Navigating the Transition: From Third Space to Independent Educational Consulting
Introduction
In the ever-evolving landscape of higher education (HE), the demand for innovative and effective learning, teaching and assessment practices has perhaps never been greater. As a result, many HE educators active within institutionally-bounded “third spaces”, find themselves drawn to the idea of becoming independent consultants, offering their expertise to multiple HE institutions (as well as schools, and other public and private sector organisations) seeking to enhance their educational practices. This shift from familiar 'third space' settings working across university communities and services and straddling multiple internal professional identities, to the dynamic world of consultancy brings with it a unique set of challenges and opportunities. In this blog post, we adopt a format that enables us to explore what we see as some of the key challenges and opportunities faced by educators looking to make this transition through two voices. First, each challenge is presented and explored. Then, acting as a kind of positive counter voice, each challenge is followed immediately by a personal insight to tackling this challenge, based on personal experiences so far..
Building a Personal Brand
One of the initial challenges when setting up as an independent educational consultant is establishing a personal brand. Within a university setting, a reputation is often well-known but also the result of a constant and protracted process of evidencing worth and credentials. But as a consultant, you must create a brand that more quickly resonates with a much wider audience. This involves crafting a compelling and authentic online presence, developing a professional website, and creating a strong, distinctive social media presence to showcase expertise and experience. Building credibility and trust takes time, but it's essential for attracting clients and opportunities.
Personal insight: Personal identity, value and letting your heart sing.
Working as ‘third space’ professionals we had spent hours supporting others to make visible and celebrate their practice ‘golden threads’, but had not given ourselves the same privilege. Making time in the diary for sense-making to understand what we were about beyond the label of a role was an empowering and critical first (and ongoing) step, and one that benefited significantly from discussion with critical friends. Having identified approaches and areas of work that made our hearts sing, we developed consultancy foci that paid the bills and reinforced and informed our personal identity, professional values and sense of self.
Navigating the Business Side
Leaving a permanent post, often means transitioning from a structured educational environment to the entrepreneurial world, where business acumen is as crucial as pedagogical expertise. Consultants must handle financial aspects, such as setting day rates, managing taxes such as VAT, navigating the complexities of IR35 and “umbrellas” and handling contracts. Learning the ropes of marketing, client acquisition, and networking in the educational consultancy field can be daunting, but online resources and professional networks can provide valuable guidance. Moreover, the experience of third space professionals used to and adept at navigating complex professional identities arguably stands them in good stead.
Personal insight: From expert to novice.
Learning, as we know, requires emotional and mental activity, support to make mistakes and is often enabled by collaboration and discussion with others. Recognising our wealth of experience working in the spaces of HE and supporting learning and colleague transitions, we turned the lens on ourselves. Scaffolding our expert to novice transition in our new space, and explicitly using our ‘expert’ skills, we planned CPD time and sought out specialist and peer networks that collectively reduced the initial feelings of uncertainty and strengthened learning, critical curiosity and collaboration as the core of our identities.
Establishing a Client Base
Building a client base is perhaps one of the most significant challenges consultants face. In their habitual third space environment, University educators have a captive audience of academic and professional staff and students to influence, but as a consultant, you must actively seek out clients. Networking, attending conferences, leveraging your existing professional connections and engaging with major players in the executive search business can help you secure your first clients. Naturally, providing high quality service and results will lead to repeat business, recommendations and referrals, further growing your client base.
Personal insight: Recognising the value of ‘loss leaders’.
The expert-to-novice experience was acute here, but working on our transition using these approaches has been helpful. As consultants we benefit from role flexibility, adjusting our ‘work’ time to explore avenues, both within HE and without, that keep our skills current and have the potential to open doors. Seeking opportunities to volunteer in the wider community or provide HE citizenship activities is not mercenary, but calculated CPD, networking and identity affirmation work. Putting time in the diary for these broad and specific client activities – including activity reflection time – has helped us value ‘finding work’ time as an explicit focus of our work, one to be costed into your fee base.
Adapting to the Changing Landscape
Educational practices are, as we know, continually evolving with advancements in learning technology, the constant churn of regulation and the publication of new pedagogical research. As an independent consultant, staying relevant is vital, so investing time in professional development, keeping up-to-date with the latest trends, research, and tools in education is a key consideration in terms of time allocation. Being adaptable and willing to pivot services to meet emerging needs, perhaps beyond education into other private and public sectors, is also crucial to income generation.
Personal Insight: The dreaded paywall and ‘institution’ tick box.
Global HE is rich in open resources, webinars and points of discussion and contact from which we have benefitted hugely, and in ways that would not have been possible when employed for one institution. But, by being unaffiliated we lose access to library resources and a myriad of professional groups which, possibly inadvertently just by deign of form creation habit, ask people renewing their memberships for their institution. Frustratingly some connections to professional networks may lapse and so peer networks are a lifeline here.
Balancing Independence and Collaboration
While independence is a hallmark of consultancy work, collaboration remains essential. Balancing these two aspects can be challenging. Consultants may find themselves working solo most of the time, but they also need to collaborate with clients, peers, and other professionals to ensure the best outcomes for their clients. Striking the right balance is key to success. Initially, just maintaining pre-existing collaborative research and writing relationships may be enough to focus on along with the other pressures of going it alone. Nevertheless, as third space professionals, we are used to working in strong communities of practice and it’s important to nurture these and continue to find professional sustenance there.
Personal insight: Creating a community of HE education-focused consultants.
Celebrating the expertises that have drawn us into the private sector, we are people people with strong values of critical curiosity and collaboration. Citizenship work can meet some of these needs, but where do we find like-minded others? How do we get invited to contribute to research and innovations? Could we share emerging opportunities we can’t meet with others? Could we visualise our expertise and consultancy status in some easily recognisable way to both elevate our work to clients and each other? To start to explore these and other conundrums we have set up a HE Education-focussed consultant network hosted by AdvanceHE Connect (search for Network for Educational Enhancement Consultants within AdvanceHE Connect https://connect.advance-he.ac.uk). If you don’t have an existing AdvanceHE Connect account, please email us directly (email addresses below).
Conclusion
Leaving the relative security of the usual third space that university-based education leaders occupy to become an independent educational consultant is a rewarding but challenging prospect. Building a personal brand, developing business acumen, identifying niche markets, establishing a client base, staying adaptable, and finding the right balance between independence and collaboration are all obstacles to overcome. Yet, there are many rewards to anticipate too. The first is the freedom as an independent consultant to choose your own clients and projects ensuring variety and giving space and time to perhaps discover new or latent strengths and interests. Second is the flexibility to set your own hours and collaborate with people and organisations who share your values. The now well-embedded prevalence of hybrid and remote workstyles also facilitates working on projects of interest anywhere in the world. All of this can be a great way to have a more balanced lifestyle and have more control over a career. Third, there is potential to make a real impact on the educational system by improving practice. So far, in these early days, we are excited and optimistic about the future. With dedication, continuous learning, and perseverance, many educators before us have successfully transitioned into this new phase of their careers and contributed significantly to the enhancement of educational practices – so why not us! The challenges may be daunting, but the opportunities for growth and impact are, it seems, boundless. And if you’d like to hear more about the future network, please email us direct.
Professor Karen Heard-Lauréote & Dr Clare Kell
