Stuck in the middle with you: the role of senior leaders as third space professionals

This collaborative opinion piece offers the perspective that senior leaders must move beyond their traditional places within the academic or professional services spaces to act as hybrid professionals or translators. We take five perspectives as senior leaders and build a collective opinion of our view of the role of senior leaders as third space professionals. Senior leaders must move across boundaries, becoming third space professionals and by actively taking a liminal or neutral position between defined spaces, they share and communicate their expertise or service in a way that encourages collaboration and improved communication between groups. This conceptualisation of role and approach reinforces the notion of a single university community which supports individual, team, and organisational goals for the primary benefit of the student members of the community. Our collective opinion is that effective senior leaders in higher education will: actively occupy the third space; understand different needs to reach common goals; value all types of expertise; and communicate, communicate, communicate.