Have you fostered someone’s aspirations today?

At the University of Bedfordshire we understand very well that some of our students come to our classrooms with narrow, constrained aspirations and one of our roles is to show what is possible for them. We all relish the moments when students realise what they can achieve. It’s a hard but crucial part of our role as higher education tutors to create those glimpses of possible futures but maybe it’s even harder for any of us to see the constraints to our own aspirations, both our individual and our collective aspirations.

Can we recognise when we have faded? When we have allowed ourselves to be beaten back? When we have consented to be constrained because it is too hard to fight the world all the time? I suggest we can’t usually do that until something happens to re-invigorate us and to realise how we had reduced ourselves. We too need the equivalent of a tutor to release us sometimes.


I’ve had a couple of points in my career when I’ve slowly diminished because my thoughts were falling on stony ground and there seemed no options for changing the situation. At one company I had been recalled to head office to work on a corporate strategy in the face of very difficult challenges for the business. After a few weeks I went to our rather wise company secretary for advice because the new CEO, who had asked me to do this work, would never see me, talk to me or listen to me.  The company secretary replied “Well, he doesn’t see anyone else either and I don’t see why it should be any different with you.” I mooched about and thought a lot but couldn’t do much except apply for another job. I shrank, not physically unfortunately, but in most other ways.

Then a new Chairman arrived. In our very first conversation I knew I had to raise my game. And I knew I could. It felt so good I practically skipped down the corridor to my office.

It is surely one of the key roles of a manager to set standards and expectations high enough to release the aspirations of staff, to support them in the will to fight the world when it is necessary and to help them believe that together we can achieve all sorts of things. Sometimes, we just have to believe. For me, nurturing this belief is one of the real satisfactions of management, just as it’s one of the joys of teaching but whether as managers or as teachers there’s always more to do isn’t there?

About the Author: Elizabeth Parkin
Elizabeth had a 25 year career in management before joining the University seven years ago as Manager for “Pod” Programmes. She also held the post of MBA Academic Director before moving on to becoming Head of Department for Management and Business Systems.