After participating in a really interesting panel event for aspiring Principal Fellows, organised by Kate Cuthbert, I was prompted to reflect on the value of PFHEA as well as the process. The summary below offers a quick overview of the benefits of PFHEA and some tips for the process in case it is useful to others, especially perhaps for those making a commitment to PFHEA for a new year’s resolution!

PFHEA helps to make sense of your career journey, your strengths, and, next steps. ✅ Links to other opportunities: Telling your story helps to strengthen and develop professional identity. ✅ PFHEA prep can feed in to promotion and other awards such as NTF. ✅ Validation by peers helps confidence and professional standing. ✅ PFHEA can inspire others across an organisation. ✅ Triggers new networking with a wide community of experts, leaders and aspiring PFs. Draw your professional identify (Venn diagram, table, picture) to help identify themes are areas that define you. Group your achievements, activities, and projects in to the thematic headings. Work with colleagues who know you well to locate evidence and impact, and to unpack your story. Consider whether your application is ready to write (and then get on with it) or whether you have to take some action first. A self assessment may help. Collate testimony from colleagues but direct them, don’t leave it to chance. Look at your direct impact but also the extra impact you have by being a leader (this is the ripple effect) Remember evidence needs reflection e.g. What else might you have done? Why did you act in this way? Consider quantifying your impact. Organise your evidence so you can reuse it for multiple purposes (perhaps NTF, CATE, or promotions). Literature should help explain aspects of both pedagogy and leadership. Use the opportunity of PFHEA to read beyond the familiar e.g. look at texts around leadership methods and values, as well as pedagogy. Show how you have been influenced by scholarship; show how it shapes you personally. Demonstrate your own scholarship; share formal and informal practices (e.g. blogs, social media as well as papers). Outline the impact of your scholarship on you, your leadership, and on others.

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