When department heads vacate their positions, the remaining department members initiate the process to obtain candidates. This process is complex and plagued with controversies and micropolitics, and is rarely predictable or linear, as it is difficult to cover the role of department head. Not all individuals are willing to take on the position. The department head’s role include functions such as representation, conflict mediation, organization of meetings (department councils, mainly), and management of research personnel, professors, and other department staff.

The aim of the present study is to describe and examine the process of deciding to apply for the role of university education department head in Spain. The main objective of the present study is to obtain first-hand knowledge on the subjective perceptions of current university department heads in Spain, on their decision to apply for that role. For this, a structured interview script was created to obtain the testimony of department heads about their beginnings in university department management, following the wake of previous research studies in this field.

As it was impossible to interview department heads from every area of knowledge at the national level, a decision was made to limit the study to a specific group of department heads: those who worked in education departments. This selection was based on three reasons:
(1) these departments are large and complex;
(2) they are mixed;
(3) there is a large percentage of variation of temporary teaching personnel.

This study allowed exploring the subjective perceptions of current university department heads in Spain about their decision to apply for that position. The following were analyzed: their starting contexts, their initial training, their reasons for applying, the ease of forming a team, and contrasts with the previous management team.
With respect to the context of the participants, the mostly female participation in this study positively stands out, as it reflects a social change in which there are more women acting as education university departments heads in Spain (10 women and 7 men participated).

With respect to the training for taking on the role, the lack of initial and permanent training that could help department heads to make correct decisions, and the lack of necessary information available at each moment in time, were highlighted. Only one person mentioned taking part in a training course.

With respect to the reasons for running for that office, a disparity was observed between the participants. Although they tended to cite more than one reason, they had a solid argument for thinking about applying for the position; support from their colleagues, the commitment from the institution, searching for a professional career change, learning and overcoming, or the promotion of a change in leadership, among others.

With respect to how easy or difficult it was for the candidate to form a team (in most of the cases, a secretary and/or sub-head), most of the interviewees affirmed that it was easy, as these roles had less exposure and constituted a professional merit of management, although they were little valued and paid, and were not highly demanded.

With respect to the styles followed by the exiting management team and the new one, contrasts were found, but in most cases the participants ensured that were no discrepancies between the types of management styles.

Keywords: leadership, management, managerial staff, qualitative research, interview.