What Centering Demands of Leaders

Part 2: It Starts with “Leadership” 

If defining centering is about clarity, the next question is responsibility.

Because once we are clear on what it means to center the student affairs workforce, we have to ask:

Who is responsible for making that real?

The answer is not complicated, but it is significant.

Leadership.

Not simply leadership as a title, but leadership as a practice. Leadership expressed through behavior, decisions, priorities, and accountability.

One of the realities we do not always acknowledge is that leaders have tremendous influence over how people experience work. The expectations we set, the decisions we make, the resources we allocate, and the behaviors we model all shape the environments our teams navigate every day.

Centering does not happen because we say the right things.

It happens because leaders make different choices.

Centering Is Lived Through Leadership

In Part 1, I described centering as a shift in how we design our environments, moving from add-on support to intentional, embedded practice.

But systems do not redesign themselves.

Policies and practices do not shift on their own.

Culture does not change by accident.

They are shaped, reinforced, and sustained through leadership.

Which means that centering the workforce is not simply an organizational priority. It is a leadership responsibility.

Moving Beyond a Productivity-Only Mindset

Many of us inherited leadership models where success was defined primarily by output and outcomes:

How much we produced.

How quickly we responded.

How efficiently we operated.

Those expectations still matter, and they are not inherently wrong.

But they are incomplete.

They tell us what was accomplished, not necessarily how people experienced accomplishing it.

Centering the workforce requires leaders to expand what they measure, what they prioritize, how they show up, and what they hold themselves accountable for.

It asks us to consider not only what gets done, but how people experience doing it.

This is the shift from a productivity-first mindset to a people-centered leadership approach.

And that shift shows up in very real ways.

What This Shift Looks Like in Practice

During the development of the Centering the Student Affairs Workforce recommendations, one theme surfaced repeatedly.

Professionals were not simply asking for more resources. They were asking for leadership practices that reflected the values institutions often claim to hold.

They wanted transparency.

Meaningful opportunities for growth.

Realistic expectations.

Authentic recognition.

Leaders willing to listen before challenges became crises.

When leaders begin to center the workforce, their day-to-day practices start to look different.

Not dramatically at first, but intentionally.

Listening Before There Is a Problem

Traditionally, many of our feedback loops are reactive. We learn what is not working when someone leaves, when concerns escalate, or when engagement declines.

Centering challenges that model.

Leaders create consistent opportunities to understand staff experiences in real time through:

• Stay interviews

• Regular check-ins that go beyond task updates

• Structured opportunities for honest feedback

The goal is not simply to solve problems.

It is to understand patterns, identify needs, and build trust before challenges reach a breaking point.

Making Values Visible in Decisions

Higher education is often very good at naming values.

We place them on websites, strategic plans, conference themes, and presentation slides.

The harder work is ensuring those values are visible in daily decisions.

Centering the workforce requires leaders to align decisions with stated commitments.

This might look like:

• Prioritizing funding for staff development alongside programmatic needs

• Reassessing expectations when teams are operating at capacity

• Being transparent about constraints while actively working toward equity and improvement

These are not always easy decisions.

But they are defining ones.

Because staff are always paying attention to how priorities show up in practice.

Expanding Accountability

Perhaps one of the most significant shifts is this:

Leaders who hold themselves accountable not only for outcomes, but for staff experience.

That means asking:

• Are my team members able to do their work sustainably?

• Do they feel supported, valued, and clear about expectations?

• Am I contributing to clarity, or unintentionally creating confusion or strain?

• Have I created an environment where people can provide honest feedback without fear?

Accountability also requires leaders to create space for feedback that may be uncomfortable.

It is easy to welcome praise.

It is much harder to remain curious when staff experiences challenge our intentions.

Yet centering requires leaders to examine impact, not just intent.

This is a different level of reflection.

And it is a necessary one.

Centering Begins With Individual Practice

It is easy to think about centering as something that happens at the organizational level.

And it does.

But it also happens in small, daily leadership decisions:

• How a one-on-one conversation is handled

• How priorities are established for the week

• How a leader responds when someone raises concerns about capacity

• How recognition is given, or not given

• How feedback is received and acted upon

These moments matter.

They accumulate into culture.

Long before culture is reflected in a survey, it is experienced in everyday interactions.

A Challenge to Leaders

If we believe that staff experience is a strategic lever for student success, leadership cannot treat it as secondary.

It has to be part of how we define effectiveness.

So here is the question I am sitting with, and offering to others:

What would change in your leadership practice if staff experience was not a byproduct of your work, but a primary measure of your effectiveness?