How We Lead: Theories of Career Services Leadership

In 2024, author Dylan Houle started the Career Services Leadership podcast to explore the topic of leadership with fellow career leaders. Over the course of two years, he interviewed 24 current and former career services leaders, asking each guest a similar set of questions on the topic of leadership. From this podcast, a research project emerged to explore a fundamental question: How do career services leaders lead?

As career outcomes become increasingly important to the value proposition of higher education, colleges and universities are strategically repositioning the role of the career services leader to be more visible and prominent.¹ Higher expectations and greater responsibilities are placed on them by university leadership, students, parents, and the public. Yet, we know little about what leadership approaches and styles are most effective in leading a career unit.

Investigating Leadership and Leadership Approaches

With the rich interviews on leadership conducted through the Career Services Leadership podcast between August 2023 and May 2025 as our data set, we initiated an archival study. Using thematic analysis to surface leadership theories that emerged from the data allowed for an inductive approach to identify underlying ideas and conceptualizations in the data.²

Podcast guests included 24 professionals representing various levels and types of leadership roles within higher education. Educational backgrounds varied, with most guests holding master’s degrees (n = 13), followed by doctorates (n = 8) and bachelor’s degrees (n = 3).

Guests served in senior leadership capacities, including executive director (n = 9), director or managing director (n = 4), associate or assistant vice provost (n = 3), and other senior-level roles (n = 3). Others included former career services leaders (n = 4). Years in current roles ranged from less than one year to more than 13 years, with an average tenure of approximately four years. They represented diverse institutional contexts, including public (n = 8) and private not-for-profit (n = 10) universities. 

Three dominant leadership approaches emerged across guests’ experiences: 1) servant leadership, 2) authentic leadership, and 3) situational leadership.

In addition, leaders characterized the work of career services at their institutions, revealing five recurring themes: 1) systems orientation, 2) collaboration and integration, 3) staff expertise and growth, 4) student experience and equity, and 5) resources and external context. How these leaders described and operationalized their work often aligned with their leadership styles. We organized our results around the dominant leadership themes and approaches. 

Servant Leadership

Leaders most often referred directly to servant leadership as a framework they specifically tried to follow, or they described the underlying characteristics of servant leadership in their work. Guest 16 (episode numbers used in lieu of names), said, “I certainly think there are pieces of servant leadership that resonate ... for me. I feel like a strong part of my work is advocacy… on behalf of my team. …I think I try to focus on psychological safety, strong communication, transparency, and a whole lot of fun.”

There was also a strong focus on the team as individuals and supporting the team’s growth and development. Guest 17 said that, “as a leader you must commit to the development of the people who are working around you …” For him, and others who were interviewed on the podcast, this leadership approach is aligned with personal values and self identity. For example, guest 17 also noted, “that’s also tied to my identity as a career educator [because] it’s interesting in this space … it’s easier and has been easier for me to identify as a career educator long before I identified as a leader.”

While some leaders did not describe a specific approach, they went on to share descriptions that aligned with these themes. Guest 4 said, “I'm a developer of individuals … [I] want people to grow. I want them to thrive. I want them to feel that I support their growth … I’m almost like part motivational speaker, part leader, you know, finding out what motivates people, bringing people together.”

Guests’ descriptions aligned with Greenleaf’s framework of servant leadership, showing patterns centered on how a leader shares power, puts the needs of employees first, builds staff capacity, centers equity, and promotes collaboration. As Greenleaf notes, “The servant-leader is servant first … It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. … The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons?” ³

Staff expertise and growth

Two themes focused on how staff operationalize their work fit into the characterizations of servant leadership. We have described these themes as a focus on 1) staff expertise and growth and 2) collaboration and integration. Leaders especially addressed a focus on staff professional development for personal growth and industry expertise. Career services work is dynamic and, as Guest 5 observed, “the skill set is changing. It is more project management, program management.”

At the same time, Guest 2 described the importance of “making sure that we have career counselors or coaches that are really becoming subject matter experts, building relationships within those industries.”

Nearly every leader emphasized the importance of professional development for their staff. Guest 21 said, “We prioritize professional development because it’s so important … a lot is changing in our field all the time.” For leaders, this isn’t just lip service.

Collaboration and integration

Connected to a servant leader orientation, guests described their work as collaborative and integrative across campuses, with a focus on boundary-spanning and initiatives designed to embed career services within the institution. Leaders shared a need to “build [career services] into the culture and fabric of the institution,” as Guest 19 described.

Across institution types, there was a similar focus on community building. Guest 5 summarized this perspective, saying that “a leader needs to know how to articulate a vision that is inspirational and motivating using, perhaps, radical imagination and compels others into action by building symbiotic relationships and community care. … career and professional development is not only me or is not an ‘I,’ or ‘me,’ ‘my office’ kind of challenge. It’s an ‘us,’ a ‘we.’"

Career services work needs to span internal and external communities. As such, the number of boundaries it has to cross continues to grow as the work expands. Discussing the benefits to having career centers for departments on campus, Guest 22 stated, “We have the ability to balance between what higher ed functions look like, but also what industry looks like and what industry is telling [us].”

We have a unique opportunity to think big in our collaboration. For example, Guest 1 described forming a “partnership committee” that even includes “chambers of commerce, offices of economic development, [and] workforce development boards” because “once you bring in all of these players, naturally, it’s going to increase your influence.” These leaders are thinking even more broadly than the traditional campus communities. As such, their reach and influence must span well beyond traditional career activities.

Authentic Leadership

Leaders with diverse backgrounds from within and outside of higher education frequently referred to having learned the value of authentic leadership while in their career leadership roles.

These leadership descriptions shared similarities to George and Clayton’s framing of authentic leadership: “Authentic leaders are characterized by truth-telling, transparency, and trust.”⁴

Guest 14, who moved up through the ranks into a leadership role, said, “… one of the intentional things that I did when I moved into leadership is that I began sharing more about myself because the more that people understand about you, the more that they can see how you make decisions, the more confident they feel in you. And that security means a lot to people who work in higher ed.”

Authentic leadership, Guest 18 shared, means not leading with ego because it “has a funny way of working against our success.” He also noted that “one of the biggest [leadership models] is humility. I think it’s so important to remind ourselves that, again, we’re part of communities, and we achieve our excellence in those communities and through those communities.” 

Leaders who started out in industry also acknowledged how vulnerability, humility, and authenticity influenced their leadership within the career services space.

Guest 22 said, “I have to know my staff. I have to know my team.” He opened himself so his staff knew him as well, creating “a level of vulnerability,” and believes it is important to “take down the armor ... let's just really be. Let’s have the real conversation,” even though doing so can be difficult.

Another common theme related to approaching difficult conversations with authenticity.

“I really try to be as transparent and as honest as possible with what I share with the team about what our expectations are, what leadership is wanting from us, and what’s happening,” Guest 8 said.

Along the same lines, Guest 21 said, “I’ve come to recognize that conflict is uncomfortable, but when we work through it, often we end up at a better outcome.” She even holds office hours with staff, because “I think that vulnerability is really important, and so I try to be as accessible as possible.”

Navigating hard conversations and learning how important it is to give direct and honest feedback was frequently shared as a central part of these leaders’ experiences.

For example, Guest 17 said, “All things being equal, I'd rather not have [difficult conversations]. But, framing it from that developmental perspective, these are necessary things. And in fact, it would be very unkind not to have these conversations.”

In a similar vein, Guest 21 said, “I remember one time where I had to tell someone something that was really hard … And I just procrastinated… and at some point I had to deal with it. And that moment taught me that I have to do the hard things, and I have to do the hard things early.”

Giving direct and honest feedback is a form of truth-telling that seems essential to the concept of authentic leadership.

Student experience and equity

Leaders’ authentic approach extended to how they operationalized their work with students, emphasizing the student experience and prioritizing equity. Guest 20 framed it as, “we are working in an arena that is not about the bottom line ... it’s about the development of humans.”

While career services is a data-heavy field, this came up repeatedly. For example, Guest 19 noted that “we have to stop just tracking sheer numbers and start looking at what’s the quality of the experience that [students are] having.”

Beyond quality, Guest 14 summarized it as a question: “Are our students making informed career decisions?”

These leaders described their offices and roles as functions having an even broader impact on students and society.

Guest 8 said, “I believe career services is social justice work. When we’re able to lift people up from, say, like the economic background that they came in.”

In a variety of ways, this theme repeated. Guest 19 noted that the “central purpose is really about ensuring that our students are prepared for the path that they want to embark on and that that path is one path within a meaningful life and a meaningful livelihood.”

The view of Guest 12 was that “the foundation that we’ve been building in career-engaged learning and the career center and with our leadership is the responsibility our institution has for social mobility.”

Situational Leadership

Situational leadership highlights the need for adaptability and context-dependent approaches. In career services, leaders described shifting strategies based on staff readiness, institutional priorities, and external market changes.

Leaders named situational leadership specifically and also described approaches that aligned with Hersey and Blanchard’s framing of situational leadership.⁵

Guest 17 emphasized that “it’s still me, but it’s a different version of me that fits in this environment that I need to adjust to.”

Guest 18 was more specific, saying, “One of my favorites is the situational leadership by Hersey and Blanchard in terms of that model. And what I like about it is it actually emphasizes and introduces choice. I think it's important for all of us to understand as leaders that we have choice.”

Guest 14 was also more specific, noting that “I'm [going to] mix in a bit of situational … you can be an expert in career services, but depending on the environment that you’re in, that may mean very little. … when I am working with those outside of the career center, but also within my office. The different areas that I have ... have different purposes; they have different sizes. And so I have to be quite flexible in how I lead them and really determining what their motivators are.”

Other leaders described approaches as eclectic. For example, Guest 7 said, “I think what I’ve come to is something that is much more situational in recognizing an eclectic supervision style.” Similarly, Guest 15 noted that, “my approach to leadership is pragmatism.” Guest 10 got to the heart of why this could be, noting, “I think, like many career leaders ... we have to be a chameleon, really. We have to wear so many hats. We’re constantly task switching … leading a team, doing professional development, being on a committee, partnering with various areas of the university.”

A situational leadership style aligned when these leaders went on to describe how they operationalized this work, framing it around a systems orientation and a focus on the resources and external context required for their work.

Systems orientation

Leaders described operationalizing their situational work around a systems orientation, with a focus on agility and external conditions. Guest 4 described this need, saying that, in career services and in higher education, “you have to be extremely nimble and adaptable” and noted that “when I say long-term, that’s like three years.”

Guest 7 shared a similar sentiment, asking “How farsighted can we be in higher ed anymore with our planning?” He went on to say that “having a more adaptable planning flexibility approach, I think, has served me better than trying to lean into plans that are just too farsighted.”

This was a common sentiment: that career services leaders need to be aware of changing conditions both within their institutions as well as externally.

Guest 15 described this landscape by saying, “We do have a huge range of stakeholders that we are trying to ... support, and a VUCA [volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity] environment within which we do that.”

As a result, leaders described tapping into systems thinking to navigate their environments.

“I have [an interest] in systems thinking which is all about making sense of that complexity. So the job of a career educator has changed, I think, the job of a leader,” said Guest 10, further noting that systems thinking requires one to be “grounded in being future minded and recognize that everything is connected to another system or process or experience for the student.”

As leaders rose into their leadership positions, several described how their perspectives needed to change to accommodate the new responsibilities.

Describing this transition, Guest 13 said, “I would characterize myself as much more of an individual contributor before I became the director. ... I really had to shift my mindset from myself and individuals to systems thinking, and how are the parts working together in harmony.”

Resources and external context

A number of external factors arose as leaders discussed their styles and approaches. This aligns with a focus on situational factors and systems orientation. Speaking of pressure, Guest 7 said, “One is the external pressure, which is how the job market shapes the questions and needs [of] …our students. But the external pressure of the job market also shapes how we engage, interact, with employers.”

Guest 12 described the system functions and dysfunctions in terms of, “conflict theory … [There is] a limited amount of resources that exist in any organization, in any society. And how do you leverage those resources? How do you advocate [for] those resources?”

A key element of situational leadership is knowing how to adapt one’s leadership style to the needs, expectations, and capacities of the various constituencies one leads, supports, or works with. These external contexts are important for a leader to embrace.

As Guest 19 observed, “We have to work with orientation and student affairs and academic affairs and advancement and alumni and parents and families. We are one of the groups that has to do the most on our campuses. …Not every area has to do all that.”

Career Services Leadership: People-centered, Systems-aware

Through analyzing Houle’s Career Services Leadership podcast interviews, we sought to understand the leadership styles and philosophies career services leaders use to enact their roles and how they characterize and operationalize this work. Dominant themes appeared across leaders’ experience levels. Servant, authentic, and situational leadership emerged as the most common approaches. While not all leaders explicitly named a leadership style, their rich descriptions of their work aligned with these three frameworks. Each theory also appeared in how these leaders approached their work, emphasizing care for staff and students, adaptability, purpose-driven work, and boundary-spanning external work.

Leaders relied on a mix of styles, recognizing that leadership in career services is both people-centered and systems-aware. Because the work spans departments and internal and external boundaries, leaders must balance team development with institutional and employer-facing priorities. Care and concern for staff were evident across guests, and servant and authentic leadership emphasized cultures of care and continuous professional development. This may, in part, reflect the unique nature of career services work, where frontline staff must serve as both industry experts and career educators, unlike many other student support roles in higher education. Leaders consistently prioritized staff development, advocacy, and empowerment as central to their leadership philosophy.

The dynamic nature of the profession also requires leadership that is agile across disciplines. Effective leaders blend these approaches fluidly, adapting to shifting contexts while maintaining consistent values. Those who drew from situational leadership demonstrated strategic flexibility and the ability to align with institutional priorities during changing conditions. Overall, our findings suggest that leadership in career services is less about hierarchical authority and more about relational influence, adaptability, and systems integration. These findings highlight the need for leadership development programs that strengthen both interpersonal and systems leadership capacities.

How Will You Lead? 

As career outcomes become acknowledged as central to the mission of universities, career services leaders have likewise become increasingly visible and integral to institutional strategy. Grounding the profession in established leadership theory can provide a framework for understanding how we lead, what qualities are most effective, and where further growth is needed for individuals and the profession. 

How will you lead, and what resources will you use to support your own professional development? 

Endnotes

¹ NACE Career Services Strategic Positioning Task Force. (2022). Positioning Career Services as an Institutional Strategic Priority. National Association of Colleges and Employers. Retrieved from www.naceweb.org/uploadedFiles/files/2022/resources/2022-nace-positioning-career-services-as-an-institutional-strategic-priority.pdf.

² Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.

³ Greenleaf, R. K. (1977). Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness. Paulist Press, p. 13.

⁴ George, B., & Clayton, Z. (2022). True North: Leading Authentically in Today’s Workplace (Emerging leader edition). Wiley, p. 7.

⁵ Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K. H. (1969). Management of organizational behavior. Prentice-Hall.