Between Systems and People

Taking on Academic Leadership with Care, Collaboration, and Presence

I have recently been offered the role of Vice-Dean Academic.

It is a moment that could feel like an arrival, but for me, it feels more like a continuation: a continuation of questions I have been asking for years, of work done quietly and relationally, and of a life shaped as much by caregiving, grief, and transition as by scholarship or title.

Much of my writing over the past several months has explored transitions:

students navigating systems that expect independence before support;

women becoming mothers in academic environments that still pretend bodies and lives do not matter;

and my own journey through loss, recalibration, and growth, as I learn to carry both responsibility and care without erasing myself in the process.

This new role belongs to that same conversation.

Leadership After Grief, Not Despite It

Early in my career, I imagined leadership as something you step up into, a position from which change flows outward. Life, and loss, have reshaped my understanding of power and responsibility.

Grief did that for me.

So did caregiving, and years of watching students, staff, and faculty absorb strain quietly, often invisibly, in systems stretched beyond what they were designed to hold.

Research on academic work and burnout reminds us that chronic strain is rarely the result of individual fragility, but of systemic mismatch between demands and available resources within organizational design (Maslach & Leiter, 2016). When invisible labour, such as mentoring, emotional support, and pedagogical care is unrecognized, that mismatch accumulates not only in workloads, but in bodies, through stress and allostatic load (McEwen, 1998).

These experiences have not made me more efficient or hardened. They have made me more attentive, more cautious about urgency, and more skeptical of solutions that rely on endurance rather than care.

If I step into this role now, it is not because I can fix everything but because I want to create conditions where fewer people break, where fewer students are left to “figure it out alone,” and where the work of teaching and mentoring is valued and protected.

From Top-Down Authority to Relational Leadership

I have always been fundamentally averse to top-down approaches to leadership. Not because structure does not matter, but because change that ignores lived experience rarely holds. Scholarship on distributed and relational leadership consistently shows that sustainable change in complex organizations emerges through shared expertise, collective sense-making, and trust, rather than hierarchical control (Spillane, 2005; Bolden, 2011). In academic environments, where knowledge is already distributed, leadership that listens is evidence-based strategy, not luxury.

My commitment to collaborative leadership is not abstract. As Director of the largest undergraduate program in our Faculty, I learned quickly that meaningful change could not be imposed, it had to be built collaboratively, across faculty, staff, and students. That role required keeping an eye on the present and the future at the same time: responding to the needs of students currently in our classrooms, while stewarding programs for those who have not yet arrived, in a landscape shaped by evolving disciplinary, societal, and labour-market contexts. Translating institutional constraints into workable practices, without losing sight of educational purpose, was less about control than about careful listening, negotiation, and shared responsibility across committees, curriculum revisions, and student advocacy conversations.

That experience shaped not only how I lead, but how I understand institutional accountability.

Teaching, Care, and Invisible Labour as Core Academic Work

The recognition I have received through recent awards, including those connected to teaching, has confirmed something I have long believed: care-centered, student-focused, collaborative approaches are not peripheral to academic excellence…they are foundational.

The dossier I prepared for my teaching award nomination in 2024 documented work many of us do quietly: scaffolding learning, mentoring through uncertainty, attending to wellbeing alongside intellectual growth. Research on faculty roles and agency shows that this work is central to institutional mission, even when it is invisible in formal reward structures (O’Meara, 2015).

If I bring anything into this academic leadership role, it is a commitment to making this work visible, valued, and protected, not as an add-on, but as central to what we do.

Meaning-Making as an Analytic Lens for Leadership

In my recent writing and thinking, I have been drawn to meaning-making; not as a soft concept, but as a rigorous lens for understanding transitions, both for individuals and institutions.

Research on stress, loss, and adaptation shows that when meaning collapses, distress intensifies, and when new narratives are co-constructed, adaptation becomes possible (Park, 2010). Organizational scholars similarly describe sensemaking as the process through which institutions navigate uncertainty, not by eliminating ambiguity, but by interpreting it together (Weick, 1995). Adult learning theory reminds us that transformation is not the acquisition of new information, but a shift in how experience itself is understood (Cranton, 2023).

Living in the in-between has taught me that stability and change are not opposites, but partners in a careful dance. The work is not to outrun the vigilance of the nervous system, but to acknowledge it, to allow space for regulation and coherence to emerge.

What I Hope to Work Toward

In stepping into this role, my intentions are simple, though not easy:

• To listen before acting

• To work collaboratively, with every voice taken seriously

• To protect space for teaching and learning amid constant change

• To translate between institutional demands and human limits

• To resist excellence narratives that depend on quiet exhaustion

  
  

I am not under any illusion that one role, or one person, can remake higher education. I cannot change the educational system single-handedly, nor can I transform an entire university through position alone. What I do believe, however, is that meaningful change can happen in how people are treated, in how decisions are made, and in how the university is understood, not simply as an industry or a factory line designed to produce standardized outcomes, but as a living community shaped by relationships, care, and shared purpose.

I am not stepping into this role to reinvent or impose, but to learn from the wisdom and experience of colleagues who have already demonstrated what works, and to collaborate with them to enhance care, teaching, and collective impact.

And perhaps most importantly, to remain someone who can still write reflections like this; someone who can pause, notice, and make meaning alongside others, rather than above them.

Institutional Sustainability and Student Success

In a sector facing financial pressures, shifting enrolments, and public scrutiny, sustainability cannot rest solely on efficiency metrics.  It also requires attending to the wellbeing and capacity of those within the system, faculty, staff, and students, so that everyone has the support, guidance, and resources needed to thrive. When these human systems are cared for, students are better able to access mentoring, guidance, and educational support, ensuring that the work of learning and growth remains central to the institution.

Invitational and Forward-Looking

I do not see this transition as a solution, but as an invitation, an invitation to deeper listening, shared responsibility, and collective meaning-making at a time when our academic systems need all three.

In stepping into this role, I hope to practice leadership not as distance or authority, but as steady presence. Together, we might build ways of working that allow both people and institutions not merely to endure, but to grow, with care.

-- Anne TM Konkle, PhD

References

Bolden R. Distributed leadership in organizations: A review of theory and research. International Journal of Management Reviews. 2011 Sep 1; 13 (3): 251-269. doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2370.2011.00306.x

Cranton P. Understanding and promoting transformative learning. A guide to theory and practice. 2023 (3^rd Ed.) NY: Routledge. Doi.org/10.4324/9781003448433.

McEwen BS. Stress, adaptation, and disease. Allostasis and allostatic load. Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences. 1998 May 1;840:33-44. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.1998.tb09546.x.

Maslach C, Leiter MP. Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry. 2016 Jun;15(2):103-11. doi: 10.1002/wps.20311.

O’Meara KA. A Career with a view: Agentic perspectives of women faculty. The Journal of Higher Education. 2015 86(3): 331-359. DOI: 10.1080/00221546.2015.11777367.

Park CL. Making sense of the meaning literature: an integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychol Bull. 2010 Mar;136(2):257-301. doi: 10.1037/a0018301.

Spillane JP. Distributed leadership. The Educational Forum. 2005 Jun; 69(2): 143-150. DOI: 10.1080/00131720508984678.

Weick KE. Sensemaking in organizations. 1995 Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.