Managing at the Yield Point: Leadership Reflections from the 2026 Higher Ed Conference Season - Part 1: The Yield Point
I just returned from presenting sessions and spending time at four higher education conferences - the NASPA AVP Symposium, NASPA Annual Conference, NADOHE, and ACPA National Convention - where I spent a lot of time talking with and listening to higher education leaders about what it’s like doing their work right now and their thoughts on the state of the profession.
It was really stark to hear leaders articulate how close they were to a breaking point. They were internalizing their realities in different ways, from healthy to concerning. Leaders are experiencing high levels of exhaustion, anxiety, and fatigue around five areas:
Lack of capacity to effectively manage leadership transitions and departures
Reorganization uncertainty
Change fatigue
AI ambivalence
Not being able to share values and commitment to DEI
I provide my view from the field and reflect on the impacts and implications of these five areas on senior leaders and the future of the profession.
Part 1: The Yield Point
Higher Ed Leaders at a Breaking Point
Key takeaways
The profession has hit its physical “yield point” where the operational and emotional toll on middle and senior management is risking permanent and irreversible talent loss.
Senior leaders cannot expand their capacity to solve complex campus issues if they do not aggressively protect time so they can stay grounded strategically. Carving out this time is critical for survival and decision-making clarity.
Three words came up over and over again: exhaustion, anxiety, and fatigue.
At first it felt like nothing new because the shift started happening at the beginning of this year. My coaching practice tripled since summer 2025 with senior leaders who were in it. I mean really in it. Every other thing I was reading in the Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed, even the New York Times was about the profound shift American higher education was grappling with across every state. Senior leaders were struggling and underscored how bad things really were.
View from the field
Stagnation: a senior leader had not gotten to any strategic planning or her own professional development this year because leadership vacancies in her portfolio. She was acting as her own Director because four key roles - two Directors and two Assistant Directors - remained vacant.
Stability seeking: a senior leader observed teams responding to reorganization and uncertainty by fleeing toward external stability elsewhere. He felt helpless to see good people leaving but didn’t blame them as he mentally prepared for how to handle those staffing vacancies.
The genAI mandate: another senior leader was incredulous about being told to drive “AI efficiency” with teams who were already at the brink and without knowing how to use the tools herself.
What’s different about these issues, this time, is the crushing weight of all of it at once. While professionals have been scrambling to put out fires, the unrelenting pace of change, combined with the intensity of scrutiny and expectations are pushing people to the edge.
There is a way to understand this in scientific terms. The act of stretching a material to its limit just before failure is known as approaching “yield point.” Here’s the kicker - this kind of stress level at which a material ceases to behave elastically, and begins to undergo permanent, irreversible deformation or fracture.
I heard frustration and exhaustion as people were trying to figure out how much more they could hold. They could not imagine continuing in the same way for much longer.
These stories reflect the double bind senior leaders in higher education are currently experiencing - without time to invest in themselves, they cannot broaden and deepen their capacity enabling them to alleviate feelings of exhaustion, anxiety, and fatigue.
What are we doing? It doesn’t have to be this way.
For those who wanted encouragement, I reminded them that making a choice to take time for yourself to get grounded in what really matters is something that is necessary and crucial at this point. I said, this is not a waste of time even though I know it’s hard to prioritize yourself right now especially when there are so many holes to plug and fires to put out. Knowing when to create space for yourself to get perspective, to take a beat and get solid in your values as a leader, and that clarity enables you to know with greater certainty what is and isn’t going to work, what is and is not the right thing to do. Cultivating space to return to the frameworks that guide you helps you deal with everything that is leading to exhaustion, anxiety, and fatigue.
For those of you reading, I wonder what your presence of mind is telling you. Are you approaching your “yield point”?
In the next part of this series, I’ll go into more depth with how higher education professionals are experiencing these pressures on a daily basis. Some of it might surprise you.
