When Roles Blur: Leading with Integrity When Professional Boundaries Shift

Jen never meant to replace anyone. In Nomadland, she stepped into a role she loved—supporting a school district’s library systems, helping teachers navigate their tools, and doing the quiet, careful work that kept digital learning afloat. She was good at it. She cared. And yet, the moment she realized her boss—an experienced professional with a master’s degree—had been pushed into retirement so the district could save money, something inside her shifted.

“I felt like I betrayed my boss by taking her job,” she said.

It was a soft sentence. But it carried the weight of an entire profession struggling under the quiet pressure of downward reclassification. Her guilt wasn’t about ambition. It was about being placed in the emotional crossfire of a structural decision she didn’t make.

That feeling is not unique.
It echoes in academic libraries every day.

A Parallel Story in Higher Education

In a small academic library, a supervisor calls a long-serving paraprofessional into the office. A librarian has left. The role won’t be replaced—not as it was. Budget cuts, shifting priorities, a campus “reorganization.” The new title sounds modern and streamlined, but everyone knows what it really means: the responsibilities are the same; the pay and credential expectations are not.

The paraprofessional hears the offer with a knot in their stomach. They admire the librarian who left. They respected her expertise, her teaching presence, her mentorship. Taking over feels like stepping into a room still warm from someone else’s life.

“It feels like I’m replacing her,” they whisper to a colleague afterward.

Their supervisor senses the discomfort but doesn’t have the language—or perhaps the courage—to address it directly. Instead, they offer upbeat reassurances. It lands like noise in a room full of echoes.

And Then There Are the Student Workers

Underneath these shifting layers sits another story—quieter, but just as consequential.

A first-generation student worker named Maya runs the evening shift at the reference desk. She was hired to shelve books and greet students. But slowly—almost imperceptibly—her responsibilities grew.

A student approaches with a citation problem for a senior capstone. Maya helps.
A faculty member emails the desk for help accessing a database. Maya tries.
A panicked student needs help identifying peer-reviewed sources.
Maya does her best.

She wants to help. She enjoys the work.
But every time she answers a research question that requires disciplinary expertise she doesn’t have, a small unease settles in her chest.

She doesn’t want to disappoint anyone.
She also doesn’t want to pretend she’s a librarian.

One night, after walking a student through a complicated research strategy, she says softly as the door closes:

“I think they think I know everything.”
She doesn’t say the second part out loud:
And I’m scared someone will notice that I don’t.

Her supervisor thanks her for “being flexible.”
But flexibility is not the same as support.
And the expectation is starting to morph into a norm.

Supervisors at the Crossroads

These are the pressure points where supervisors must lead with intention.

Because when professional boundaries blur:

• paraprofessionals feel like they’re stepping into someone else’s shoes

• librarians feel like their roles are dissolving into mist

• student workers feel pressure to perform expertise they don’t have

• and the supervisor stands at the intersection of three different anxieties

Supervisors don’t control institutional budgets.
They don’t write HR policies.
They rarely get a vote in reclassifications.

But they hold something far more consequential:
the day-to-day experience of the people navigating those decisions.

And that requires moral clarity.

The Human Toll of Pretending “It’s All the Same Work”

Role ambiguity always sounds tidy in administrative language.

“Cross-functional support.”
“Flexible staffing.”
“Student-centered service model.”

But the emotional reality inside the building is much messier.

The paraprofessional wonders whether they’re being set up to fail.
The librarian wonders whether their professional identity still matters.
The student worker wonders whether they’re allowed to say, “I don’t know.”

The supervisor, if silent, becomes complicit in this quiet erosion—
not because they are uncaring,
but because they underestimate the emotional labor their silence produces.

Every blurred expectation creates a micro-wound:
a small tear in confidence, belonging, and professional dignity.

Left unaddressed, those wounds become culture.

Leadership Through Honesty, Not Evasion

Good supervisors don’t fix structural problems alone.
But they can prevent structural harm.

Imagine a supervisor saying to the paraprofessional:

“This shift doesn’t reflect your qualifications. It reflects institutional pressures. I will make sure you get training, support, and boundaries.”

Or to the librarian watching their role fragment:

“Your work hasn’t lost value. The structure is changing around you. I’m committed to protecting the integrity of your role.”

Or to the student worker who is trying to do the impossible:

“You are not expected to have librarian-level expertise. If a question requires professional support, I want you to refer it. Your job is not to absorb institutional gaps.”

Those sentences are small.
But they are stabilizing.

They remind each person that their worth is not measured by how well they can disguise the cracks in an institution.

Where Supervisors Become Stewards

Leadership in these moments is not managerial.
It is relational, ethical, and deeply human.

It means acknowledging that:

• Paraprofessionals should grow, but not under the shadow of erased librarian roles.

• Librarians deserve professional clarity, not quiet reinterpretation.

• Student workers deserve protection from the emotional labor of expertise they do not hold.

And supervisors deserve support—training, community, and professional development that equips them to navigate these complexities without defaulting to silence.

Because silence is not neutral.
Silence is a message.

Supervisors must choose to speak instead.

A Call for Courageous, Compassionate Leadership

In a time when academic libraries are pressured to do more with less—more teaching, more technology, more support for more students—the temptation to push work downward is strong.

But student workers are not librarians.
Paraprofessionals are not substitutes.
And the profession cannot stay healthy if its boundaries are redrawn without consent.

Supervisors cannot change every decision.
But they can change how those decisions land on human beings.

They can make sure no one feels like Jen—
carrying guilt for choices they didn’t make.

They can make sure no one feels like Maya—
quietly performing expertise while hoping no one notices the strain.

They can make sure no one feels invisible when the ground shifts beneath them.

Leadership is not about protecting the system.
It is about protecting the people.

And in moments of role ambiguity, the most courageous supervisors are the ones who say the quiet truth out loud:

“You don’t have to hold this alone. I’m here.
Your work matters.
Your boundaries matter.
And together, we will navigate what comes next.”