Person-Centered Leadership: The Secret Sauce Your Team May Be Missing

In a previous role, I was “voluntold” to lead the intern program, where the norm was to saddle interns with mind-numbing tasks—endless copies and supply closet cleanups. It felt like a waste of potential. These were sharp, ambitious students, so I decided to take a different tack.

As the leader of the organization's marketing and community relations strategies, I sat them down and asked: What gets you fired up? Why’d you choose your major? What does ‘marketing’ mean to you—and if you could pick any piece of it, what would you run with? The answers spanned “writing content” to “community development” to “event planning.”

Together, we then crafted summer projects around their passions—tangible takeaways like a market research report or a press release that actually hit the wires.

They left with portfolios and pride.

Now, in my current role leading advancement and communications for a nonprofit serving people with autism and developmental disabilities, I see a striking parallel. We champion “person-centered planning” for the individuals we support—building life plans around their dreams, strengths, and voices. Why? Because it sparks engagement, ownership, and agency over their lives, as it should.

Yet, I find myself thinking: Why don’t we do the same for our teams?

In my work today, I see how this approach transforms lives—helping someone pursue a job they love or a hobby that lights them up. Shouldn’t we lead our teams the same way, unlocking their potential by putting them at the center?

Here’s how we can:

• Start with Curiosity: Carve out one-on-one time to ask: What excites you about your work? Where do you see yourself growing? Listen like you would to someone shaping their life plan—without preconceptions.
• Uncover Strengths: Pinpoint what they’re great at or love—maybe it’s crafting stories, analyzing trends, or planning events—and build opportunities around that, just like matching a passion to a life goal.
• Co-Create Goals: Partner with them to design projects that blend their interests with team priorities—think of it as a “work plan” with the same ownership as a person-centered life plan.
• Check In, Not Up: Regularly ask: Is this still meaningful to you? What’s one tweak we could make?—mirroring how we’d adjust a life plan to keep someone engaged.
• Celebrate Ownership: Highlight their wins—big or small—and connect it to their unique contribution, reinforcing the agency they’ve claimed, just as we’d cheer a milestone in someone’s journey.

I still keep in touch with many of those former interns, now thriving in careers they love. It’s humbling to know I played a small part in their journey. Isn’t that what leadership is all about—planting seeds for others to grow into their best selves?

When we lead with a person-centered lens, we don’t just build successful teams—we shape legacies of purpose and potential.