Modern higher education institutions face tremendous challenges, including dwindling financial resources, waning public support, demands for greater accountability, and daunting student needs and expectations. Campus presidents simply cannot face these challenges as isolated or solitary leaders. High functioning, inclusive, collaborative, and synergistic senior leadership teams are needed to not only ensure day-to-day campus operations, but also to respond, strategize and make the necessary changes for long term institutional success and viability. Two consistent themes emerge across many leadership theories--team leadership is quite valuable and "credible" leadership is crucial. This research project employed a source credibility lens (competence, goodwill/caring, and trustworthiness) through which to gather college and university presidents' and their cabinet members' perceptions of senior student affairs officer (SSAO) credibility as well as senior administrator credibility in general. The study revealed that CIC cabinet members, with the exception of campus presidents, perceive their SSAOs' credibility quite similarly--the presidents rated their SSAOs' credibility significantly higher. In addition, trustworthiness was unanimously perceived to be the SSAOs' strongest of the three credibility dimensions, and the dimensions of general senior administrator credibility were prioritized trustworthiness (first), competence (second) and goodwill/caring (third). Understanding differences in perceptions of credibility among senior leaders will assist SSAO's in developing stronger partnerships with colleagues, thus improving their administrative effectiveness, and will assist presidents striving to build stronger leadership teams. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]