Headwind #4: When Alignment With Faculty, Staff, and School Leadership Is Assumed, Not Shared
Empowered Enrollment Team
Sometimes enrollment work feels harder than it should. You have capable people and good intentions. Maybe even a solid plan on paper. And yet decisions feel slower, progress feels uneven, and the work carries more friction than momentum. Nothing is technically broken, but it is not as strong or as steady as it could be.
Often, the cause of these symptoms isn’t effort, but alignment.
This post closes out The Four Headwinds Fighting Your Enrollment Team, a Tassel webinar featuring Andy Lynch, President & CEO at Tassel, alongside Rudi Gesch, Director of Marketing, and Dan Quist, Director of Admissions at Timothy Christian Schools. In earlier posts, we explored Headwind #1, a lack of role clarity that pulls leaders in too many directions; Headwind #2, team readiness gaps that limit what’s possible; and Headwind #3, enrollment processes that quietly work against you. Each of these headwinds can slow progress on its own.
Headwind #4, a lack of alignment and shared understanding, is more often felt than announced. It shows up in relationships and assumptions rather than job descriptions or flowcharts. And when it goes unaddressed, it has a way of amplifying every other challenge you are already up against.
Where Misalignment Quietly Takes Root
If we’re permitted to stereotype for a moment, enrollment folks are usually good people trying to do the right thing. They care about the school and want to see it thrive. They don’t shy away from hard work. They trust one another. Therefore, this headwind can be quieter, living in the assumptions about who owns what, who understands the goals, and who is supposed to be looped in at various points along the way.
Gaps in shared understanding slowly widen over time. One team member assumes another is aligned. Leadership assumes progress is happening. Faculty assume admissions has it covered. Everyone is moving forward, just not always in the same direction.
At the center of this are real people with real influence on enrollment health. School leadership sets priorities, allocates resources, and signals what matters most. Faculty and staff shape daily family experiences and often become the most trusted voices a school has. Enrollment and marketing peers, both inside the school and beyond it, carry context, insight, and momentum when they are truly connected. When even one of these groups is slightly out of sync, the work gets heavier for everyone.
What makes this headwind especially tricky is how long it can go unnoticed. Many schools do not recognize an alignment issue until momentum slows, decisions take longer, or enrollment leaders feel isolated in work that should be shared. By the time it is named, the strain is already there.
Four Places Misalignment Shows Up Most
In the webinar, Lynch, Gesch, and Quist acknowledged that alignment can break down in different ways. Across schools, however, there are four areas where misalignment is most commonly felt by marketing and enrollment teams.
- Leadership Is Supportive, but Distant
For many enrollment leaders, this is one of the hardest dynamics to name out loud, especially when leadership is encouraging, trusting, and genuinely believes in the work you are doing. And yet, when it comes to enrollment strategy, the relationship can still feel oddly hands-off.
What this looks like: Enrollment goals are set early, often with good intentions, and then quietly fade into the background. There may be long stretches without meaningful conversation about progress, challenges, or tradeoffs. When questions surface or decisions need to be made, authority feels unclear. You are responsible for results, but not always equipped with the shared context or consistent guidance.
This distance is rarely a sign of disinterest. More often, it reflects full plates, competing priorities, and the assumption that enrollment is handled. Still, the impact is real. Without regular engagement, alignment erodes and momentum becomes harder to maintain.
What helps: Alignment with leadership should be built through rhythm. When regular check-ins take place, teams are able to reinforce priorities and progress because decision-making becomes clearer, authority feels less fuzzy, and enrollment work feels less isolating. If you’re only meeting to provide updates when something goes wrong, you can lose sight of the enrollment goals in the in-between. - Faculty and Staff Care, but Don’t Fully Understand the Enrollment Journey
“Our teachers love the kids” isn’t a differentiator at your school, because every school claims the same thing. And usually, it’s true: faculty and staff care deeply about the community they serve. They want students to thrive. They want families to feel confident in their choice. And they want the school to remain strong and sustainable. What’s often missing is not commitment, but clarity on what the enrollment team does, and how they can support it.
What this looks like: Teachers usually have a general sense of admissions. They know students apply, visit campus, and eventually land in classrooms. But beyond that, the enrollment journey can feel abstract or incomplete. The steps families take, the decisions being weighed, and the role marketing and enrollment teams play along the way are not always visible in daily school life.
As a result, the enrollment process can feel disconnected from what happens in hallways and classrooms. Faculty may not be sure how they fit into recruitment or retention, or how their interactions with prospective and current families influence enrollment outcomes. Enrollment work happens nearby, but not always with them.
This lack of clarity can create missed opportunities. When faculty do not fully understand the enrollment journey, they are less equipped to support it in natural, authentic ways.
What helps: Alignment improves when transparency becomes normal. Walking faculty and staff through how families move from inquiry to enrollment does not require a long presentation or a detailed flowchart. Small, consistent touchpoints go a long way. A brief explanation at the start of the year. A short update during a staff meeting, tied to real enrollment moments.
Equally important are relationships. When enrollment leaders are approachable and willing to explain their work, their work stops feeling mysterious and becomes shared. Faculty gain confidence in how they support families, and enrollment teams gain trusted partners across the school.
We’ve explored this dynamic more deeply in our post on how to empower faculty to support healthy enrollment, where transparency and relationship-building play a central role in strengthening alignment across the school. - Enrollment and Marketing Work in Parallel Instead of Together
During most months of the year, enrollment and marketing teams are working hard at the same time. Campaigns are launching, events are being planned, communications are going out the door, etc. Activity is high. Alignment, however, isn’t always.
What this looks like: Teams stay busy, but their work does not always intersect in meaningful ways. Meetings are infrequent or purely reactive, often focused on immediate needs rather than shared strategy. Information lives in different places, and context does not always travel with it. As a result, decisions take longer because no one has the full picture at the right moment.
Over time, this parallel work creates drag that causes enrollment leaders to feel like they are constantly translating needs, and marketing team members to feel disconnected from outcomes. Both are moving forward, just not always together.
What helps: Alignment improves when shared time is treated as essential, not optional. Just as it’s important for enrollment teams to meet with leadership, it’s critical teams have a regular rhythm for planning and reflection, so they can surface insights, adjust priorities, and stay connected to the same goals. These conversations work best when they move past transactional check-ins and into shared ownership of the work that creates room for real collaboration. - Peer Connection Is Optional Instead of Strategic
Enrollment work can be surprisingly isolating. Even in strong schools with dedicated teams, leaders often rely almost entirely on internal knowledge and experience to solve challenges from scratch, instead of learning how other schools have already navigated the same terrain. And when team members leave, that knowledge often leaves with them.
What this looks like: Teams naturally default to what they know, and often without the benefit of an external perspective or shared learning. Open houses are rebuilt, communications reworked, and tested processes ineffectively reimagined. Connecting with peers is set to the side, because there’s always urgent work waiting.
What helps: When peer relationships are treated as strategic, it prioritizes time to visit other schools, exchange ideas, and learn how others approach similar challenges. This allows enrollment leaders to draw from collective experience, and find solutions faster. The work feels less lonely because it is no longer carried alone.
Reflection: Questions to Pause and Ask
If alignment is a headwind you think your team might be up against, it’s worth slowing down long enough to notice where assumptions may have taken place of shared understanding, before jumping to solutions. Work through these as a team to identify areas of strength, and places you could grow together.
- Who truly understands our enrollment goals right now, and who may only have a partial picture?
- Where are we assuming alignment instead of actively checking it?
- How visible is our enrollment process inside the school, especially to faculty and staff?
- When was the last time leadership, marketing, and admissions stepped back together to assess strategy? What is working, what is not, and where is it time to lean in?
What to Do Next
Misalignment, like the other headwinds we’ve explored, is fixable once it’s named. Consider stepping back and paying attention to where alignment may be assumed rather than shared. Notice where enrollment work feels heavier than expected. If you’re looking for a partner who will walk with you in your pursuit of healthy enrollment, reach out to us. A Tassel solutions advisor would be glad to listen to the challenges you’re navigating and help you take the next steps.