In the recent conversations The Parliament Group have had with senior international officers and enrollment leaders, we’ve been asking: how do you build influence in an environment like this?
For most SIOs, leading internationalization means influencing decisions well beyond the international office—program development, pricing and aid, recruitment, admissions, marketing, partnerships, and broader institutional priorities.
And influence inside an organization is usually built through some combination of authority, relationships, demonstrated results, and expertise.
But each of those works differently in international education today.
And despite responsibility for the outcomes, an SIO’s formal authority often doesn’t extend to many of the decisions that actually determine international outcomes.
Relationships matter enormously. But relationships alone aren’t enough to move an institution toward difficult decisions.
And SIOs tell us that demonstrated results—a powerful source of credibility for any leader—are particularly complicated right now. Policy changes, visa conditions, geopolitics, and rapidly shifting markets can overwhelm good strategy just as easily as favorable conditions can make a mediocre strategy look successful.
That leaves expertise.
But even expertise is challenging in an environment changing this quickly. What worked three years ago—or even last year—may tell us surprisingly little about what will work next.
What we hear from SIOs is an increasing need to help their institutions understand what is happening now, why it is happening, and what the evidence suggests they should do next.
This is harder than it should be.
But bringing enough context and evidence to the conversation that colleagues trust their interpretation of a market they may only see pieces of. In uncertain times, that kind of credibility may be one of the SIO’s most important sources of influence.