The Reason Teams Fail to Communicate

In my work, I often hear from clients—engineers and leaders alike—that poor communication between departments is one of the biggest challenges in their everyday lives. It isn’t just a mild annoyance or a logistical hiccup; it’s a chronic ache at the heart of how organizations actually function. Picture an engineering team sweating over a new product feature, confident in their technical vision, while leadership requests a deadline change or redesign. Too often, each side ends up frustrated, misunderstood, or even resentful. The same story told with different words on either side of a closed office door.

This isn’t just about misaligned calendars or muddled emails; it’s a phenomenon that psychologists have described for decades using the language of “in-groups” and “out-groups.” Henri Tajfel’s famous Minimal Group Paradigm experiments illustrate how even the most arbitrary divisions between people lead them to favor their own group and judge the other more harshly. In the workplace, engineering teams naturally blend around their own expertise, terminology, and goals, while leadership forms another nucleus of priorities, metrics, and decisions. With these identities entrenched, the bridge between the two grows shaky. The belief that “they just don’t get us” becomes automatic, cementing silos as psychological facts.

It gets more complex when we add the layer of fraternalistic deprivation theory. Here’s how it plays out: When one group (say, engineers) believes leadership isn’t granting them enough resources or recognition, their sense of group disadvantage grows, even if objectively things aren’t so skewed. Developed by Walter Garry Runciman, fraternalistic deprivation theory shows that groups can feel collectively shortchanged. This perception spurs distrust, as engineers wonder why leadership won’t “fight for them,” and leaders quietly complain that “the engineering team won’t cooperate or prioritize the big picture.” No one is truly deprived, but the sense of injustice is enough to corrode goodwill. So when project updates stall or requests vanish into the abyss, it isn’t always bureaucracy at fault. It’s tribal psychology at work.

Albert Bandura’s self-efficacy theory provides another lens: If engineering teams or leaders constantly see communication attempts failing—or better yet, watched the other side shift blame every time something goes off track—they eventually stop trying. Both departments get stuck in passive frustration. The engineers might say, “Management is clueless. It’s not our fault this project failed.” The leaders counter, “Engineering never answers our emails anyway—I’m not even going to bother.” This blame game means nobody grows; everyone acts like a powerless passenger, instead of grabbing the wheel.

Research reveals these biases become automatic. Teams tend to clearly recall and hold onto mistakes made by the other group, while their own errors are often forgotten or overlooked. Attribution bias locks each group into their personal narrative, making meaningful communication more unlikely with every passing project. The engineering team’s “real problems” are always leadership’s fault; leadership’s “real struggle” is definitely the engineering group’s resistance to change.

The cost of these silos isn’t just lower productivity—it drains morale, erodes trust, and strangles creativity. Engineers start to identify more with their own subteam than the organization as a whole, and leadership loses the ability to influence where it matters. But breaking this cycle is possible. Overcoming psychological barriers requires both engineering teams and leadership to actively engage with each other rather than remain passive or disconnected. When engineering understands that leadership’s requests arise from broader business priorities—not ignorance—and leadership truly values the technical complexity and craftsmanship of engineering work, genuine collaboration can begin.

I’ve watched teams move past those ingrained “us vs. them” instincts: when an engineering group gets involved in goal-setting, and leadership sits down alongside them to solve real problems, the tone changes. It’s no longer about one side “winning” or “convincing” the other. It’s about combining different perspectives to drive toward something everyone can be proud of.

This kind of transformation requires deliberate effort and openness, but it is achievable. By clearly identifying the underlying dynamics between departments, we gain the ability to address them effectively. The key insight is that growth and improvement do not come from passive complaints; instead, both departments must actively engage and collaborate, shaping their shared path forward together.