Having Trouble Aligning Technical and Non-Technical Stakeholders? Try These Tips

Summary: Effective collaboration between technical and non-technical teams is essential, but not always easy. This blog explores practical strategies to bridge communication gaps, improve mutual understanding, and strengthen teamwork. From business process analysis to reducing jargon and building listening skills, these tips can help teams align, communicate clearly, and achieve better results together.

Having Trouble Aligning Technical and Non-Technical Stakeholders? Try These Tips

Whether our expertise lies in a technical field or has a more human focus, inevitably, we must work with those who are our technically skilled opposites. This can seem daunting and almost impossible at times, but it is crucial. As the Project Management Institute points out, over half of all strategic initiatives fail due to communication issues. To ensure successful collaboration and outcomes, technical training and communication strategies must go hand in hand. This article will highlight practical tips each group can use to work more effectively together.

Why Is It Important for Non-Technical Teams to Know Their Processes?

Non-technical workers often have deep expertise in their day-to-day responsibilities but may not realize how hard it is for others, especially technical teams, to understand what they do. One way to bridge this gap is through business process analysis (BPA), a method for documenting and examining how work gets done.

Before collaborating with technical colleagues, consider using BPA tools to clarify and map out your workflows. These tools help teams visualize how tasks flow from start to finish, making it easier to identify where technology might improve or support the process. For example, business process mapping, a technique within BPA, creates visual representations like SIPOC diagrams or process flowcharts that make your work more tangible to others, including developers and system designers working on solutions for your team.

Beyond aiding communication, BPA exercises often bring together people who contribute to the same process but don’t regularly interact. These sessions can uncover inefficiencies, such as redundant tasks, something that takes up as much as 62% of the average workday, according to Asana’s Anatomy of Work report.

For Technical Groups: Your Skillset Is Rare; Speak Without Jargon

According to workforce.com, only about 4.5% of employees in an organization are in IT or other technical roles. This often means that your job functions are not widely understood, and your skillset isn’t shared by most of your colleagues. Many people find the technology in their roles frustrating, unfamiliar, or even intimidating, especially when technical concepts aren’t translated into language they can relate to. Reskilling technical content plays a critical role in bridging this gap and making knowledge more accessible across the organization.

That’s where technical training also proves invaluable. It’s not just about upskilling technical employees, but about helping them learn how to explain systems and processes in ways that resonate with broader audiences. What’s obvious to IT teams is often unclear to non-technical coworkers. In a study of over 1,000 corporate workers, myperfectresume.com found that 41% of respondents felt disengaged by excessive business jargon.

We recommend assuming that technical terms will fly over the heads of non-technical peers. The best practice is to avoid acronyms, jargon, and complex terminology whenever possible. Try using analogies that relate to your audience’s domain, such as accounting or human resources. For example, when discussing a database INSERT statement, you might explain it as being similar to adding rows into an Excel spreadsheet.

Could Better Listening Be the Missing Link in Your Team’s Communication?

No matter what side of the technical realm you inhabit, it’s always a good idea to sharpen your active listening skills. These skills ensure that both sides on a technical project feel heard and understand the other’s concerns. What are these skills?

1. Asking Questions
Asking questions is courageous! You may hesitate, especially when everyone seems to understand and agree on a given topic or decision. What to do? If it’s your meeting, consider designating a “critical reviewer.” This person purposefully asks questions and requests clarification to signal that it’s okay for others to ask their own questions. Without this signal, meetings can tend to devolve into groupthink, where technical and non-technical assumptions are unchallenged. According to two studies convened by researchers at MIT Sloan, meetings saw a 32% increase in diversity of ideas discussed and a 38% improvement in engagement with the addition of a critical reviewer.

Consider having both a technical and non-technical critical reviewer in your meetings to raise questions from both sides. This ensures that both sides of the table are given the psychological safety signal that questions and concerns are welcomed.

2. Empathy
Questions and concerns cannot bring about effective communication on their own, however. If a question is fielded in a hostile way, or if a concern is hand-waved without giving it real consideration, communication can shut down very quickly. Technical and non-technical co-workers alike need to provide signs that they are taking the question or concern seriously. One common tactic for doing this is to give the person raising the concern full attention. When they have finished, repeat their question back to them in the form of, “If I’m understanding you correctly, you are concerned about… [their concern in your words].” This both shows that the concern was heard and ensures that the group that needs to answer understands the concern properly.

Sometimes a question can be taken as a challenge to someone’s expertise. There are ways to soften a question when asking. Using a phrase like, “I see you know a lot about this topic. As someone who doesn’t, could you explain… [your question here]?” shows you respect the other person’s knowledge and makes it more likely you will get an answer.

3. Showing Appreciation
In a busy culture, appreciation can feel like “too much,” but it never hurts to take the time to show it. Acknowledging others’ contributions is always a good idea, as it makes others feel important and fosters goodwill between teams.

Both technical and non-technical groups can show appreciation by:

• • Sending a thank-you email or stopping by a desk to say thanks when someone performs a task for them
  • Taking an active interest in the work that is done in different groups by asking questions unrelated to work concerns
  • Celebrating project milestones together with small tokens of appreciation or lunches/snacks
  • Having regular informal interactions, like getting coffee together

Although technical and non-technical groups inhabit different worlds, speak different languages, and may even have very different working styles, none of these differences have to be a barrier to collaboration. Taking these ideas into your workplace can be the starting point for a more effective, inclusive dynamic across teams. Most of these actions are small and don’t require much effort or planning, but they can make a big impact.

Looking to strengthen communication and collaboration across your technical teams? Explore our Technical Training solutions to build skills, reduce friction, and drive real results.