How Generalists Transform Communication Between Specialists

How to leverage your diverse skills to become the essential connector between specialized teams

As we step into June and the halfway point of 2025, I find myself reflecting on perhaps the most powerful gift we creative generalists bring to the table: our ability to serve as connective tissue in a world increasingly divided by specialisation.

When I transitioned to product management last May (has it really been a year already?), I quickly discovered that my most valuable contribution wasn't my technical knowledge, design skills, or strategic thinking—though all played important roles. Rather, it was my ability to serve as a translator between specialists who, despite working toward the same goals, often seemed to be speaking entirely different languages.

When Specialists Stop Communicating

Last month, our development team hit a critical roadblock with a feature implementation. The engineers insisted the designers' vision wasn't technically feasible given our timeline. The designers maintained that compromising on certain elements would fundamentally undermine the user experience. The data analysts, meanwhile, questioned whether either approach would deliver the metrics we needed.

Andrey Popov from Getty Images

The meeting that followed could only be described as tense. Technical terms flew across the room like arrows, each specialist retreating deeper into their domain-specific fortresses. The more specialised the vocabulary became, the less actual communication occurred.

I watched as brilliant minds—all passionate about creating an exceptional product, talked past each other, each convinced the others simply didn't understand the importance of their perspective.

This wasn't exceptional—it was simply the specialist divide in action.

The Bridge-Builder's Advantage

As the only person in the room with experience in multiple domains, I found myself instinctively translating—not just the terminology, but the underlying values and priorities driving each team's position.

"What the designers are really saying", I explained to our lead developer, "is that users consistently abandon our product at this specific point in the journey. They're not insisting on this particular implementation—they're highlighting a business-critical problem."

Then, turning to our design lead: "When the development team mentions 'service architecture limitations', they're not saying no—they're explaining that this approach would require rebuilding foundational systems that support multiple features."

Within thirty minutes, the team had found common ground and developed a hybrid approach that honoured both technical constraints and design principles. What had seemed like an unbridgeable divide was, in fact, a communication challenge tailor-made for a generalist's intervention.

The Generalist as Translator: Beyond Technical Skills

What makes creative generalists such effective bridges isn't just technical knowledge across domains—it's our ability to understand and translate the different professional cultures, values, and communication styles that exist within specialised fields.

When specialists collaborate, the challenges often run deeper than terminology. Each field develops its own.

1. Value Hierarchies: Engineers might prioritise efficiency and scalability, while designers focus on usability and emotional response. Marketing teams value market positioning and messaging clarity, while finance emphasises resource optimisation.

As generalists, we intuitively recognise that these different priorities aren't competing values—they're complementary perspectives necessary for holistic success. Our greatest contribution is helping specialists see how their values connect to others rather than conflict with them.

2. Success Metrics: Different specialised teams measure success through different lenses. Data scientists track statistical significance, product managers monitor adoption metrics, and content creators focus on engagement measures.

When cross-functional collaboration stalls, it's often because teams are unknowingly working toward different definitions of success. Our generalist perspective allows us to identify these misalignments and help establish shared outcome metrics that honour each speciality's contribution.

3. Work Processes: Perhaps most fundamentally, specialists develop distinct workflows and mental models that can seem bizarre or inefficient to those outside their domain. Designers may need explorative ideation time that feels unstructured to engineers accustomed to clearly defined problems. Engineers might require a technical feasibility analysis that seems unnecessarily limiting to creative teams.

As generalists who have navigated multiple professional cultures, we can validate these different approaches rather than forcing everyone into a single methodology. This creates psychological safety that unlocks true collaboration.

Building Your Translation Toolkit

After a year of consciously developing my "bridge-building" capacities, I've created a framework that has dramatically improved my effectiveness as a collaborative generalist:

1. The Domain Dictionary

I maintain what I call a "Domain Dictionary"—a living document capturing the terminology, priorities, and unspoken assumptions of different teams I work with. This isn't just jargon translation; it includes notes on:

• What constitutes "quality work" in each domain

• Common misunderstandings between teams

• Cultural norms and communication patterns

• Sensitive topics or historical pain points

This resource has proven invaluable when facilitating cross-functional work. Before important meetings, I review the relevant sections to anticipate potential misalignments and prepare appropriate translations.

The most surprising benefit? This practice has transformed how I'm perceived by specialists. Rather than seeing me as a generalist with "surface-level" knowledge, they recognise that I genuinely understand their world—even if I don't share their technical depth.

2. The Perspective Rotation

When facilitating challenging cross-functional discussions, I use a structured approach I call "Perspective Rotation". I create dedicated time for each speciality to articulate:

• What they're optimizing for and why it matters

• Their constraints and non-negotiables

• What would constitute an ideal outcome from their perspective

• What they need to understand better about other teams' positions

The key insight: I don't allow one team to immediately respond to another's perspective. Each viewpoint gets complete expression before collaborative problem-solving begins.

This simple structural change prevents the common pattern where teams debate point-by-point without ever fully understanding each other's fundamental position. The resulting solutions honour more perspectives and require fewer revisions.

3. The Connection Facilitation

Perhaps my most valuable practice is what I call "Connection Facilitation"—intentionally creating informal spaces where specialists can build relationships beyond immediate project needs.

Each month, I organise what our team affectionately calls "Domain Dialogues"—casual lunch sessions where someone shares insight into their speciality through a specific lens:

• "A Day in My Professional Life"

• "How I Know When I've Done Great Work"

• "The Evolution of My Field and Where It's Heading"

• "What I Wish Other Teams Understood About My Role"

These sessions build empathy and understanding that transfer to project-based collaboration. When specialists see each other as whole professionals rather than just functional contributors, translation becomes easier and more natural.

Your Collaboration Challenge

Here's my invitation to you this week: Identify one cross-functional relationship in your work where communication frequently breaks down. It might be between departments, disciplines, or even between technical and non-technical team members.

Then, create your own mini "Domain Dictionary" for just these two groups. What terminology causes confusion? What are the different priorities driving each side? What assumptions does each group make that might not be visible to the other?

Share one insight from this exercise with a representative from each side, positioned as a genuine inquiry: "I've noticed [observation about communication pattern]. Does that resonate with your experience?"

The most successful organisations I've worked with aren't necessarily those with the most brilliant specialists (though that helps!)—they're the ones where communication flows seamlessly across domain boundaries, allowing that brilliance to be integrated into cohesive solutions.

As Margaret Wheatley beautifully observes, "In organisations, real power and energy are generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions."

For us generalists, facilitating these relationships across specialised boundaries isn't just a nice skill—it's our essential contribution to increasingly complex workplaces.

I'd love to hear about a time when your generalist perspective helped bridge a communication gap between specialists. Drop a comment below or send me a message to share your experience!