9 Teamwork Challenges in 2026 and How to Actually Fix Them

Teamwork challenges are recurring obstacles, such as unclear roles, low trust, misaligned goals, disengagement, uneven contribution, and increasingly, friction with AI tools, that prevent a group of individuals from functioning as one effective unit. Every team faces some of these challenges. What separates high-performing teams from stuck ones isn’t the absence of these challenges. It’s how quickly leaders recognize them and how deliberately they build systems, rather than relying on good intentions, to address them.

Research from i4cp and Babson College professor Rob Cross
found that high-performing organizations are 5.5 times more likely to reward
collaboration than their lower-performing peers. A more recent i4cp study of 1,400
organizations found something more sobering: eight in ten teams underperform because
of collaboration dysfunctions, even when the people on them are individually
talented.

Teamwork undeniably fosters creativity and enhances overall organizational productivity. However, amid these benefits lie unspoken challenges of teamwork that can lead to a frustrating collaborative experience. Many organizations resort to employee engagement software to address these teamwork-related issues effectively.

This article aims to shed light on common questions such as “What challenges do you typically encounter in teamwork within your organization? How do you approach overcoming them?” Delve into valuable insights to navigate and tackle the challenges of teamwork for a more harmonious and productive collaborative environment.

5 Challenges of Teamwork

There are multiple challenges of working in a team. As a leader, one has to be available for their team members and must understand their concerns to ensure that they stay productive and engaged. The following are some of the teamwork challenges and how one can overcome them.

1. Role Uncertainty

Role uncertainty is one of the most common challenges of group work. There are a lot of differences between working as an individual employee and working as a part of a team. When you work with a team, your responsibilities are shared with other team members.

This culture of shared responsibilities might be a little hard to get used to if you have never worked with a team before. Working with many people can create confusion about your role in the team, resulting in multiple people taking up the same responsibility or leaving out some vital tasks. Asking the manager of the team clearly about your role in the team could help avoid these situations.

Impact:

• Duplicated or missed work because responsibilities are unclear
• Slower execution as team members spend time figuring out who owns what
• Friction and frustration when multiple people assume different responsibilities
• Lower accountability when no one has clear ownership of a task or outcome

Solution:

• Define clear roles and responsibilities at the start of every project
• Document ownership in an accessible place so everyone can reference it
• Use a RACI matrix for complex projects or decisions where responsibilities overlap
• Revisit roles when priorities, team structure, or project requirements change

2. Lack Of Trust

When you work as an individual, you are used to making decisions and completing tasks individually. But when you work with a team, you have to trust your teammates and let them make a few decisions for the team.

Sometimes, team members make mistakes and it could be hard for you to trust them with any other decision. But as a team, it is important to trust your teammates and function. Building trust goes a long way in resolving the challenges of group work.

Impact:

• Team members hesitate to share ideas, concerns, or mistakes openly
• More micromanagement as employees feel they cannot rely on one another
• Slower decision-making because people second-guess their teammates
• Conflict becomes harder to resolve when people interpret actions through a lack-of-trust lens

Solution:

• Create clear expectations around communication, ownership, and follow-through
• Encourage open conversations where team members can raise concerns without fear of blame
• Use regular check-ins and continuous feedback to address issues before they become larger conflicts
• Recognize reliable collaboration and follow-through to reinforce trust within the team

This isn’t just a soft-skills issue. Gallup’s workplace research found that 1 in 5 employees worldwide feel lonely at work, and it hits younger and fully remote employees hardest, which makes trust-building a structural priority, not a nice-to-ha

3. Unclear Goals

Some employees perform better when they function as a team, and some perform better than individual contributors. One reason for this could be setting the right goals. You can easily set the right goals for yourself as an individual contributor, but when you are a part of the team, you have to consider your teammates before setting goals.

One of the most common reasons for conflicts in teams is the ambiguity of goals. If you are not on the same page with your other teammates about your goals, it affects the productivity of the entire team, so communicate with the team/ manager and be clear about your goals.

Impact:

• Team members prioritize different tasks because they have different interpretations of success
• Resources and effort get wasted on work that does not support shared objectives
• Conflicts increase when priorities or expectations are unclear
• Progress becomes difficult to measure because the team lacks a common definition of success

Solution:

• Define specific team goals and make sure every member understands how their work contributes
• Connect individual goals to broader team and organizational objectives
• Review goals regularly and adjust them when priorities change
• Use regular goal check-ins to identify misalignment before it affects team performance

Misalignment is one of the most common breakdowns teams report. In one 2026 workplace survey, 33 percent of employees and 32 percent of leaders said a lack of alignment within or between teams was a top collabor

4. Disengagement

Disengagement is one of the most common challenges of group work faced by everyone in the workplace. Teams tend to get disengaged when there’s a lack of proper direction or vision. Team members fail to understand their role in the bigger picture, which leads to lack of motivation.

Disengagement in teams is often a result of lack of clarity on team goals and how they contribute to the organization.

To learn more about addressing disengagement, read our detailed guide on Employee Disengagement and How To Fix It.

Impact:

• Lower motivation and participation in team discussions and activities
• Reduced productivity as employees become less invested in shared outcomes
• Less initiative to solve problems or contribute ideas
• Stronger risk of turnover when employees no longer see value in their work

Solution:

• Clearly connect individual responsibilities to the team’s broader purpose
• Recognize contributions regularly, including behind-the-scenes work that may otherwise go unnoticed
• Give team members opportunities to contribute ideas and have a say in how work gets done
• Use regular check-ins and pulse feedback to identify disengagement early and understand its causes

5. Talent Differences

Some employees contribute more to a team than the rest of the team. The reason is not always that they feel responsible for the team, the share of their contribution depends on their individual talent and efficiency. But sometimes, these talent differences cause conflicts between team members.

Some employees of the team could be slower and less efficient than the rest. This could decrease the overall productivity of the team which could be frustrating for the high-performers of the team causing conflicts within the team. To avoid this, the goals should be set based on their capability and skills.

Impact:

• High performers may become overloaded when they repeatedly compensate for skill gaps
• Uneven workloads can create resentment and frustration within the team
• Less experienced employees may struggle without enough support or development
• Team productivity can suffer when tasks are not matched to the right skills

Solution:

• Assign responsibilities based on individual strengths, experience, and development needs
• Use mentorship and cross-training to build capabilities across the team
• Set realistic expectations based on each person’s current skills while creating opportunities to grow
• Review workloads regularly so high performers are not consistently carrying disproportionate responsibility

6. Information Silos and Poor Knowledge Sharing

Information silos happen when knowledge gets trapped with one person or one
sub-team instead of flowing across the whole group. It’s rarely intentional.
Most of the time it’s just a missing habit, nobody wrote it down, or a missing
system, there was nowhere obvious to put it.

This gets worse as teams scale. Once you have multiple sub-teams, departments,
or reporting lines working toward the same goal, silos stop being a minor
annoyance and start actively working against each other. Priorities clash,
decisions slow down, and two teams end up solving the same problem without
knowing it.

The cost shows up directly in how people spend their day. Asana’s Anatomy of Work Global Index
found that knowledge workers spend 58 percent of their day on “work about work,”
coordinating, searching for information, and chasing status updates, instead of
the skilled work they were actually hired to do. A separate 2026 workplace
survey found that 83 percent of leaders and 77 percent of employees
now name difficulty finding time on other people’s schedules as a major
collaboration barrier, which is often a silo problem wearing a scheduling
costume.

Impact:

• Duplicated work and wasted effort across teams
• Slower decisions because context has to be re-explained every time
• Innovation stalls, since new ideas rarely form when knowledge stays locked
  in one place
• Cross-team friction as priorities drift apart without anyone noticing

Solution:

• Put a single source of truth in place, a wiki or shared workspace, and make
  it the default rather than an optional extra
• Set a norm that documentation happens as part of the work, not as cleanup
  after it
• Give cross-functional teams a shared charter and shared KPIs so their
  incentives point in the same direction instead of competing
• Run a short cross-team sync on a fixed cadence so misalignment gets caught
  early instead of discovered at launch

Silos are expensive in a very literal sense. 83 percent of leaders and 77 percent of employees say difficulty finding time on other people’s schedules is a major collaboration barrier, while employees report spending 58 percent of their workday on coordination tasks rather than the work itself.

7. Collaboration Overload and Burnout

Collaboration overload happens when the sheer volume of meetings, messages, and
requests for input leaves people with no real time to do focused work. The
irony is that this usually shows up hardest in teams that are collaborating
“well” by every visible metric.

This has gotten measurably worse, not better, heading into 2026. ActivTrak’s 2026 State of the Workplace report
found that collaboration activity rose 34 percent in 2026, while focus time fell
to its lowest point in three years. More people are talking to each other than
ever, and less actual work is getting done in the gaps between conversations.
On top of that, Microsoft’s Work Trend Index
found that meetings after 8pm are up 16 percent year over year, and roughly 30
percent of meetings now span multiple time zones, both signs that collaboration
is bleeding into hours it was never meant to occupy.

Impact:

• Constant context-switching that kills deep, focused work
• Rising exhaustion and resentment toward collaboration itself, even though the
  underlying problem is volume, not teamwork
• Lower quality decisions, since tired, over-scheduled people give worse input
• Higher attrition risk among your best performers, who usually get pulled into
  the most meetings

Solution:

• Draw a clear line between what needs a live meeting and what can be handled
  asynchronously, and default to async unless there’s a real reason not to
• Protect blocks of focus time on the calendar the same way you’d protect a
  client meeting
• Audit collaboration load on a regular cadence, who is in too many meetings,
  who is being asked for input on things outside their role
• Give people explicit permission to decline meetings that don’t need them, and
  back that up as a manager, not just as a stated policy

This has gotten worse, not better. ActivTrak’s 2026 State of the Workplace report found that collaboration activity rose 34 percent in 2026, while focus time fell to its lowest level in three years. Teams are spending more time coordinating and less time actually doing the work.

8. Social Loafing and Unequal Participationmat

Social loafing is when some team members consistently contribute less, often
without meaning to, because they’re assuming someone else will cover the gap.
It’s one of the oldest documented problems in group psychology, and it hasn’t
gone anywhere just because teams now work in Slack instead of in a room
together.

If anything, distributed and hybrid work makes it easier to hide. In person,
uneven effort is visible almost immediately. Async and remote work removes a lot
of those visual cues, so loafing can go unnoticed for months. Full-time remote workers spend 50 percent less time collaborating
than their in-office counterparts, which cuts both ways, it protects focus time,
but it also makes it harder for a team to notice when one person has quietly
checked out.

Impact:

• Resentment and burnout among the people who keep picking up the slack
• A fairness problem that erodes trust faster than almost anything else on this
  list
• Reduced overall output, even though the team looks fully staffed on paper
• High performers eventually stop over-functioning to compensate, and then the
  whole team’s output drops at once

Solution:

• Make individual contributions visible through shared task boards or regular
  status updates, not just team-level reporting
• Set clear, individually owned deliverables inside every team goal, so
  “the team” is never the only name attached to a task
• Use peer feedback alongside manager feedback, since peers usually spot
  uneven effort long before it shows up in performance reviews
• Recognize individual effort publicly, not only team wins, so contribution is
  rewarded at the level where it actually happened

9. AI-Human Collaboration Friction

AI-human collaboration friction happens when a team adds AI tools to its workflow faster than it adapts its habits, trust, and processes around them. The tool changes. The teamwork doesn’t. That gap is where the friction lives.

By 2026, AI has moved from an experimental add-on to a daily coworker for many teams, but the human side hasn’t caught up. In an HBR survey of more than 100 C-level executives, 93 percent said human and cultural issues, not the technology itself, were their biggest barrier to AI adoption. That’s the highest number recorded in fifteen years of that survey.

The friction shows up in a few specific ways:

• Team members don’t trust AI-generated work enough to build on it without redoing it
• People hide their AI use from teammates, which quietly breaks the transparency a team needs to function
• Some employees fear AI is being used to justify headcount cuts, which makes them guarded instead of collaborative
• Roles blur when nobody has agreed on which tasks stay human, which go to AI, and who reviews the output

The upside is real too. Gensler’s 2026 Global Workplace Survey of over 16,400 office workers found that employees who use AI most often, so-called “AI Power Users,” actually report stronger team relationships and spend more time learning, not less time connecting with coworkers.

Solution:

• Set a written team agreement on what tasks AI handles, what stays human, and who signs off on AI-assisted work
• Make AI use visible instead of something people hide, so trust isn’t built on guesswork
• Train managers to address AI-related job anxiety directly instead of avoiding the topic, since SHRM’s 2026 workplace AI research found workshops on practical, day-to-day AI skills are one of the few things that reliably reduces this friction
• Review AI-related roles and responsibilities on the same cadence you review eve

How To Overcome Teamwork Challenges?

1. Clarify Roles and Responsibilities

To combat role uncertainty, establish clear and defined roles for each team member. Make sure everyone knows their specific duties and how their tasks contribute to the overall project. Regularly review and update these roles as the project evolves.

Solution:

• Clearly outline each team member’s responsibilities at the start.
• Maintain an accessible document that tracks roles and responsibilities for easy reference.
• Regularly review roles during meetings to ensure everyone stays aligned.

2. Build Trust

To address the lack of trust within a team, focus on fostering open communication and collaboration. Encourage a safe space where team members can share ideas, express concerns, and give feedback.

Solution:

• Promote transparent and honest communication. Continuous real-time feedback helps reinforce trust and prevents issues from escalating.
• Implement team-building activities that encourage cooperation.
• Recognize and celebrate individual and team achievements to build confidence in each other’s capabilities.

3. Set Clear Goals

To tackle unclear goals, set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals that all team members understand and agree upon. Ensure everyone is on the same page with what is expected and how success is defined.

Solution:

• Define and communicate SMART goals to the team. Using structured frameworks like OKRs and goals ensures alignment across individuals and teams.
• Engage team members in collaborative goal-setting to create buy-in.
• Conduct regular goal check-ins to track progress and adjust as needed.

4. Increase Engagement

To overcome disengagement, ensure that each team member understands the value of their contributions and how their work ties into the bigger picture. Make sure the team feels connected to the mission and motivated.

Solution:

• Clearly articulate the team’s vision and how individual tasks contribute to it.
• Regularly acknowledge contributions and successes to boost morale.
• Personalize tasks to match team members’ strengths and interests, making them feel more engaged.

5. Manage Talent Differences

To address talent differences, tailor task assignments based on each individual’s strengths and abilities. Ensure that high performers are not overburdened, while also providing growth opportunities for those with less experience.

Solution:

• Assign tasks that align with team members’ strengths and skills.
• Implement mentorship or cross-training programs to bridge skill gaps.
• Foster a team-first mindset by encouraging collaboration rather than competition.

We hope this article helps you manage your team effectively. Do let us know about the ways you use to overcome teamwork challenges in your organization. Tell us about the challenges you face when working in groups in the comments below.

Leadership & Team Design Strategies to Prevent Challenges

Leadership & Team Design Strategies

• Regular 1-on-1s Focused on Engagement & Trust
  • Leaders should hold consistent 1-on-1s not just for performance updates, but to check on team morale, psychological safety, and trust. Atlassian recommends asking open questions about how people feel, what worries them, and how their work contributes to purpose.
  • Use these conversations to spot disengagement early.
• Transparent Collaboration Infrastructure
  • Make collaboration tools and document repositories accessible and “open by default” where possible. This reduces silos and increases knowledge sharing.
  • Establish norms around how and where work and decisions are recorded (e.g., shared digital workspace, wiki).
• Design for Equity: Use Decision Frameworks
  • Implement a decision-making model (e.g., DECIDE) to ensure participation. Rotate roles (facilitator, decision-maker, reviewer) so no one person dominates.
  • Use a RACI matrix (Responsible / Accountable / Consulted / Informed) for clarity on roles in decisions and execution.
• Team Charter & Norm Setting
  • At the start (or reboot) of a team/project, co-create a team charter: working norms, meeting cadence, communication style, decision rights, conflict resolution process.
  • For remote or hybrid teams, include time zone overlapping rules, expected response times, and meeting patterns. This echoes Mural’s advice to use a team charter.
• Psychological Safety Mechanisms
  • Embed routines like “blameless post-mortems” or “retrospectives” where failure is discussed openly.
  • Leadership should model vulnerability — share learnings from what went wrong, not just victories.
  • Use surveys or pulse-checks to measure how safe people feel to speak up, then act on feedback.
• Recognition & Accountability Systems
  • Introduce peer-recognition practices (shout-outs, rewards) so contribution is visible.
  • Combine team KPIs with individual KPIs, so both collective and personal effort is tracked.
  • Use peer feedback and 360 reviews to surface social loafing or over-contribution. Structured performance reviews help reinforce accountability while keeping feedback continuous and actionable.

Conclusion

Teamwork may be the backbone of every successful organization, but it doesn’t become effective by accident. From role ambiguity and trust issues to deeper structural challenges like information silos, collaboration overload, and psychological safety, teams face a complex mix of obstacles that can quietly undermine performance.

Leaders who want to build high-performing teams must go beyond surface-level fixes. That means designing teams with clarity, setting equitable decision-making processes, removing structural barriers, and building an environment where people feel safe to contribute, challenge ideas, and take ownership. When teams are supported with the right systems, frameworks, and cultural norms, collaboration becomes smoother, faster, and measurably more impactful.

If your organization is looking to address these challenges with a more scalable and consistent approach, Engagedly can help. Our platform enables role clarity, continuous feedback, recognition, team alignment, and engagement insights – all essential components of strong teamwork. If you want a more structured and scalable way to improve teamwork across your organization, request a demo and see how Engagedly brings clarity, feedback, and alignment together.

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Author

Srikant Chellappa

CEO & Co-Founder of Engagedly

Srikant Chellappa is the Co-Founder and CEO at Engagedly and is a passionate entrepreneur and people leader. He is an author, producer/director of 6 feature films, a music album with his band Manchester Underground, and is the host of The People Strategy Leaders Podcast.

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