When Collaboration Breaks Down: How PMs Can Rebuild Trust and Alignment

Like any relationship, healthy PM x Design collaboration depends on trust, communication, and empathy. And like any relationship, it can break down — even when both sides have good intentions. Maybe you’ve had the 1:1s. You’ve aligned on outcomes. You’ve reviewed documents and sat through stakeholder meetings together. But something still feels off.

This post is a companion to How PMs and Designers Collaborate to Build Better Games. That post offered a proactive model for shared success. This one is for the reactive moments — when trust starts to fray, communication gets murky, and you need to repair, not just optimize.

This is not part of a formal series — just a field manual for when things get messy.

Scenario 1: You’re the Individual PM in a Fraying Partnership

“You’ve been working with a designer for months. Something’s changed. You’re aligned on paper, but the vibes are off.”

Red Flags

Repair Moves

• Initiate a 1:1 meta-convo: “Can we talk about how we’re working together, not just what we’re building?”
• Use say-back syncs for a week to rebuild alignment and trust
• Re-establish the “why”: Help Design understand player and business context, not just constraints
• Avoid ego or blame — frame it as a reset, not a confrontation

Emotional Layer

You may feel defensive (“But I’ve been clear!”) or impatient. But trust is emotional, not just procedural — repair requires vulnerability.

Scenario 2: You’re a Director Entering a New Org with Low PM–Design Trust

“You’ve inherited a team where PMs and Designers don’t work well together. There’s tension, turf wars, and complaints.”

Symptoms

• PMs say Designers “don’t think about the player” or ignore constraints
• Designers say PMs are “too top-down” or “dictating flows” or only care about the money
• Exec reviews are chaotic and unaligned

Repair Moves

• Run a Collab Retro with PMs and Designers separately first, then together
• Create a Role Mapping doc: Who owns what decisions? Clarify where PMs lead (the “why”) and where Designers lead (the “how”)
• Reset rituals org-wide: Pre-stakeholder syncs, say-back reviews, shared PRD/design docs
• Reinforce shared outcomes — not shared control

Emotional Layer

As a new leader, you’ll be expected to “fix” things quickly — but real trust repair is slower than process change. Model patience and transparency.

Scenario 3: You’re a New PM Joining an Existing Team

“You’ve just joined a game team where Design has already formed its own habits — and they don’t fully trust you yet.”

Signals

• You’re excluded from early ideation
• Your suggestions are ignored, overruled, or lightly dismissed
• You feel you’re always reacting, not co-creating

Trust-Building Moves

• Ask how your designer prefers to work — and how previous PMs built trust
• Clearly define your role: “I won’t prescribe UX — I want to represent the player and the problem.”
• Offer context before constraints: Help Design see your POV before jumping into trade-offs
• Propose a “working agreement” session by Week 2 or 3

Emotional Layer

It’s easy to swing between over-asserting or over-accommodating. Stay grounded in clarity and curiosity.

Quick Diagnostic: Are You Misaligned?

If you’re sensing tension but unsure whether to act, use this checklist. If you check two or more, it’s worth initiating a reset:

[ ] We haven’t revisited our shared goals or outcomes in the past 2 weeks 

[ ] Feedback loops feel slow, tense, or repetitive 

[ ] Design deliverables don’t reflect what was discussed (or vice versa) 

[ ] We avoid 1:1s unless necessary — or they feel awkward 

[ ] Stakeholder reviews create more confusion than alignment 

[ ] Async threads feel cold, tense, or overly formal 

[ ] Neither side feels ownership over the final outcome 

If you're nodding along: pause, name the tension, and co-design a better way of working together.

Shared Tools for All Three Scenarios

Why Team-Building Exercises Matter (Even if They Feel Corporate)

If your collaboration feels brittle, awkward, or transactional — sometimes what’s needed isn’t another spec review, it’s play.

Team-building rituals like the ones below aren’t just fluff — they help teams:

• Get into shared creative flow
• Surface hidden tensions early
• Humanize each other beyond our roles
• Practice trust in low-stakes ways

Facilitation Formats to Try

You don’t need an offsite or big workshop — even running these in a 45-minute working session can unlock deeper collaboration. The key is consistency. Rituals build muscle memory, and the more you practice trust, the faster you recover when it breaks.

Example Output: Download the PM x Design Collaboration Model

If you're wondering what a healthy collaboration model looks like when these rituals are working — here's a real output you can reference:

Further Reading & Resources

These resources have helped many teams (and leaders) navigate collaboration breakdowns and rebuild stronger working cultures:

• Radical Candor by Kim Scott — Build direct, caring communication without tiptoeing or blowing up
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni — Understand the trust pyramid and how team health breaks down
• Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg — For reframing conflict through needs and observation

Closing Thought

Creative friction is inevitable in game development. But what distinguishes strong teams isn’t the absence of conflict — it’s their ability to repair, recalibrate, and keep building together.

You don’t need perfect harmony. You need mutual respect, shared purpose, and the courage to reset when things go off-track.

You’ll know you’re back on track when you stop managing tension — and start building momentum.