5 Communication Mistakes Technical Leaders Make (And How to Fix Them)

You've mastered the language of your domain. You can discuss experimental design, assay development, regulatory requirements, or clinical trial protocols with precision and clarity.

But now that you're leading a team, you're discovering that technical expertise alone doesn't make you an effective communicator. In fact, some of the communication habits that served you well as a bench scientist or research contributor are actively undermining your leadership.

Here are the five most common communication mistakes technical leaders make in biotech and pharma, and practical strategies to fix them.

Mistake #1: Drowning Your Audience in Technical Detail

You're in a meeting with your VP explaining why your team needs three more months before filing the IND application. You dive into the technical constraints: the lead compound shows suboptimal bioavailability in the latest PK studies, the formulation stability data at accelerated conditions hasn't reached the required ICH timepoints, and the analytical method validation for the primary endpoint still needs temperature stress testing to meet regulatory guidelines.

Your VP's eyes glaze over. Your request is denied.

The problem isn't that the technical details are wrong—it's that they're irrelevant to your audience. Your VP doesn't need to understand your analytical method validation protocols. They need to understand the business and regulatory risk of filing too early versus the cost of delaying.

The fix: Start with the "so what" before you explain the "how." Match your level of detail to your audience's needs and decision-making authority.

For executives: "We need three more months because filing now would mean the FDA will likely issue a clinical hold due to incomplete CMC data, which would delay our timeline by at least six months and damage our credibility with regulators for future submissions."

For your regulatory and CMC peers: "We need to complete the stability studies at 40°C/75% RH through the 6-month timepoint and finish analytical method validation because the acceptance criteria aren't tight enough to support the proposed shelf life."

For your team: "Here's the specific stability protocol modifications we need to implement and the validation experiments we need to run..."

Think of communication as having zoom levels. Executives need the satellite view showing timeline and risk. Peers need the street map with enough detail to collaborate. Your team needs the experimental blueprint with precise protocols. Adjust your altitude accordingly.

Mistake #2: Using Jargon as a Crutch

Technical jargon serves a real purpose among domain experts—it's precise, efficient shorthand. But when you're leading, you're constantly interfacing with people outside your domain: HR, finance, business development, executives, clinical operations, manufacturing. Continuing to use specialized terminology in these contexts doesn't make you sound smart. It makes you sound unable to think beyond your narrow specialty.

Worse, it creates information asymmetry. When stakeholders don't understand what you're saying, they can't make informed decisions. They either defer to you blindly or shut you out of strategic conversations because you're "too technical."

The fix: Practice translation as a core leadership skill. For every technical concept you need to explain, develop a plain-language version.

Instead of: "We're using a baculovirus expression system with post-translational modification optimization to achieve glycosylation patterns that match the native protein, validated through orthogonal LC-MS and functional binding assays."

Try: "We're producing the protein in insect cells because they add the right sugar molecules to make it work like the natural version. We're using two different tests to confirm it's correct."

If the other person needs more detail, they'll ask. Start accessible, then go deeper if warranted. Think of it like teaching—you don't start an immunology course with the molecular mechanisms of MHC-II presentation. You build from foundations.

One effective technique: use analogies to familiar systems. "Our high-throughput screening platform is like having a thousand scientists each testing one compound at a time, except we can do it all simultaneously in a single day."

Mistake #3: Focusing on Problems Without Presenting Solutions

Scientists are trained problem-finders. You can spot a flawed experimental design, a weak clinical endpoint, or an unstable formulation from across the room. This critical thinking is valuable: it's what prevents costly mistakes and regulatory failures. But when you're in a leadership position, constantly pointing out problems without offering solutions makes you seem like an obstacle rather than an asset.

Your manager doesn't need another person identifying issues, they need someone who can navigate those issues and chart a path forward.

The fix: Adopt a solutions-oriented communication framework. When you bring up a problem, come prepared with at least two potential approaches, along with tradeoffs.

Instead of: "This clinical trial timeline is completely unrealistic. There's no way we can enroll 300 patients with this rare biomarker in six months."

Try: "Given the patient population and site activation timelines, enrolling 300 patients in six months isn't feasible. I see three options: we can extend enrollment to twelve months and adjust the regulatory strategy accordingly, we can expand to international sites which adds operational complexity but increases the patient pool, or we can modify the inclusion criteria to broaden eligibility while still maintaining scientific rigor. Here are the tradeoffs for each approach..."

This positions you as a strategic partner, not a bottleneck. It also demonstrates that you understand your role is to enable decisions, not just to be scientifically correct.

Even when you genuinely don't have a solution yet, frame it constructively: "This stability issue is complex and could impact our filing timeline. I need two days to consult with our formulation team and external CMOs, and then I'll come back with recommended approaches and a revised risk assessment."

Mistake #4: Underestimating the Importance of Emotional Communication

Scientists often pride themselves on being rational and objective. Emotions are seen as noise in the signal, something that clouds good decision-making. But here's what many technical leaders miss: emotions aren't irrational: they're data. They tell you what people care about, what motivates them, and what threatens them.

When you communicate purely in facts and data, you miss the human element that actually drives decision-making and behavior. Research shows that even scientists and technical professionals make decisions based on a combination of rational analysis and emotional factors like trust, confidence, and values alignment.

The fix: Acknowledge the emotional dimension of your communication, especially in high-stakes situations.

When delivering difficult news, don't just explain the logic, acknowledge the impact. "I know this protocol change is frustrating, especially since you've already run 200 samples using the previous method and now we need to re-run them with the updated validation parameters" goes a long way before you explain why the regulatory requirement changed.

When asking for resources or support, don't just make the logical case: connect to what your stakeholders care about emotionally. Instead of "We need budget for a new confocal microscope," try "Investing in advanced imaging equipment means our team spends less time waiting in line for shared equipment and more time generating the breakthrough data that could differentiate our therapeutic candidate. It's about respecting our scientists' expertise and giving them the tools to do their best work."

When a clinical trial fails to meet its primary endpoint, don't just present the data. Acknowledge what the team is feeling: "I know everyone put their hearts into this study. Seeing negative results after two years of work is genuinely painful. Let's talk through what we learned and what it means for the program." Then move to the scientific analysis.

Pay attention to how people respond to your communication, not just to what they say. If someone seems confused, frustrated, or disengaged during a project update, that's valuable feedback about your message or delivery, even if the scientific content is perfect.

Mistake #5: Treating All Communication as Information Transfer

As a bench scientist or research contributor, most of your communication was transactional: sharing experimental results, asking methodological questions, reporting data. But as a leader, communication serves multiple functions beyond information transfer. It builds relationships, establishes culture, provides motivation, and reinforces priorities.

When you treat all communication purely as data exchange, you miss opportunities to lead. Your team doesn't just need to know what experiments to run, they need to understand why the work matters, how it connects to patients or to scientific advancement, and that you see and value their contributions.

The fix: Be intentional about the purpose of each communication. Ask yourself: am I informing, persuading, motivating, building rapport, or providing recognition?

In team meetings, don't just review experimental progress. Take time to connect work to impact: "The assay optimization you completed last week reduced our sample processing time from four days to one day. That means we can screen 300 compounds per month instead of 75, which directly accelerates our timeline to identifying a clinical candidate. The project team specifically mentioned this as a breakthrough in our pipeline review."

In one-on-ones, don't just discuss current projects. Ask about career goals, what energizes them scientifically, and what challenges they're facing. Show genuine curiosity about your team members as people, not just as resources producing data.

When communicating changes, like a pivot in research strategy after a failed efficacy study, don't just announce what's different. Explain the scientific reasoning, acknowledge the emotional reality of abandoning work people have invested in, and create space for questions and concerns. "I know many of you have spent the last year optimizing this compound series. The decision to stop isn't a reflection on the quality of your work; it's based on new competitive intelligence and target validation data. Let's talk through what this means for the team and where your expertise will be most valuable in the new direction."

Model the communication culture you want. If you want your team to surface problems early, you need to communicate transparently about challenges you're facing with executive stakeholders or regulatory strategy. If you want collaboration across departments, actively reach out to clinical, regulatory, and CMC teams and bring them into your team's conversations.

Developing Your Communication Skills as a Technical Leader

These communication challenges aren't character flaws: they're skill gaps. The good news is that communication, like any other experimental technique, improves with deliberate practice.

Here are some ways to work on your communication:

• Start by getting feedback. Ask your manager, peers, and team members: "What's one thing I could do to communicate more effectively with you?" Actually listen to the answers without getting defensive.

• Record yourself in presentations or important meetings (with permission). Watch it back and evaluate: Am I adapting to my audience? Am I being clear or hiding behind jargon? Am I solution-oriented or just problem-focused?

• Practice translating technical concepts for non-technical audiences. Write for broader scientific audiences, give talks at company-wide meetings, or simply explain your work to friends or family members outside your field. If you can explain CAR-T cell therapy to your neighbor, you can explain it to your CFO.

Remember: your technical expertise got you into leadership. Your communication skills will determine how far you go. The most influential scientific leaders in biotech and pharma aren't necessarily the most brilliant researchers - they're the ones who can bridge the gap between scientific complexity and organizational impact. They translate mechanism-of-action into patient benefit. They connect preclinical data to business strategy. They inspire diverse teams around a shared mission.

Your deep expertise is still your foundation. Now you're learning to build something bigger on top of it - a team, a culture, and ultimately, a greater impact on patients and medicine than you could ever achieve alone at the bench.

Want expert guidance and real-time support in developing your communication skills? Reach out for a free strategy call!