Insight

The Complexities of Interagency Working

6 November 2025

By Rose McCarthy

Working across professional and organisational boundaries is an essential element of contemporary working life – whether this relates to health provision, technology innovation, or financial services. It is not possible for one single agency or team to hold the full picture of the complex, systems in which we live and work. Yet despite our best intentions, genuine collaboration between agencies often proves problematic.

Strategic alignment and shared objectives alone do not guarantee effective partnership; the relational aspects of our work are more important.

The Human Dynamics of Collaboration

Examining the interplay between the individual, the group, and the wider system helps uncover some of the often hidden dynamics that can shape our behaviour. When applied to interagency working, it helps us see that collaboration is not simply a technical or procedural exercise. It is an emotional and relational one, shaped by personal experiences, identities, and responses to the uncertainty inherent in complex work.

Each agency or team brings its own culture, primary focus, and driving pressures. A health service might be oriented around clinical risk, a police force around control and compliance, and a social care agency around care and containment. When these cultures meet, so do their unconscious assumptions about authority, responsibility, and what “good enough” looks like. The potential for misunderstanding is huge. What one system experiences as decisive leadership, another might perceive as authoritarian. What one calls empathy, another might label boundary-blurring.

The Pull of Splitting and Blame

In the face of this complexity, anxiety inevitably arises. Interagency work often centres on high-stakes situations where the potential for harm is real. When the work feels overwhelming, systems can often find ways of defending against these difficult realities.

A common defence is splitting: dividing the system into “good” and “bad” parts. Agencies may idealise their own approach while denigrating others—“health never listens,” “social care overreacts,” “the police just want to control.” This splitting provides temporary relief from anxiety by simplifying a complex picture, but it hinders collaboration.

Competition for funding, reputation, or influence often arises, particularly when resources are scarce. When the dynamics resulting from this competition are openly discussed, it can enhance collaboration and improve working practices. However, the challenge comes when these dynamics are not acknowledged, leading to fractured ways of working.  

The Benefits of Working Through

When groups are able to notice and name these dynamics, something shifts. Leaders and practitioners become better able to tolerate the anxiety of not knowing, allowing the group to move from blaming and splitting to thinking and reflecting.

The benefits of working in this way are profound. Firstly, it enables containment: a space where difficult emotions can be thought about rather than acted out. This, in turn, supports thinking under pressure, which is vital when dealing with uncertainty. Secondly, it promotes boundary awareness: understanding where one’s role begins and ends, and how it intersects with others. Rather than collapsing boundaries (which leads to confusion) or rigidly defending them (which leads to silos), systems thinking supports the creation of porous, thoughtful boundaries that facilitate coordination and trust.

Ultimately, genuine interagency collaboration enhances the system’s collective capacity for sense-making. It allows agencies to stay connected to the emotional realities of their shared work while still holding to their distinct purposes.

What Gets in the Way

Many of us work hard to collaborate meaningfully with colleagues across our systems, but barriers still exist:

• Time and Task Pressures: The pace of organisational life often leaves little space for reflection. When reflection is seen as a luxury rather than a necessity, defensive behaviours go unexamined.

• Organisational Identity and Territory: Agencies and teams are understandably protective of their expertise and authority. Collaboration can feel like a loss—of control, of clarity, of professional identity.

• Power: Differences in status, funding, or legislative authority shape how collaboration plays out. Less powerful agencies may hold back, while dominant ones may unconsciously take up more space.

• Lack of Role Clarity: Different agencies have their own mandates, governance structures, and accountabilities. When roles are not clearly defined, or when multiple organisations share overlapping responsibilities, individuals may feel uncertain about who holds decision-making authority and where accountability lies.

Case example

In an effort to create a more integrated service for children and young people’s mental health, Tavistock Consulting conducted a service review involving various stakeholders from different agencies. The goal was to identify barriers to effective collaboration and improve holistic support systems for young people.

The interviews with practitioners revealed a significant challenge: teams were operating in silos. There was minimal collaboration, and the absence of joint budgets or commissioning meant that interdisciplinary teamwork was virtually non-existent. Communication barriers were prevalent, with many practitioners using service-specific jargon.

Recognising the need for a supportive environment to foster collaboration, a series of Action Learning Sets were established with the leadership group. In these sets, leaders were encouraged to bring current workplace dilemmas they found challenging. The groups provided a platform for peers to explore these issues and reflect collectively.

Participants in the Action Learning Sets reported that discussing colleagues’ challenges often helped illuminate solutions for their own dilemmas. The shared experiences fostered a sense of community and collaboration that had previously been lacking.

Towards More Conscious Collaboration

So how can leaders and practitioners form more psychologically informed interagency systems?

• Create Spaces for Reflection: Regular facilitated forums or work discussion groups that attend to process as well as task can help teams surface and work through some of these hard-to-speak-to dynamics.

• Use a Shared Language: Using a common language that everyone understands, free of acronyms or jargon, enhances communication and builds connections across professional boundaries.

• Model Emotional Integrity: Leaders who can acknowledge anxiety, ambivalence, and uncertainty without becoming paralysed in their work create permission for others to do the same.

Conclusion

Interagency collaboration is a crucial aspect of organisational life, providing an opportunity to pool resources and deliver better services that address needs more effectively than any single agency could on its own. This collaboration is not merely a rational goal; it is deeply human and intertwined with anxiety, identity, and emotion. The obstacles to collaboration often go beyond poor coordination; they stem from our collective struggle to engage with complexity. Instead of retreating from uncomfortable issues, we must embrace these challenges in order to enhance our collaborative efforts.