Cross-functional Team Leadership Best Practices

I've worked with cross-functional teams throughout my experience as a PM, and I've learned a thing or two about leading cross-functional teams. And now, dear reader, you can benefit from my mistakes experience. Here are some best practices I've collected, in no particular order:

1. Cast a Wide Net

Whether you're forming the team or inheriting it, it's important to make sure you have the right people on your team. Consider the work to be done. Do you have the right person to do that work (or oversee the work being done)? Regularly confirm with each of your team members that they're the right person to be included on the team--no one knows better than they do. Create an org chart of team members, and map it to your work breakdown structure to make sure you're not missing any matches.

2. Have a Clearly Defined Scope and Desired Outcomes

OK, so this one is kind of obvious, but it's worth mentioning because when you get stuck in the weeds with your project or initiative (and in my experience, this happens at least once per project or initiative), it is beyond helpful to have that north star to guide you. This can happen especially when work is done iteratively, and it helps in your interactions with the team to have a mechanism to refresh everyone's memory and adjust expectations, as needed.

3. Prevent a Communication Breakdown

Remember that your cross-functional team are stakeholders, too, and like other stakeholders, you have to have a communication plan. Every person has different preferences for mode of communication and frequency, and every aspect of your project or initiative will require its own form of collaboration to be successful. Use the right tools, and don't expect people to adopt new tools unless you make it really easy for them. This is where it's also helpful to have a RACI matrix just for your team members, and use that along with your communication plan to determine the best course of action with risks or issues arise.

4. Make the Team a Safe Space

It's important to really get to know your team, encourage new ideas and differing opinions. The best cross-functional teams work to build trust with one another and play to each member's strengths. Fostering an environment where people aren't afraid to try different approaches and fail not only will improve cohesion, but also make whatever project, program, product you're working on better. It also makes it easier to capture lessons learned as you go, since you're constantly learning new lessons.

5. Be Prepared to Play Referee

Conflicts will arise inevitably, and whether those conflicts are between you and another team member or between members on your team, it is your responsibility to resolve those conflicts. If you haven't read up on conflict resolution techniques and best practices, do it now! Here's where I'd love to share an image of the Thomas-Kilmann conflict resolution model because I think it's a great place to start and a useful visual resource, but I can't find a version of it that's free to use, so I recommend searching for it instead.

Special Situation: Taking over a Project or Initiative Already in Progress

This requires a Cartesian approach: Begin by assuming you know nothing, and question everything. This will slow you down as you work to ramp up quickly, but it will save you time in the long run. Everyone's perception of the project's status and even its overarching goals can be interpreted differently by different people, so start your conversations with the project sponsor and work your way through, starting with whichever work products are recently completed or currently in progress.