No kind of leadership is easy, but cross-functional leadership is even more difficult. Different teams have their distinct priorities, goals, and required skills, and juggling these demands simultaneously could throw any leader off course. But, while cross-functional team management certainly has its complexities, it’s also beneficial for company operations when done right, facilitating speed and seamless collaboration.
Achieving exceptional results when managing a cross-functional team requires specific skills. In this article, we’ll explore these skills, how to apply them, and foolproof strategies for hiring the right cross-functional leaders for your organization.
For starters…
What is cross-functional team leadership?
Cross-functional team leadership involves guiding a team comprising employees from different departments in the organization, each with a unique skill set. Rather than heading a team of people used to working in a specific area of expertise, cross-functional leaders coordinate people with different backgrounds and workflows toward a shared target.
This method of leadership is particularly useful for intricate projects with aspects that require input from different disciplines for successful delivery. For example, producing and launching a new technological product brings together engineering, marketing, finance, sales, and even legal experts.
With such diversity in the team, cross-functional leaders ensure that each contribution aligns with the team’s collective goal and maintain focus when challenges inevitably arise.
The complexities of cross-functional teams
The diversity in cross-functional teams is great for innovation, creativity, and bringing unique perspectives to project delivery. However, this same diversity creates unique challenges, as we’ll see below.
1. Different priorities
Team members usually have individual goals tailored to their area of expertise in addition to the team’s shared goal. For example, for a product launch, the marketer’s goal may be to create an exceptional campaign, while the finance expert aims to stick to a budget. When team members prioritize these individual goals over the team’s and have little consideration for their colleagues’ concerns, it could easily create friction.
2. Slower decision-making
In cross-functional teams, everyone has unique perspectives, opinions, and backgrounds. Due to these diverse priorities and inputs, it can be significantly harder to reach unanimous decisions that satisfy every team member. This is especially true when the hierarchy is less defined, and every team member is part of the senior leadership team or has a similar ranking in the organization.
3. Unclear communication
Different departments have their industry jargon and terminologies that are peculiar to them, and team members may use these terms in team meetings. This causes communication barriers and misunderstandings that could affect the team’s workflow, possibly leading to unnecessary delays.
4. Deadline coordination
Each team member works with their unit’s schedules, and coordinating these timelines to fit the overall team’s deadlines can be difficult. This is even more challenging in scenarios where a team member depends on another colleague’s output to make progress in their work. A cross-functional leader needs to be able to manage schedules efficiently and prevent project delays while considering individual timelines.
5. Different work cultures
As a result of their different backgrounds, team members may have different work styles or problem-solving approaches. When faced with general challenges that require collective strategizing, these differences could cause clashes as each person has their preferred method of addressing the situation. For example, one person may prefer data-based, deductive reasoning, while another favors a creative, less structured approach.
7 essential skills for cross-functional leaders
Despite the challenges, many organizations succeed with cross-functional teams. In fact, a 2021 Deloitte survey found that 83% of digitally maturing companies use them. Here, we’ll outline seven essential skills cross-functional leaders need to drive results.
1. Strategic thinking and decision-making
In a cross-functional team, it’s easy to get carried away and fixate on individual priorities and preferences only, neglecting the team’s end goal. With strategic thinking, cross-functional leaders can see beyond immediate opinions and visualize the big picture that aligns with the organization’s overall vision.
In addition to seeing the end goal, strategic thinkers also chart a clear path to achieve it, anticipating challenges that may arise along the way. Then, using contributions and inputs from team members, they make insightful decisions and determine the team’s next steps toward the unified vision.
2. Clear communication
Communication is the bedrock of any cross-functional team’s success—42% of respondents in a 2024 Forbes study linked it to cross-functional collaboration, 48% to job satisfaction, and almost half to productivity.
Where diversity is the order of the day, leaders must be able to craft a singular vision and communicate it clearly to direct the team. They should be able to tell the team members why that vision is important and how their individual skills help bring the vision to life.
Besides speaking skills, cross-functional leaders should also demonstrate active listening in communication. This lets them understand their team members’ concerns and perspectives and address them appropriately, making them feel valued and facilitating cohesiveness in the team.
3. Adaptability
Cross-functional teams are highly dynamic and encounter unexpected changes or obstacles. To continuously steer the team forward, the leader should be able to respond to these changes swiftly without panic or impulsivity.
They should be able to assess the situation logically, request team members’ inputs where necessary, and make adjustments. This flexibility keeps the team stable and resilient both in times of clarity and uncertainty.
4. Emotional intelligence
Cross-functional leadership involves navigating interpersonal relationships and team dynamics, and emotional intelligence is key to achieving this. Cross-functional teams frequently see goal clashes or differences in opinion, and emotional intelligence helps leaders identify and address individual pain points diplomatically, preventing disruption.
Moreover, these teams gather employees with unique work styles, viewpoints, and preferences. With emotional intelligence, the leader can quickly assess the team and adapt ideal leadership styles that can better influence them.
5. Collaboration and teamwork
Every team member’s contribution is valuable for the team to achieve its objectives. No employee can single-handedly tackle the complex projects that cross-functional teams are built to execute. As such, a collaborative environment is mandatory for cross-functional teams to be successful.
Leaders in such teams should be able to inspire trust, interaction, and openness in exchanging ideas. They should promote a workspace where teammates are eager to give, receive, and implement feedback from each other and work together.
6. Equity and respect
Equity and respect ensure that cross-functional leaders treat every teammate fairly, regardless of their background or opinions. Marginalization breeds resentment and distrust in teams, and these feelings cause disunity and poor engagement in cross-functional teams.
By showing teammates that their opinions are valuable and recognized, leaders foster an environment where everyone actively contributes to team success.
7. Project management
Cross-functional teams usually have many highly specialized members, and project management provides the skills needed to coordinate the team as a single unit regardless. With project management, cross-functional leaders bridge the technical and non-technical aspects of the team’s operation.
They explain niche terminologies to other teammates for better understanding, track progress, prioritize tasks, and allocate resources fairly according to the team’s needs. This way, team members can channel their diversity in the workplace appropriately for seamless delivery and results.
How to manage a cross-functional team
Leaders must take certain strategic, deliberate steps to manage a cross-functional team successfully. Below, we’ll explore five steps to take when managing cross-functional teams.
1. Clearly define and communicate the team’s objectives
First, cross-functional leaders should define and communicate their team’s objectives in clear detail. This includes a specific, collective vision broken into strategic steps with defined timelines. Moreover, each teammate should have a clear understanding of their roles in the outlined stages, what the team lead expects from them, and how to report their results.
2. Encourage open communication
After spelling out the vision, lay a foundation for open communication and idea exchange. As the team’s head, the cross-functional leader should inspire through action by opening the floor for questions, insights, or feedback without judgment or negative criticism. This builds trust and encourages other teammates to speak up, participate, and show enthusiasm.
3. Create a collaborative environment
Here, the leader facilitates teamwork and togetherness, checking that everyone has the support they need at all times. Rather than focusing on individual work styles alone, integrate brainstorming sessions, regular check-ins, and group activities. With these methods, the team can easily communicate, share ideas, and provide constructive feedback to each other, improving problem-solving, innovation, and creativity.
4. Include diversity when solving problems
When a cross-functional team values and takes all inputs into account, regardless of how diverse they are, the team achieves greater success. Tackling a problem from one angle alone leads to shortsightedness and errors, as it hardly provides a comprehensive, innovative solution. Instead, acknowledge background diversity and listen to every viewpoint, thus providing more information that helps the team deliver more creative results.
5. Track progress and make adjustments where necessary
The complexities involved in cross-functional team management can be very distracting. For effective management, leaders must regularly revisit the team’s objectives and weigh the team’s progress against this long-term vision to ensure consistent goal alignment.
At specific intervals, call team meetings to see which milestones have been crossed and which need more attention. Then, update the team’s strategies to address the current situation effectively.
How to hire cross-functional leaders
Your hiring strategy largely determines how skilled the leader you attract to your organization will be. Let’s look at four things to consider when hiring cross-functional leaders.
1. Define your ideal cross-functional leader
Before anything else, you must have a clear picture of your ideal cross-functional leader—their skill set, qualities, work culture, and values. Knowing what kind of leader you want helps you spot the right candidates much more easily and sift them from unqualified applicants, reducing your time-to-hire.
To do this, assess your team to identify its needs and shortcomings. This will give you an idea of what qualities a leader should have to drive success and flow seamlessly in the team.
2. Create a concise, attractive job description
Next, create a compelling job description, stating both the requirements and benefits of working for your organization to attract high-quality applicants. This step is crucial—according to a 2024 Indeed survey, 52% of job seekers say the quality of a job description directly influences their decision to apply. Keep it concise but engaging enough to impress candidates and hold their attention, or you risk losing exceptional talent before they even complete the application.
3. Evaluate with leadership skill assessments
On receiving the applications, evaluate each candidate with leadership skill assessments to determine their job fit. Skill assessments are an objective method of testing candidates’ proficiency in job-specific skills based on their responses to scenario-based questions. In addition to being purely data-based, they’re also fast and accurate, letting you evaluate any number of applicants at once.
Vervoe is among the most reliable recruitment and hiring software, offering extensive features for candidate evaluation, including a rich assessment library. With over 300 premade templates and 300,000 questions for building custom tests, you have the flexibility to test for any cross-functional leadership skill you choose.
Our AI grading and ranking feature removes the burden of manual grading, instantly grading each candidate based on your specifications with remarkable accuracy. It goes further to rank their performance, showing you the cross-functional leader that’s just right for your team and even providing detailed reports for added transparency.
If you want to observe candidates leading a team in real-time, Vervoe’s job simulations help you do that with ease. Using this feature, you can simulate life-like challenges involved in running a typical cross-functional team and watch the candidate navigate the problem.
Vervoe also provides anti-cheating, personalization, and candidate support features. By taking advantage of them, you can provide a truly enjoyable hiring experience for your candidates while securing the integrity and accuracy of your assessments.
4. Conduct structured interviews
Before extending an offer, you may want to get a feel for the candidate to determine if they’ll be a right fit for your organization. Structured interviews are a great avenue for this, as they let you chat with candidates in a way that skill assessments may not allow.
Your questions can be situational or behavioral, and they should follow a structured, standardized format to reduce bias and inconsistencies. Each question should evaluate a specific skill that can aid them in cross-functional leadership.
For example, you can ask them to describe a time they had to lead teams with conflicting priorities toward a shared organizational goal.
Hiring the perfect leader starts with Vervoe
Cross-functional leadership can be challenging and cause burnout and confusion, but this only happens when handled incorrectly. By hiring a leader with the right skills, your organization can enjoy seamless, fast execution and innovation across a team, irrespective of individual differences.
Vervoe is your go-to hiring tool for identifying and selecting top cross-functional leaders. Our assessment library, job simulation, and AI grading features are second to none, quickly testing candidates’ skills to show you the perfect leader for your cross-functional team.
Transform your leadership hiring today! Book your free Vervoe demo and see how our AI-powered assessments find proven cross-functional leaders.
