No one is an island
How to Drive Effective Communication with Cross-Functional Teams
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How often have you heard someone say that they hate conflict? Or, how often have you avoided conflict yourself?
While it may seem good enough to just smooth out or gloss over conflicts, in the workplace, avoiding conflict can easily escalate into bigger and bigger problems.
While there is no silver bullet to guarantee effective communication, adhering to some best practices can help cross-functional teams present their insights effectively and drive business impact.
In this article, you're going to learn how to prepare to keep conflict from derailing your projects or disrupting your team dynamics.
Collaboration among different teams is necessary, but it’s difficult to overcome the silo mentality. It’s not uncommon for different teams (quality, clinical, regulatory, manufacturing, IT) to work amid undercurrents of antagonism.
Cross-functional Collaboration Can Be Challenging
Cross-functional collaboration can be especially challenging for companies that rely on unconnected manual processes or those with employees scattered in different cities or countries.
In both instances, an integrated platform that connects stakeholders and provides a virtual collaboration space is crucial for an effective workflow.
What is cross-functional collaboration?
Put simply, cross-functional collaboration is when people from different teams or functions (marketing, sales, engineering, HR) within a company join forces to work on a common goal, project, or responsibility.
It can be anything from day-to-day responsibilities, like customer support and marketing teaming up on social media, to one-off projects, like sales and product developing a new, customer-converting feature.
However, making it happen—not to mention making it work—isn’t always easy.
Why Does Communication Fail in Cross-Functional Teams
Cross-functional teams often fail because the organization lacks a systemic approach. Teams are hurt by unclear governance, a lack of accountability, goals that lack specificity, and organizations’ failure to prioritize the success of cross-functional projects.
Cross-functional collaboration: why we struggle with it and what to do!
Given the amount of technology built to improve team communication, cross-functional collaboration should be easier than ever.
We can instantly contact coworkers with Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom. We can share documents across the globe with Google Drive, OneDrive or Dropbox.
We can assign tasks and collaborate on projects but you likely have other, more interpersonal, barriers to overcome as well. This leads us to Conflict Resolution
When a team is comprised of people from different departments (with different motives and loyalties to different areas of the company), you’re going to experience some conflict.
It’s important for you to be prepared to handle conflict effectively. Many industry experts suggest you provide your cross-functional team with conflict-resolution training before bringing them together, but if this isn’t possible, be sure to confront any conflicts you encounter head-on.
Ignoring conflict will only make it worse.
Hoping the issue will resolve itself is a mistake all too many managers make. Letting employees take matters into their own hands might cost the company a lot of time and money in the long run.
According to Charmain Hammond, a globally respected professional consultant on conflict resolution, when you communicate clearly, you create opportunities for your team to see where they/their skills fit into the plan.
To summarize Charmain Hammond's process on how you can build a foundation for success is simply being clear.
Getting CLEAR involves:
Communicating your project expectations in a way that is focused, easy to understand, builds interest and helps the team see where they fit in.
Leaving fluff and unnecessary information out of the dialogue.
Engaging the person early. Don’t make the conversation and monologue and find a point of interest that will help people embrace the information.
Asking questions to get the person or team engaged in the conversation and Avoid acronyms and terms that are not general knowledge or are trigger words/terms.
Repeating and reminding the team of the most important details in a different way as you close the conversation.
Facing disputes head-on is so important and helps you understand why you may have negative associations with conflict. You can develop concrete strategies to become a better listener and communicator and learn how to accomplish that essential task of reaching a resolution.
#conflictmanagement, #effectivecommunication #crossfunctionalteams