Facilitating communication

- A cross-functional team leader has a lot of communication vehicles at their disposal. These need to be used effectively. Here's some of the most common ones, and a few suggestions on how you can use them. There are steering committee meetings. These are the most formal, and usually the least frequent. They involve senior stakeholders from multiple functions. You'll provide a formal team progress update. You may conduct deep dives into specific areas of concern. Sometimes you're coming to the steering committee for a major decision. These occur on a monthly, bimonthly, or even quarterly basis, depending on the size of the project. There are team project updates. These are conducted with the entire cross-functional team. Every team member reviews their progress, shares concerns and needs for assistance, and team decisions are made here. These generally occur biweekly or monthly, since they can be big and they're very involved. There are regular team meetings. Those involve the entire…