Communication Significance among Cross-Functional Team

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Coordination

Coordination is the core strength of cross-functional team and it can be achieved with better communications Almost all the interviewees agreed on communication as the base of coordination in cross-functional teams. No coordination can be done if the individuals in the team stop communicating the issues and tasks with each other.
“you can have aerospace engineers in the cross-functional team but if they don’t coordinate with each other with communication nothing will come out”.

Empirical Findings

The individual skills of the team members are not worthy and inefficient if team members fail to coordinate with each other. The base of cross-functional teams is to unite different skills together to work on one task. Communication between team members allow the knowledge to flow from one direction to other providing ground of mutual working atmosphere.
“I have experienced as a team leader that whenever there has been some issue or delays in the projects it’s because team members lack the coordination with each other and I personally make sure to get them together and make them sit in the room and let them communicated (….) so in one way I push them to communicated to get a coordinating team”.
Coordination by communication rely on how productive the discussion the team members conduct during the meetings. If the discussion is destructive, the results of meeting are highly disappointing at the end. In many cases, team members lack the coordination due to individual differences which require more involvement of team leader to overcome the differences. In this situation team leader lead the discussion by allowing every member to participate and express his/herself opinion about the project.
While interviewing the team members, one of the interviewee highlighted the importance of the team diversity in coordination
“In my previous organization I felt my team members were not coordinating with me as I was the only one from outside of Europe (….) this situation somehow make me frustrated even to communicate with the team members as I never get a sufficient feedback for the questions I was feeling to discuss about”
The cultural difference is one of the hurdles in the team communications. Especially, if the team member is from different culture does not speak the language of rest the group. Naturally, we feel more comfortable speaking the native language which increases the chances of segregation within team if one group dominates rest of the team. It can be observed that team leader will be aware of the situation if he or she has worked in culturally diversified team.

Cooperation

“People hate meetings but if team members not communicating with each other it means they are not cooperating with each other (….) so what I do I arrange a meeting and lead it myself to see who is communicating and who is not and try to create atmosphere of cooperation by letting them talk to each other”
From team leader point of view, if team members do not talk with each other which eventually effect the cooperation of team individuals with each other. Meeting can provide better surrounding where team members can express their problems. These meetings are worth arranging if the agenda is cleared by team leader and provide opportunity for everyone to speak. Most of the meetings are considered useless because of one person (team leader or manager) explain everything without a follow up discussion on the issues. Cooperation level increases in the team if every member feels that his/her voice is going to be heard with a sense of everyone has equal chances of speaking.
“So what I do, I gather all the team members and let them talk with each other and if they don’t, I start the conversation and ask if you have question with this person or (….) and then the team members start to talk to each other and eventually realized that they have several questions that need to be addressed (….) so cooperation is started more likely with the frequency of the communication between the team members. So you would say I work as a facilitator between the team members”
According to the upper statement, team leader is ensuring that all the team members present their problems and if team leader notice someone is not participating, team leader take the initiative to ask the view of the member. One more point highlighted by the participant that cooperation between team members increases with frequency of communicational sessions.

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Satisfaction level

Satisfaction is the key in the cross-functional team outcomes. If team member feel satisfied with his or her presence in the team then it increase the communicational flows. According to Ying-Jung and Huey-Wen, (2005) satisfaction of working in the cross-functional team is related to how worth their voice get in the team meetings and during the communications sessions “Yes, I am satisfied because I say what I want to say and there is no problem I feel to express myself

1 Introduction
1.1 BACKGROUND
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
1.3 RESEARCH PURPOSE AND QUESTIONS.
2 Frame of Reference
2.1 CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS
2.1.1 Considerations while Team Selection.
2.1.2 Management of Cross-Functional Team .
2.1.3 Success Factors of Cross-Functional Team
2.1.4 Communication Significance among Cross-Functional Team .
3 Research Method
3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHOD
3.2 WORK APPROACH.
3.2.1 Selection of Methodology .
3.3 DATA COLLECTION
3.3.1 Interviews.
3.4 DATA ANALYSIS TRUSTWORTHINESS.
3.6 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS.
4 Empirical Findings
4.1 CORRELATION BETWEEN RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND THEORY
5 Analysis and Interpretation
5.1 COMMUNICATION ATTRIBUTES
5.1.1 Satisfaction level.
5.1.2 Relationship of team communication and performance
5.2 EFFECTIVENESS OF COMMUNICATIONAL TOOLS
5.2.1 Situational dependency for communicational tools .
5.3 HIERARCHAL IMPACT
5.4 TIME FACTOR
6 Conclusion
7 Discussion