Report: Leading Cross-Functional Teams for Effectiveness

This report analyzes the strategies for leading a cross-functional team to update an organization's Health and Safety policy. It explores the criteria for selecting team members, emphasizing the importance of attitude and skills for effective communication and service provision. The report outlines strategies for bonding and motivating team members, including Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and addresses conflict management using frameworks like Tuckman's model of team development. The report also highlights the challenges faced by cross-functional teams, such as conflicting deadlines and diverse personalities, and suggests approaches to overcome these hurdles, ultimately aiming to improve team performance and achieve organizational goals. The report concludes that effective leadership and the implementation of appropriate strategies are critical for team success and creating a positive work environment.

Running head: PROMOTE TEAM EFFECTIVENESS
PROMOTE TEAM EFFECTIVENESS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Team objectives and team members professional background.......................................................3
Challenges of cross- functional team...............................................................................................4
Leading the team of equals..............................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
The objective of this report is to analyze the way to lead cross –functional team of the
peers and promote team effectiveness. The study analyses as well as update CareMalta’s health
and safety policy. It reflects on how the human resource (HR) department of the organization
adopts effective strategy in order to create effective team, so that they can provide proper
services and ensure safety of people (Borrego et al. 2013) .
Care Malta’s Group is the market leaders of this group that provides quality services in
residential as well as nursing care, independent living for the aged persons, dementia care and
courses in health relating to aged persons care. Being one of the leaders in this care sector, this
group cares for near about 1300 residents as well as employs laborforce of about 1000 dedicated
as well as trained personnel. The organization’s main philosophy is to maintain comfortable,
efficient and safe environment, encourage independence in which proper sufficient privacy is to
maintain persons dignity, promote social interchange between the staffs and residents and
support emotional as well as physical well- being of residents. The company’s core values is to
strive for improvement in services they offer, secure safe environment in all their facilities,
maintain integrity in work, create proper environment for the individuals as well as enterprise
learning as well as development and treat every employees with dignity and respect (Perry ,
Karney, and Spencer 2013)
Being a leader of cross functional team of this enterprise, my aim is to recruit the
individuals with right attitude and skills. The reasons behind selecting right attitude individuals is
that it helps to communicate with other employees and people relating to provision of services.
My role will also help the company to assure workers health and safety. Being the team leader, I
will utilize every resources for creating as well as maintaining health as well as safety standards

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for the employees (Zanko and Dawson 2012). I will also ensure proper provision of services that
reduces dangers of health as well as safety of the persons working within the facilities. In
addition to this, I will try to take effective strategy for assuring reduction of risks that are
associated with business operations. This would help them to improve the work environment
where the staffs find this place safe to work with and thus improve their work performance by
delivering better services to the people. As a leader of cross-functional team, I will also ensure
that the employees liability insurance is in proper place, so that it might not demotivate them in
their work. I will try to implement several strategies for developing a proper team, so that they
can achieve the target of reducing dangers of health and safety to the people (Costa, Passos and
Bakke, 2014).
Team objectives and team members professional background
The aims and objectives of the team is to apply present thinking in practical way for
achieving safe as well as healthier work environment. Their purpose is to make strategic
objectives for achieving the goal of the organization. Besides this, they also try to provide health
and safety to the workers of the organization in order to achieve success in business (Ohland et
al. 2012). Being a leader of this enterprise, the strategies that will be used for developing
effective team involves- establishment of open communication, coordinating with the facility
manager, providing training to each team member regarding fire prevention and so on.
Moreover, these strategies will help to unite the team members and aid them to achieve the target
of the company within the specified time frame.
The professional background of the team members working in this organization are
described below-

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 The team members have considerable experience in the health and safety
practices
 They have exceptional grasp of certain rules as well as regulations related to
health care of the people such as OSHA, NEFA
 They have strong superior multitasking as well as prioritization skills
 They have abilities in computer applications
 They have excellent written as well as oral communication skills.
 Each team member in this company have high proficiency in using workplace
protective environment.
Challenges of cross- functional team
A cross- functional team refers to the group of individuals with divergent functional
professionals working towards common target. It might involve individuals from different
backgrounds such as – marketing, finance and human resource departments. Specifically, it
involves employees from each level of the organization. These teams serves as innovation
pockets and enhance both individual as well as group performance (Rickards and Moger 2017).
Some of the challenges of cross- functional teams of CareMalta enterprise are given below-
 This team creates stressful situation within the workplace
 Diverse personality team members creates conflict in certain ideas
 It creates conflicting deadlines, which in turn reduces productivity
 It creates lack of trust among the employees
Tuckman’s framework is one of the widely known management model that aids to explain
team development as well as behavior of each team members. There are five stages of

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Tuckman’s model, which includes- forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. The
features of each phase are described below-
 Forming-In this stage, the team members are highly dependent on the leaders for
guidance as well as direction. The team members of this enterprise faces issues as test
tolerance of leaders and system.
 Storming- At this stage, the group begins to sort themselves and also gains knowledge
from each other.
 Norming – The roles and responsibilities are given to each team member and any big
decisions are taken by the group agreement. The team discusses as well as develops the
processes as well as working style (Borrego et al. 2013).
 Performing- In this stage, the team members becomes ready to accept high uncertainty
level as they face challenges together. Some disagreements occur within the team in this
organizations but is resolved positively.
 Adjourning- In this stage, when the task of team is completed, the group becomes
dissolved. In this stage, some issues the team members in this organizations face in this
stage is that they experiences anxiety as the group becomes dissolved.
Leading the team of equals
Being the team leader of this enterprise, it is necessary to motivate each team member so
that it positively affect the results of project. Need theories usually attempt to recognize internal
factors, which motivate individual’s behavior and hence are based on premise that individuals
are encouraged by unfulfilled requirements (Somech and Drach-Zahavy 2013). According to
Maslow’s framework, motivation is outcome of individuals attempt to fulfill five needs such as –

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physiological, safety, social, esteem and self- actualization. These needs in turn creates huge
pressure that impacts the individuals behavior.
 Physiological needs refers to those needs that employees requires while working in an
organization such as - comfortable working conditions and work hours. The team
members will be provided this needs in order to motivate them in work.
 Safety needs involve those needs that gives individuals with proper sense of security as
well as well- being. Safety working conditions will motivate the workers to retain in this
company for long term (Maslow 2013).
 Social needs relates to the requirement of belonging as well as acceptance. The team
members will also be provided with these needs as it motivates cooperative teamwork.
 Esteem needs indicates the needs for respect as well as self-esteem of the employees.
Promotions will be provided to the team members of this enterprise in order to make
them valued.
 Self- actualization needs describes individual’s needs for reaching their full potential.
Being a leader, this needs will be taken into account as it enhances flexibility within the
enterprise (Kaur 2013).
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that developing effective team is vital for
every organization as it helps to achieve success and create proper work environment. However,
in order to develop effective team, leaders have to implement effective strategies and style.
Overall, this helps to improve the financial performance of the organization and provide team
members security in their work.

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References
Borrego, M., Karlin, J., McNair, L.D. and Beddoes, K., 2013. Team effectiveness theory from
industrial and organizational psychology applied to engineering student project teams: A
research review. Journal of Engineering Education, 102(4), pp.472-512.
Costa, P.L., Passos, A.M. and Bakker, A.B., 2014. Team work engagement: A model of
emergence. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 87(2), pp.414-436.
Kaur, A., 2013. Maslow’s need hierarchy theory: Applications and criticisms. Global Journal of
Management and Business Studies, 3(10), pp.1061-1064.
Maslow, A.H., 2013. A theory of human motivation. Simon and Schuster.
Ohland, M.W., Loughry, M.L., Woehr, D.J., Bullard, L.G., Felder, R.M., Finelli, C.J., Layton,
R.A., Pomeranz, H.R. and Schmucker, D.G., 2012. The comprehensive assessment of team
member effectiveness: Development of a behaviorally anchored rating scale for self-and peer
evaluation. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 11(4), pp.609-630.
Perry Jr, E.E., Karney, D.F. and Spencer, D.G., 2013. Team establishment of self-managed work
teams: a model from the field. Team Performance Management: An International Journal,
19(1/2), pp.87-108.
Rahim, M.A., 2017. Managing conflict in organizations. Routledge.
Rickards, T. and Moger, S., 2017. Handbook for creative team leaders. Routledge.

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Somech, A. and Drach-Zahavy, A., 2013. Translating team creativity to innovation
implementation: The role of team composition and climate for innovation. Journal of
management, 39(3), pp.684-708.
Zanko, M. and Dawson, P., 2012. Occupational health and safety management in organizations:
A review. International Journal of Management Reviews, 14(3), pp.328-344.