In this workshop, participants will discover the elements of their working style and communication preferences within four key dimensions: how we like to communicate, how we take in and process information, how we make decisions, and how we organize our lives. Through group learning, individual reflection, and group discussion, participants will walk away from this workshop with an increased confidence in their ability to articulate their needs to others, and heightened ability to adjust their styles to meet the preferences of others. This session takes a humorous and informative look at how we operate, providing us with the tools to adjust our styles to work effectively with anyone.
Leaders Aren’t Born – They’re Made.
At The Leadership Laboratory, we orchestrate comprehensive team + leadership development workshops specifically crafted for cross-functional teams and interdisciplinary collaboration environments. We understand that cross-functional professionals navigate diverse expertise landscapes that require leadership approaches emphasizing perspective integration, communication bridge-building, and collaborative goal achievement. Our methodology centers on advancing cross-functional leadership capabilities that excel through departmental integration opportunities, interdisciplinary project success, and organizational alignment initiatives.
From product development cross-functional teams and strategic initiative groups to matrix organization participants, project-based collaborations, and multi-departmental task forces, our integration-focused, collaboration-optimized approach ensures immediate relevance and enhanced cross-functional team performance. We recognize that cross-functional teams bring exceptional diverse expertise, varied perspective contributions, and collaborative problem-solving capabilities – our workshops integrate these multi-disciplinary strengths while introducing leadership frameworks that enhance communication across departments, stakeholder alignment, and collective project excellence. Our cross-functional leadership workshops integrate collaborative methodology principles with advanced team development, creating experiences that unite diverse professionals while driving measurable improvements in team integration and cross-departmental project success. This cross-functional approach celebrates the diverse expertise and collaborative innovation that defines successful interdisciplinary organizations, providing targeted preparation for cross-functional leadership roles.
Suggested Leadership Workshops: Cross-Functional Teams
Building The Dream Team
Adjusting Styles To Enhance Relationships & Build Trust
Learning Objectives:
- Clarify leadership and communication preferences, and develop a “user’s manual” to articulate our findings
- Discover the attributes, behaviors and common blind-spots of natural preferences, and explore and understand the same attributes and behaviors of opposing types
- Highlight specific actions we can take when working with someone who leverages opposing preferences, and develop a plan to adjust our styles with at least one current colleague
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Effective Communication
- Collaboration + Trust
- Openness + Awareness
Learning Objectives:
- Experiment with interactive exercises to enhance active listening, setting others up for success, challenging the status-quo, and confidently stepping outside of our comfort zones
- Embrace the concept of “YES, AND” to build upon the ideas of others in an effort to strengthen interpersonal, team, and organizational relationships
- Develop an action + implementation plan for positive, long-term behavior change
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Collaboration + Trust
- Effective Communication
- Openness to Change + Innovation
IMPROVing Team Collaboration
Embracing “YES, AND” to Foster Leadership & Build Trust
Understanding the fundamentals of improvisation enhances core communication in personal and professional settings. Improvisation requires participants to think on their feet, be in the moment, and use enhanced active listening skills, all of which play a role in our success in the work we do on a daily basis. In this workshop, participants will gain an understanding of how to fully embrace “YES, AND” and other core principles from improv for increased collaboration, trust, and enhanced team dynamics.
Thanks for the Feedback
Empowering Others through Coaching Conversations
In making the transition from individual contributor to leader, we rely on a new skill set that focuses on inspiring and motivating the people we work with. In this series, participants will focus on people and project leadership skills, specifically as it relates to the topics of coaching and motivating to inspire those we work with to take action. Through knowledge-sharing and discussion based learning, and an opportunity to directly experiment with coaching methodologies, participants will have the opportunity to learn from and alongside each other, and connect these practices to specific action plans to retain and grow their top talent.
Learning Objectives:
- Leverage feedback conversations to transform and inspire performance of peers, direct-reports, and other frequent collaborators
- Identify the theories behind three common negative reactions when receiving feedback
- Discover the three types of feedback to more effectively inspire peak performance
- Develop an action + implementation plan for positive, long-term behavior change
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Giving + Receiving Feedback
- Navigating Conflict Conversations
- Positive Psychology + Trust
Learning Objectives:
- Identify current decision making practices, both on an individual and team level
- Discover The Four Phases of Team Development, overlaying the model to spark dialogue on the current state of team dynamics
- Measure individual and team-based decision making success, and develop an action and implementation plan of new leadership competencies
Key Themes & Leadership Behaviors:
- Data-Based Decision Making
- Consensus Building
- Effective Communication
Survival Simulation
An Experiment with Team Effectiveness & Decision Making
During this interactive and experience-based simulation, the playing fields are evened and participants are tasked with a specific objective to ensure survival. Leveraging their decisions, teams are able to measure their individual and group effectiveness, and walk away with a deeper understanding of the four stages of team development, and experiment with tools to enhance their approaches to decision making on their own and as a team.
Why Cross-Functional Teams Choose The Leadership Laboratory
Cross-functional team development requires nuanced understanding of departmental perspectives, communication style differences, and collaborative project management. Interdisciplinary professionals need leadership strategies that enhance their ability to bridge diverse viewpoints while building unified team environments that accelerate both individual cross-functional effectiveness and collective organizational project impact. The Leadership Laboratory delivers interdisciplinary leadership workshops that are integration-focused, collaboration-oriented, and designed to unlock the synergistic potential within high-performing cross-functional organizations.
Our data-driven cross-functional team workshops blend the art and science of leadership development to create inclusive, perspective-rich experiences – strengthening interdisciplinary leadership effectiveness and collaborative project performance. We understand that cross-functional professionals demonstrate remarkable adaptability, diverse skill integration abilities, and collaborative coordination expertise. Our approach centers on maximizing these existing collaborative competencies while introducing cross-functional leadership skills that improve interdepartmental communication, project alignment, and stakeholder coordination.
Whether your team encompasses representatives from marketing and engineering, finance and operations, or sales and product development, The Leadership Laboratory creates inclusive, evidence-based workshops that reinforce current collaborative excellence, enhance cross-functional leadership influence, and generate improved departmental integration, project coordination effectiveness, and organizational alignment outcomes. Grounded in collaboration research and interdisciplinary team studies, our framework emphasizes synergy amplification over departmental silos, focusing on cross-functional success and organizational integration advancement.
The Leadership Laboratory operates nationwide with both in-person and virtual healthcare leadership development workshops. We proudly serve healthcare organizations around the world and throughout the United States across the country, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington DC.
Strategic Considerations for Cross-Functional Team Development
Cross-functional leadership workshops are designed to meet the unique challenge of effective interdisciplinary organizations: uniting diverse departmental expertise while preserving each professional's individual identity. Our approach recognizes that cross-functional professionals thrive when equipped with advanced translation skills between departments, collaborative decision-making frameworks, and integration methodologies that enhance both individual professional contributions and collective cross-functional outcomes.
The Leadership Laboratory's cross-functional leadership training integrates departmental perspective appreciation with collaborative project management, ensuring participants develop both the communication versatility and integration skills necessary for cross-functional leadership advancement. We focus on building influence capabilities across diverse professional cultures, collaborative communication abilities for varied stakeholder groups, and the emotional intelligence required to lead interdisciplinary personalities while maintaining project momentum and organizational alignment objectives.
Our methodology acknowledges that cross-functional teams navigate unique leadership opportunities including departmental perspective synthesis, stakeholder alignment facilitation, and collaborative culture development that require specialized integration leadership understanding. We create workshop experiences that honor diverse professional expertise while introducing leadership concepts that enhance team integration and cross-departmental collaboration effectiveness.
Our cross-functional leadership development workshops implement proven methodologies designed exclusively for interdisciplinary environments, creating meaningful improvements in cross-departmental communication, collaborative integration thinking, and unified team leadership to inspire sustained collaborative excellence throughout your cross-functional organization.
Building tomorrow's leaders today.
The Leadership Laboratory works across multiple industries - including start-up and established technology firms, non-profit and government agencies, finance companies, healthcare organizations and more. We are proud to collaborate with individuals and teams of all sizes.
Contact us and say hello! We're excited to get to know you and share our ideas on learning + leadership development.
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Collaborating Partners
“I laughed harder than I have in a while!”
Our workshop was engaging, informative, rejuvenating and pure fun. I laughed harder than I have in a while! This was a phenomenal way to get more comfortable as a team.
— Director of People, SpotHero
“You made this easy to apply and implement”
You listened to our needs and adapted on the spot to incorporate leadership lessons. Every element was backed up by research, and you made this easy to apply and implement.
— VP / HEAD OF PEOPLE, WARBY PARKER
Meet Jacob Goldstein
Jacob Goldstein is the founder of The Leadership Laboratory, and leverages his experiences in education, the performing arts, and corporate learning & leadership development to his work. As a performer, Jacob has sung as a backup vocalist for musical artists such as Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, and Patti LuPone, as a recording artist for Netflix series Sense8, and at venues including The United Center, The Chicago Theater, and Chicago Symphony Center. In the education space, Jacob has served as an educator for high school, undergraduate and graduate students, and has been a Guest Lecturer at Northwestern University since 2016. As a Learning & Leadership Development Consultant, Jacob has worked as a one-on-one coach and group workshop facilitator to organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies in diverse industries, including technology, healthcare, non-profit, and fashion/apparel. Jacob holds a Bachelor’s degree from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Master’s of Science in Communication from Northwestern University.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Typical Size of Cross-Functional Teams Leadership Development Workshops?
At The Leadership Laboratory, we customize each learning experience to align with your team and culture. Traditionally, we recommend between 20 – 30 participants per workshop, though often work with groups as small as 5 to as large as 5,000+. Knowing your audience size can help us to design a workshop partnership to maximize engagement and participation, and honor each participant at their respective knowledge and experience level.
Are Cross-Functional Teams Leadership Development Workshops Available Both In-Person and Virtually?
Yes! All of our programming can be facilitated on-site, virtually, or in a hybrid format (virtual facilitation to an in-person audience). For both on-site and virtual workshops, we traditionally recommend a lead time of 6 – 8 weeks to get your top choice of date for a facilitated partnership.
How Do We Choose Cross-Functional Teams Leadership Development Workshops?
When working with a new partner, we leverage a process called backwards design theory to curate a tailored learning experience. One of the first questions that we ask is “what would you like this audience to do differently as a result of this collaboration?” – in other words, what are the skills or behaviors you’d like this group to have, or the knowledge they want to possess?
Once we know and define these learning objectives, we can work backwards and partner with you to determine what content can support in making those goals a reality. For a sample list of workshops, feel free to check our Workshop + Experiments pages, or browse the Workshop by Industry or Workshops by Role pages for additional recommendations.
How Long are Cross-Functional Teams Leadership Development Workshops?
Each of our workshops is designed to be approximately 2.5 – 3 hours in length. For on-site partnerships, most groups opt for two back-to-back workshop topics to create a full day of learning. For teams looking for sessions outside of the standard length, please contact The Leadership Laboratory to discuss more customized options.
Can We Customize Cross-Functional Teams Leadership Development Workshops?
Yes! At The Leadership Laboratory, we leverage a process called backwards design theory to curate a tailored learning experience. As we collaborate with you to learn more about your goals, we can incorporate information about your team’s culture, organizational strategy, and industry trends to design an experience that truly resonates, with easy-to-apply concepts that lead to long-term, positive behavior change.
We know that each participant has their own unique learning goals, and have designed our leadership development experiences to customize our content to each person in the moment. We kick-off each workshop with an opportunity to learn more about the goals of each participant in the room, and align the experience to what is most top-of-mind for them. This differentiated learning allows us to adjust to each unique participant, as well as honor the diverse perspectives, roles, and experience in the room.
Does The Leadership Laboratory Work with Individual Cross-Functional Teams Professionals?
At The Leadership Laboratory, most of our workshops are designed for teams or groups of leaders within organizations. As we focus on customizing each leadership development experience to the unique elements of each organization’s culture and team’s communication style, our work is focused on sessions that departments or groups within the same organization can participate in together, as opposed to sessions that individuals can sign up for on their own.
For individuals looking for one-on-one development, The Leadership Laboratory offers select executive coaching and thought partnership opportunities. Feel free to reach out directly for more information.