Forming a team is often treated as a logistical task: bring people together, give them a goal, and get started.
In reality, forming a team is a leadership act. And when people come from different functions, backgrounds, or organizations, it quickly becomes a real challenge.
In this episode of Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership, I sat down with Valentin Yonchev and Matt Takane from Red Hat Open Innovation Labs to explore a deceptively simple question:
How do you actually form a team?
From a group of people to a real team
Valentin and Matt have extensive experience building cross-functional teams in a wide range of contexts. Teams assembled:
- for a single meeting
- for short, focused engagements
- or for longer-term initiatives
Rather than sharing abstract principles, they describe practical ways to move from a group of people to a team that can actually work together.
What you will take away from this episode
In this conversation, we discuss:
- what really matters when forming a team
- how to adapt your approach depending on the duration and purpose of the engagement
- how to notice early signals that something is not working
- what leaders can do when collaboration stalls or friction appears
Whether you are assembling a temporary working group or launching a longer initiative, you will find concrete ideas you can apply immediately in your own context.
Practices and references
During the discussion, Matt mentions the Open Practice Library, a valuable resource for discovering concrete practices that support collaboration, learning, and experimentation:
👉 https://openpracticelibrary.com
We also refer to the idea of pulling the Andon cord. Originally coming from Lean manufacturing, this practice is about making problems visible early, so teams can stop, reflect, and improve together rather than pushing through dysfunction.
A final thought
If forming teams is part of your role, this episode is a reminder that teams don’t just happen. They are shaped deliberately, through attention, intention, and small but meaningful leadership choices.
Where to listen:
Le Podcast – Season Two
- Playful Leadership: Helping Others Be Their Best
- Blessed, Grateful, and Human
- Build the Right Product, with Gojko Adzic
- Hiring and Diversity Without Dropping the Bar
- Leadership and Teamwork in a Crisis
- Chief of Staff: The Role, the Craft, the Community
- Belonging, Identity, and Better Hiring,
- What Software Teams Can Learn from Sporting Teams
- Agile and Open Innovation: Building the Bridge Between Tech and Business
- Radical Focus: OKRs, Cadence, and the “Seduction of the Task”
- Human-Centric Agility Coaching: The Expert Paradox and the Ideology Paradox
- The Job of an Open Leader: Context, Trust, and Growing Others
Le Podcast – Season One
- Growing as a Software Engineer: Learning, Sharing, and Impact
- Thirteen Rules for Building Strong Teams
- OKRs in Practice: Learning, Focus, and Common Pitfalls
- The Myth of 10x Engineers: Growing Beyond Technical Skills
- The Anatomy of Peace: Leadership Starts With Who You Are
- Psychological Safety: Creating Teams Where People Can Speak Up
- Leading Distributed Teams: Collaboration Across Time Zones
- Changing Your Team from the Inside: A Practitioner’s View on Leadership
- Why Shared Language Matters: How Terms Shape Collaboration
- How (Not) to Give Feedback: Responsibility, Ego, and Relationships
- Rock Stars and Superstars: Supporting Growth Without Losing Stability
- Do Cultural Differences Really Block Agile Adoption?
- How to Create Great Goals: Using OKRs to Focus on Impact
- Making Change from the Inside: Leadership Beyond Management Roles
- How to Form a Cross-Functional Team That Actually Works
Comments
One response to “How to Form a Cross-Functional Team That Actually Works”
Great podcast, thank you Alexis.
Here’s 7 things I learned:
1. Ask ‘Why are we forming a team?” to understand your outcome.
2. Create a ‘Social Contract’ (and update it when necessary) so the team can hold itself accountable.
3. Use ‘mood of the room’ and ‘team sentiment’ as mechanisms to monitor ‘health’ of the team.
4. The subtle use of self organisation e.g. going out for a team picnic.
5. Using a team name as a banner or identity for the team.
6. Stopping the team when something’s not right and being honest about it.
7. A team succeeds or fails as a team, there are no individual successes or failures.