Executive Podcast #226: How to Lead a Team In a Matrix Organization

The term Matrix Management is used to describe an organizational structure where individuals can report to more than one leader. A team member might have a direct supervisor who they ultimately report to, but also have dotted line reporting to another leader or leaders depending on the projects where this employee is assigned.

There are pros and cons to a matrix system, but for any leader tasked with leading a cross-functional team in a matrix organization, there are some best practice ideas to ensure project success.

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Perry Holley:

Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast, where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:

And I’m Chris Goede, Executive Vice President of Maxwell Leadership. Welcome, and thank you for joining. Just as we get started, I’d love for you to visit maxwellleadership.com/podcast. There, if you’re interested in leadership development for your team, maybe assessing the culture and then digging into, how do we fix that, we would love to help you with that. If you’ll go there, fill out a form, submit that form, our team would love to follow up with you. Also, if you have a question or even just a comment.

Perry Holley:

Bring it.

Chris Goede:

Bring it, because this is what today’s about. Today is actually directly from someone that went on there, filled out a form, and now we’re going to help unpack this in regard to some leadership content around today’s topic. And it is titled, How to Lead a Team in a Matrix Organization. Perry, talk a little bit about the listener question and where we’re going today.

Perry Holley:

Yeah, so an executive offered that they were asked to lead a new project team, which would be a new, highly visible line of business for the organization. This executive thought that it would be like a promotion and they would be now the executive of such and such, but they were told no promotion or no new title right now, maybe in the future that might happen, but would really want you to run this with a number of people from across the… Build a virtual team of people that don’t report directly to this person. She would have project leadership over that, but not be the functional manager for that person. And the question really came in was, how can I ensure success of this when the people on the team, they all have another boss? And that then triggers to me that this is a matrix management structure. Maybe you could explain that a little bit, because people said, do I take the red pill or the blue pill, or not that matrix?

Chris Goede:

No. That’s right. There are pros and cons to this. At Maxwell Leadership, we did not used to be a structured organization with this, but now we are. And so there could be times where one fits your organization better than other. We’re going to talk about some best practices today that we’re going to bring to light. But to your point, the matrix management structure, I love this, you gave this to me in my notes, and I think it probably is a family tie here that probably grew up with your dad somehow tied to this. But this was first developed in the 1950s. Perry was born, I was not, in association with the aerospace industry, which I know is close to your family. And it wasn’t until the 1970s, that it actually became popular in some US based organizations.

And so before we get into talking about some of the best practices and the ways to make this positive, to your point in the listener’s question, almost explain what the matrix organization is. We were talking just before we got started between you and I and Jake, who runs all of our podcasts for us. And so we were talking about matrix organization and I was like, “Hey, it’s kind of like this.” I said, “Jake, who do you report directly to?” And on our organizational chart, he reports to Andrew, is his solid line direct leader. And then I was like, “But when it comes to this podcast, who is it that you work with and work alongside and run everything by?” And he was like, “You guys.” And so we said, “Okay, so that’s the dotted line to us.”

And then you had a couple other questions. You’re like, “Well, what about this project, Jake? And what about this project?” He’s like, “Different people.” He has a solid line to Andrew, but all the projects that he’s running for our team across the enterprise, he has dotted lines too for those projects. And that in essence is a matrix run organization. Now, real quick, one of the things you got to be very, very careful with these is, you got to have leaders that are comfortable with that, are aware of that, that don’t get their feelings hurt, that Jake may report directly to Andrew, but when it comes to this podcast, he’s coming directly to us and saying, “When do you want to schedule it? What about this topic? Hey, that was wrong.” You got to have that confident leader that doesn’t get their feelings hurt.

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Perry Holley:

I thought you handled it very well. And you said, “Jake, I need something.” He said, “I need you to fill out that form-“

Chris Goede:

No, he said, “I need you to run that by Perry.” I don’t know what happened. I think I got down a dotted line.

Perry Holley:

I got a new dotted line.

Chris Goede:

I got a new dotted line.

Perry Holley:

The idea here is what would you do? What are the keys for this? And so I think it’s important that if you’re leading teams in this type of an organization, team members may feel like they… I remember this on my IBM days, you say, “Who do you work for?” “Oh, I have so many bosses. I have so many bosses, you can’t imagine.” But everybody feels like they might be distracted from taking leadership from you. And Jake’s a great example. He is pulled in many different directions, even though right now, this day we’re in the studio, this is the most important thing to us. Jake has 10 other things, people that are pulling on him to do that. I just come up with a few best practices. You want to guess how many?

Chris Goede:

Let’s do it, five.

Perry Holley:

Okay, five. Yeah. And the first one was and I told this person, you need to connect with each person on your team. And they need to know that they are on your team. This is I often think of John Maxwell talking about the law of connection, that leaders must touch a heart before they ask for a hand. And in every part of this matrix, people are being asked for a hand, but are you actually touching the heart, connecting? Do they know who you are? Do they know that they’re on the team? If they have a personal, go back to what we talked about over the last few weeks about influence. What’s your level of influence with these people? Even though they are spread out through the organization and may report to other people, do you have that influence?

Chris Goede:

Yeah. You could turn this episode off right now and just go back and listen to the previous two lessons. I don’t want you to do that though because there’s some good stuff coming down the track here in regards to-

Perry Holley:

There go the ratings.

Chris Goede:

I was getting ready to say, yeah. Dadgummit, Chris, why did you say that on episode, whatever, we completely tanked. But there’s two things here, and I 100% agree. Connection is key in a matrix run organization because you are influencing so many different people. And the other thing is, is that this is where I think really comes into to play as the common language of how we define leadership inside the organization.

Here at Maxwell Leadership, we define leadership as influence and we understand that. And so we know that when we’re leading a team or that when we’re working with somebody else, our mindset should be the fact of, how do we influence those on the team for not only their benefit, the organization’s benefit, but then for your benefit, how do you go about doing that? And it starts with understanding the common language of leadership and what is important in the culture of your organization. The other thing is, I would encourage you to make sure that you’re from a connection standpoint, that you make it known both physically and maybe verbally, that you’re in it with them. That you’re just not saying, “Hey, go do this project and then bring it back to me.” No, I want to be a part of it. I want to check in. I want to… And when you do that, that will help you connect with them, even though you just have a dotted line to them for that certain project.

Perry Holley:

Best practice. Number two, I found it was very helpful to be very clear on the outcomes for this project, whatever they’re assigned to you for, that you have that matrix, that dotted line is that they know what it is you expect and what those outcomes. They have other job responsibilities, they have other people pulling on them. It’s essential that everyone’s clear. Where are we going? What is the plan? You’re on the team, we’re clear about that, we’ve connected. But now, if there’s any in’s uncertainty at all, these team members may become distracted or even disconnected from the project at all.

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Chris Goede:

Yeah. A couple other things on that. I think this is true for both a matrix and a non-matrix. And so I think that this is something that your people have to be clear. There has to be clarity in what we’re trying to accomplish. And I’d also encourage you to communicate not only the clarity around that, but then how does that tie into the bigger part of what we’re trying to do. For example, here at Maxwell Leadership, we are about adding value to people, period. Getting as many people as possible that could listen to podcasts, so that we can add value to them, period.

And so Jake knows that even though Jake doesn’t directly report to us, he knows the fact that the purpose behind this, he’s very clear on the role, but he’s also clear about how this ties into the bigger part of Maxwell Leadership. And when you do that, that allows you to run a matrix structured organization, a team, much more effectively. I also think, make sure in addition to what you said, make sure they’re aware of timeframes of things that need to be accomplished. Make sure that they’re aware of expectations. You have to lead at times almost like it’s a solid line, but do it in a different way by setting and communicating these outcomes and expectations.

Perry Holley:

Which leads to best practice number three, I found it’s very helpful to be clear about each person’s role and responsibility on the team. When you’re in a standard structure of what we had for a while was that you’re the boss, we have the team, we all know each other on the team. We know what each other does. When you get into a matrix organization, you may be thrown into project teams with people that you don’t know. Actually, we just had this here where we had, as we’ve grown, we are being more matrix, but we were just on a call with the family rooms and I heard people saying, “Well, what do you do? Now, I do this.” If people aren’t clear about what each person is doing, and it’s very normal in a hard line, direct report, we all know each other. But you may not know what other people do. As a leader, it would be really great to be clear with each person what they do, what their role and responsibility and how does it connect to and relate to the other people on the team.

Chris Goede:

Yeah, 100% that is something that we need to make sure that we are doing as we’re leading in a matrix driven, structured organization. Otherwise, there’s going to be confusion about what’s going on. And now there’s already confusion in organizations, period. Matter of fact, the number one thing that we hear from organization is, “Man, we need help with communication,” and doesn’t matter, the economic state, doesn’t matter, we’re always helping with communication because there is confusion.

That has to be driven by the team members understanding what is the outcome. They need to know what that is. They also need to know, how are we going to go about achieving that, and how do you often communicate about that? And so that just comes from, connecting one-on-one. It comes from group updates, it comes from sharing expectations and them hearing your voice as a leader. Get back to the, “Hey, if I am communicating to my team, that directly reports to me, I ought to be doing the same thing for those that I have dealt a lot of responsibility to.”

Perry Holley:

Yeah. Good. And that leads to best practice number four is, do you have a communication strategy? The quickest way any matrix team I’ve been a part of, to feel disconnected is to be unclear about what’s happening. I haven’t heard from you. And by the way, you may be leading other teams as well, so you have people that nothing’s happening. We’re really not moving forward. You should have a regular set of check-in’s, one-on-one and probably with the team. You may have to update your manager. You may be in a matrix as well. You may want to update your peers. You may have a plan. But I think being clear about your communication strategy for how you update, keeping the team, first of all up to speed on what’s going on, where the wins are, where the setbacks are, what needs to happen, but really important, up the ladder and across to your peers, could be really great and establishing you as a cross team, cross organization leader that really raises your level of influence.

Chris Goede:

Love it. And number five, be inspiring as a leader. Every project, every team that you’re connected with, especially inside matrix organizations, want to make sure that you’re present, want to make sure that you’re positive, want to make sure you’re inspiring. What we’re doing matters. It doesn’t matter what the KPI is behind what you’re working on, but you have got to make sure that you are being inspiring to them. You bring energy that will then pull people into work. I want to stop on that word pull because we’ve had to push people before-

Perry Holley:

That’s exactly right.

Chris Goede:

And there’s a big difference. And I think that that comes from inspiring them. One of the ways to be able to do this is make sure that you continue to invite them to speak into how we’re going to go about doing this. I know for Jake, when it comes to technology, we’re like, “Hey, Jake, we have an idea or thought. What do you think about this? How could we do that?” And that will inspire him and his skillset to be able to feel more comfortable with working in this matrix organization.

Perry Holley:

Well, I think about when I said be inspiring, I think about level three that people, first of all, they’re on the team, but you want them to want to be there, so that’s level two. But level three is that it’s fun. There’s a momentum that comes with being on this team. And it’s tough in a matrix environment to feel this level of momentum because people have other things, other strings, other dotted lines going on. And so I want to be that leader that they say, “I really want to be on that leader’s team.” And that you’re inspiring, you’re motivating, it’s encouraging, it’s uplifting. There’s energy around it and we’re going to produce results. You’re usually in a matrix, you get the best talent, but it has some issues there. I told this leader, “Do they even know they’re on your team?” He goes, “I’m not sure.” “Okay, we better go do that one, connect, and then do these things. And I think it’ll help.”

Chris Goede:

Well, as I wrap up, we started by the title and the question that came in from our listener, which by the way, thank you for doing that, was how to lead a team in a matrix organization. And what I really want to now wrap up and say, it’s the same way you would lead your team in a regular organization, it’s just expanded. And so the things that we talk about and leaders struggle with and we need to work on and stuff that we as leaders continue to work on. It is the exact same thing with any project that you’re on.

And I would challenge listeners to this, if you were in the community and you were asked to voluntarily lead a program to do something, how would you go about it? You’d go about it the same way that you’re leading your team inside the organization. And in essence, that’s what we’re talking about. And so the principles that we’ve unpacked that are just rooted in the five levels of leadership from John Maxwell, they work cross-functionally, they work across organizationally. They work across community, and they work in your family, by the way, so make sure that you stay true to the principles of the five levels of leadership.

Perry Holley:

Well, fantastic, Chris. Thank you. And just a reminder, if you’d like to get that learner guide with these points, you can get that. You can leave a question, you can ask a question, leave a comment. You do all that at maxwellleadership.com/podcast. We always love hearing from you and we’re very grateful you would spend this time with us today. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.