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Cross-Functional Leadership: Lead Without Authority
2,900 students
Cross-Functional Leadership: Lead Without Authority
cross-functional leadership | matrix management | org design | stakeholder management | conflict resolution | pmbok
Last updated 9/2026
English
English [Auto],
What you'll learn
- Read an organisational structure and explain why the friction you feel is designed into it
- Choose between functional, divisional and the three types of matrix structure
- Map power in a matrix, where accountability and authority sit with different people
- Build a stakeholder map and an engagement plan for people who do not report to you
- Run a project across functions: scope, work breakdown, schedule, budget, risk, closure
- Design a communication plan aimed at behaviour rather than at coverage
- Build and run a 360 assessment from questionnaire design to the feedback conversation
- Diagnose a conflict, prevent the predictable ones and mediate the rest
- Learn alongside Mike's 1.6 million students from 185 countries
- Get the author's experience from Preply, Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank
Explore related topics
Course content
15 sections • 40 lectures • 20h 53m total length
Requirements
- Work that depends on people outside your reporting line, which is most work above a certain level
- No project management certification required. PMBOK 7 is introduced from the beginning
- Access to a free form builder, since one lesson builds a working 360 in Google Forms
- English at intermediate level or above, since all lessons are in English
- A real cross-functional situation to apply this to, ideally one currently stuck
Description
This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.
The hardest people to lead are the ones who do not report to you. You need their time, they have their own priorities, and their manager assesses them on something else entirely.
Most advice for this situation amounts to building relationships. That is not a method.
Why the other department keeps saying no
They are not being difficult. They are optimising for what they are measured on, which is not your project. The structure created that gap deliberately, and no amount of goodwill closes it. Meanwhile you have no authority to escalate, your project plan assumes resources you cannot command, and the status update you send lands in an inbox where it competes with things that carry consequences.
Then a conflict surfaces, everyone becomes polite, and the work quietly stops moving.
Structure and delivery
Thirty-eight lessons. Eight on organisational design first, because you cannot navigate a structure you do not understand. The five-step design process, the star model, six design drivers, the archetypes, the three types of matrix, how power actually distributes when accountability and authority sit with different people, span of control, transition planning, and five real company cases including Wargaming and ArcelorMittal.
Then ten on running a project across functions by PMBOK 7. Business case, charter, stakeholder mapping with influence and interest, scope boundaries, work breakdown, network diagrams, Gantt, a three-stage budget, risk assessment, working in a matrix where nobody reports to you, control, and a closure that actually happens.
Communication, feedback and conflict
Then six treating communication as a designed process rather than as sending updates: audit, goals aimed at behaviour, audience segmentation, channel mix, other managers as your distribution, delivering unwelcome news, and measuring whether anything changed.
Then eight on 360 feedback, from questionnaire design through critical incidents, scales, distribution, assessor bias, the feedback conversation, linking results to development and succession, and building a working instrument in Google Forms. In a matrix, 360 is often the only honest signal you get about how you are perceived by people who owe you nothing.
And six on conflict, which in cross-functional work is the normal operating condition rather than a breakdown: escalation dynamics, the resolution algorithm, structural causes, political conflict and nepotism, prevention, negotiation and mediation.
Who is teaching this
Mike, the number one HR instructor on Udemy. More than 1.6 million course enrolments, over 150,000 professionals trained, PHRi and SHRM-CP certified, HRCI representative in more than 10 countries. I built the people function of the unicorn Preply and worked at Wargaming, Alfa-Bank and iDeals — every one of them a matrix, and every result I produced there depended on people I could not instruct.
What is included
Lifetime access to all course materials
Active instructor support in the Q&A section
Udemy Certificate of Completion
Practical assignments and real business cases
A section with additional courses, tools and resources
Start with this
Pick the department that blocks you most often and write down what their head is measured on this quarter. If you cannot answer, that is why the conversations keep failing. Enrol now and start the first lesson today.
Who this course is for:
- Managers in a matrix, where you have two bosses and no clear authority over anyone
- Project and programme leads assembling teams from departments they do not control
- Function heads whose results depend on three other functions delivering on time
- Product owners negotiating with engineering, sales, legal and finance simultaneously
- Chiefs of staff and operations roles coordinating everything and owning nothing
- HR and people partners working across an organisation without line authority
- Anyone whose main obstacle is not the work but the other department