Be the easiest peer to work with
Reciprocity at scale. The peer who responds quickly, pre-builds context for them, makes their tradeoffs visible, and shows up to their team's rituals gets disproportionate goodwill in return. Most of your power as a cross-functional leader comes from this, not from formal authority.
Pre-align before public meetings
The mistake new PM leaders make: surfacing disagreements at the all-hands or steering meeting. Senior leaders pre-align 1:1 with their counterparts before the public moment. The public meeting confirms decisions; it doesn't create them.
↳ in the wild
Protect your team
Cross-functional comes with cross-functional churn — every peer's priorities are pulling at your team. The leader's job is filtering: absorbing peer requests, deciding which to surface to the team, which to push back on, and which to handle yourself. A team that sees every peer request directly is a team being pulled in eight directions.