Question

You are a highly regarded project manager at your company. You have demonstrated the ability to execute and deliver results. You are working on a critical project that has the attention of the CEO. Your project team consists of 25-30 team members where you meet weekly. During a weekly meeting, you learn a team member, Jeff, is withholding information from other team members. Jeff proceeds to throw a tantrum during the meeting and accuses you of misrepresenting his work and taking credit for the work he’s done. What steps should you take as the project manager and why?

Answer 1

As our project is a critical one, I should handle the issue with patience and should try to understand the reason behind Jeff’s allegation. It is not wise to discuss the issue in front of the entire team and the weekly meeting should not be interrupted. Hence as first step I would try to make him calm and assure him that his concerns would be addressed in a face to face discussion after the meeting. Once the meeting is finished, I would take him to the discussion room and try to understand the real problem. I would listen to him carefully and identify the root cause for his misunderstanding. I would try to convince him that all the members are equally important for me as well as the organization and the work done by him is valuable for us. I would try to convince that team goals are important than individual goals and assure him that he would be rewarded if he can contribute more for the team to achieve the goals. Each and every team members are being monitored and nobody can take the credit of other’s work in such a critical environment.

From Jeff’s behavior I can identify that he is being misguided by someone or by himself through false assumptions and I need to handle the situation carefully. Around 30 members are working in my team and one member’s frustration and non cooperation is enough to spoil the unity and performance of the entire team. Through the above steps I would be able to handle the situation successfully and eliminate Jeff’s misunderstanding in an effective way. Only patience, careful listening and empathy would work in such frustrated situation. Once Jeff understands his mistake and identify his responsibilities as a team member he would show cooperation and work with collaboration within the team. My team performance would improve significantly and we can achieve the results without much difficulty.