Topic Teasers Vol. 29: Ugly Team Emotions

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  Communications Management   Talent Management   Teams  

I feel quite confident in my project skills and hold several certifications. However, my team seems to frequently have ugly emotions present themselves to me, pass between teammates and appear in our group meetings. How do I deal with these to keep them from destroying relationships and impeding the work of the project?

A. Send offending team members to Human Resources and ask that they be given a free psychological evaluation. Since the behavior is impacting project work, this will be company money well-spent.

B.  Go to the individual and ask if he or she would prefer to work on another team. Take the responsibility for their behavior, as it must be a negative response to you as a project manager.

C. Ignore the offensive behavior. Your job it to get the deliverables of the project completed in a timely way. Any time you spend dealing with misbehavior is time stolen from productive project work.

D. Write down the emotions you surmise are behind the negative behaviors and think through appropriate responses ahead of time so that you are prepared when they occur.

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Answer: D. Write down the emotions you surmise are behind the negative behaviors and think through appropriate responses ahead of time so that you are prepared when they occur.

If …

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