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What can go wrong if team member does not trust Project Manager?

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KEYULKUMAR DAVE PMP, Six sigma Black belt| Thailand Banchang, Rayong Province, Thailand
Project is operated in Weak matrix environment. Project Manager and other functional department relations are not good or no one trust each other.

How project can get affected because of this?

And in this condition Project Manager enforces a decision on team member. So what can go wrong after the project complete?
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Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada
A lack of trust will cause many different kinds of issues on projects but primarily it will introduce a lot of waste & increased costs (e.g. lots of CYA behavior) and reduce the level of creativity and innovation.

In a weak matrix it is rare that a PM can "enforce" anything on a team member, but regardless of the power structure, using an authoritative approach will likely eliminate any respect the team member has for the PM and after the project is complete, the team member may refuse to work with that PM again.

Kiron
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Karthik Ramamurthy Author, Say YES to Project Success| Founder KeyResultz Chennai, Tamilnadu, Tamilnadu, India
Keyulkumar: Thanks for posting a question that is in the minds of many PMs.
Trust is critical for success in any organization, more so in projects where a group of people from disparate functions need to quickly gel together and contribute to project success.
As Kiron rightly pointed out, lack of trust invariably leads to poor results.
The theory says that PMs have very limited power in weak matrix structures. However, by being knowledgeable, skilled, and ethical, a project manager can indeed increase power and influence.
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Eric Simms Senior Program Manager Baltimore, Maryland, United States
It's possible the team member can sabotage the Project Manager by setting up him or her for failure. The team member might also spread rumors about the Project Manager, which will ruin his or her relations with other departments and make future projects much more difficult to execute.
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Adrian Carlogea Australia
In matrix organizations in general the PM is or should be primarily a facilitator and should consider the other team members as peers and not subordinates. Technically this is true, the team members don't report to PMs in matrix organizations.

If you start with the mentality that you are the boss, when in reality you are not, and try to give orders to others not only that they would not trust you but they will also hate you.

Also the functional managers would feel that you are trying to threat their authority over their direct reports.

I am not a fan of Scrum but as a PM you must have a Scrum Master mentality and you should try to enable the team to take the best decision removing any obstacles. Trying to enforce decisions on the team in this situation would simply not work unless the team is willing to obey you.
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Riyadh Salih Saskatchewan, Canada
Keyulkumar, I concur with Kiron and Eric, this is a truly unhealthy environment to work, if you need the job you have to play it safe and cool otherwise look for better organization
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KEYULKUMAR DAVE PMP, Six sigma Black belt| Thailand Banchang, Rayong Province, Thailand
Thanks guys for really good points.

But here one more point i forgot to mention is PM has very good relation with sponsor. Which is driving the project. All the team member has great respect for sponsor.

But i agree that During this case Team is not working for the PM and PM cant manage as a result high cost, more time to complete and quality issue can arise.
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Alok Priyadarshi Project Manager| Tata Consulting Engineers Limited Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India
Very interesting project dynamics. Trust is one of the key element relationship and without that one can not achieve harmony. Project can not be sync with their objectives. Our friends has rightly said that under this kind of situation there's high probability of cost overrun and delay. In this case only advice for project manager to revisit his approch for interpersonal skills and other skill and correct it if possible to make trustworthy environment. Of course it is not easy but possible.Trust is earned by your deeds. All the best!!
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
Is not a matter of organizational structure. Is a matter of organizational culture. In my personal opinion the only and experience the only thing you can not loose as project manger is trust. Trust is building on integrity between others. There is no other thing that to construct trust by yourself just in case there is not a organizational change management department that could help you.
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KEYULKUMAR DAVE PMP, Six sigma Black belt| Thailand Banchang, Rayong Province, Thailand
Thanks Sergio for pointing out Culture. I believe this is very very important aspect.
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Guilherme Caloba Production Engineer| PETROBRAS Rio De Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
I agree with most of the people. It's hard to work having to defend yourself from a hostile environment. It also mix things up a lot, the person and the job he or she should be doing with the trust or distrust. I've been in situations where you have a top person everyone respects, but the team does not trust one another, and the PM is not liked. I think you have to have an extra set of eyes on the job and be very aware of your tasks to suceed here.

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