Leading the Project Team: What to Do With the Person Who Is Not Working Out

TL;DR: Leading the project team is the biggest single topic in this bank, 255 questions, and its most consistent trap is delegating the problem out of the project. Sending a struggling team member to their functional manager or to HR appears 31 times and is keyed twice. Directing the individual is keyed twice against 14 appearances as a distractor. What gets keyed instead is narrower than it looks: facilitate the team when the problem is between people, take one person aside privately when it is about that person, and find out the cause before you act on it.

A candidate revising this topic reads about motivation theory and leadership styles, then meets a question about a team member who arrives late, talks over colleagues and misses deadlines, while the rest of the team has started calling out their performance in meetings and wants you to step in. None of the theory decides it. What decides it is that four options are on the table and three of them do something to the person before anyone has found out why.

Why is handing the problem to HR almost always wrong?

Because it is the one move that removes the project manager from a situation the project manager owns. In this slice, an option that routes a person to human resources, a functional manager or a line manager is offered 31 times and keyed twice.

The two keyed cases are worth knowing, because they mark the boundary rather than break the rule. Both involve something outside the project's standing to decide. Everything else on that list of 31 is a project manager declining to manage.

Watch how thoroughly the exam commits to this. One question asks who is responsible for arranging training for new staff assigned to a project, and offers the human resources department, the training department and the functional managers alongside the project manager. The keyed answer is the project manager, and the explanation is blunt about the reason: the training exists because this project needs it, so it belongs to whoever is accountable for the project meeting its requirements. HR and the training department deliver training. They do not decide what your team needs.

Common trap: reading escalation to a functional manager as the responsible, procedurally correct choice. It reads that way because in a real organization it often is. This bank keys it twice in 31 appearances, and the explanations describe it the same way each time, as handing the project manager's problem to somebody else. In one question about a virtual team arguing over who is responsible for what, escalating to the members' functional managers is offered against building a RACI chart with the team. The RACI chart is keyed, because the dispute is about undefined responsibility and that is a thing the project manager can simply define.

What does the exam key instead?

Three moves, and the stem tells you which one it wants.

Take the late, disruptive team member. The options are a private one-on-one, raising the behaviour at the next team meeting, documenting it and escalating to HR for disciplinary action, and reassigning their tasks. The keyed answer is the private conversation, and the explanation gives the rule in one line: when one person causes the issue, meet them privately first to understand the cause, rather than calling them out in front of others, escalating, or reassigning work prematurely.

Now change one fact. A virtual team where every role is clearly defined, but arguments about who is responsible keep breaking out. Nobody is misbehaving. The problem sits between people, so the keyed answer moves to the team: build a RACI chart together. Same domain, same task, different shape of trouble.

The third move is the one candidates overuse. Training, pairing, mentoring and coaching are keyed 22 times between them, more than any other single response, which makes them feel like a safe default. They are offered 51 times. The difference between the 22 and the other 29 is whether the stem established a skill gap or something else wearing a skill gap's clothes. In one question a team's enthusiasm dips near a deadline, people arrive late, focus slips. A peer-recognition programme is on the table and the explanation calls it the strongest distractor, genuinely good practice, and still wrong, because the cause is a lost connection to why the work matters and the deadline is close enough that whatever you do has to work this week. The keyed answer runs a session that reconnects the team to the outcome.

How do you tell a skill problem from a motivation problem?

Ask what would still be broken the day after everyone finished the course.

This is the question the bank keeps testing under different scenery. An experienced team member tells the project manager privately that a new hire "doesn't seem to have the skills for this role" and suggests reassigning their tasks. The project manager has not observed the new hire's work. Three options act on the claim: reassign the tasks, release the hire and request a replacement through HR, or do nothing because reassigning this early would be disruptive. The keyed answer observes the actual work against the role's expectations before deciding anything.

The explanation names the real defect in the other three: what the project manager holds is one colleague's secondhand impression, which may be wrong, incomplete, or itself a product of friction between those two people. Every other option treats it as established.

Compare that with a preassigned team member who wants to serve as Scrum Master, has worked on Scrum projects but never held the role, on a project with no budget to hire. Here the skill gap is real and stated. Telling her she is not experienced enough is offered. So is asking the functional manager for somebody else, and so is requiring immediate training. The keyed answer pairs her with an experienced agile coach, because she already knows the ceremonies and what she needs is support while doing the job, not a classroom.

That is the whole discrimination. When the stem hands you a verified gap, close it. When the stem hands you somebody's opinion of a gap, go and look.

Where does the team charter fit?

Before the work starts, which is earlier than most candidates expect.

One question describes an agile project with a signed charter, an appointed project manager, agreed budget and scope, and a named team that has not started work. Four options: send the team on training, meet the functional managers the members report to, release the members not needed until later phases, or develop the team charter with the team. The team charter is keyed, and the reason is timing. It sets the values, ground rules and working agreements the team holds each other to, and it is established before the work starts so it governs the work rather than describing it afterwards.

Team charters and working agreements are keyed 5 times and offered 5 times in this slice, which makes them the most reliably fair option in the whole topic. When one is on the table and the work has not started, or the team's own norms are what broke, it is usually the answer. It is a preventive control, and every wrong answer explained in this bank's team slice points the same direction: the exam rewards the project manager who set the conditions early over the one improvising a fix late.

FAQ

Should I involve HR when a team member is underperforming? Almost never as a first move. Across the 238 multiple-choice questions in this slice, routing the person to human resources, a functional manager or a line manager appears 31 times and is keyed twice, both times where the project manager genuinely has no standing to decide. Everything else is the project manager's own work.

Is the right answer to talk to the person privately or to raise it with the team? It depends on whose problem it is. One named individual causing the trouble points to a private one-on-one, keyed 12 times. Trouble between people, or about how the team works, points to facilitating the team, keyed 17 times.

Does the exam ever want me to remove or reassign someone? Not as a first response. Reassigning tasks, releasing someone or requesting a replacement appear repeatedly as distractors, and the explanations say the same thing each time: you are committing to an outcome before establishing what is wrong.

Why is training such a common wrong answer here? It is over-offered rather than wrong. Training, pairing, mentoring and coaching are keyed 22 times between them and offered 51. They fit a genuine skill gap and fail a motivation gap, a role-clarity gap or a conflict.

Try it yourself

PMP Practice's 2,141 questions are certified against PMBOK 8 and the July 2026 exam content outline, and the people-domain questions come with the reasoning that separates a private conversation from an escalation, every wrong answer explained rather than just marked wrong. Start the free 20-question sample with no card and no signup.

Related reading: Servant Leadership vs. Traditional Project Management and Conflict Resolution on the PMP Exam. The full People domain breakdown is on the People study page.

Sources: PMI, Project Management Professional (PMP) Exam Content Outline

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