about 4.1% of the exam content - about 90 minutes - 14 practice questions
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Managing is about tasks; leading is about people. The PMP exam draws that line hard. A project manager
manages a schedule and leads a team, and most People-domain questions are testing whether
you reach for the leadership move or the administrative one. The administrative move (update the plan, log
the issue, notify the manager) is usually the distractor.
For a GCHS crew lead moving into formal project management, the biggest adjustment is this: your job is no
longer to do the best work on the site. It is to make it possible for other people to do their best work.
PMI calls that servant leadership, and it is the dominant model on the modern exam.
Servant leadership
A servant leader inverts the usual picture. Instead of the team existing to execute the manager's
instructions, the leader exists to serve the team's ability to deliver value. Concretely, that means:
Removing impediments. If the crew is waiting on a permit, a material delivery, or an
access decision, clearing that is the PM's highest-value work that day.
Shielding the team from noise. Absorbing interruptions, ad-hoc requests, and political
pressure so the team can focus.
Coaching rather than directing. Asking questions that help people find the answer, so
the capability stays with them.
Providing what the team needs: tools, training, information, access, and cover to
make decisions.
Getting out of the way. A self-organizing team decides how to do the work; the
product owner or sponsor decides what is most valuable.
Key points
Servant leader: how can I help you deliver? Command-and-control: here is what you will do.
The strongest exam answers usually involve removing a blocker, coaching, or empowering,
not assigning, instructing, or reporting.
Empowerment means the team makes decisions within agreed boundaries; it does not mean
the PM is absent or unaccountable.
Leadership is situational; a brand-new team and a mature team need different things from you.
Tuckman: how teams actually develop
Bruce Tuckman's model is on the exam and is genuinely useful for reading a described team. The stages are
sequential, but teams can regress: a new member, a new scope, or a lost member can send a performing team
back to storming.
Stage
What you observe
What the leader should do
Forming
Polite, cautious, dependent on the leader; roles unclear; little real disagreement
Be directive. Provide structure, clarify roles and goals, establish the team charter and ground rules
Storming
Disagreement about approach and roles; challenges to authority; frustration; productivity dips
Coach. Facilitate conflict openly, reinforce ground rules, do not suppress the friction or bypass it
Norming
Working agreements settle in; trust builds; the team starts self-correcting
Support. Step back gradually, reinforce good behavior, let the team own more decisions
Performing
High trust, high output, self-organizing; conflict is handled internally
Delegate. Stay out of the way, remove impediments, protect the team's focus
Adjourning
Work completes; the team disbands; a mix of pride and loss
Recognize contributions, capture lessons learned, help people transition
Notice that the leader's style shifts from directive to delegating as the team matures. That is the same
idea as situational leadership: adapt your style to the readiness (the competence and the
confidence) of the person or team in front of you. A skilled carpenter who has never run a permit process
needs direction on permits and delegation on framing, from the same manager on the same day.
Clarifying who does what: RACI and role clarity
A large share of team dysfunction is not attitude, it is ambiguity. A RACI chart (a type of
responsibility assignment matrix) fixes that by assigning, for each activity:
R (Responsible): does the work. Can be more than one person.
A (Accountable): owns the outcome and approves it. Exactly one per activity:
this is the rule most often tested.
C (Consulted): two-way input before the decision.
I (Informed): one-way notification after the decision.
If two people are Accountable for the same activity, nobody is. If a task is being dropped repeatedly, look
for a missing A before you look for a lazy team member.
Motivation: what actually moves people
PMI leans on a few motivation theories. You do not need to recite them, but you need to recognize them in a
scenario.
Maslow's hierarchy: people pursue higher needs (belonging, esteem, self-actualization)
only once basic ones (physiological, safety) are met. A crew worried about layoffs will not be inspired by a
vision statement.
Herzberg's two-factor theory: hygiene factors (pay, working conditions,
supervision, job security) cause dissatisfaction when missing but do not motivate when present.
Motivators (achievement, recognition, the work itself, responsibility, growth) are what actually
drive engagement. Fixing a broken truck removes a complaint; giving someone ownership of a scope creates
energy.
McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y: Theory X assumes people avoid work and need
supervision; Theory Y assumes people are self-motivated when given responsibility. The servant-leadership approach PMI favors
reflects Theory Y.
McClelland: people are driven by differing needs for achievement, affiliation, or
power; effective leaders assign work accordingly.
Intrinsic motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. This is why self-organizing
teams often outperform closely supervised ones.
Recognition and rewards
Recognition works when it is timely, specific, and culturally appropriate, and when it does not pit
team members against each other. Zero-sum awards such as employee of the month can quietly undermine the
collaboration you are trying to build. Team-based recognition generally beats individual competition on
project work.
Building capability: training, mentoring, and the AI question
PMI expects the PM to ensure team members are adequately trained and to mentor deliberately. Practically:
identify the competency gap against what the project actually needs, plan how to close it (training, pairing,
shadowing, mentoring), fund it in the budget, and verify it worked. On a GCHS job that might mean lead-safe
renovation certification, ADA and Texas Accessibility Standards familiarity, or moisture-control detailing for
coastal humidity.
AI tools change the training conversation rather than ending it. Teams now need judgment about when to trust
an AI-generated estimate, scope draft, or photo assessment, and when to verify. Good practice: treat AI output
as a draft from a fast but inexperienced assistant, require human review before anything reaches a homeowner
or funder, and be explicit that accountability stays with the named person, not the tool. A PM who lets a
junior estimator ship unreviewed AI output has a training gap, not a technology problem.
Leading virtual and distributed teams
GCHS runs crews across counties with remote design and grant staff, so virtual leadership is not optional.
What PMI expects:
Invest deliberately in relationship-building; it does not happen incidentally without a shared job site.
Agree communication norms explicitly: channels, response-time expectations, and which decisions require
synchronous discussion.
Use video for anything involving disagreement, feedback, or nuance; text loses tone.
Watch for exclusion of remote members in hybrid meetings, and actively bring them in.
Respect time zones and site schedules; rotate the inconvenience rather than always imposing it on the
same group.
Make work visible through shared boards so trust rests on transparency, not on surveillance.
Underperformance: diagnose before you act
When a scenario describes someone underperforming, the first move is a private conversation to
understand why: capability, clarity, capacity, tools, or something personal. Reassigning the person,
reporting them to their functional manager, or documenting for a performance review before you have talked
to them are all classic wrong answers. Address performance privately, praise publicly.
Practice Questions
1. A team reports being blocked because a required permit has not been issued. What is the servant leader's PRIMARY responsibility here?
Ask the team to escalate to the permitting office themselves
Document the delay in the issue log and report it in the status report
Actively work to remove the impediment so the team can continue
Reassign the team to other tasks and wait
Answer: c. Removing impediments is the defining act of servant leadership and is the PM's highest-value work when the team is blocked. Logging and reporting are necessary administration but change nothing on the ground, and pushing the escalation back to the team is the opposite of serving them.
2. A newly formed team is polite, avoids disagreement, and looks to the project manager for direction on everything. Which Tuckman stage is this, and what should the project manager do?
Storming: facilitate conflict openly
Forming: provide structure, clarify roles and goals
Norming: step back and let the team self-correct as it settles into a rhythm
Performing: delegate and stay out of the way
Answer: b. Dependence on the leader and an absence of real disagreement are hallmarks of forming, which calls for a directive style that establishes roles, goals, and ground rules. Delegating to a forming team leaves it rudderless, and there is no conflict yet to facilitate.
3. A team that had been working smoothly begins arguing about approach after two new members join and the scope expands. What is the MOST likely explanation?
The team lacks technical competence
The ground rules were poorly written
The team has entered adjourning
The team has regressed to storming because its composition and scope changed
Answer: d. Tuckman stages are not one-way; changes in membership or scope commonly send a performing team back to storming. Treating the friction as incompetence or bad documentation misses that this is a normal, expected regression that coaching will move through.
4. In a RACI chart, how many people should be Accountable for a single activity?
At least two, for redundancy
Exactly one
One per functional department involved
As many as are Responsible
Answer: b. Accountability must be singular: one person owns the outcome and approves it. Splitting accountability across two or more people reliably produces the situation where each assumes the other has it and nobody does.
5. A task keeps falling through the cracks between two departments. What should the project manager examine FIRST?
Whether the schedule allows enough duration
Whether the task should be outsourced
Whether the individuals involved are motivated enough to take ownership without being told
Whether the RACI gives that task one clear Accountable party
Answer: d. Repeatedly dropped work is usually an ambiguity problem, and the RACI is where ambiguity in ownership shows up. Questioning motivation first blames people for a structural gap the PM can fix with a chart.
6. According to Herzberg's two-factor theory, which of the following is a MOTIVATOR rather than a hygiene factor?
Salary
Working conditions
Recognition for achievement
Job security
Answer: c. Motivators come from the work itself: achievement, recognition, responsibility, and growth. Salary, conditions, and security are hygiene factors: their absence causes dissatisfaction, but adding more of them does not create engagement.
7. On a RACI chart, who has a two-way conversation with the decision maker before a task is finalized, but does not perform the work and does not approve it?
Accountable
Informed
Consulted
Responsible
Answer: c. Consulted is two-way input sought before a decision. Informed is one-way notification after the fact, Responsible does the work, and Accountable owns and approves the outcome.
8. A skilled carpenter moving into a lead role is confident framing walls but has never handled a permit application. What is the BEST leadership approach for the project manager to take with this person?
Delegating on both, since the person is generally skilled
Coaching on both, to build confidence evenly
Directive on the permit process, delegating on framing
Directive on both tasks until fully cross-trained
Answer: c. Situational leadership matches style to the person's readiness for the specific task, not the person overall. The same carpenter needs direction on an unfamiliar permit process and can be delegated to on framing, where competence and confidence are already high.
9. GCHS's remote design consultant works Central time while two crews are on Eastern time, and meetings are always scheduled for the crews' convenience. What should the project manager do?
Rotate the inconvenient meeting time so no one group always bears it
Keep the current schedule, since the majority of attendees are on Eastern time
Require the consultant to shift permanently to Eastern hours
Move all coordination to text messages and recorded videos to avoid live scheduling entirely
Answer: a. Leading distributed teams means respecting time zones and rotating the inconvenience rather than always imposing it on the same group. Permanently shifting one person's hours or dropping to text-only communication both erode the relationship-building virtual leadership requires.
10. GCHS crew members are anxious about a rumored funding cut that could mean layoffs. Leadership responds with an inspiring speech about the project's long-term impact. According to Maslow's hierarchy, why is this unlikely to land?
Because motivators only matter once hygiene factors are already poor
Because vision statements only apply in adaptive environments
Because Theory Y assumes people avoid work without supervision
Because safety needs must be addressed before higher needs like belonging or self-actualization can motivate
Answer: d. Maslow's hierarchy holds that people pursue higher needs only once basic ones, including safety, are met. A crew worried about job security will not be inspired by a vision statement until the safety concern is actually addressed.
11. A project manager designs work assignments assuming team members are self-motivated and will seek out responsibility when given the chance. Which management assumption does this reflect?
Theory Y
Herzberg's hygiene theory
McClelland's need for power
Theory X
Answer: a. Theory Y assumes people are self-motivated and seek responsibility when given the opportunity, and the servant-leadership approach PMI favors reflects this assumption. Theory X assumes the opposite, that people avoid work and need close supervision.
12. A regional office proposes an "employee of the month" award for the rehab crews. What risk should the project manager raise?
It costs too much to administer across multiple counties
Zero-sum individual awards can quietly undermine the collaboration the team relies on
It violates the definition of done
It will motivate every team member equally
Answer: b. Zero-sum awards pit team members against each other, and team-based recognition generally beats individual competition on project work. The concern is not cost or process, it is the effect on collaboration.
13. A previously reliable estimator has missed three consecutive deadlines. What should the project manager do FIRST?
Have a private conversation to understand the cause
Document the pattern for the next performance review
Reassign the estimator's tasks to someone else
Report the pattern to the estimator's functional manager
Answer: a. Underperformance is diagnosed before it is acted on: a private conversation surfaces whether the cause is capability, clarity, capacity, tools, or something personal. Reassigning, reporting upward, or building a file before that conversation are the classic wrong first moves.
14. A junior estimator assigned to a coastal rehab project has never handled moisture-control detailing. What is the project manager's BEST first step?
Wait for the next annual training budget cycle
Assign the task and let the estimator learn from any mistakes
Permanently reassign all coastal jobs to a senior estimator until the estimator's next annual review
Identify the competency gap and plan to close it, for example by pairing with a senior estimator
Answer: d. Building capability starts with naming the gap against what the project actually needs, then closing it deliberately through pairing, training, or mentoring. Letting an unqualified estimate go out risks a homeowner or funder relying on bad detailing, and waiting a full budget cycle ignores an immediate need.
Glossary
Servant leadership
A leadership model in which the leader's role is to remove impediments, coach, and provide what the team needs, rather than to direct and control.
Tuckman's stages
Forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning: the sequential, but reversible, stages of team development.
Situational leadership
Adapting leadership style to the readiness, meaning competence and confidence, of the person or team for a specific task.
RACI chart
A responsibility assignment matrix identifying who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each activity, with exactly one Accountable party per activity.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs
A theory holding that people pursue higher-order needs, such as belonging and self-actualization, only after basic needs like safety are met.
Herzberg's two-factor theory
Distinguishes hygiene factors, such as pay and job security, which prevent dissatisfaction, from motivators, such as recognition and growth, which drive engagement.
Theory X and Theory Y
Two contrasting management assumptions: Theory X holds people avoid work and need supervision; Theory Y holds people are self-motivated when given responsibility.
Intrinsic motivation
Motivation driven by autonomy, mastery, and purpose, which is why self-organizing teams often outperform closely supervised ones.