3.3. Lead the Project Team
💡 First Principle: Leadership on the exam means creating the conditions for a team to perform, not directing every task — establishing expectations, empowering the team, and adapting your leadership style to the situation are all tested as active PM responsibilities, not "soft" extras.
Enablers: establish team-level expectations, empower the team, solve problems, represent the voice of the team upward, support the team's varied experience/skills/perspectives, determine an appropriate leadership style, and establish clear roles and responsibilities.
"Determine an appropriate leadership style" is situational-leadership territory: a highly experienced, self-directing team needs a different style (delegating) than a newly-formed team still learning the domain (directing/coaching). PMI expects you to read team maturity and adapt, not apply one leadership style universally.
⚠️ Exam Trap: Choosing "empower the team to decide" as the answer even when the scenario describes a low-maturity or newly-formed team that needs more direct guidance — empowerment is the right instinct generally, but not the right answer for every team-maturity stage.
Reflection Question: Think of two different teams you've led with genuinely different maturity levels. How did (or should) your leadership style have differed between them?
