ADVISORY ARTICLE
By Yogi Schulz
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Has the project team you are managing zoned out, become unresponsive and careless? Many events can kill the morale and commitment of project teams.
What can you do as the project manager to resuscitate your team and position it to complete your project successfully?
In all the situations below, you, as the project manager, will have to take deliberate steps to reenergize the team members. Usually, your encouragement efforts will improve team members’ attitude and productivity. In a few cases, your efforts will have little or no impact. In those cases, you will have to remove the person from the project team. Keeping low morale and perhaps toxic individuals hanging around will only infect others. Never believe that someone is so critical that you can’t remove them.
Watch for these signs that indicate team members have lost interest.
Stopped pushing back
When team members stop pushing back, it is not a sign of agreement but a sign of disengagement. Silence means they have stopped caring, not that they have come around to agree with the project goal and approach.
Lost their curiosity
As team curiosity fades, their questions disappear. Meetings shift from creative explorations of possible solutions to issues to cursory status reporting.
Started criticisms
Team members engage in whispered criticism of others, the project and various stakeholders. Negative spin replaces a positive outlook and mutual encouragement.
Prioritized safety
The team prioritizes safety over innovation. Bold ideas become scarce. They’re replaced by cautious emails. As risk tolerance drops, so does motivation.
Let standards slip
The standard of work starts to decline quietly. Where they once obsessed over every detail, good enough or barely defensible fit-for-purpose now replaces what used to be great.
More…
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How to cite this article: Schulz, Y. (2026). Responding to a disconnected project team, PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue IX, September. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/pmwj168-Sep2026-Schulz-Responding-to-disconnected-team.pdf
About the Author
Yogi Schulz
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Yogi Schulz has over 40 years of Information Technology experience in various industries. Yogi works extensively in the petroleum industry to select and implement financial, production revenue accounting, land & contracts and geotechnical systems. He manages projects that arise from changes in business requirements, from the need to leverage technology opportunities and from mergers. His specialties include IT strategy, web strategy and systems project management.
Mr. Schulz regularly speaks to industry groups and writes a regular column for Engineering.com and for TechNewsDay.com. He has written for Microsoft.com and the Calgary Herald. His writing focuses on project management and IT developments of interest to management. Mr. Schulz served on the Board of Directors of the PPDM Association, the global energy data professionals, for 20 years, until 2015. He can be contacted at yogischulz@corvelle.com.
His new book, co-authored by Jocelyn Schulz Lapointe, is “A Project Sponsor’s Warp-Speed Guide: Improving Project Performance.”
To view other works by Yogi Schulz, visit his author showcase in the PM World Library at https://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/yogi-schulz/
