CPM Leadership Development & Team Building 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A manager's team is underperforming due to unclear roles. Which team-building intervention addresses this root cause?
- Conduct a team-building retreat
- Facilitate a role-clarification workshop using a RACI matrix (Correct answer)
- Increase monitoring of individual output
- Rotate team members across roles weekly
Correct answer: Facilitate a role-clarification workshop using a RACI matrix
A RACI matrix clarifies who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed, directly resolving role ambiguity.
Question 2: Which leadership behavior has the greatest positive impact on team innovation?
- Strict adherence to established processes
- Encouraging experimentation and tolerating calculated risk (Correct answer)
- Rewarding only successful outcomes
- Centralizing all creative decisions with the manager
Correct answer: Encouraging experimentation and tolerating calculated risk
Innovation flourishes when leaders create safety for experimentation and accept that some attempts will fail.
Question 3: During team meetings, one member consistently dominates the conversation. What should a people manager do?
- Ask the dominant member to lead all meetings
- Implement structured turn-taking and explicitly invite quieter members to contribute (Correct answer)
- Remove the dominant member from meetings
- End meetings early to reduce conflict
Correct answer: Implement structured turn-taking and explicitly invite quieter members to contribute
Structured facilitation ensures all voices are heard without singling out or punishing any individual.
Question 4: What is the primary purpose of a '360-degree feedback' tool in leadership development?
- To determine annual compensation adjustments
- To provide leaders with multi-source feedback on their behaviors from peers, direct reports, and managers (Correct answer)
- To evaluate team productivity metrics
- To document performance issues for HR records
Correct answer: To provide leaders with multi-source feedback on their behaviors from peers, direct reports, and managers
360-degree feedback collects holistic input from multiple stakeholders to help leaders identify blind spots and growth areas.
Question 5: A manager notices two high-performing employees competing destructively rather than collaborating. What is the best response?
- Separate the employees into different projects permanently
- Redefine success metrics to reward collaborative outcomes (Correct answer)
- Promote one employee to remove the competition
- Ignore the issue if individual results remain strong
Correct answer: Redefine success metrics to reward collaborative outcomes
Aligning incentives with collaboration changes behavior more sustainably than structural separation or promotion.
Question 6: Which element is most critical when establishing team norms?
- The norms must be created by senior leadership alone
- Team members should co-create norms to increase buy-in and accountability (Correct answer)
- Norms should be flexible and unwritten to allow adaptability
- Norms must mirror company-wide HR policies exactly
Correct answer: Team members should co-create norms to increase buy-in and accountability
Co-created norms build ownership — team members are more likely to uphold agreements they helped define.
Question 7: A CPM-certified manager is coaching an underperforming employee. Which coaching technique is most effective as a starting point?
- Tell the employee exactly what they need to change
- Ask open-ended questions to help the employee identify barriers themselves (Correct answer)
- Place the employee on a performance improvement plan immediately
- Reassign the employee's key tasks to higher performers
Correct answer: Ask open-ended questions to help the employee identify barriers themselves
Coaching starts with discovery — using open questions helps the employee develop self-awareness and ownership of solutions.
CPM Leadership Development & Team Building 3
A manager's team is underperforming due to unclear roles.
Which team-building intervention addresses this root cause?