You're sitting in your second weekly project team meeting as part of your new assignment as project manager on a year-long, high-visibility project.

You've asked for input and opinion from the project team on several key issues - issues that are alive with a painful amount of high risk and big impacts requiring the expert insights from your team.

But no one is talking.

Except the crickets.

You're about to lose it in the meeting as you realize the team is not willing to say anything about much.

WTF?

And then, to add some spice to your project, you have a couple of inherited project team members who avoid accountability at all costs.  They hide their lack of work, they miss key deliverable deadlines, taking up project manager time with repeated nudging to "get it done", not to mention the tracking of when the last time they were nudged; like a frazzled parent trying to get their 3-year-old to pick up their toys or eat their dinner for the last 3 months.

We've all been there.

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