Remember, your job as the project manager is to manage the project and the team. Managing the team may be the hardest part of your job as the project manager. This is where your leadership skills come into play, some of which you've already begun, like sending certain members of the team to training, and establishing the roles and responsibilities for each member, team member, but there are other things that you can do to make your team more effective. Like tracking performance, providing feedback, resolving issues or conflict, and appraising performance. What can you use to help you? Your project management plan outlining the steps agreed upon at the beginning of the project. Your project documents, like your team charter, and work assignments, your assessments and performance reports, but what happens when things don't go well? Managing the team may be challenging, especially when there's conflict or unforeseen challenges facing the team. Project Management managers must rely on interpersonal skills to help them in times of conflict and try to defuse it as quickly as possible. Some things that you can use to deal with conflict are, identifying the importance of the conflict, the timing, the relative power of the people involved, what's the motivation, and how important is it for you to maintain relationships within the group. Knowing these things will help you navigate the conflict much more easily. So there are five techniques commonly used in resolving conflict. Some are better than others, but we will discuss each of them. One of them is, withdrawal or avoiding, which basically postpones the decision. There's smoothing or accommodating, seeking areas of agreement, compromising and reconciling. So that is typically seen as a lose, lose situation, where people are each having to give something up. There's the force or direct, where one person wins and the other person loses. And then there's the collaborate or problem solving, which is a win, win, which is the ideal solution. Successful conflict management results in greater productivity, and the success of project managers is often dependent upon their ability to manage and resolve conflict. Conflict management takes tact and interpersonal skills. Giving team members feedback, especially negative feedback is difficult, and should be thought out prior to giving it to the individual or the team. Remember, one of your roles as the leader of the team is to develop your team, so that they may become a leader in the future. Managing a team effectively requires many skills and a combination of a variety of tools ranging from decision making, to emotional intelligence, to being persuasive, and high levels of gathering information, through high levels of active and effective listening. But the bottom line with managing your team is that it takes leadership to set the tone, direction, and vision for the team, and to lead by example. Good leaders motivate people, and you should strive to be the best leader possible. So how do you know if you've been successful in managing your team? Well, you'll have a smooth completion to your project, but as your project progresses, make sure that you update all of your documents, record any change request that may be outcomes of your assessments, and update any internal processes so that you don't make the same mistakes in the future. Ultimately if you manage your team well it will result in the successful completion of your project. Well, now let's look at how you can control all of these processes and resources.