You are brought in to lead a 5 member team of engineers to develop machine that automatically tests a subset mechanical parts as they are produced. The machine periodically picks a part off of a conveyor belt and places it on a test stand where a variety of tests are performed. After the tests the machine removes the part from the test stand and places it in one of two bins labeled "pass" and "fail" depending on the outcomes of the tests. The project, of course, has a tight budget and ambitious (meaning short) timeline.
One member of the team, Tom, proposed building a general purpose gripper modeled on the human hand that could be used to pick-up a wide variety of parts. Other team members objected to this idea as being too complicated and counter-proposed a much simpler and less costly gripper designed to pick up the specific part under test. One team member called Tom's idea stupid in a group meeting. Tom insisted that his idea was best and went off to work on the hand-type gripper on his own. Tom discovered that his idea was too complicated and that he had neither the expertise nor the resources to develop the hand-type gripper. Embarrassed, Tom's participation in group meetings dropped off and he eventually stopped attending the meetings.
At the same time the other team members became frustrated at Tom's lack of progress and angry that he had effectively stopped working on the project leaving them to pick-up the slack. They also had fun ridiculing Tom behind his back in "schoolyard" fashion. Tom, sensing his team mates' attitudes reacted by becoming withdrawn, resentful and silent. You were brought in as the team leader with the difficult task of fixing this dysfunctional team of engineers and getting the project back on track.
1. You must have a conversation with Tom to get him to participate in the team. List the main points you will make in that conversation.
2. You must have a conversation with the other members of the team to accept Tom back into the team and to get them to behave in a more professional manner toward him. List the main points you will make in that conversation.
3. You have the unfortunate job of trying to re-energize an already dysfunctional team. If you were the team leader from the beginning think about how you might have prevented this situation from happening. List the main management points, ideas or techniques that you would employ.