Reference no: EM133180789

You are a Senior Manager at an Online Gaming Software Engineering firm located in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. You lead an Engineering Team: 

• that consists of seven Software Engineers
• three men and four women
• two team members are from Canada, one is from China, another from Germany, and two are from Japan.

The Team is working to finalize a new online game "the Student's Revenge" which is being launched globally on June 1, 2022. The game is marketed to kids ages 10-15, wherein the game player gets to create characters and their "Teacher" character must complete a series of complex challenges as assigned by the student characters in the game. 

Over the past couple of months, you have observed that your Team is missing deadlines, the quality of the work is lacking, and the likelihood of you missing the launch deadline of June 1, 2022 is quite possible. You know there are issues that need to be addressed, and if you miss the launch date, there will be significant revenue losses and you may lose your job. 

When you talk with the team, both as a group and individually, you receive mixed messages.  Sometimes team members will agree that there are issues, promising that the solution you requested will be implemented.  But when you check-in with the team, the solution hasn't been implemented and Team members will shrug their shoulders, noting that they did everything they could to implement the solution.  Some members of your team have met with you 1:1 to express their frustration working on your Team.  Some of the concerns they have expressed include "members on the Team are rude and disrespectful", "members want to spend a lot of time exchanging pleasantries and don't want to focus on work", and "members won't give me a straight answer about if they can complete the tasks within their role". 

Through talking with your Team and observing their behaviours, you know there is conflict and misalignment of goals.  You know it is time for you to "step-up" as their leader to get them working together, focusing on completing "the Student's Revenge" on-time, with high quality. What are you going to do? 

Using the theories of leadership and diversity, discuss how you are going to flex your leadership style and behaviours to support your team to better work together to achieve the goals of launching a high-quality game on June 1, 2022.