Your system engineer has started making negative comments during your weekly team meeting. He has had a heated argument with the marketing manager, and you have heard from various team members that he has become difficult to work with. What is the best course of action for you to take?
A. You should write a memo to the system engineer's functional manager and request a replacement as soon as possible.
B. The system engineer is critical to the project, so you should give him some slack and wait to see whether the behavior stops.
C. You should confront the system engineer openly at the next team meeting. Let him know that his behavior is unacceptable and that he will be replaced if there is not an immediate change.
D. You should schedule an individual meeting with the system engineer to determine whether he has issues with the project that need to be resolved. Get his perspective on how the project is progressing and how he feels about his role.
D. To address the issue, you need to understand what is behind the system engineer's current behavior. He may have been given additional work that you are not aware of, or he may misunderstand the project goals, to name just a couple of possibilities. The situation cannot be ignored, no matter how valuable the person is, and it should be handled in private.