After completing engineering school, you landed a job as a structural engineer with a large automobile manufacturing company in Detroit. You have been asked to lead a project on developing prototypes for next year's concept cars. You have decided that using cross-functional teams that will pull head engineers in from multiple different areas is the best approach, as well as technical engineers that will help with the latest and greatest features that customers desire in a vehicle.

When you receive the team roster from HR, you are not surprised to see nine male names listed of the different engineers that have been asked to help with this project as engineering and Information Technology is historically a male-dominant career field. When the team meets for its kickoff meeting, you find that there is one woman on the team who is in the process of undergoing gender reassignment. You also later find out that HR did not realize there was a legal name change associated with this employee and pulled their contact from an old organizational chart.

After the kick-off meeting and introduction, the group takes a 15-minute break and you see several of the engineers from Africa leave together. Once the group reconvened, you notice these same engineers from Africa snickering and laughing under their breath at one another and the frustrated look on your female colleague's face as well as an engineer from Latin America.

Assignment

Explain the actions that you would take to address this toxic environment. Also, reflect on what you have learned that may explain how culture could have impacted these actions.