Your team misses a major deadline. What do you do as team lead?

Correct — C.
Rule: a team lead owns the miss: find the cause, then tell people what happens next.

Analyze reasons shows why the deadline slipped, so the fix targets the real problem.
Communicate next steps tells the team, and whoever was waiting on the work, what the revised plan is.

Of the four, it is the response that accepts responsibility and moves the work forward → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Quit the project — Quit the project walks away when the team most needs its lead. The deadline stays missed, and no one is left to plan the recovery.
• (b)
  Stay silent — Stay silent leaves the cause unexamined and the people waiting uninformed. The same slip can happen again while everyone guesses what went wrong.
• (d)
  Blame someone — Blame someone deflects a responsibility the lead carries for the team's output. It hurts morale and still leaves the cause of the delay unfixed.

A situational-judgement item describes a workplace problem and asks for the best response. The keyed answer is what a responsible professional would do: accept ownership, deal with the cause, and keep others informed.

Here the three wrong options are behaviours to avoid: walking away, hiding the problem and shifting blame. Test each option with two questions. Does it fix the problem? Does it keep people informed? Only option (c) does both.

Key facts

• The keyed response pairs analysis (why the deadline slipped) with communication (what happens next).
• Quitting, staying silent and blaming someone each leave the cause of the delay unaddressed.

Common traps

• Treating silence as the calm, safe choice, when it leaves the cause unfixed and others uninformed.

No directly related past PYQ was found.