Sandra is the manager of four technical support staff for a large banking firm. She has far more work on her plate than she can handle, so although she was relieved to hear that she would be getting a new technical support associate named Monte, she knew she wouldn’t have time to train him.

On the new associate’s first day, Sandra had a work-related emergency first thing in the morning and didn’t have time to greet Monte when he arrived. When she did find a few minutes for him, she rushed into the staff room, shook his hand, and said, “I’m too busy to talk things over right now, but there’s an important project that I need your help with. Samir will go over the systems with you and show you what we need done, and I’ll be back later. Is that OK?”

When Monte nodded, Sandra smiled at him and promised to find him on the support floor when she had some time later that day. However, when that time did come, Sandra found that he was non-communicative and answered her questions with one-word answers. Since then, his performance has been acceptable but she has not been able to improve her communications with him.