After her tenth sick day in the past three months, you sense that Teacher Wang might be depressed.

Use your partnership and consultative skills to probe and come to an agreeable action plan.

Mandarin First (MF) is a global company that established its Toronto subsidiary in 2012 to meet the growing demand for Mandarin language skills. Its consumers vary from elementary, high school and post-secondary students to business people. The key marketing feature is that MF recruits faculty from Mainland China; they are professionally trained Mandarin teachers and their tenure in Canada varies from one year to five years. It is this feature that allows MF to charge a premium rate compared to its competitors. Jackie was recently hired as the Faculty Director (FD) position at Mandarin First. The FD is the key business partner for the General Manager of the business. The previous FD left the company due to an inability to appreciate and manage the multiple cross-cultural management issues at MF. Jackie has over 10 years of work experience in, and is highly knowledgeable of the foreign language learning sector in Canada. Jackie has been on the job for six months and it has been a steep learning curve, understanding the operation and appreciating the different communication styles of the Chinese faculty. Teacher Wang recently joined the MF team in Toronto. She graduated from Beijing University three years ago and was teaching Mandarin in the school system for the past two years. She is a new expatriate to Canada ... in fact, other than a couple of beach vacations in southeast Asia, this was her first experience outside of Asia. Along with this, she was new to teaching non-Chinese. Wang was raised in a traditional, conservative home where she was the only child so she was attracted to independence and freedom the opportunity of living and working overseas afforded her. She realized that the first few months were an adjustment period to a new home and job. However, after five months, she felt culture-shock... and it was starting to affect work performance. She started taking more sick days and when she was teaching his after school high school students, Jackle was getting negative feedback about Wang's performance.