Hi Madeleine, I just started a new position with an organization that is pretty young in the association world. I accepted the job because everyone gets along really well and works as a team to accomplish yearly goals. This type of culture is something I didn’t experience at my previous place of employment, but I…
I can’t get what I need. My boss doesn’t understand me. My organization’s systems don’t work. I don’t have the resources I need. My job doesn’t take advantage of my strengths. No one appreciates me. My boss micromanages me. There’s no room for me to grow. They don’t understand how much I could be contributing…
There is a great deal of controversy these days about what mastery in coaching actually looks like. The International Coach Federation has created stringent rules regarding coach competencies that make it simpler to identify the criteria a coach must meet to achieve the Master Certified Coach (MCC) designation. As of May 2017, only six percent…
Hi Madeleine, I have a great job that I love in a fast paced, entrepreneurial young company. We are a small shop, so for some projects I work directly with the CEO. I’ll call him Rob. My problem is that Rob seems to expect me to read his mind. He rarely gives me any specific…
The Ken Blanchard Companies Ignite newsletter is a must-read for leadership, learning, and talent development professionals. Highlights from the just published August issue include Getting Buy-In for Leadership Development Training One of the biggest challenges leadership, learning, and talent development professionals face when they propose a new initiative is convincing their CEO of the financial…
In a couple of my recent posts I’ve talked about managers using coach-like skills in their conversations with direct reports. Doing this often makes conversations more impactful and effective. But there are times when using a coaching style is not appropriate—when, in fact, it can be counterproductive and cause the other person to become frustrated. First…
In this episode of the Blanchard LeaderChat podcast, we interview Michael Bungay Stanier, author of The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever. Bungay Stanier, a top executive coach and consultant, shares how time-pressed managers can effectively coach direct reports by asking instead of telling, being a little more…
One of the biggest challenges leadership, learning, and talent development professionals face when they propose a new initiative is convincing their CEO of the financial impact of the proposed initiative. Without a clear sense of the positive financial impact, it’s easy for a leader to dismiss a new proposal as being too disruptive, too expensive,…
Dear Madeleine, I work in a very large company and have managed a small team for a couple of years. About a year ago, my department got a new leader, who is my manager’s boss. This new leader came from another part of the company and apparently is being groomed for the senior leadership team. …
In a new article for Training magazine, Jim Diehl and I share the results of a 1,300-person study of teams in today’s work environment. The survey results reveal there’s much work to be done: only 27 percent of respondents said their teams perform at top levels a majority of the time. Millennials scored their team…
I’ve always appreciated this quote from famed author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” What good is building character only to have it erode due to a lack of maintenance? Coaching enables people to gain clarity about who they are,…
Dear Madeleine, I am a fairly new marketing manager for a large consumer goods firm. I have three great people who work for me—I inherited them, so I lucked out. We function like a well-oiled machine. The problem is my boss. She was promoted about two years ago and now oversees several managers of different…
