Dear Madeleine, I am a senior VP in a global energy company and recently had an opportunity to give a webinar presentation to the entire company. I got a lot of great feedback, which was nice, but one person wrote in the chat that my “privilege was showing.” What the heck? My family is from…
What started as a book to help an author’s college grad daughter navigate the business world turned into a guide for employers everywhere who want to build a high-performing workforce. In her new book Winning the Talent Shift: Three Steps to Unleashing the New Higher Performance Workplace, Berta Aldrich explains why companies struggle to hire…
Dear Madeleine, I recently logged into a web conference meeting a few minutes early. Some of my direct reports were already on and they didn’t notice I had joined. I heard them talking about one of their colleagues who also reports to me, and I was shocked. They were talking about their political beliefs, which…
When my colleagues Vicki Halsey and Kathy Cuff and I were creating the Legendary Service customer service training program, we asked people in organizations two questions: Why is creating a positive customer experience important? How do you want your customers to feel when working with your organization? We always got the same answers: If customers…
Dear Madeleine, An employee recently left. She worked for me for 18 months. She never really seemed to want to be here, never got very good at her job, and never developed relationships with anyone on the team. At best, she seemed apathetic. She rather unceremoniously gave two weeks’ notice right before the holidays and…
Dear Madeleine, I am a team lead in the R&D department of a pharmaceutical company. We are all scientists and engineers and the work is interesting and fun. I really like managing my team and they seem to be happy with me. My problem is that my new boss is just awful. We loved our…
Dear Madeleine, I am a senior leader in a large state government agency. I’ve been here a long time. I came to the job as a high-ranking, decorated veteran and have earned an excellent reputation. I hired an employee about a year ago who seemed to have everything I was looking for. He was young,…
While recently teaching a class on Building Trust, I found myself giving the participants this admonishment: “Just like anything in life, you’re going to get out of this what you put into it.” I’m not quite sure where that came from, but I suspect it was the words of advice given to me over the…
Dear Madeleine, I am a manager at a fairly new and fast growing software-as-a-service company. I have been managing people forever and nothing like this has ever happened to me. I recently gave some feedback to a new employee I’ll call LK. Despite having received step-by-step directions on a certain task, she had done it…
It’s a timeless truth that bears repeating: Good leadership starts with a vision. Why? Because leadership is about going somewhere. If you don’t know where you’re going, your leadership doesn’t matter. Great leaders understand this and mobilize others by coalescing them around a shared vision. A compelling vision will help you and your team get…
Creating a great learning experience is more difficult than it seems. And when you add rapidly changing work environments and technology to the mix, it might even be overwhelming. Enter learning strategy and design expert Julie Dirksen with tips and tools from her book, Design for How People Learn. Dirksen combines the fundamental concepts of…
Dear Madeleine, I am a branch manager for a regional bank. We are a small crew, and everyone reports into me. Things run smoothly for the most part. I have one team member—an older woman—who has terrible body odor. It is so off putting that I lose focus each time she comes near my desk.…
We all want to achieve our professional dreams, but a lot of stuff can get in the way. Often, we label that stuff as a blocker to success, whether it’s an external factor (e.g., no time, no money, lack of resources, an ongoing pandemic) or an internal factor (e.g., don’t know enough, not enough influence,…
Most companies want their employees to continue to grow and develop because they know employee growth benefits not only the individual but also the organization. For example, how would productivity change if an employee became a more effective communicator or learned to manage others using a coach approach? To foster employee growth and development, organizations…
Dear Madeleine, I am a senior manager. I like my company, I like my job, and I like my team. I have always received good performance reviews and my boss thinks I can do no wrong. I feel lucky, all things considered—this past year was as challenging for our company as it was for others,…
