Dear Madeleine, I manage a large team of accountants and other kinds of finance experts. We recently posted a job for a senior budget analyst. One of the applicants is a person who was in the finance department a couple of years back. I wasn’t his boss, but I wasn’t impressed with him then and…
How many times have you wondered who the future leaders will be in your organization? When I listen to organizational sponsors express their needs for leadership development, it can be framed as a need to shift people from almost ready to ready NOW. Coaching is a significant way to develop high potentials into emerging leaders.…
Dear Madeleine, My long-time boss recently left and I finally got a chance to be a manager. But soon after I stepped into the role, upper management informed me I needed to cut at least three people from my team as part of a massive company restructure. I messaged my old boss and she told…
What are the attributes of a modern servant leader in business today—someone who puts the interests of others on equal footing with their own? The Ken Blanchard Companies recently completed a three-city tour piloting servant leadership content with leadership, learning, and talent development professionals in Houston, New York, and Ft. Lauderdale. As a part of…
Dear Madeleine, I am a senior manager in a large government agency that has been decimated and paralyzed by our current administration. Don’t worry, I am not going to get political. But I do need help, because growth and opportunity have ground to a standstill in our organization and I have a whole team of…
Learn how to create a servant leadership culture in your organization. The just published June issue of Blanchard’s Ignite newsletter shares tips and strategies for leadership, learning, and talent development professionals. Highlights include Do’s and Don’ts When Creating a Servant Leadership Curriculum You have to resist the temptation to treat a servant leadership initiative as just…
Great coaches are trained to be fully present with clients. We are good at it. We know how to reduce distractions, quiet the mind, and put all of our attention on the client. But that doesn’t mean it is easy for us! There are times when it isn’t easy at all. Staying in the now…
Dear Madeleine, I manage a fairly large group in engineering. My team has a good reputation with the rest of the company and works well together. Except for one person. I have one direct report that I just don’t know what to do with. “K” has always been a little bit prickly and unpredictable, but…
Taking a servant leadership mindset and turning it into a curriculum and a set of skills can be a challenge, explains Bob Freytag, a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. You have to resist the temptation to treat a servant leadership initiative as just a training intervention and instead see it, ideally, as…
Addressing low trust in a relationship is a challenging issue. As soon as the “t” word—trust—is mentioned, emotions start to rise, defensiveness climbs, and people begin to feel uneasy about where the conversation is headed. When I conduct workshops on building trust, participants often ask me for advice about how they can tell someone they…
Dear Madeleine, I have been working as a technical expert for about a decade. I have been headhunted away from where I was three times, with a substantial signing bonus and salary raise each time. I now make more than I ever thought I would—and I am still getting calls about twice a week. I…
Editor’s Note: This guest post is by Hunter Young. Think about this past week. Did you go to a business where you received below average customer service? Did it make you feel unwanted? Did you feel like leaving right then? If you answered “yes” to these questions, you’re not alone. Thousands if not millions of…
Dear Madeleine, I am an experienced manager but I am in a situation that is stumping me. I have a large team, and we have a reputation for getting a lot done, very efficiently. One team member—L— has been with the team since before I took it over. She is in her early 40s, a…
As a part of onboarding, Mike Rognlien, builder of awesome people at Facebook, would always ask new employees if the culture at Facebook was a deciding factor in their decision to join the company. “Every time, in more than six years of asking that question, almost every hand would go up,” says Rognlien. “Then I would…
For about a year now, it seems everywhere I turn I hear people talking about the power of mindfulness. To me, mindfulness means paying attention to your experience from moment to moment. Because I keep hearing and reading about this topic, I figure the universe is telling me this should be my development focus right…
