Dear Madeleine, I am a senior leader in a large nonprofit. My big struggle is with one employee who seems emotionally unstable. One day she is completely reasonable and easygoing, and the next she is reactive and flying off the handle for no apparent reason. I’ve learned to expect it, but her behavior is affecting…
Dear Madeleine, I head up one of several R&D teams at a global consumer goods company. My team is amazing—brilliant, eccentric, creative, fun people who are blowing away their goals. (It takes a certain type of person to be good at what we do.) Here is my problem. Some of my folks are good at…
Too many leaders have been conditioned to think of leadership only in terms of power and control. But there is a better way to lead, says best-selling business author Ken Blanchard—one that combines equal parts serving and leading. This kind of leadership requires a special kind of leader: a servant leader. “In this model,” says…
Dear Madeleine, I am a new manager. I have twelve folks reporting to me and it is going perfectly, except for one person (I will call him “A”). There seems to be a fundamental disconnect between how he sees his own performance (superior) and how others see his performance (subpar). I am continually confused by…
Those of us who work with or are followers of Ken Blanchard have all heard the expression “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” We’ve also read dozens of examples of when and how to give feedback to get to best possible outcome. Read on for a slightly different take on how to approach feedback. As…
Dear Madeleine, I am a mid-level manager with a large team in a low-profile but significant government agency. I say significant because substantial numbers of citizens depend on us for critical services. The chaos here has been profound over the last year or so. Senior leaders keep quitting or getting fired, mandates turn on a…
In this episode, Alex Hutchinson shares what he learned from ten years of researching human performance. He explains that whether you are running a marathon, building a career, or raising a family, you will have fundamental struggles. And even though the situations are very different, the struggles are similar. “Human achievement relies upon the ability…
Performance planning, coaching, and review are the foundation of any well-designed performance management system, but the results of a recent study suggest that leaders are falling short in meeting the expectations of their direct reports. Researchers from The Ken Blanchard Companies teamed up with Training magazine to poll 456 human resource and talent-management professionals. The purpose was…
Dear Madeleine, I started a new job about six months ago. My boss warned me about one of my direct reports—he said she was argumentative and difficult. For the first few months I thought she was okay, but now I’m beginning to see what my boss meant. She is hostile in meetings. She agrees to…
In a recent article for the July edition of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Ignite! newsletter, senior consulting partner Ann Phillips describes three types of conversations managers need to master—goal setting, feedback, and one-on-ones. One element within the feedback conversation—redirection—tends to be especially challenging for managers. It focuses on those times when a manager must provide…
“I don’t want to be a micromanager!” I hear that statement all the time from my coaching clients. I get it—no one wants to be known as a boss who hovers over people and tells them what to do all the time. However, what I’ve noticed with some clients who desperately do not want to…
Dear Madeleine, I have been with the same organization for eight years. My company offers anyone who has been here for seven years a reduced pay, three-month sabbatical. My boss keeps pestering me to schedule it and take one. (I totally get that this is a good problem for me to have.) I don’t have…
What does it take to become a world-class leader? In this episode of the LeaderChat Podcast, we speak with Elena Botelho, coauthor of The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviors that Transform Ordinary People into World-Class Leaders. “Most ideals about why people are successful are driven by stereotypes and gut feel rather than facts and…
Managers don’t have enough high quality conversations with their direct reports, according to Ann Phillips, a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. This deficiency has a negative effect on both productivity and morale. “Part of effective communication between manager and direct report is a mindset and part is a skillset. Both are required,”…
Dear Madeleine, Our company went to “unlimited PTO” about 16 months ago. The idea was to try it out for a year and re-evaluate. The re-evaluation period was moved to the 18-month mark, so it hasn’t happened yet. You would think the problem would be people abusing the policy but I have the opposite…
