Dear Madeleine, I was promoted to VP of sales a few months before the pandemic hit. I feel like I have been in an industrial washing machine ever since, and am just starting to come up for air. There was a lot of training at the beginning but then our entire book of business and…
Dear Madeleine, I am a client services manager at a new cancer center in Lagos, Nigeria. I have just had my six-month appraisal with the CEO. Along with my responsibilities, I have been helping my CEO with her calendar and all other duties. During the appraisal, she said she wants me to be her executive…
It’s hard to believe it’s been more than a year since the world was blindsided by a global pandemic. Millions of people are mourning losses due to COVID-19: family members, friends, and colleagues who have died; businesses and jobs that have been lost; savings accounts that have been depleted. Almost everyone has experienced some form…
Dear Madeleine, I read your article called Terrified about Doing a Presentation at Work? and I am writing to see if I can get some help. I have spent 23 years in the IT industry and am still nervous about presenting. I have challenges remembering the right words during the presentation. I tend to rush and…
Virtually every organization I work with wants their leaders to be good coaches. Gone are the days where self-oriented, command and control leaders rule the roost. The most effective leaders today understand that their success, and that of the organization, is inextricably tied to the success of their people. Leadership is an others-oriented approach, where…
Now that we’ve dealt with the initial implications of leadership and development in a COVID environment, L&D professionals are increasingly turning their attention to what the future will look like in a post-COVID world. Remote working will not go away after COVID—in fact, many research firms predict that 2021 will see the number of employees…
Dear Madeleine, I lost my identical twin brother to COVID late last spring. Of course there was no service, and I organized a Zoom event that was almost too sad to bear. A cousin was also infected, and lived, but has many brain-related long-hauler symptoms and has had to go on disability. This leads me…
Have you ever thought about how elite performers achieve their level of accomplishment? Steven Kotler has—and in his latest book, The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer, he shares what he has learned from decades of research into the exploration of human possibility. Kotler believes everyone is capable of achieving the extraordinary, and he…
Dear Madeleine, I was recently promoted to director of contracts and compliance at a global staffing organization. I have a great team, I seem to be well regarded in the organization, and I get along well with my direct boss and his boss, who is the regional CEO. I am often tapped to lead or…
Dear Madeleine, I manage an IT group—12 people—that does the tech stack for all supply chain management for a national chain of service providers. We also sell some product, but not a lot. I report directly to the CTO and have a good relationship with him. At the beginning of the year, after much discussion…
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…
