Hi Madeleine, I have been working for over 15 years in my field and have moved up the ranks. In my last role I was a manager. Six months ago, I left my old job and moved to a company that had a small team where I was given a supervisor/team lead title that was…
Dear Madeleine, I have been assigned to handle a new team and we are currently in the developmental stage. Yesterday as I did a few one-on-one sessions, one of the new hires on my team (let’s call her Laura) mentioned that one of my tenured team members (let’s call her Carol) was cold to her.…
Dear Madeleine, I work as a training manager in a large organization. Two years ago my boss was let go. Since then, I have been doing both her job and my old job. I like my current boss (formerly my boss’s boss) but it’s obvious that he is fine with the existing situation. I’m not—and…
Dear Madeleine, I work in sales in a large medical device company. I kill my numbers and have been number one in my region for the last six quarters. I need your advice. My company continually makes errors in creating inventory of the devices we are selling. I just don’t think that I, in good…
Dear Madeleine, I am a few years in, working on Wall Street. I am a financial analyst and am pretty good at my job. At my recent performance review my boss told me that I need to “build my brand.” What the heck? I tried to get some detail out of him but didn’t get…
Dear Madeleine, I got a new boss about six months ago and I have been watching and waiting to see how he is going to pan out. So far, so good, I think—except for one thing that is really burning my toast. Literally the first thing he did was to put a stop to all…
Dear Madeleine, I am terrible at my job and it is only a matter of time before I get fired. I don’t like any of my direct reports. I am supposed to do one-on-ones with them, but I find them so boring and whiny I can barely listen to them. I am making errors because…
Dear Madeleine, I recently took a director level job with a huge Fortune 50 organization. I have been thrown into the deep end and I am worried about completely bombing out. I have had zero onboarding, so I am constantly making errors and spending tons of time backtracking and clearing things up. I am really…
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…