Dear Madeleine, The COVID-19 pandemic has been such a disruption over the past couple of weeks. At work, all travel has been put on an indefinite hold, all training classes and in-person meetings have been cancelled, and the entire workforce has been asked to work from home. Working from home sounds like a dream to…
Dear Madeleine, I am the GM for a small brewery that has been shut down during the COVID-19 crisis as non-essential. However, the owner believes it is still worthwhile to stay open to serve take-out customers, which is allowed according to the shutdown rules. Because I am the GM, I have been designated as the…
Dear Madeleine, I work as a marketing director at a medium-sized firm and I’m a longtime reader of your column. My company reacted quickly to the warnings about COVID-19 and sent all of us home last week. My spouse is a frontline manager for a larger firm across town that couldn’t send employees home because…
Dear Madeleine, I need your advice. The coronavirus is really putting everyone in my office on edge. Clients are canceling bookings. Executives are calling emergency meetings to try to figure out a course of action. And mid-level managers like me are being pulled in a dozen different directions with multiple top-priority requests from senior leaders…
Dear Madeleine, I am a very quiet person, not so much shy as simply quiet. I am interested in people but have almost no need to be interesting to others. Social events aren’t hard for me, except for feeling the expectation from others to be entertaining. My problem at work is that I feel that…
Dear Madeleine, I am biased. I thought for the longest time that I wasn’t, but it has become clear to me that I am. I realize I am biased against certain types of people. My biases are not traditional ones like race, gender, or age. I think I am mostly conscious and appropriate. What I…
We’ve just celebrated the fifth anniversary of this blog. My goal has been to host an advice column for you, the well-intentioned manager. Over the past five years we’ve looked at over 200 different questions from people working to lead at a higher level. As a coach for the past 30 years I have seen…
Dear Madeleine, I have been working for the internet arm of a retail company for almost twenty years. When I started, we were truly innovating with the speed and fierceness of a startup. I was given carte blanche because the internet business was growing more quickly than that of the actual stores. The website has…
Dear Madeleine, I have been a manager for many years. I came up through the ranks and have been steadily promoted because of my technical and analytical skills—also, because I am almost always right. I try not to be a jerk about it, but it is the truth. I recently had a performance review with…
Dear Madeleine, I lead a team at a global bank that is going through constant upheaval and change. I have used Blanchard’s change model in the past to try to meet my people where they are and address their concerns. The problem with the latest change is that I don’t have any answers for my…