Dear Madeleine, What do I do if I just can’t connect with one of my direct reports? I was recently promoted and inherited a whole new team in addition to the one I had before. The team is good and was well led (the leader left for another opportunity). I get along really well with…
Dear Madeleine, I manage three large global teams. They do similar customer service, but for different product lines. They all have very seasoned team leads and produce excellent results. Our business really took off because of the pandemic and we implemented a data-driven way to measure results that has worked well. For a long time…
Dear Madeleine, Is it naïve to want people to like me? I have been very successful at sales and developing partnerships in my job, partially because I am so good at knowing how to relate to people and getting them to like me. But recently I am beginning to wonder if having people like me—and…
Dear Madeleine, I have a couple of questions about networking that I was hoping you could help me with. I am pretty good at walking up to people and networking with them these days. I also message people on LinkedIn asking for chats. But I struggle to turn network connections into something deeper and more…
Dear Madeleine, I manage a small team for a startup health and wellbeing subscription platform. I was super excited at the beginning—the founders seemed to have the right values and care about their employees. As time has passed, though, the competition has increased and none of the strategic targets have been met. With every all-company…
Dear Madeleine, A few years back, I started working for a boutique real estate investment trust (REIT) company. I was inadvertently so good at it that I was made a junior partner in two years. I relocated to California to open the West Coast office and my opening move was to land a massive deal.…
Dear Madeleine, I am a talent acquisition leader with a midsize tech company. I built my team from scratch in the past year. We are a high performing team that is greatly appreciated by our stakeholders. Like many companies out there, ours is seeing the impact of inflation and economic downturn. Many organizations are putting…
Dear Madeleine, I have a problem with lying. Yes. I am a liar. But I’m not a compulsive liar by any means. What I mean is for a long while I’ve been thinking about little lies that most everyone I know so easily uses—and it bugs me a lot. I’ve analyzed how these “little white…
Dear Madeleine, I have a new friend at work, and she is so great. At least she was. We met when we volunteered to be on a committee for a big company community outreach event. We work in different areas of the company. I have been here a lot longer, and am senior to her,…
Dear Madeleine, I am a senior leader who reports to an SVP. I lead a business unit for a region. I recently had a one-on-one with my boss—a rare thing—and she gave me some feedback I am grappling with. My company recently started doing pulse surveys, so I thought she might want to talk about…