Dear Madeleine, I am a fairly experienced manager, but I have reached my limit with one of my people—let’s call her Sam. She is extremely competent and up until about a year ago she was very reliable. Since then, it seems as if it has been one crisis after another. First, one of her kids…
Dear Madeleine, I am a senior director for a large multinational organization. I am good at what I do, my employees love working for me, and I’ve always received good feedback from my boss. At my last review, though, I didn’t get the promotion to VP that I expected. My boss told me she didn’t think…
Dear Madeleine, As you’ve probably noticed, the political situation in the US has gotten completely out of hand, with presidential candidates running amok. I don’t know what your political opinions are, but I am hoping you can help me with my untenable situation. Both my boss and one of my direct reports are super, emphatically,…
Dear Madeleine, I work for a very high profile not for profit. It is my first job and although I have been promoted twice in two years, I am still very young. I mention this because although I have a couple of direct reports now, and have a lot of responsibility, my boss still doesn’t…
Ego can be our greatest asset or it can be our biggest liability. It’s all about keeping it in balance. An out of balance ego doesn’t feel dramatically different from one that is in balance, explain authors David Marcum and Steven Smith in their book, Egonomics—and that’s why it trips up so many leaders. That’s…
I was at a conference last weekend and the facilitator assigned the table groups a topic to discuss. After the discussion a person from each table stood up and gave a brief report on group’s conversation. A very accomplished friend and colleague of mine presented for our table group and when she sat down the…
I believe that the ability to truly listen is one of the most important skills we can develop in this life—as leaders, as husbands and wives, as friends and coworkers. Here’s a question I have asked in numerous workshops over the past few months: How many of you have had formal training in listening? It…
