Dear Madeleine, I have had uncanny success in my company. I am extremely competitive and incredibly focused, and I work really hard because I live in fear of disappointing my boss or my customers. Now my boss wants to put me in charge of a whole region—to open an office with about 75 people reporting…
Dear Madeleine, I have a new boss who just offered me the role of lead for a team I have been on for about seven months. Our former lead (who, frankly, wasn’t great at leading) left suddenly a month ago. In the leadership vacuum I kind of stepped up, and nobody seemed to mind. In…
Dear Madeleine, I am an attorney in a government office. I was just promoted and have inherited four new direct reports. Although I have trained interns in the past, I am feeling overwhelmed with the fact that I still have my full time job and am now managing people. My first week was essentially all…
Dear Madeleine, I am 25, super organized, and I have no problem being direct. On the CliftonStrengths® assessment I come out as having high self-assurance. People just assume I am in charge even when I am not—officially. As a result, I have been given opportunities to lead all the way back to my first job.…
Dear Madeleine, I lead a team in a large organization. I stepped in as an interim leader when my boss went out on leave—but he never came back. At this point, my challenge is that I need to delegate more and make people on my team do the stuff they should be doing. I have…
Dear Madeleine, My long-time boss recently left and I finally got a chance to be a manager. But soon after I stepped into the role, upper management informed me I needed to cut at least three people from my team as part of a massive company restructure. I messaged my old boss and she told…
New managers aren’t getting the training they need when they first step up to leadership roles. For example, more than 40 percent of the people who attended the early pilots of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ First-time Manager classes had already been in management over two years by the time they attended class—and research by management…
What do riding a bike, being a first-time manager, and coaching have in common? You’ll soon find out. Over the weekend I spent some time in the local park enjoying a bit of sunshine and doing some people watching. For several minutes I watched a young couple as they were teaching their son how to…
In a webinar on first-time management last week, we asked the 900+ people in attendance to share their biggest challenge as a first-time manager. It was open ended so people could type in whatever came to mind. The chat box was soon bursting with 146 responses. I’ll summarize the major buckets as I saw them,…
As a part of the research into the release of our new First-time Manager program, we have asked people to fill out a survey about their experience as a first time manager. We ask what they wish they had known before they started, what surprised them about their new role, and what mistakes they made.…