Dear Madeleine, I started a new job as a senior leader for a large manufacturing firm about four months ago—and I still haven’t gotten to the bottom of the disaster I’ve walked into. All I heard about when I first came on was how much everyone loved my predecessor, how smart he was, how much…
During my time as a coach, I have often utilized SWOT analyses to help teams analyze their organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This is a simple, user-friendly method to help a team or a board focus on key issues affecting their business. This type of analysis often can be used as a precursor to…
Dear Madeleine, I have an employee who hates me. I have been supervising and managing people for 25 years and this has never happened to me before. I’ve been to training classes, attended webinars, read books on managing, and worked hard to hone my leadership skills over the years. I am generally a likeable person,…
A common topic in my coaching sessions is work/life balance. Heavy workloads, daily abundance of emails, competing deadlines, required meetings, and other concerns can be so overwhelming that work can become the focal point and main priority in life. As a result, we can feel obligated to dedicate long hours to our work. We struggle…
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 work in a very matrixed organization. My actual boss works remotely and I seldom interact with him one-on-one, but we have a team lead on every project. In my work group, we all work on different projects as they come in. One of my peers in another group is causing real problems…
Dear Madeleine, I work for a small company in a small city. I really like my job, but the atmosphere in my office is so toxic I am not sure I can live with it. This is my first real job. My immediate boss took me under his wing, taught me the business, and he…
Dear Madeleine, About three months ago, I was promoted to COO in my organization. I wasn’t expecting it—a lot of changes happened at once. A large group of people were fired and the next thing I knew I was COO. I have no real senior leadership experience, but here is the crazy thing: I’m pretty…
Dear Madeleine, I am a senior executive with a lot of experience who is on the leadership team of my organization. I have a problem I’ve never had before, which has been developing over the last year. Since we got a new CEO (my new boss), there has been a lot of turnover on the…
Dear Madeleine, I am so frustrated with myself. At the beginning of the year I set a whole bunch of goals. Then Q1 whooshed by and guess what I have done? Nothing. I stayed really focused for about two weeks and then forgot all about my resolutions. One of my big goals was to have…