By their very nature, unionized workplaces and industries often promote a culture of distrust between stakeholders. Each party is suspicious of the other and is afraid of being taken advantage of, so they hold their cards close to their vest and try to cut the best deal possible for their stakeholders. It’s us on one…
Dear Madeleine, I manage a team of very experienced and talented people. One of my people is particularly essential to the work we do and has vast institutional knowledge. A couple of other teams also depend on her. She is having a really hard time right now. Her father died a few months ago and…
Virtually every organization I work with wants their leaders to be good coaches. Gone are the days where self-oriented, command and control leaders rule the roost. The most effective leaders today understand that their success, and that of the organization, is inextricably tied to the success of their people. Leadership is an others-oriented approach, where…
While recently teaching a class on Building Trust, I found myself giving the participants this admonishment: “Just like anything in life, you’re going to get out of this what you put into it.” I’m not quite sure where that came from, but I suspect it was the words of advice given to me over the…
“I’m sure you’ve heard the saying People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And that is so true for anyone who is in a leadership role today,” says Kathy Cuff, senior consulting partner at The Ken Blanchard Companies. “In our SLII® leadership development class we conduct an exercise…
Constant change is a way of life in organizations today. How do managers and leaders cope with the barrage of changes that confront them daily as they attempt to keep their organizations adaptive and viable? Leaders often feel trapped in a lose-lose situation when they try to launch a change effort. On one hand, they…
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 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 am the general manager of a hotel property. I have always received great performance reviews, have high employee retention numbers (a big issue in my business) and my teams seem to really like working with me. About nine months ago I got a new boss and she is a crazy micromanager. She…
How can an organization have a problem with low trust yet none of its leaders consider themselves untrustworthy? Sounds crazy, right? It must be possible in some sort of cosmic, twilight zone kind of way. Organizations frequently ask us to help them address low trust, yet when we work with the individual managers, none of…