Dear Madeleine, I have a long-time employee named Tom who has more than 25 years’ experience in our field—but he totally lacks confidence. He is very timid in response to questions from other less experienced professionals on staff. He doesn’t take the lead even when it’s in his area of expertise. For example, recently one…
Dear Madeleine, I supervise a number of educational professionals who are required to report to a team (including parents) regarding their evaluation. A recent hire, with more than 25 years’ experience in the field, uses phrases such as “um” and “you know” excessively when giving his evaluation results to the team. At a recent meeting,…
Dear Madeleine, I am a ruminator. I second-guess everything I do. My wife is tired of me spending hours every night going over and over the events of the day. I work in finance and have a lot of technical expertise in my field. My organization counts on me for their reports, budgets, etc. I’m…
Dear Madeleine, I have a long-time employee who is very smart, understands his job, and gets things done. He manages a small but powerful team of individual contributors and his people really like and respect him. We recently invited him to join an elite group in the company to do visioning and strategy work. It…
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, 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…
Dear Madeleine, What should I do about all of the requests I get from people who want to “pick my brain” or schedule an informational interview? My friends’ kids are all reaching the age where they are getting serious about having lucrative careers and satisfying jobs, and they’re all following the advice they’re getting to…
I’ve been coaching executives for about six years now. Recently I was working with a leader who proudly identified himself as a perfectionist. He considered it a badge of honor that he routinely works ten to twelve hours each day. Even now, in his sixties, he has his company cellphone on him at all times…