Dear Madeleine, I manage a team of project and program managers responsible for keeping software implementations on track for a global company. I have five regional directors, each of whom manage about fifteen individual service representatives. The frontline folks are highly skilled—their jobs require a lot of technical experience and real expertise. They are dedicated…
Dear Madeleine, I am a director-level leader in a national insurance organization. The culture here is that things get done slowly, and only when everyone agrees with the change. I have been tasked with spearheading a ton of change, which is desperately needed. I have not made any friends with my approach and my boss…
Dear Madeleine, I run a compliance and risk group for a large regional credit union. We have a new CEO—I’ll call him “K.” K was our organization’s CFO for several years before he was named CEO, so I know him well. We have always had a good relationship. K has been in the CEO position…
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…
Dear Madeleine, I work in a research organization. My colleagues are very well educated, as is most of the executive leadership team. I’m not a scientist, a PhD, or a doctor. I’m a middle manager who knows how things get done and what needs to be fixed in order to improve a process. I have…
As one of the first female F-14 Tomcat fighter pilots in the US Navy, Carey Lohrenz knows all about pressure. During her intense training, she learned critical lessons about navigating in the most demanding, high-pressure environment imaginable—the cockpit of an F-14 fighter jet. The genius of her latest book, Span of Control, is how she…
Dear Madeleine, I am a sales EVP in fast growing but incredibly competitive software. The pandemic threw demand into overdrive, which is great, but it means quotas have ballooned as well. Our structure is regional and all of the regional VPs report to me. My issue is one very whiny VP who is convinced that…
Dear Madeleine, I was promoted to VP of sales a few months before the pandemic hit. I feel like I have been in an industrial washing machine ever since, and am just starting to come up for air. There was a lot of training at the beginning but then our entire book of business and…
Dear Madeleine, I read your article called Terrified about Doing a Presentation at Work? and I am writing to see if I can get some help. I have spent 23 years in the IT industry and am still nervous about presenting. I have challenges remembering the right words during the presentation. I tend to rush and…
Now that we’ve dealt with the initial implications of leadership and development in a COVID environment, L&D professionals are increasingly turning their attention to what the future will look like in a post-COVID world. Remote working will not go away after COVID—in fact, many research firms predict that 2021 will see the number of employees…