Dear Madeleine, I read your article “Celebrating Women at Work” with interest and it prompted this question. I am a female senior manager in a fast-moving tech company. I run a high-level customer success team made up of mostly older women. About a year ago, my old boss retired. I got a new female boss…
Dear Madeleine, I lead a business unit for a global manufacturing company and have been in the role for about 18 months. I took over for someone who was completely checked out and it was a bit of a mess. It has taken me this long just to untangle the log jams and uncover all…
Dear Madeleine, I am an experienced executive. A few years ago, my company created a mentoring program. I have really enjoyed mentoring young new hires and have done several six-month stints. My first mentee and I have stayed in close touch and have become friendly. The kid is a rock star at work and has…
Dear Madeleine, I am the CEO of a small but rapidly growing global employee relocation services organization. It is a complicated business. One of the complexities is that employment laws are different in every country and they change constantly. Our chief legal counsel is very talented and business savvy. But when we are trying to…
Dear Madeleine, Your advice has been very helpful in the past, so I couldn’t stop myself from writing to you again about a tricky situation. I have recently taken over the area of learning and development as part of my portfolio. With that came the discussion of a resource with my boss. My boss suggested a…
Dear Madeleine, I lead a team of eight employees. One of them is dealing with a personal crisis outside of work and I can see he is struggling. This isn’t the first time I’ve had an employee dealing with crisis, given COVID, but somehow I have managed to get by. I want to be the…
Dear Madeleine, I manage three large global teams. They do similar customer service, but for different product lines. They all have very seasoned team leads and produce excellent results. Our business really took off because of the pandemic and we implemented a data-driven way to measure results that has worked well. For a long time…
Dear Madeleine, A few years back, I started working for a boutique real estate investment trust (REIT) company. I was inadvertently so good at it that I was made a junior partner in two years. I relocated to California to open the West Coast office and my opening move was to land a massive deal.…
Dear Madeleine, I have a problem with lying. Yes. I am a liar. But I’m not a compulsive liar by any means. What I mean is for a long while I’ve been thinking about little lies that most everyone I know so easily uses—and it bugs me a lot. I’ve analyzed how these “little white…
Dear Madeleine, I have a great job in a company I love. I was recently offered a promotion. Even though I thought the change in compensation didn’t reflect the increased responsibility, I was so happy to even be considered that I jumped at it. I now have four direct reports. Here’s the problem: as the…