Hi Madeleine, Earlier this year I joined a consulting firm that works with companies in my previous industry. I had taken a break to get a management degree and got a taste of consulting doing an internship that was part of my program. I believed consulting would be a different world where I would learn…
Too many leaders have been conditioned to think of leadership only in terms of power and control. But there is a better way to lead, says best-selling business author Ken Blanchard—one that combines equal parts serving and leading. This kind of leadership requires a special kind of leader: a servant leader. “In this model,” says…
Dear Madeleine, I am a mid-level manager with a large team in a low-profile but significant government agency. I say significant because substantial numbers of citizens depend on us for critical services. The chaos here has been profound over the last year or so. Senior leaders keep quitting or getting fired, mandates turn on a…
Dear Madeleine, I am a senior manager in a large government agency that has been decimated and paralyzed by our current administration. Don’t worry, I am not going to get political. But I do need help, because growth and opportunity have ground to a standstill in our organization and I have a whole team of…
An increasingly complex business environment requires an engaging and easy-to-understand service vision says Vicki Halsey, co-author of Legendary Service: The Key Is to Care. In a short, one-minute video featuring key concepts from The Ken Blanchard Companies new Legendary Service training program, Halsey shares a great story about how one major league baseball stadium…
I like how mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness. He says, “There is nothing particularly unusual or mystical about being mindful. All it involves is paying attention to your experience from moment to moment.” For the leaders I coach, much of their workday moments are spent in email, in meetings, or tap, tap, tapping on…
Let’s face it, performance coaching isn’t easy. In many organizations, if an employee’s performance is poor enough that a coach is called in, it means the manager is in a last ditch effort to save them. Emotions are running high, termination may be looming, and the relationship between boss and employee may have degraded into…
Dear Madeleine, I am fairly new to managing a large team in the property management industry. I was a team member for a long time. One of the reasons I was promoted was because I was a work horse. I have a lot of energy and was used to putting in ten- and twelve-hour days…
Dear Madeleine, I have been managing a team in the insurance industry for the last fifteen years. There has been a lot of change—mostly reductions in staff size and increases in work load—but basically it is pretty much the same stuff, just a different day, and has been for a long time. My last kid…
Dear Madeleine, I am about eight months into my first senior department manager position at a government agency. I have a lot of experience in this sector and was brought in to shake things up and make some changes. My boss literally told me that my job is to kick *ss and take names. After…