Dear Madeleine, I read your last blog with interest. My boss and I have worked together for four years and, generally speaking, I have done well with her. She shows appreciation for my work and has been warm and supportive of my career aspirations. However, there are moments when something she does or says puts…
Dear Madeleine, I am a supervisor and team leader in a technology company. We have several products on the market that are doing well. All my projects are in new products—a combination of market research and product testing; and all my teams are cross-functional—project management, software developers, marketing and customer support, and designers. The timelines…
Dear Madeleine, My boss is just awful. He is the son of a friend of the owner, and the owner has no idea how he treats people. Although he comes from a company in our industry, where he was the operations manager, he really doesn’t understand how different things are here. I love my job.…
Dear Madeleine, I manage a few teams—data scientists, bio engineers, research fellows, project managers—in a fast-growing biotech company. I have teams in Southern California, Canada, Eastern Europe, and Indonesia. The teams pass work off between time zones; if one person doesn’t complete their piece during the workday, it puts their counterpart behind. The pressure is…
Dear Madeleine, I am really worried that my company is going to replace my entire team of graphic artists with AI. What can I say to people who have spent decades to get really good at their craft only to see themselves replaced by technology? I am literally losing sleep over this. I would appreciate…
People want an empathetic leader. Many managers strive to be one. But ask someone to define the term, and you’re likely to be met with silence. Let’s start with the definition. According to Merriam-Webster, empathy means “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of…
Our mental health has deteriorated during the pandemic, demanding the attention of leaders and businesses. Under normal circumstances, one in ten adults in the U.S. have symptoms of depression or anxiety. That number has jumped to four in ten during the pandemic—and that might be conservative. Our data show much higher numbers. In our research…
We must bring to light a dark topic which most of us would rather avoid. It is more common and detrimental in the workplace than we care to admit, and likely each of us knows someone who suffers from its burden. It is raw and painful and most people would gladly keep it in the…