Dear Madeleine, I think I know the answer to this, but I thought I would just check my thinking. I work in the arts and have been an assistant to many executive directors. My experience is that once people get into that job they never leave, even when they should. I have been in my…
Dear Madeleine, I was made supervisor for a team at a software company about six months ago. I like the job and the people on my team, and I’m slowly figuring out how to be a decent manager. I feel lucky that I was moved to a different team so I don’t have to manage…
Hello Madeleine, I have read your articles, and I wanted to reach out to you. I have an equal business partner with whom I have successfully run a restaurant for six years. While I have 30 years of experience in the industry, my business partner had no previous knowledge about restaurant operations. I have used…
Dear Madeleine, I am at a crossroads and don’t know which way to go. During Covid, I got a great idea and started a very cool online business. I did so well that a few people invested in my little company, and for a while it grew like gangbusters. I hired some people to help…
Dear Intern, What do today’s interns want out of a summer internship? My company—like many others—hosts six to eight summer interns every year. I’ve been participating in the program for over fifteen years and during that time I’ve had one, two, or sometimes three interns working for several weeks in our marketing department. It’s been…
Dear Madeleine, About six months ago, I went above and beyond to help out a new colleague. He had misread a deadline and needed to scramble to get a bunch of time-sensitive work done over a long weekend. I willingly jumped in to help him, finding documents, getting permission to give him access to materials,…
Dear Madeleine, I manage a team of customer support specialists. The job requires in-depth knowledge of our products (outdoor/climbing gear, some of it very technical), so we have provided a lot of training and oversight. In the past year we lost two of our best people, and the executive team refused to let me replace…
Dear Madeleine, I run a rapidly growing not-for-profit. I put together a great board, our fundraising efforts paid off, and I have a great team. In a recent chat, my head of accounting made a crack about needing to wait to share something with me because he wanted to catch me “in the right mood.”…
Dear Madeleine, I work on a team that has had a lot of turnover in the last couple of years. Although our company is very big, over time I have learned who to call to get things done. I am now considered our team’s “answer lady.” The situation has slowly morphed into people asking me…
Dear Madeleine, I had a big job and got a lot of manager training early in my working life. Then a series of events (I had a child with special needs, then another one, parents needing care, husband making enough to sustain the family) conspired to make me leave the workforce for about a decade.…