Dear Madeleine, I work on a great team. We do good work together, and we seem to always find a way to hit our milestones and deadlines. My problem is that our team lead seems to be inappropriately dependent on me. He is pretty much AWOL most of the time and I am the only…
Dear Madeleine, I have owned a boutique specialty consulting firm for over twenty-five years. My founding partner died a few years ago and left me her share of the business, so I am the sole owner. I am working with a broker to find the right buyer for the business. I don’t expect to get…
Dear Madeleine, I work for a giant real estate company and have been selling houses in a big metropolitan city for a long time. Over the years, I’ve been heavily recruited and this is my third company. I never wanted to be in management as I really like working with clients. I’ve had terrible managers,…
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 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.…
Dear Madeleine, I manage a small team in a big company. Here is my problem. I start my day at 7 a.m. with a meeting, and then my entire day is back-to-back meetings. Almost every meeting generates work for me to do or to delegate to someone on my team—which requires another meeting. When am…
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 work in a call center that delivers customer service for highly technical products. I have been a supervisor for about six months. I have a great manager and a great team. My problem is that I overcommit. I work much longer hours than I should. Everything I have read on the topic…
Dear Madeleine, I am a mid-level manager in a global software company. I have been working here for about ten years and I lead three teams. Right now I am working with my manager on our goals for 2024 and I can already tell that there is no way my teams are going to be…