Dear Madeleine, I am a junior partner in a small investment firm. My job is huge—there is always more to do than time to do it. Last year, the firm hired a junior analyst to work with me. I did my best, but things just didn’t work out. He worked very slowly, made lots of…
The business world is only going to keep moving faster, which is forcing leaders to become increasingly adept at managing their team’s priorities and delegating tasks. But that can be a tricky undertaking. The way leaders manage their team’s priorities and delegate runs the spectrum. On one end are leaders who don’t know what their…
Dear Madeleine, I am a fairly new manager for a well established and growing not-for-profit organization that brings arts education to underserved communities. When we have open positions, we prioritize hiring alumni of our programs. About nine months ago, I hired a promising alumnus who seemed perfect for an entry level program administration job. She…
Dear Madeleine, I was promoted to VP of sales a few months before the pandemic hit. I feel like I have been in an industrial washing machine ever since, and am just starting to come up for air. There was a lot of training at the beginning but then our entire book of business and…
Dear Madeleine, I was promoted to VP of sales a few months before the pandemic hit. I feel like I have been in an industrial washing machine ever since, and am just starting to come up for air. There was a lot of training at the beginning but then our entire book of business and…
“So many of us are dealing with changes to our work routines. It’s generating a mountain of new requests and tasks that require us to get things done using new guidelines, practices, and procedures,” says bestselling business author Dr. Vicki Halsey, VP of Applied Learning at The Ken Blanchard Companies. “Leaders need to: (1) be…
Best-selling business author Scott Blanchard says managers who are effective at goal setting with their people keep two things in mind: The big picture—why we are doing it and what matters about it? The short term—what do we need to do now to move forward toward the larger goal? Blanchard gives an example of this…
Dear Madeleine, I have a high-stress technical job serving the sales department of a professional services company. I have one direct report I am struggling with. Everything is an emotional event with him. He takes everything personally and even finds ways to get offended by positive feedback. He is always melting down and getting sick.…
Performance planning, coaching, and review are the foundation of any well-designed performance management system, but the results of a recent study suggest that leaders are falling short in meeting the expectations of their direct reports. Researchers from The Ken Blanchard Companies teamed up with Training magazine to poll 456 human resource and talent-management professionals. The purpose was…
“I don’t want to be a micromanager!” I hear that statement all the time from my coaching clients. I get it—no one wants to be known as a boss who hovers over people and tells them what to do all the time. However, what I’ve noticed with some clients who desperately do not want to…