Dear Madeleine, I am a senior leader in a highly specialized digital publishing organization and I have about 14 direct reports. Organizationally, I’m third in seniority. My plan is, by the end of 2025, to transition out of this role and into my own coaching and consulting business. I’d be working with some clients, but…
Dear Madeleine, I have been managing people for over a decade and now manage several businesses. There are constant fires that need to be put out. I spend hours on the phone trying to get to the bottom of what the problems are. Sometimes, after I have put in time, it turns that what seemed…
Today’s blog covers the promised Part Two from last week’s blog post. If you missed it and want to see the whole letter and the context, click here. Here’s the part of the letter, signed Paralyzed, that I am addressing today: “I asked my manager to tell me what she thought the most critical thing…
Dear Madeleine, I am in a high potential program at a large global company and am being considered for fast track promotion. As part of the program, everyone did a battery of assessments. I have learned all kinds of things about myself, my strengths, my preferences, how others see me, etc. It has been enlightening…
Dear Madeleine, My boss recently left the company. It was very sudden—I can’t tell if he left on his own or if he was fired. We had a good relationship, so I would have thought I would be more in the know. Anyway, my boss’s boss asked me to fill in until they find a…
Dear Madeleine, I am a ruminator. I second-guess everything I do. My wife is tired of me spending hours every night going over and over the events of the day. I work in finance and have a lot of technical expertise in my field. My organization counts on me for their reports, budgets, etc. I’m…
Perhaps, like me, you suffer from the inability to say the word no. As soon as I hear “You are so good at…” or “We really need you…,” I am captured in the web of overcommitment and the stress that often accompanies it. As I analyzed the various commitments, projects, and requests that I have…
“Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one is watching – even when doing the wrong thing is legal”. – Aldo Leopold * * * Ethical adjective Avoiding activities or organizations that do harm to people or the environment. * * * Examples of non-ethical behavior in business and leadership are all around…
It’s December – not only is it peak Christmas shopping time for some (I am completely unprepared!), it’s also when leaders are formalising their strategic planning for 2016 and beyond. Organisations are thinking about strategic change; whether this is incremental or a larger scale transformational change. If your organisation needs to make some difficult choices…
A few months back, I asked a group of leaders for a show of hands on who had experienced either oversupervision or undersupervision. Almost every hand went up. But then I asked how many had themselves oversupervised or undersupervised their direct reports. Only one or two hands shyly peeked out from the crowd.
So what’s going on? Well, leaders can sometimes be unaware of what they should and should not be doing. And this lack of awareness separates good leaders from great leaders. Great leaders know that leading is a never-ending journey that can be filled with treacherous obstacles.
So what do you need to know to become a great leader?