Dear Madeleine, I work for a global company that had a very flexible work-from-home policy before Covid happened. I have been managing hybrid teams for more than 20 years and have never had trouble with performance. We got a new CEO last fall, and he has a very strong belief (despite all the research that…
Dear Madeleine, I have been managing people for decades. With the advent of Covid, I put a lot of focus on getting better at managing hybrid teams. (This blog really helped me.) I have some people who come to the office and about half the group works remotely. I go in four days a week.…
Dear Madeleine, I work on a team where I am the only member who is remote. Pre-Covid we all worked together at the office, but during the shutdown I took advantage of my company’s remote-work option and moved back to my hometown to be closer to my parents who need help. Many of our meetings…
Dear Madeleine, I am at the end of my rope with all of the new software platforms my company expects me to use as part of my job. Every time I turn around, there is a new app introduced but never any training. Or, if the app itself does provide training, it takes time to…
Reading about how tired we are is fatiguing. So let’s try something different. We’re built to want to be part of something that’s meaningful. We’re eager to learn. We love wrestling with a challenge. It’s in our nature and we can’t help it. So instead of focusing on how everyone is depleted, why not appeal…
Dear Madeleine, I manage a small group of what we call WMS professionals—Website Marketing Specialists. They all work remotely, and the group has developed into an extremely effective team. I am very proud of our work; together we have found a way to really add value to sales and to the company. Taken individually, each…
Hybrid teams are nothing new. Pre-COVID, many hybrid virtual teams existed. Some team members worked from the office full time, some worked from home or from the road full time, and others did a mix of the two. So what’s so different as we look ahead to work in the future? What’s different is the…
A misnomer is floating around—the concept of return-to-work. This phrase conjures up images of coming back from a sabbatical, a leave of absence, or maternity/paternity leave. But today, return-to-work is used to describe how employees should return to the location where they did most of their work prior to the pandemic. We have to be…
Dear Madeleine, Ever since the beginning of this work-from-home situation, our entire department feels like it is on hold. The reason? Our seriously old school boss is not at all comfortable with meeting via phone or web conferencing. He was always a stickler for meeting in person, and has just kind of fallen apart. I…
“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…