Madeleine Homan Blanchard

Dear Madeleine, I am the executive director of a well established not-for-profit organization. I am passionate about our mission, and I know we do great things for our community. My problem is...

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...

Dear Madeleine, I am a regional sales director for a company that installs gutters for houses. I have spent endless time training my people to map out exactly what is needed for each house. We...

Dear Madeleine, I am the operations manager for a large veterinary hospital. It is a fast-moving, extremely busy environment, especially our 24/7 ER. I essentially manage all personnel because the...

Dear Madeleine, I am an EVP for a major insurance company where I have been leading a large team for five years. I was just getting the hang of things when COVID hit, and since then it has been a...

Dear Madeleine, I am a senior executive at a fast-growing regional bank. One of our employees (I’ll call her Mae), who doesn’t report to me but on whom I rely on for several big deliverables on a...

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...

Dear Madeleine, I recently had a situation that I now see I handled very badly with one of my second-line reports in India. Sandeep (name changed for confidentiality) had gone completely AWOL....

Dear Madeleine, I am a smart woman with an impeccable work ethic. I get more done in less time that just about anyone I know. The “Exceeds Expectations” box is checked on nearly every dimension of...

Dear Madeleine, I am the director of HR who was hired by an early start-up to rebuild the talent team. In the past four months, I have been creating a new team of seven and working to get them up...

Dear Madeleine, I run a small not for profit.  We are past the startup phase and we were hitting a stride, but then we had some big setbacks before our big summer season and all my people are...

Dear Madeleine, I got promoted about six months ago. My new boss, who used to be my old boss’s boss, is just not competent. When I try to clarify priorities with her, she changes her mind so many...

Dear Madeleine, I work for a scrappy startup that offers a system for weight loss and coaching. It’s for folks who need extra help losing and maintaining their weight and who want a healthier...

Dear Madeleine, I manage a team of project and program managers responsible for keeping software implementations on track for a global company. I have five regional directors, each of whom manage...

Dear Madeleine, I am sixty years old and really love my work. I have had a long and varied career and had hoped to get another decade in before retiring. The institution I worked for closed down...

Dear Madeleine, Before COVID, I led a high performing, intact team. There are twelve of us and we all used to work in one office. I hired three new people just as the stay-at-home order was...

Dear Madeleine, I am a director-level leader in a national insurance organization. The culture here is that things get done slowly, and only when everyone agrees with the change. I have been...

Dear Madeleine, I run a compliance and risk group for a large regional credit union. We have a new CEO—I’ll call him “K.” K was our organization’s CFO for several years before he was named CEO, so...

Dear Madeleine, I am an EVP of sales in an organization that is growing insanely fast. I have a brand new Chief Sales Officer and my regional counterpart just quit—so I have gone from four direct...