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Problems with Culture After A Merger? Ask Madeleine
Dear Madeleine, I am a senior director at a big pharma company. Our company has grown quickly through mergers and acquisitions—four in the last four years, in fact. I’ve noticed a big problem with...
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Four Ways to Reduce Dysfunction During Change
I’m working with an organization that, like many, is going through change. During coaching sessions I’ve become aware of some dysfunctional patterns of behavior that can prevent both leaders and...
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What My Girl Scouts Taught Me on a Weekend Adventure Day
I’m a Girl Scout leader. They’re called Brownies here in the UK, and the girls are between seven and ten years old. I help run the activities the girls take part in. Last weekend, our Brownies went on...
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Dance of the Blind Reflex – Ends and Middles
In my last post I shared the dysfunctional relationship pattern between leaders and direct reports as part of what author Barry Oshry describes as “Dance of the Blind Reflex” in his book Seeing...
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Cat Leaders vs. Dog Leaders
I woke up this morning to a face full of licking and paws on my chest. Now, Chico isn’t a small dog—he’s a bull terrier who was described as “one big muscle” by a guy on his way to work today. So his...
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Henry Cloud on The Power of the Other
Chad Gordon interviews Dr. Henry Cloud, author of the new book, The Power of the Other: The startling effect other people have on you, from the boardroom to the bedroom and beyond—and what to do about...
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3 Things a Competitive Video Game Taught Me about Virtual Teams
As strange as it may seem, a virtual workplace team can learn a lot from online competitive video games. For both, team members have set roles, clear and shared goals, and a designated action plan to...
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What Does Your Dream Team Look Like?
I recently watched a UK talk show where Tom Hanks and Ron Howard were guests. Howard, director of many of Hanks’s most successful films, was asked what he liked about working with Hanks. His response...
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Unfairly Criticized at Performance Review? Ask Madeleine
Dear Madeleine, I lead large teams in the field and partner with a core team at the headquarters of my organization. My boss is at HQ and largely ignores me because all of my projects come in on time...
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Patrick Lencioni on The Ideal Team Player
In this episode of the Blanchard LeaderChat podcast Chad Gordon interviews Patrick Lencioni, author of The Ideal Team Player as well as nine other books on teams and motivation—which have sold nearly...
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How to Celebrate with Your Virtual Team—12 fun ideas!
This is a great time of year to celebrate holidays around the world, commemorate team accomplishments, or just take time to build relationships for the year ahead. When people work together face to...
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Whose Customer Is It, Anyway? 3 Ways to Balance Individual and Organizational...
Have you ever had employees in your organization argue over customers? I was recently working with a client in Toronto where one of the company’s salespeople was emphatic that a certain customer...
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Six Steps to SPRING Ahead in Your Work Relationships
I just got back from teaching a class on our Situational Team Leadership content. Before class started, people were very quiet, even wary, about talking with one another. Some even passed the time by...
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Individual vs. Group Effort: 3 Leadership Strategies for Maximizing Both
Have you ever had to choose between performing a task alone or with others? If you have, you’ve probably been torn thinking: –If I do it alone, I can make decisions quicker. I don’t have to sort...
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4 Reasons You Should Stop Running Your Own Virtual Meetings
If you really want to pay better attention to what is going on in your team, stop running your own virtual meetings. It’s almost impossible to run a meeting, manage an agenda, present ideas, and also...
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Promoting and Selling Your Ideas — 3 Steps to Success
Ever get a good idea? It starts out as a feeling that you might have a solution to a problem. A few days later you’re thinking Hey, I’ve got something here. This could really help. And the cost is well...
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Leaders: Got Questions? Ask Your People!
Ken Blanchard tells a story about his early days as a consultant. One day he was brought in to help address a turnover problem at a manufacturing plant in the Southeastern United States. In spite of...
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Coaching Tuesday: Could You Use an Olympic Coach at Work?
In her online post In Olympics of Life, We All Could Use a Coach, Mary Schmich delineates the myriad ways a coach makes a difference. She states: “Most of us are slipping and sliding on the bumpy ice...
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The Curse of Unspoken Expectations – 3 Ways to Improve Teamwork and...
Unspoken expectations are a curse upon relationships. It’s a surefire way to guarantee you will have conflict and discord that leads to poor teamwork and collaboration in the workplace. Some time ago I...
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Virtual Team Too Big? 3 Warning Signs
Because of the diversity of ideas and perspectives, virtual teams are the ideal forum to gather best practices and implement changes across geographical and organizational boundaries. Unfortunately,...
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Do These 7 Things and People Will Love Working with You
“It all depends on who you’re working with.” That was the feedback from team members to a recent survey about the state of collaboration within our department. The feedback was consistent that...
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Help! I Inherited My Team: Ask Madeleine
Dear Madeleine, I am at my wits’ end. I worked hard in college and graduate school and have what some people might call a “Type A” personality. I take on a lot, I work really hard and I complete my...
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Customer Service Has To Be Everyone’s Business
Any single person in your company can make a positive or negative impression on a customer. And today, thanks to social media, that one impression can be multiplied, exponentially, within hours. “Think...
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Need More Time? How Recurring One-on-One Meetings Can Help
This Coaching Tuesday guest post is from Blanchard network coach Antonio Estrada. I recently coached an ambitious sales person with ten direct reports after he attended a three-day Managing People...
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Leaders—Feel Like You’re Rowing Alone? Alignment Might Be the Problem
As a leader, have you ever felt as if you were rowing upstream alone while your team watched from the bank, wondering what you were doing? Have you ever felt as if you were the only one carrying a...
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Engineers, Programmers, Scientists: Start Here to Lead a Technical Project Team
Can’t we just get to work? Why do we have to spend time getting all touchy-feely about how we will work together? If you lead or assist virtual teams of engineers, programmers, scientists, or technical...
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6 Steps to Foster Trust, Community, and an Optimistic Workplace
We are in desperate need for a new model of leadership in organizations. The type of leadership we’ve seen the last several decades has produced record low levels of trust and engagement in the...
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12 Ways to Be the One Everyone Wants on Their Virtual Team
One of the most powerful aspects of telecommuting or working virtually is that, whether you are an individual contributor or a leader, you have more choice about how you show up to your colleagues....
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Team Member Who Is a Manipulator? Ask Madeleine
Dear Madeleine, I am a manager with a team member who is a manipulator. He uses people to get what he wants, especially if he knows his idea is unacceptable or not within the process. And he finds ways...
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New Managers: Are You Having Trouble Letting Go of Old Habits?
Most leaders began their careers as high functioning individual contributors. They had their sphere of responsibilities and took pride in their ability to accomplish tasks. They were self-starters...
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Jealous Co-Worker? Ask Madeleine
Dear Madeleine, I am a young, new manager at a large health food grocery. I love the company, I love the job, and I am really learning a lot about being a new manager. Here is my problem: when I...
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Coaching and Character: A Double Benefit
I’ve always appreciated this quote from famed author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.: “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” What good is building...
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Want People to Try Harder on Work Teams? Focus On These 3 Perceptions
In a new article for Training magazine, Jim Diehl and I share the results of a 1,300-person study of teams in today’s work environment. The survey results reveal there’s much work to be done: only 27...
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Trying to Establish Relationships at a New Job? Ask Madeleine
Hi Madeleine, I just started a new position with an organization that is pretty young in the association world. I accepted the job because everyone gets along really well and works as a team to...
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Leadership as a Partnership
Responsibility for leadership shouldn’t fall on only the person with position power. Leadership needs to be more of a partnership, according to Susan Fowler, co-creator of the newly redesigned Self...
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Management as a Shared Responsibility?
Leadership needs to be more of a partnership. And the responsibility for leadership has to rest with more than just the leader says Susan Fowler, co-creator of The Ken Blanchard Companies newly...
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Boss Playing Mind Games? Ask Madeleine
Dear Madeleine, I am a sales leader in charge of half of the US and I have a counterpart who runs the other half. We have a good relationship. We support each other and share ideas and information. I...
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Coworker Is Jealous of You? Ask Madeleine
Dear Madeleine, I spent a decade of my career at a very sexy, high profile tech company and rose to a senior position. I worked 24/7 and my commute was a horror show. When my kids were little, my...
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To collaborate, or not to collaborate: that is the question…
If you are a millennial or manage millenials you probably perceive collaboration as a key to success. Managers who believe in top-down leadership are likely to see the negative impact their style has...
View ArticleThe 3 Habits of Highly Effective Millennials
We’re doing something a little different this week. Instead of a written post, Gus Jaramillo and I collaborated on a video post as part of the Leadership Quote vlog series. Subscribe for future videos!
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Top Talent: Your Organisation's Knowledge Capital
Approaching the topic of Knowledge Management is very daunting. Many may say it is nothing more than managing information; others have created numerous academic journals and books on the subject. I am...
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Top 3 Reasons Why Being a Great Leader Isn’t Easy
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...
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Not Sure Where to Start in a New Senior Role? Ask Madeleine
Dear Madeleine, About three months ago, I was promoted to COO in my organization. I wasn’t expecting it—a lot of changes happened at once. A large group of people were fired and the next thing I knew...
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New to the Team and They Want You Out? Ask Madeleine
Dear Madeleine, I am about four months into a new job as a senior executive in a large global infrastructure company. I report directly to the EVP of Operations, who is the person who brought me into...
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Leading Without Authority with Keith Ferrazzi
With his first two books, Never Eat Alone and Who’s got Your Back, Keith Ferrazzi taught us the importance of building collaborative relationships. In his latest book, Leading Without Authority,...
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Creating More Community in 2022
COVID-19 has been a major disruptor, forcing countless organizations to innovate and make a rapid shift to the virtual world. In some ways, this has been a good thing. Many businesses—including...
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Team Member Being Taken Advantage Of? Ask Madeleine
Dear Madeleine, I recently joined the executive team of my organization as an interim VP. I am pretty sure I will end up with this role because I have been getting great feedback and no one has the...
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Struggling with a Matrix Environment? Ask Madeleine
Dear Madeleine, I work in a company that has recently gone to a matrix environment. It is kind of a disaster because no one seems to know what that means. Trying to get anyone to make a decision so I...
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