Dear Madeleine, There is no way to sugar coat this: I suspect one of my direct reports has taken another job. Most of my team is virtual. A few people live locally, but after Covid we never insisted that people come to the office. I got quite good at managing a hybrid team (I took…
Dear Madeleine, This isn’t so much a work question as a “my work is affecting my relationship” question. I met my husband in grad school when we were both studying to work in the same field. He got an amazing job with a good salary right out of school. I was happy for him and…
Dear Madeleine, I am a junior partner in a law firm and the expectation is that I work. A lot. Many of the partners work virtually in the summer, but I usually go into the office because it is easier for me to get things done there. My in-laws bought a house at the shore…
Dear Madeleine, I work on a great team. We do good work together, and we seem to always find a way to hit our milestones and deadlines. My problem is that our team lead seems to be inappropriately dependent on me. He is pretty much AWOL most of the time and I am the only…
Dear Madeleine, I have owned a boutique specialty consulting firm for over twenty-five years. My founding partner died a few years ago and left me her share of the business, so I am the sole owner. I am working with a broker to find the right buyer for the business. I don’t expect to get…
Dear Madeleine, I work for a giant real estate company and have been selling houses in a big metropolitan city for a long time. Over the years, I’ve been heavily recruited and this is my third company. I never wanted to be in management as I really like working with clients. I’ve had terrible managers,…
Dear Madeleine, About six months ago, I went above and beyond to help out a new colleague. He had misread a deadline and needed to scramble to get a bunch of time-sensitive work done over a long weekend. I willingly jumped in to help him, finding documents, getting permission to give him access to materials,…
Dear Madeleine, I work on a team that has had a lot of turnover in the last couple of years. Although our company is very big, over time I have learned who to call to get things done. I am now considered our team’s “answer lady.” The situation has slowly morphed into people asking me…
Dear Madeleine, I had a big job and got a lot of manager training early in my working life. Then a series of events (I had a child with special needs, then another one, parents needing care, husband making enough to sustain the family) conspired to make me leave the workforce for about a decade.…
Dear Madeleine, I manage a small team in a big company. Here is my problem. I start my day at 7 a.m. with a meeting, and then my entire day is back-to-back meetings. Almost every meeting generates work for me to do or to delegate to someone on my team—which requires another meeting. When am…