Here's a controversial opinion.


As a leader I'm not a fan of using PIPs. "Performance Improvement Plans".

You might have another name for it where you hail from. But, I'm talking about a "write up" essentially.

"But Josh! If you're not using PIPs you're making a mistake. PIPs are a very effective tool at correcting behaviors, I used one at my corporate job for years and they absolutely work!"

Listen, I'm totally open to debating anyone's strong feelings on this, but I disagree with the statement above and I'll tell you why.

For every PIP that "works" I'll show you the other 99 where it utterly fails.

Just because something worked a handful of times, it doesn't mean it's the most effective way at dealing with performance or behavioral issues.

I'm also not coming from a position of ignorance. Between my civilian SVP Sales role and my 13+ years in the military I've led and been responsible for hundreds of people in my career.

They never really work. For several reasons:

1) Leaders lean on them as a crutch. Instead of having the hard and difficult conversations early they let things slide until they get so bad that they now must resort to the PIP.

And in a leaders mind, they've been dealing with the frustration or disappointment for months. Maybe you've even shared your frustration with your boss or colleagues. So you know, others know, but does the actual employee know they're underperforming? More often than not the answer is no. Which leads to the 2nd reason:

2) There's too much shame involved. When you write up your performance plan and you hand it to the person (who almost never sees it coming) it's like the equivalent of slapping someone in the face.

And I'm talking about the physical/or digital act of writing it down on your HR compliant form. It's now become more than a verbal discussion, it's now become "Permanent Record".

It doesn't matter how well you write it or even deliver it, the person on the receiving end will immediately go into a bitter, angry, or even resentful state.


Understand that I'm not talking about being "soft" or being a "pushover", in fact quite the opposite.

I'm saying that in order to get real authentic trust you need to be communicating early and often with your employees about ways they can improve, giving them help and creating a plan.

And doing it VERBALLY in person.

Not via email, or slack, or teams ... in person (zoom at the very least).

Having to deliver a difficult or tough message to employee does suck, I don't know any good leaders that enjoy doing it. But if you do it correctly it really does make an impact.

The longer you wait the harder it becomes. Your employees would rather know early too, so they have time to fix it.

#leadership #leadershipdevelopment #leadershiptips #leadertraining

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