B (2:23)

A long one i'll pick the pip process that my they continue the pip process that my company follows feels a bit like managing out to me and i'm struggling to find the best way to lean into the radical candor values while complying with hr directives at this stage my manager our hr director and i agree that my report is not the right fit for the role but i have to wait until formal pep conversation to express it every interaction i have my report leading up to that conversation feels disingenuous also following hr directives around resetting role expectations from a report and providing ongoing feedback and support in meeting those expectations led to high conflict between my report and me resulting in loss of trust and unpleasant work environment my report has reacted very poorly to my increased management and often challenges and push us back resulting in emotional fatigue and work inefficiency i wonder if there's a better way to manage the informal stage of the pip process or if pip is or if the pip is doing exactly what it's intended to do manage my report out sincerely frustrated oof.

A (3:28)

Very sincerely frustrated and we have recorded separate episodes on managing out on pips the connection between performance development and management we'll put all those in the show notes but our listener is sincerely frustrated in quite a pickle there's a lot going on here and kim i'd love for you to just start whatever's leaping out at you first so the first.

C (3:51)

Thing i want to say is i'm sorry to this person for being in this situation and i think that this person's manager really did not do the right thing this person's manager should have managed this person out rather than passing them on and then say manage this person out that is lousy a lousy lousy especially if this is this person's first management experience this is really that's kind of obnoxious to do to someone.

A (4:24)

Kim can i ask so like that's really interesting just tactically if are you saying that before this person's manager became the director they should have started the pip rather than sort of saying congratulations you're in this job like take it.

C (4:39)

On yeah i would never promote someone to management give them a direct report and then say fire them especially if i had been managing that person previously this person is passing on a really hard job to a first time manager and that doesn't feel right to me.

A (4:57)

Is it right for that person two layers above to manage the pip like they should even if they had hired this new person and said because you're new here i'm going to manage this process is that what you're recommending no.

C (5:10)

What i would say is let's say i have an employee bob who i think should be managed out and then i promote james over bob like that's the wrong thing to do i can promote james but not give james bob to manage out i would manage bob out myself i would that's what i.

A (5:31)

Get so even though they're like another layer below you you still would have owned it jason sounds no i just.

C (5:36)

Wouldn'T have given them a direct report that i knew should be fired in.

B (5:39)

The first place correct you're you're amy assuming that it has to be the i don't know that you're assuming this but the way you're asking the question assumes that all the direct reports had to automatically report to this person gotcha but that's that's not usually the case right i i can decide who the team is that this person is going to manage that i'm promoting into management i just didn't have to put this person on that team and kim it's funny that you you say that because i i have been the manager in this particular situation and i did exactly what you described which is i basically said i'm going to continue to manage this person until either things turn around or i fire them essentially yeah yeah.

C (6:24)

But anyway that's not the situation that's what should have happened that's not what life is never ideal so let's deal with the situation this person is in and answer their question but i just want to give them a little bit of sympathy for being a situation they shouldn't be in in the first place.

A (6:40)

Well and i want to and we'll get into what the situation they're in but i wonder if there is a time for a radically candid conversation between our letter writer and their boss for having put them in this situation well.

C (6:54)

Let'S talk about that later okay it's a good question i don't think i would lead with that frankly given that the boss did that they got boss clearly thought it was fine and there there may be more to the story that i don't know there there there may be a good reason for the boss having done that so go ahead.

B (7:15)

Jason yeah i was just going to say it seems like the central theme of the question is is am i being manipulative by following through with this process but that's like the thesis the core the core tenet of the of the question my there's something else which is the results of going through the informal pip were not great so like that was at the end they basically said like this person got really upset when we started to it sounds like really sort of focus in on their performance and give them a lot of feedback about how they were not meeting expectations like unsurprisingly that led to a tense relationship between this new manager and.

C (8:04)

Their new director report yes yeah and so this person is not doing any the fact that the situation is tense is unsurprising in fact it's inevitable that the situation is tense it doesn't mean that this that the the person who wrote to us is doing anything wrong and what i would say sort of to answer the core question which is is this a disingenuous thing i would answer no i think what this person needs to do is to be crystal clear about what's wrong and where the pip is headed so that this person can decide do i want to resign or do i want to be fired i mean that's basically the choice that the employee has at this point because they didn't meet the pip the only thing that would be disingenuous is if the this person's direct report does begin to meet the terms of the pip and they fire them anyway like that's not fair that's managing out in a way that's unfair but if if you tell a person what the expectations are the person doesn't meet the expectations and then you formalize it with a with a writ with a with a more formal pip and they're still not meeting expectations the job is just to tell them that in every single one on one which is going to be unpleasant it's going to be unpleasant for the employee it's going to be unpleasant for the manager there is nothing pleasant about this but this is where kind is clear.

A (9:45)

And just to be really clear and obviously we're not exactly in this situation but kim what's leaping out for me is the writer shared the stage that they're in quote my manager our hr director and i agree that my report is not right for the role but i have to wait until the formal pip conversation to express it and they're saying it feels disingenuous because every interaction they have leading up to that conversation feels disingenuous yes but it's not clear they can be clear no i.

C (10:20)

Think that they can be clear they can say in every single meeting you're not meeting expectations that's just no fun you know you're not meeting the pip i think that's basically the conversation that they have to have over and over again i think if i read between the lines is what this person is saying is can't we just fire them already it doesn't seem very nice to go through the performance improvement plan but the law in many in many instances demands that you formalize that you give a person to an opportunity to fix the problem and even if the law doesn't demand it i think fairness demands it because if you don't have a formal performance improvement plan what happens is that some managers think they've been clear but they haven't been clear and then the employee is surprised when they get fired so the idea of our performance improvement plan is to prevent that from.

B (11:19)

Happening yeah to provide a formal check on the potential lack of clarity that an employee has about how they're doing as compared to what's expected of them i think there's another thing here which is sometimes rigidly following a process that is intended to follow the law can actually create a situation that is open to legal scrutiny so like i have seen things go wrong in pips that are too rigidly followed where the person starts to feel bullied or harassed because they feel like they're constantly being told that they're doing something wrong and there's all this and so i just want to empathize for a moment there's an intuition that this manager has which is like if we really had a brass tax conversation with this person and said you know we don't we don't think this is this is going well to your to your point kim not that you can't possibly improve but we don't think this is going well they've already imagined that they're going to pay this person for the rest of the pip process like what if they could just offer them to say yeah another alternative here is for us we'll pay you through the end of the pip but we're we'll reduce your responsibilities to essentially like off you know turning over the keys to somebody else to give you time to look for another job if you want if you want to continue to try to meet expectations we will work earnestly with you in order to.

C (12:54)

Do that and most pips give the person that option you could quit now and you'll be paid out throughout the period of the pip or you could keep trying and then you'll get two weeks severance or something like that correct.

B (13:09)

But it doesn't sound like that's on the table it seems like this person would have given the amount of detail that they gave it seems like they would have mentioned it and i just wanted to call that out because i do think that if that's not an option then i better understand why it feels a bit like damocles sword is hanging over yeah like hanging over their collective heads and why it feels like there's no way to have sort of a real conversation about it i i i guess i'll say like i one hundred agree with you kim that like this is going to be tense there's no way for this to be like good vibes for everybody involved in this situation and that stinks like that the manager is in this position and i i actually think that that discomfort is like it is appropriate in a situation like this because like some set of failures has led to a situation where like a person is very likely to lose their job i don't think that should feel easy breezy for everybody yeah no it shouldn't involved so i think that but accepting that this is going to be tense and maybe even giving voice to that to say you know because it sounds like they have quite a short relationship to say i know we haven't been working together very long and i know this is a difficult situation and my goal is not to to paper over the difficult work and emotions that we're going to experience going through this and just know that you know i'm here like i'm open to understanding when you're frustrated or upset by the process that might provide some relief.

C (14:51)

Yeah it might not yeah no i think it i think it probably will i mean sometimes caring personally is about acknowledging the negative emotions that are in the room and not pretending that they're otherwise i think that another thing this person could do to sort of move up on the care personally dimension in this very difficult situation is to to try to imagine a job that this person would be very good at like this person is their employee is probably not terrible at everything that you know they're not a bad person they're not a bad employee they're just bad at this point particular job and so figuring thinking about what kind of job would this person excel at and and noticing the traits that are really helpful to to that that you really admire in the person say look you're really good at x but that's not what is required in this role there's another job where you know where where this talent that you have would be really welcome like for example i had an employee who was really detail oriented and very into process but we were at a startup and there was nobody wanted any process we didn't need any process and and as i was in the process of telling him a quick process a non process process of of explaining to him why this wasn't working out i acknowledge like you have some some really wonderful skills and the problem is that we don't need those skills right now those skills are actually hurting you right now but there are plenty of places where they would be a tremendous asset but here they're a liability yeah i.

A (16:52)

Think that's a really helpful frame i mean just going back to the emotion acknowledging that's extra sort of emotional effort for our letter writer but it might have some real value in resetting the relationship i wanted to also acknowledge i want to get as clear as we can on this idea of kind of informal pip conversation and formal pip conversation because it felt to me that part of the feeling of disingenuous was was a matter of where they were in the stage and they had to actually follow this process of informal versus formal and jason i'm curious if you can just share for our listeners like as frustrating as that might be for our letter writer what is the value of that like why why is that actually a beneficial thing kind of at a.

B (17:42)

High level without understanding exactly what the process looks like i'm going to make a couple of guesses here but one one benefit of the informal pip process is one you the let's imagine this was there was no manager switch this is just like the person had been reporting this person for a long time the informal pip process requires consent from other people to say we have evaluated your evaluation of this person we actually agree that they are not meeting expectations so like the person doesn't just start winging it and say like just because like kim and i don't get along so i'm going to put kim on an informal pip process so that's that's one advantage of the informal pip process is it requires you to like reach out to people and say i need i need to get some explicit feedback from you about my assessment of this person the second thing that it does is it put it makes you accountable to your boss and your hr manager to give this person very clear feedback about where they're not meeting expectations and for you to document that at least to some degree so that your effort can be evaluated your effort to communicate the problem can can be evaluated and to do all of that without creating explicit consequences without saying like at the end of this something is going to happen to this person's job like the that informal process i think can be really important because the reason why hips feel so bad is like most people perform worse under scrutiny when they know they're being evaluated that they start to i mean i experience this all the time you know i can probably type one hundred ten words a minute when i'm not typing in a zoom meeting you put my screen up and i start typing in a zoom meeting and it's like i'm back to mavis beacon like seventh grade that was a i don't know that reference that i'm going along with it there's there is a program to teach people to type called mavis beacon teaches typing i was like.

A (19:46)

I remember like amelia bedelia drawing the curtains or is that a different was.

B (19:51)

It a real thing slightly different but same same kind of vein but but like that so like i actually think there's that there there's a bunch of value in that informal pip process both to make sure that the manager is doing their job and to hold them accountable to doing their job and to create an opportunity for a person to respond to performance issues without a threat of some sort of consequence hanging over their head so i don't think it's the hard part is when you get to the end of that process and you're like this has not gone well we have we've seen no improvement it's hard to hold out hope that formalizing it and saying hey we're putting you on notice like this is now an official thing hr is involved we either need to see some performance improvement or you're going to be terminated essentially at the end of this process and as kim said in some places the law literally requires that people have that clear of an opportunity to address their performance but it feels really bad to have gone through the first part and all i can say the only thing i can offer that might help a little bit is the acknowledgement that for the person on the receiving end of the informal process there is some benefit to not having that consequence at the end it actually increases slightly increases the likelihood that they would be able to respond.

C (21:15)

Positively to the feedback i think that as a manager one of the reasons why people i mean everybody hates pipeline let's just put that on the table and i think a pip is really i think it's a good process and the reason is that that is high.

A (21:33)

Praise from someone who's not such a.

C (21:35)

Fan of process yeah yes i'm not a fan of process and at a startup i wouldn't do a pip but at a big company i would i would put pips in place and the reason is that as we have said many times on this podcast the biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has happened and so often what will happen is a manager will be saying something giving some feedback to a direct report the direct report won't have heard it and usually the manager then has decided okay i need to i need to fire this person and what these two the informal and formal processes do is they put some checks and balances on this on the on this situation which is always good if you have power it's good to have checks and balances on your power and so the informal one is a way of making sure that other people agree with your assessment and it should help you be more clear however no matter how clear you are there are still going to be some people who won't have heard it and that's why not only do you say it you start writing it down and documenting so that so so that it it is indubitably clear to this to this direct report and sometimes that feels like a legal cya thing but but and sometimes it is i you know i want to acknowledge that but i think there's really good there are good reasons for this so.

A (23:08)

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B (24:30)

Kind.

A (24:31)

Of building on that kim i wonder if you have specific tips on what our listener could actually say the point where they say my report has reacted very poorly to my increased management and often challenges and pushes back like phrases that they could say to kind of demonstrate why they're saying what they're saying like obviously it's an uncomfortable thing but what did you find worked as well as it could have in a difficult situation of trying to build that rapport.

C (25:02)

With the person there was one time when i was firing someone and because there was a pattern of problems and this had all been documented and this person was extremely defensive and so every time i would give an example i couldn't even get to the second example because they would go so far down the rabbit hole on why that wasn't really a problem and finally i said you know timeout i want you to notice the same pattern that i am noticing i'm going to give you five examples of this problem and i do not want to be interrupted until i get to the fifth i promise you at the end i will give you an opportun to spend as much time on each one as you want but i want you to notice the same pattern i'm noticing and by the time i got to the fifth this part that like this person understood that it was time to go and and quit arguing so sometimes go i mean and this is part of the value of of writing it all down in the performance improvement plan too but but just saying to the person look i promise i'm going to listen but i want you to understand the same thing i'm understanding and making it clear i think also to this person that they cannot argue their way out of this situation that they could perform their way out of this situation but they cannot argue their way out of this situation jason.

B (26:37)

Any ads that's so helpful i'm feeling a lot of empathy for the person in this situation especially if they're relatively new to management like all the things that kim and i have been describing these are the things that we did after we made all the mistakes like there's just i just i feel this like well up of emotion for this person because it's so hard like and and you do feel caught between like as a manager especially if you haven't been through this process before you've never seen it done particularly well you do sort of feel like you're following orders without necessarily fully understanding why you're being asked to do it so that's why i'm hopeful that the explanation of like why this is useful might be helpful to this person is to say understand like why what you're being asked to do might actually be helpful but like some of it is is really subtle in like how you approach these individual conversations with with this person you haven't had a long time to develop a great relationship or even any relationship with this person before you're sort of thrown into this and i think can be it can feel like you're walking around in a minefield essentially like that that's i'm guessing what his day to day feels like anytime there's an interaction or their day to day looks like anytime there's an interaction with this person on their calendar right which is like i better get my dancing shoes on because i'm going to be tip tiptoeing through the tulips here yeah i think i.

C (28:18)

Think here are some maybe helpful hints or maybe not helpful you all can tell me if you think they're helpful or not for going into the one on ones with this direct report because it's you got to feel you got to wake up on the days when you have a one on one with a pit in your stomach i have.

A (28:34)

A pit for the pip already yes.

C (28:36)

Yeah so i think what one thing that has helped me in this situation is for me before i go in to think of two things first of all to think of a job that i sucked at i know i don't suck but i did suck at that job because i think that one of the mistakes that one can make in this situation is to decide you feel bad at least here's here's what has happened to me mentally i feel terrible that i have to fire this person and in order to sort of overcome these feelings of guilt and these awful feelings that i have i decide that i have to fire this person because they're a worthless human being and that is not the case that is not why you are firing this person so i think managing your own feelings of guilt and discomfort with the situation and reminding yourself this person is going to be great at some job this person is a wonderful human being as all human beings are but this is not the right job for this person and part of part of your job as a manager is to be crystal clear with people when they're in the wrong job so that they can go find the right job it's not an act of kindness to allow a person to continue to do a job that they're not good at so so remind yourself that it's not it's not mean and that kind is clear as you go in so that's number one number two and this was suggested to me by a leader who i really admire he said when he has to fire someone before he goes in to have the conversation or when he's in the process of of conducting a pip before he walks into the room he imagines the face of someone he loves and that puts him in this different kind of mindset when he goes into the room to remind himself this is a person this is a human being who i need to treat this human being with respect even though this is a really.

A (30:39)

Hard situation i think those are great tips this might be a little devil's advocate kim but on the first one around especially thinking about things this person could be good at or other roles i'm just aware even from my own experience that on the disingenuous side if this person can't explicitly say because they're still in the informal period they can't say you're out of a job what they can say is you know you're not meeting expectations you're not meeting expectations i wonder if it may land disingenuous or what aren't you telling me if you're saying but amy what would you really like to be doing instead or what's something else like is there how can that that inquiry be from a place of actually trying to be helpful rather than it coming from well because i can't tell you you're going to be fired i'm now yeah this other line of inquiry well i didn't say.

C (31:34)

Ask the person what else that think about skills that they have and point out those skills like you can still give praise you can say you know i noticed in that meeting that that that you told a really funny joke and you're funny and i love that about you unfortunately it doesn't always you know humor was not the right thing in that in that kind of meeting or something like that like let the person know you don't want to give person praise thinking oh i do more of that and i'll keep this job but you can still point out to the person that they have these other skills that you do notice and that you do appreciate and that are worthwhile they're just not relevant to this job.

B (32:18)

Really helpful this person could be exactly right about everything that they've said or there's the potential that there's there's some misunderstanding so one of the things that i'm leaving with like meta not just in one on ones i think an interesting question to go back to the hr person and their boss with is what can like what am i being restricted from saying in these conversations and what am i allowed to say because here's what i'd like to say i would like to say the following things to this person because i think it's actually going to help us resolve this situation faster and with less animosity yeah because that's what they want right they they want to resolve the situation as smoothly as possible and so by offering them a pathway so i think that might be a worthwhile conversation is just to lay on the table like the thing that's in their head because maybe they think they're being prohibited from saying it but they might be wrong like maybe they go to their manager and the hr person they say oh actually it's okay for you for you to say that we're not saying don't say that yeah but at least then they.

C (33:27)

Would know yeah another thing this person could do is they could ask either their manager or hr to go into these meetings with them sometimes it's useful to have two people and to give them feedback i will say there was one time when i had someone who was working for me who was a first time manager and they had to fire someone on their team and i didn't go to the meeting with them because i thought ah you know i don't want to undermine them i don't you know i don't want to micromanage and this person just made a hash of it and and i regret i felt so bad later i was like i did not set this person up for success i should have gone to the meeting with them and if things started going sideways i could grab the steering wheel you know so so i think that when it comes time to have the final conversation if person who wrote in has never fired anyone it's perfectly reasonable to ask your boss or hr to go in to that conversation with you and to give you feedback afterwards about how it went and also sort of i'm teaching my children to drive right now so to grab and occasionally one has to grab the steering wheel and it's good you know i wouldn't let them drive alone nor would it be legal to but but i think for the same reason might be good to have someone else in the room with them when they when they have to have the last conversation i.

B (34:58)

Feel like we've had lots of we've shared lots of ideas for ways that this person could think about this potential things that they could try i wonder if we want to wrap wrap up with a couple of tips i think.

A (35:13)

Tips sound great and then after the tips i'd love to get one final recommendation for what and when the letter writer can say to their boss about having been put in this position at the top so i'm giving you a little time to noodle on that as we head into our radical candor checklist which are tips so that you can start putting radical candor into practice tip.

B (35:40)

Number one while pips can feel like they're just leading to termination they can also offer a real opportunity for growth if approached with radical candor as you move into the sort of more formal stage of the process keep the compassionate and clear communication going make sure your report knows that the pips goal is not just about meeting current role expectations but also about them finding a place where they can really shine if you're allowed to and even if that means eventually transitioning out of the team i think finding a way to communicate that this is might be the end of this role but not a judgment about them as a person is really important if you stay open and sincere you can help your report see the bigger picture and make better choices for their.

A (36:27)

Career tip number two if you feel like the pip is being used primarily to manage someone out rather than allowing them an opportunity to improve it may be worth discussing with your hr representative and your manager if there are alternative roles or paths for your report that align better with their strengths and using some of these conversations as an opportunity to highlight your direct reports strengths if you're not clear on what you can and can't say you certainly can check in with your hr team member as.

C (37:03)

Well as your manager tip number three don't lead the person on acknowledge the gap in performance and acknowledge the fact that it may not be fixable help them to take ownership of their next steps try framing it in the following kind of ways i want to be honest with you we've been working on these performance expectations for a while and i know this process has been frustrating for us both at this point it's clear that the role isn't aligning with your strengths and i want to support you in figuring out what's next if your hr person says don't say that i want to be clear that this is not headed in the right direction you could also say you could also ask this person you know what kind of work makes you feel energized or you could point out when you notice that they've been doing work that makes them feel energized point it out and say this you were really good at this unfortunately that's not the job but you are good at this thing you could you could ask the person where do you think your skills are best applied you can ask the person how can i help you explore other opportunities that might be a better fit although again ask hr before you ask that.

A (38:17)

Question all right and before we close jason or kim any tips on what should our letter writer say to their.

C (38:25)

Manager so don't say kim scott said you're a terrible manager that's my first bit of advice because again i do have compassion for this manager i've made this mistake before i think what i would do is say why did you decide to have me manage this pip instead of instead of managing it instead of firing the person before i became a manager like i felt you could say if you felt this way i felt like i was a little bit thrown into the deep end of management in my very first management role yeah.

B (39:03)

I think that that the point of trying to understand the like why the situation is the way it is is is really valuable and i think it seems to me that it would be pretty useful at some point to do some kind of postmortem on this whole process and say like what have we learned from this process that we can take forward to avoid making mistakes or to repeat some of the things that.

A (39:37)

Worked out well all right well thank you both and for more tips check out our youtube channel where you can not only listen to this podcast but also watch dozens of other radical candor videos you can get this podcast early and ad free when you join our community at radicalcander dot com community and the show notes for this episode are at radicalcander dot com podcast as we like to say praise in public criticize in private so if you like what you hear we hope you do please do follow rate and review us wherever you listen to your podcast it really does help and we also appreciate getting your criticism please email that to podcastadicalcandor dot com as well as challenges and questions thank you again for our listener writing in and we are with you and hoping for the best possible outcome.

C (40:32)

Bye for now take care everybody the.

A (40:36)

Radical candor podcast is based on the book radical be a kick ass boss without losing youg humanity by kim senior scott episodes are written and produced by brandy neal with script editing by me amy sandler the show features radical candor co founders kim scott and jason rosoff and is hosted by me still amy sandler nick ki is our audio engineer the radical candor podcast theme music was composed by cliff goldmacher follow us on linkedin radical candor the company and visit us at radicalcandor dot com.