In this episode of the Future of Team Podcast, hosts James Giroux and Dee Teal discuss the intricacies of Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs). They delve into the purpose and structure of PIPs, emphasizing their role as tools for improving behavior and performance rather than as steps towards termination. They also share personal experiences and strategies for both managers and employees on how to navigate these plans effectively. Key points include the importance of a structured feedback process, setting clear and achievable objectives, regular check-ins, and the emotional aspects of implementing and receiving a PIP. This episode provides valuable insights for anyone involved in team management and development.
Transcript
James Giroux: Hello everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Future of Team Podcast. My name is James Giroux and I am joined by my co-host, Dee Teal, all the way from Melbourne, Australia, Melbourne,
Dee Teal: Australia. I love how you say Melbourne the right way. It’s not Melbourne. It’s not Melbourne, it’s Melbourne. Melbourne, get on the bin.
James Giroux: and it is winter there and or coming up to winter just on the cusp of winter and it’s just on the cusp of summer here. My kids, friend across the street from us, they’ve officially opened their pool, I’m not sure, I can’t remember how it works in. Melbourne, ’cause I lived there for three years, but when I was there, I think our friends, like the, like our kids’ friends had a pool and they kept it open all year round, like they had the heater and they just whoa. Nice. But here, because we get below freezing, for four to six months of the year, we actually have to go through this whole process of draining our pools and, because pipes freeze and Yeah, we get up all that. So Nice. Anyway, it’s all the work’s been done and they can all play and frolic and do what they do, but I love that.
That’s awesome. this week or this episode I should say, we are talking about performance improvement. And for me, Have, I have some feels anytime I hear that, from past experiences. But I think, like the main idea here, and I really the way this is written, is when you need to take a more direct approach to changing behavior.
This is not about firing somebody. This is not about, getting back at somebody. It is when your other methods of feedback, of coaching, of mentoring haven’t been able to address the specific issues that have come up. And now you need to take it to quote unquote
Dee Teal: the next level.
I think you raised an a point, important point there, and I think even before any of this starts, it’s that sense of a PIP kind of, I just, I heard you say Wendy, other areas of change making that change or feedback. This is something that is part of a continuous improvement program, presumably, or a high performing culture in your company.
And so I even before we start talking about it, I’m like, you have to make sure those things are in place first, right? if you are in a company that’s not sitting there, taking those things seriously and have embedding those things already, getting to this point, feels like a big leap.
Anyway, that’s the first thing that comes to mind. I’m probably getting out of step.
James Giroux: No, it’s good. And I’ll just add onto that, that I think as well, it is a tool, like we’re gonna talk about a specific approach, which is called a performance improvement plan. A pip. and that’s one tool, it’s one approach to intentionally or taking a more direct approach to changing behavior.
There are other tools out there. But this is one that both and I are familiar with. and so it’s the one that, I think it’s probably the one that’s the most used, I would imagine. I
Dee Teal: think you hear about it a lot. Yeah, a few, a few channels. I’ve seen it pop up a few times. It’s definitely something I see people asking about how people have introduced it, what people are doing with it. I’ve heard somebody ask if it’s one of the things that they can use to get rid of somebody. We could talk about that at length. But, in which they were soundly jumped on, thankfully, just for the group that we were in. But yeah certainly one I think most people will be familiar with. And so it’s good to talk about.
James Giroux: So let’s maybe then jump into what it is. so we’re going to, we’re gonna paint a little picture here maybe ahead of time. So you’ve got somebody on your team or, whatever, maybe you’re the person on the team, but no, you’ve got somebody on your team who you’ve been working with, let’s say for six months.
And in those six months they’ve been, six months ago they demonstrated some behaviors, that were not in keeping with the behavior framework that you’ve established in your organization. Yeah. We talked a little bit about behavior frameworks, in our last episode and feedback and performance.
So maybe there’s some things that they’re not doing that they need to be doing or there’s some things that they are doing, but not at the level that needs to be, it needs to be at, in order to find success in the role. And so six months ago you started giving them that feedback. You’ve been coaching them, you’ve been helping them along, and trying to nudge them in the right direction.
Your feedback started out informally and casually hoping that would work. You move from there to more direct feedback, maybe in a very specific situation where something occurred. And rather than taking the approach that you outlined, they maybe did the complete opposite or completely ignored you and just did what they wanted to do.
And you find yourself in the position where now. You’re not getting the performance out of them, that you need the behaviors out of your team member that you need. And it’s having an impact on those things that matter to a business. Interpersonal relationships, the ability to deliver projects on time.
We’ve talked in the past about how high performing culture is one where you have predictability around your ability to estimate delivery and results, and that’s in jeopardy now because of this person on your team. all of these things are coming up and you have been over the last six months keeping just track of these things, and now you’re finally at a place where you have a list.
Of things that need to get worked on.
Dee Teal: oh, okay. But before we go there,
James Giroux: okay.
Dee Teal: When you say keeping track of these things, so I’m sitting here listening to that six month timeline and you are saying, and you are keeping track of these things. Have you been talking these things through with your report?
Because a performance improvement process should not be a surprise, Like
James Giroux: we started
Dee Teal: out if you’ve, we now been provided. Yeah. So if there’s been this continuous state of, ongoing contribution and conversation with the report about the fact that the per
James Giroux: oh no d we lost you,
Dee Teal: you do get to that point when to do something about it. I just heard the six months and I was like, I just need to make sure that there are check-ins going in there because I work for some. Stacked up, things against me for three months that I had no idea about, and then used all of them to end my probation in a role that I was in.
So it was a, definitely a how not to do it situation.
James Giroux: My internet cut out there for a little bit of that. I think we got it back in the end. I said really
Dee Teal: good stuff. It was awesome.
James Giroux: I don’t know how this is all gonna play out in the recording, but it came through after I said you’ve disappeared. So hopefully we’ll capture that.
But I didn’t hear you
Dee Teal: say you’ve disappeared, but, yeah. Should at the crux of the matter was this should be something that’s not a surprise to the report or the person who was on the receiving end of the pep.
James Giroux: And if you want a little bit more about how to set up feedback, we have an episode we recorded a little bit earlier that you can go and take a listen to, to get a sense of what that could look like.
But we’re here now, we’ve got this list of things that we have been communicating to our direct report about. We’ve not seen the kind of change that we need to see. and it could be that they’ve made some small improvements, but the improvements have not been big enough or they’re at, or it’s at a point now where the risk of keeping them in their role without seeing significant change is greater than, the time that you have available.
Let’s say to actually wait for them to move at their speed and you’ve maybe gotta move to something a little bit faster. You can hear in this, there’s sensitivity, there’s understanding that there, we all are dealing with things hopefully you’re hearing as well as we’re talking about this, the goal here again, is not to fire somebody.
It is to see them come to a place where they’re performing at an acceptable level and getting and keeping them in their role, helping them be successful, right. Grow. We do have, we’ve got the whole outline for this, which is really helpful. Sometimes we’re not as detailed as this, but this week we’re lucky.
And to give you a sense of what it is, it’s a formal document outlining specific performance issues. what could that be? speaking of somebody who has been on multiple performance improvement plans, it is exactly what it sounds like. It is a list of very specific, could be, task related things, could be behavior related, things that have come up and what the issues are, addressed for you and what needs to happen in order for those to be acceptable. And again, designed to help you improve and meet expectations.
Dee Teal: Yeah, I was gonna say, the performance improvement plan is a document and it sits within presumably a documented HR process about how you actually get there. And I know that we will talk about the steps that go into, getting from. That feedback loop to, hey, we’ve hit this point, and all of the things that need to happen before you even actually get there.
But I think one of the critical things around the plan itself and the documentation is that it’s, yes, it’s outlining the problems. Yes, it’s outlining the goals, but in the hands of a really good manager. It’s also a structured, almost training program in some cases to go, these are how we are going to get there.
This is how you succeed. It’s not set up to show you how you fail and therefore probably end up losing your job. But this is a, in, in, in my opinion, this is a plan to help you succeed
James Giroux: with a higher degree of seriousness, right? Oh, for sure. It’s a step on a path to dismissal. Yeah, for sure. being clear about that as a manager and as a direct report, I think is important.
Not just for you, but depending on where you are legislatively as well. and in terms of the rules around letting someone go dismissing someone from a position. You have to be able to clearly show process and this is part of that process. so let’s talk maybe a little bit now. So we’ve talked about what it is, it’s a document.
It outlines the issues, components of a performance improvement plan, components of a pip. we’ve got a couple of things here. we’ve got clear objectives and measurable goals, specific actions required to improve timelines and deadlines for progress, support and resources provided by the organization.
I. Do you think?
Dee Teal: Pretty straightforward. And I think all of those things are the things, that are important. I’ve put people through as a manager, put people through Pips before, and those were, I can’t, there’s nothing really to add to that. I think that those are the critical things. I think if you’re somebody on the receiving end of that, really clearly, need to get to.
I think it probably, I think the maybe thing that isn’t in there is that here’s the outline of where the problems are, right? That’s the first thing. These are the things that we’ve identified that we have talked about over the last six months to use your example from before. here’s where we need to get to.
Here’s how I propose, or we propose that you can get there. Here’s when it needs to happen by, and here’s how we’re gonna help.
James Giroux: So to, to give maybe a bit of added detail to something like this. I’ll speak from my own personal experience. if there’s one component here that’s missing, it’s we talk about specific actions required to improve, but what does that look like practically?
How does that actually play out in this process? I was, called in by my, manager, shortly after I arrived in Australia after having worked for the company from Canada. got myself into some trouble. I call it cultural trouble because the way we approach work and language and talk about things in North America is actually quite different to how things are spoken of and talked about in Australia and New Zealand.
As a result, there was a brashness, if you will, to my communication style. There was ways that I was talking that would not have ruffled any feathers really in north America, but that hit on appropriateness sort of things in Australia, which I didn’t know anything about that. So there was that piece, and then there was also a piece of, Hey, you’re not doing your job.
These are the things we want you to be doing. I had a very fuzzy job description because it was a first time role and the actual deliverables for the role were not very clear. And, but there, my manager had been doing the work before I had been doing it and had a very specific way that they expected it to be done.
And that was getting lost in translation. And so we ended up in this situation where I was not doing things the way that they specifically wanted it to be done. And that combined with some of these cultural transition things, as of moving from Canada to Australia, created the space for a pip.
Dee Teal: I have to ask, were you getting that feedback before?
Were you in this or did this come as a come out of the blue?
James Giroux: It was out of the blue. It was
Dee Teal: holy up. Okay, cool. Yeah. So one of the interesting
James Giroux: things was, and this, let’s add some regulatory stuff to this. So I was technically an independent contractor when I was in Canada. So the company did not employ me.
When I moved to Australia, I became an employee until I moved there, they could not do things like 360 degree, feedback or other types of performance evaluation. Oh, wow. Because I was a contractor, I had a list of deliverables, and at any point they could say, you’re not delivering on those deliverables, you’re out. but once I became an employee, then they could do more typical, evaluations and feedback type things. And so within my first, I think week or two that I was there, they did a 360 review. they initiated that process. And again, I’m literally fresh off a plane. I’ve moved my family.
I’m living in a hotel or an apartment while we’re trying to find a home and I’m trying to figure out culture and all these things and I’m getting a 360 review. So it was, there was a lot of things going on. Yeah. We can talk about whether it was the right time or not. hindsight’s always 2020.
Sure. But here we were. And yeah. So I was brought in and told that there were these things that I had to work on, and I had, 90 days, three months to get it together. What I noticed was missing in all of that was there was no, standardized approach to how that would be evaluated.
That was identified. so for you as managers, if you are looking to introduce performance improvement. And you go in and all you have is your list of complaints, so to speak. That’s probably not the place you wanna stop. You may want to consider if these are the things that need to change. What tooling can I provide?
What monitoring system, what feedback mechanism can I put in place as part of this performance improvement process to enable us to keep these conversations at the forefront? one of the things, yeah, so that’s the missing piece there. A little bit of my story of that first experience I was given, I wasn’t really given measurable goals to work I was, but they, there wasn’t an actual measurement tool that was included in the, they must
Dee Teal: have.
James Giroux: Sorry. No, go ahead.
Dee Teal: I interrupted. I feel like they, they must have been interested in your success because they still bought you out from Canada, that’s a big expense and a big, so they must have been surely they’re like, okay, so the first thing that we’re gonna do here is straighten him up because we can see a future with him that surely they wouldn’t have, if they’re dropping you in the middle of that a few weeks in, I’m like, okay,
James Giroux: that’s assuming positive intent, and let’s assume always positive intent.
Here’s a very interestingly though, when you switch hats from the person who is initiating the performance improvement plan and you put on the hat of somebody who’s on the receiving end of a performance improvement plan as the manager. In the situation and in the feedback culture and the steps that you’ve taken ahead of time, that really does set the tone for whether this is about performance improvement or about correction and discipline and path to dismissal. Because it came as a surprise because a lot of these things were unknown to me at the time. A performance to me, and this is my opinion and I’m gonna share it and you can take it or leave it. If a behavior has happened one time, that to in my mind is the grounds for feedback and coaching.
Correct? It is not the grounds for a performance improvement plan. If it is a behavior that has happened, feedback has been provided and the behavior continues and it is a. Unhealthy. It is disruptive, it is dangerous. Whatever the right word is. Yeah. unless it’s threatening behavior or, and even then if it, I would say if it’s a one-time thing or there’s a one-time situation, and you can look at that situation and go, okay, what’s going on here?
Is it a cultural thing? Is it a, sub, like a one off, right? Like they had a, a dust up or a blow up or something happened.
Dee Teal: there’s something going on in their personal world right, that is causing, that is over spilling into the workplace as well.
James Giroux: Exactly. Again, with a proper healthy feedback environment, coaching environment that happens in that situation.
And it can be corrective, it can be written up, it can be documented, it can be like, Hey, you’ve caused a foul here. Straight up, full stop, this is it. You cannot have that behavior happen again. You cannot do that again. That is very clear. Okay. That’s not, that’s, to me, that’s not an initiation for a performance improvement plan.
That is just, management
Dee Teal: One strike. I think, this comes down to the kind of the next section we’re gonna talk about around when you use a, when you use it, I think Pips have to sit within an embedded HR structure of process and policy. I think they have to, in the times that I’ve instituted before, we’ve had a very clear and structured policy about when this becomes something that you do, it comes after and an informal notice that there is something going on. And again, this comes back to the, this is not a surprise. It shouldn’t be. it’s not a pleasant experience, but it shouldn’t be surprising. It’s here’s what our 360 process looks like. You’re starting to highlight flags, in the three sixties or in the one-on-ones with your, with between manager and report. if things don’t change, then the next step is an informal, informal notice of, and then as the behavior and patterns continue, then it becomes more and more formal through whatever the documented structure that your HR department team person, have put together. And then it’s okay, so it’s an ever escalating thing, right?
Presumably, because the behavior is not seeing the change that you want through that process. It’s not had a bad day, now you’re on a pip. It, it should never be that kind of, it needs to be part of a core structure in my opinion. And
James Giroux: I would, maybe this is a little bit too personal, but, or like from my own experience, a if you are planning for a PIP for specific behaviors and something happens on top of that doesn’t necessarily mean that thing gets included in the pip, hoover Yeah. It’s not a catchall for behaviors, right? It is, yeah. for obvious reasons. Now, let’s say you don’t have an HR team or anything like that. We often say here, I think every episode we say leadership is intentional. And so even if you don’t have an HR team, you need to have a plan for performance improvement or feedback or some layered structured approach to how you’re going to do this.
And it can often be something that is, we can often think that we don’t need this because we like everyone, and everyone likes us, and we’re all having a good time, and we’re all family, quote unquote family. Don’t use that word around me when, we’re talking about work, but do an episode on that trigger.
Yep. you need to, as has just said. Figure out the layers, or figure out the steps in your process of what does that look like? And it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to constantly go and revisit it, although you should be reviewing these things regularly. Sure. but yeah, have a process so that when the time comes that you need it, everybody understands what it is, or there’s a place where everyone can go e eventually, if you’re handing off leadership responsibilities or people management responsibilities to others, they’re going to need this.
So even if your team’s not big, you still need something in there. Okay. We talked, we’ve actually touched on the when the how, and the why throughout this, because it’s all connected. But let’s just take a step back here. When do you use a performance improvement plan? When do you use a pip?
Dee Teal: persistent under performance.
In spite of previous feedback and support. It’s a pretty good start. Yeah, I’m reading and you can tell I’m reading it off the, reading it off the list, but I think, behavior issues that are impacting team dynamics, and productivity does it, and gaps and skill or knowledge. I think those, I think the clear gaps in skill or knowledge.
I don’t know if I’d take that to a PIP actually, but if job performance or do you use a PIP in terms of outcome and output? it’s probably a interesting conversation.
James Giroux: considerable but if’s, gaps, it’s
Dee Teal: gaps skills or knowledge. If there’s gaps and skills or knowledge, is that a performance improvement or is that management improvement going, hang on, there’s clearly a gap here.
We need to help support them in this. I dunno if that’s performance.
James Giroux: I think, If we come back to what a performance improvement plan is for, if somebody does not have the skills or knowledge and the keyword here is critical to job performance. Yeah. that’s a failure of the hiring process to begin with. Correct. So there’s feedback that needs to go back or there’s been a failure in putting the right person in the right role, and maybe there’s,
Dee Teal: or they could have lied about it on their cv And then come in and then Yeah. Yeah. So there’s grades of that kind of situation. Yeah. But I think that’s also something to be mindful of is, hang on, have we set them up for success?
James Giroux: And then timing considerations. So we’ve talked a lot about this already after informal feedback and coaching have failed, when the issue is specific, measurable, and correctable.
I think that’s a really good one. When the issue is specific, measurable, and correctable, that’s like, how often do we let things that are not really things become things that we, that then, taint our view of someone, or, for whatever reason, Maybe somebody is a narcissist. Let’s just say I was gonna
Dee Teal: I was gonna, I was gonna touch on that.
I was like, yeah, that’s a whole other ball game and a whole other episode. But,
James Giroux: dealing with narcissists.
Dee Teal: yeah, but I’m sitting there thinking. When an issue is specific, measurable, and correctable. Again, I guess I come back to that thing of when a pip’s being used to get someone out or about, I think of the time, years and years ago, I was still really young.
I was working for a religious organization, and my behavior, my sources, sense of humor, my inherent cheek did not align with the behaviors that the manager of said organization expected. And so I got to the end of my three month probation and she laid on me all of my infractions. So I had no gr I had no, no leg to stand on.
I, any of these things, a, if I’d even remembered them happening, happens. Ages before that I’d never had a chance to respond to. If you could picture 20-year-old Dee stomping around in the car park of a church, swearing and effing and blinding, you get an idea of what the situation was like.
It was hilarious. It’s hilarious. Now
I can totally, the first time I think I
Dee Teal: did, I think it was the first time I’ve ever used the an F word and I ended up, anyway, this is a whole other story. It’s very funny. But I’d have been in a conversation weeks before with someone and said, oh, I’ve never used the F word.
That’s a terrible word. And oh, you’ve just never been angry enough. prove that point that particular day I lost my job. But, yeah, I’m just trying to tie that in with that issue being specific, measurable and correctable. inherent cheek is a hard thing to correct, in an adult. has to be, it has to be, you have to be careful around it.
James Giroux: I think too, one of the things, like I’ll say about a process like this is expect to get some things wrong. Expect to not get everything right and be very open to feedback, and in some cases push back from the person receiving the pip if it’s not a cer. And maybe that’s more if it comes as a surprise for you, for example. Yeah. In that church car park situation, or the unbe unbecoming behaviors, if you will. we’ll just call them human behaviors. yeah. And the fact that everything came as a surprise as part of your probationary evaluation is a failure of the feedback process in general.
Dee Teal: It’s also the sense, I think the other thing that I’m looking at is were the expectations clear? Yeah. So this is not just what the feedback process is. What are you measuring against? Exactly. This is where we come back to behavior frameworks, right? So if there’s a behavior framework, we know that these are what the expectations are on you and how you behave in this workplace.
Yep.
Dee Teal: When your behaviors are not measuring up to those on a repeated basis that you are discussing and working through in your formal, regular feedback situations, then you can get to this point where you go, Hey, we’ve talked about this. There’s this area in the behavior framework that you’re not performing against.
This has been an ongoing thing. We need to address this more formally. But you have to have that, you have to have the standard that you’re measuring against.
James Giroux: Absolutely. And we’ll get to that ’cause there’s a section here where we’ll talk a little bit about more about it, but, so we’ve talked about what a PIP is.
We’ve talked about when you would use a pip. How do you implement a pip? What is the process for actually getting this going and getting it started? we’ve got a couple of things. We’ve got preparation, structure and communication specifically on. Preparation we’ve talked a little bit about this, but gather evidence of performance issues.
This, I think is actually really important. If you are gearing up to do a pip, remember I talking about documenting things or writing things down? you’ve already been doing that feedback already. Make sure you’ve got that put somewhere. I’m not saying that you necessarily need to always be planning for a pip with your team, but if you are on a track with somebody and it’s clear that they’re not where they need to be, that should be a flag to you as a people manager, as a people leader, that you might need to be doing some of those intentional leadership steps of actually preparing and getting ready for this and formalizing your own thinking around feedback.
So that should, you need to extend it. You’ve got a starting point or you’ve got something in place. I think people, leadership as a whole is your full-time job. That is, that’s what doing, oh, for sure. So this I’m just, sorry, I’m jumping ahead, but I’m thinking about, the leader of a plugin company with 10 employees who’s managing everyone directly while also managing, the latest feature release and doing some marketing and doing this.
People leadership is a full-time role. And so you may think of this stuff as secondary, but it is primary. If you are managing people, it becomes the only thing you’re responsible for. So
Dee Teal: I think you can get a, you could end up spinning off into a conversation around tools, around this. How do you keep, I’m sitting here imagining a manager with their little notebook of all of the, infractions.
I think too, when going back to the process of feedback and actionable feedback and actual example, useful feedback actually points to specific examples rather than just a feeling that you have about somebody. And I’ve used a tool, I’ve used tools before where when you’re doing one-to-ones with someone, you’re actually tracking the conversation and keeping data in the conversation.
I would be keeping that kind of, this kind of information in that ready for the next, one-to-one or, an impromptu one-to-one if there’s something that pops up, that you need to address as it happens. And so there are tools available to help keep that stuff structured and in place.
But again, if you are going to somebody to say, we have a poor performance, you need to be able to say, here are the, road. here are the points that have got us to this along this road. And we have talked about it these different times. and here’s why we haven’t seen the change that we needed.
And you need to be, yeah. You need those markers to be able to point back to. Exactly. I, I do, I have a living one-on-one doc with all of my direct reports. I have. So basically what I have is I have private folders with the names Yeah. Of all of my direct reports. And so each one gets their own folder.
James Giroux: In that folder. I have a doc that is our one-on-one doc and then another doc that’s just my own personal private notes around Yeah. Whatever happens. Yeah. The one-on-one doc is shared and I tend to have a standardized, format for that, what are you thinking about? What are the wins that you had this week?
Yeah. What are the questions that you have? Any feedback for me? Any action items we’re taking away. And it’s the same kind of stuff every week. And so in that. We can start to get a sense of history as well of when things happen. Sometimes are really good about following up and writing, notes.
Sometimes we’re not, and that’s okay too. I think AI is gonna help with that moving forward. you can add a note taker to your meetings and do all that kind of stuff, but,
yeah.
James Giroux: cool. All right. So gather evidence, and then define clear, achievable objectives and timelines. We’ve already touched on that a little bit.
Yeah. in the structure of a pip of a performance improvement plan, the specific areas of improvement, so if it’s task related or deliverable related, what are those things? If it’s behavior related, what are those things? and then what are both, what is the offending behavior, So what is the thing, what is the specific behavior or the specific outcome that you’re after? And feedback on where maybe specifically they’re missing the mark. so for example, if, they are on the marketing team and they are constantly missing deadlines and not communicating that, deadlines need to be pushed back, or they are not communicating that things are falling behind until the deadline happens the day of, and it leaves everybody scrambling to rearrange everything because of all the dependencies that are around.
Say it’s a blog post or something that, that you’re waiting on. That’s an example where the expected behavior, the specific deliverable is not happening and the behavior around it isn’t happening. So what are the specific things that you want to see happening? You need to outline those behaviors need to outline those actions.
So that your direct report knows what the expectation is and can move forward from there. Does that sound as an example? That sounds
Dee Teal: pretty, yeah. I’m just thinking through the structure. So on the times that I’ve put someone through p before we had a Word doc, we had, I’ve worked out actually quite a, their situation was one in which there was a knowledge gap, but there was also a culture gap.
So there are quite a few things that we were addressing and, but the clear expectation was this is how we behave with our clients. These, this is why we behave in this way with our clients. This is why what we are seeing is not what we want. This is how. here is the reading material, this is where we’re coming from.
Here’s the, here’s how I’m gonna help coach you through this, and then here’s what we expect to see on the other side of this. And it was a three month process that we put in place and we had a really structured, almost training program. At least for one individual where we were getting them skill level up.
And again, it was actually quite a culture gap for them. This is someone, very different approach coming from South Asia into an, western company. And yeah, it’s that clarity, the documentation, the clear expectations are the critical things and the genuine, and for me it was a genuine desire as a manager to see, people succeed.
James Giroux: So the last part of the structure, so we’ve talked about. Being specific in the areas for improvement, the action steps, that are needed and the resourcing of how to get there, if that’s available. Yep. and the last one is regular check-ins and progress reviews. And this is what I alluded to is the missing piece, was the progress review. I, when I have done these sucks to say that, but I’ll be honest and open, when I’ve done these, we’ve had regular weekly check-ins separate from our one-on-ones that were specific. So they weren’t as long as a one-on-one. So we had our regular one-on-one, which was an hour long, and we had a separate, pip check-in, which was 30 minutes long.
And, at the time didn’t actually have a document or a tool to, to review progress. So what I ended up doing was just creating my own spreadsheet. I took all of the specific points that needed to be adjusted or changed, and I went through and I created a little grid and I said, meets expectations or still needs improvement.
Yeah, And notes for that week. So every week we could go through this, all of the specific things and just go through. Did you notice any, My manager and I would talk, did you notice anything? I did well in this area. Did you notice anything I needed to improve? Did I meet expectations?
Was there, maybe there was no opportunity to observe because it, was a one time situation that happened and to be on the pip, but was on the PIP anyway. Yep.
Dee Teal: Yeah. Okay. Deep breath.
James Giroux: So once you’ve got all of that in place, that’s your structure, but you Yeah. You have a weekly, separate meeting about it creates some kind of progress, review tool or system. I actually found that very helpful in the end. it’s helpful for you as the recipient. It’s helpful for you as the manager, but in particular for the recipient, you have paperwork, you have full on proper documentation. should somebody be trying to use it as a tool for dismissal? Ultimately you don’t want a manager to use this to manipulate this process as a way to dismiss. Yeah. That’s not a good manager in my
Dee Teal: opinion. That’s not a good manager. Yeah.
James Giroux: You may run into
Dee Teal: that,
James Giroux: so if
Dee Teal: Yeah, it, yeah. It’s.
Sucks. Yeah, I’ve seen a few, I’ve seen a few instances in some of the circles that I travel in. okay. Clearly aware of time. I think we’ve covered quite a lot of what the benefits of this are, I’m thinking that if you are the person who’s had your manager come to you and say we need to go talk about a pip, what happens?
How do you respond? What’s the best way to handle something? That handle can have quite a heightened emotion attached to it for all of the reasons that we’ve outlined, right?
James Giroux: The best thing you can do, I think, is stay calm. We’ve got this written down, but I think it’s fairly obvious. Stay calm. It is, stay
Dee Teal: calm.
James Giroux: Stay open to feedback. The moment you get defensive in that meeting, you stop listening. To the feedback and you might miss valuable information to help you be successful in that initial meeting.
It’s going to be
Dee Teal: emotional, I think too. It is gonna be emotional. I think one of the things too, and I know in some of the ones that we’ve done or that I’ve done in the past, I think, and I think in some, I think certainly think this is the case in Australian employment law, you can actually have somebody come with you
if
Dee Teal: you’re starting to get that point.
I think, and I think we have had to say again, as part of policy, this is the meeting that we are going to have. you may, we’ve actually had to say to somebody, you may bring someone with you. Actually, that’s a pretty good indicator. If your manager says to you, we need to have a meeting, you can bring someone with you. that’s a pretty good indicator that there’s an emotional road ahead. But, That actually helps with that sense of you. There’s stuff that you might miss because of the heightened emotion of it.
James Giroux: And, in Australia you need 24 hours notice, I think. Ah, okay. Yeah. Didn’t know that. Missed a day’s notice.
Yeah. all of those are good things. what’s,
what’s hard is figuring out how to be transparent about the process while not giving too much away before the meeting actually starts. Finding that balance. as a recipient, you have 24 hours to dwell on what’s gonna be in that performance review that, that hip meeting or that whatever it’s called.
It depends as well on the culture of whether, if you’ve been on a journey and you’ve been getting feedback and you’re likely having been warned, Hey, if we don’t see improvement in this, it could lead to the next step, which is a performance improvement plan. Hey, by the way Yeah. it’s not where it needs to be. We’re gonna have that performance improvement plan chat. And we’re gonna give you the feedback. Formally, you have 24 hours of notice you can find someone to bring you with you to the meeting. Just so you know it, it’s happening. it’s the real deal now. And, but again, how you, I, a lot of this is how you might set it up as a manager, but how you receive it as a recipient as well is, I can tell you how I received the first one because it was a surprise. I was in panic mode. I thought I was gonna lose my job. I thought I was done for, and all I could, all I could do was, let my hands shake for a whole 24 hours as I was, had no idea what was coming.
I’d never been in a process like this. I’d never gone through anything like this. And so I had no idea what to expect. I had no idea what any of it even meant. It was all new territory and I had no guidance from anyone anywhere. because,
Dee Teal: and I think too, in the absence of a story, you tell yourself a story.
It may be the right story, it may be the wrong story. And so if you are somebody delivering that information, and we have, as we’ve, in this ideal situation, you have all of those structures in place and you’ve had this process and it shouldn’t be, and it isn’t a surprise. there is still a sense of.
Being able to make sure that the story that they have is the right story. And hopefully the story is, you are aware where there are issues, we’ve had issues. We do need to make this more formal. But our goal and intent is still that we want to keep you and that this is a process. here are the policies and the rules within the company.
We need to abide by those. but we are still geared towards your success. It’s a different story than 24 hours of panic.
James Giroux: Yeah. expect as the recipient to go through all the feels and all the feels, all of them. And all you can do is your best to try to separate your personal feelings from this.
A lot will depend. Excuse me. A lot will depend on how your manager approaches. The PIP and how your manager treats this process. if you are in an open people first workplace, that is what we advocate for at future team. Then li likely your manager’s coming in with empathy and understanding and really clearly from the beginning saying this is not about termination.
This is about getting you on track to be successful. Yeah. And the formal process is a necessary raise of volume so that you understand the importance of it and can prioritize these things amongst all the other things that you’ve got on your plate and are thinking about. When it is that way as a manager, I think the number one thing you are working to do is to, I.
Fix the broken psychological safety that’s going to happen as a result of a pip. I don’t think you get away unscathed. in terms of the relationship and psychological safety of that relationship from a pip, because you’ve had to graduate to that level. The volumes had to be raised to that level. At some level it may not be completely shattered, but I think at some level there’s repair work that may need to get done.
Dee Teal: I think some of that’s gonna come down to the, emotional landscape of the person on the receiving end of it.
Yep.
Dee Teal: I think, yeah. And the relationship that you as a manager and that person have, I don’t know if I would go so far as to say it affects psychological safety. I think you can do, I.
Deliver all of these things in a psychologically safe way. I do think it, it’s gonna have an effect in the sense of there’s a shame-based response to somebody. There’s, all of those things will have, will affect the relationship to an extent and for how long? Depends on the person.
And, again, the emotional and cultural landscape in which you’re actually taking these on. But I think I. When you are a manager who has already built a relationship with your team and with your, and it’s not just all about the work. You actually know the people that you’re working with.
You genuinely care about their wellbeing and their performance. It’s not all just the sense of, Hey, we’ve got a benchmark in the company and you’re not meeting it. It’s the, Hey, where are you at? Why is we in this situation? How can we smooth that path? Yeah. I think, I dunno if the psychological safety I think that creates that space and then hopefully you guys will, be able to move through it.
A lot of that’s gonna depend on the emotional intelligence of the person receiving the pip, maybe.
James Giroux: I guess maybe from my own personal experience, having been on the receiving end a few times, it’s hard not to disconnect. The next few months. Sure. the possibility of not having a job. Yeah. the natural next step of failing a PIP is potentially termination. And that tension is okay. I can see that creates that lack of psychological safety where you will be for what, even if it’s not anything else, just walking on eggshells, right? Yeah. Around your team, around your manager. Yeah. I think that’s natural, a natural reaction. and maybe it is a little bit of that shame-based response or that emotional response, but yeah. But as you’ve rightly pointed out, if you’ve got a manager who understands you, who has been building an actual relationship with you and trying to get to know you, not just as a resource, but as yeah, a human.
That’s gonna have a huge impact on the whole thing when it feels like your manager is really in your corner, I think like a boxing manager, a boxer goes out to get hit and they’re gonna take hits and they’re gonna come back and they’re gonna sit down and they’re gonna be wiped out and they’re gonna be a little bloody.
And your job as the manager when they’re in that situation is to just encourage them and support them and help them get back up. Yeah. Go win. maybe that’s a bit of a gruesome example that’s
Dee Teal: a pretty extreme metaphor for web and product development. I think, in an agency maybe I can see it when you’re customer success in dealing with clients and missing deadlines, maybe I can see the blood and gore, but
James Giroux: maybe it’s a poor, but. Again, a, like when you were talking about the pip as a manager, I went, oh, I wish I would’ve had you as a manager. Just that feeling of it’s too easy to get stuck in. I failed. Yeah. And that’s what’s landed us here. Yeah. And not going out. You haven’t failed. You, we’ve found a path forward. Yeah. And to flip that script completely as a manager, if you can flip that script, things like celebrating small wins, celebrating progress, being really even more attentive and more quick to provide feedback and go, Hey, not quite, but you’re getting closer. Here’s the thing, I noticed This is great. Keep moving. Those are the kinds of things that are going to, really make the process exactly what it needs to be.
Dee Teal: I think we’ve talked about I think you’ve talked a little bit about what it’s like on the receiving end as a recipient or a contributor or manager who’s on the receiving end of a pip.
But I think there are also some things to consider when you are a manager dealing with somebody who you wanna put on a PIP because there’s an emotional landscape. You have to navigate with that as well. if you are getting to the point of putting someone on a pip, there’s probably an element of frustration in terms of, Hey, we’ve talked about this, and here we are.
Hey, we’ve talked, Hey, we’ve talked about this. And you can hear the volume go up as you go, oh yeah, here we are again. So there is a sense in which. I think again, when I hear people say, oh, we could just put them on a pip as a means for dismissal, it comes from a place of frustration is that we’re not seeing the change that we want.
And so you do have to be able to tamp down and navigate that so that when you are getting through this process, which is why we have these structures in place, is that you can go, hang on, I need to, yes, this is frustrating. yes, I can see that there’s stuff going on for men that might be swatting their ability to make these changes.
And it the, you have to be able to navigate that as a manager as well. It can’t be a knee jerk reaction to frustration, from your part. And again, a lot of that comes down to being able to see the person and not just the behaviors.
James Giroux: let’s end on a little bit more of a positive note. I will just let you all know that I successfully, survived. My own pip experiences and look back on them. Grateful for the opportunity to go through them because that’s good. The pips that I’ve been on pointed out areas of opportunity for me to grow and learn and develop. And I came out of, in particular two, in one role. I came out of both of them stronger and better.
And my team was better as a result of both of them. And you didn’t lose your job. And I didn’t lose my job. No. Yeah, no. Eventually
Dee Teal: that’s a win. That’s a win.
James Giroux: But that’s a different story. That’s
Dee Teal: a different, that’s a different thing. We’ll talk about that another day. But that’s the point, right?
It’s Hey, you were able to adjust that behavior. The company won because they got to keep great talent. you won because you made, all of those learning opportunities and the company was stronger for it. And so were you. So that’s the point. That’s the point. And I think that’s what, that’s where I, this is why my hackers go up when I hear people talk about it as, oh, a pip is just the next step before your dismissal.
I’d be really disappointed if the companies that I was working with thought that way.
James Giroux: let’s end it here. end it on a positive. Thank you all for being with us this week. This one, we knew this one was gonna be a little bit longer, because it’s, there’s a lot to cover, deal cover’s a and a lot of emotion having experienced it on both sides. a lot of good stories. We hope you’ve enjoyed it. We hope you’ve got something out of it. we would love to hear your thoughts on performance improvement. What tools have you seen? Maybe like we’ve talked about this one particular tool and process. I’d be curious to hear from you, if you’ve ex had an experience with this or have another process that you’ve gone through.
I. that’s different and maybe what your observations are on it, so you can leave a comment. Yeah, that’d be cool. on, YouTube or wherever you’re listening or watching, on our blog, we’ll post this as well. but also, yeah, what are we supposed to say? Subscribe, hit the Share, let everyone know. Yep. about this. we’re very excited to have the opportunity to talk about these kinds of things, and, to have you along for the journey. So thank you,
Dee Teal: Dee. Awesome. Thank you James. Nice to see you.
James Giroux: Thanks everyone.
Dee Teal: Bye.
