**1. PIPs are mostly being used backwards.**
It is, as far as I can tell from my inbox, PIP season absolutely everywhere.
Almost without exception, clients open the conversation with me by saying "can we do a performance plan"- and almost without exception, they don't mean "how do we help this person genuinely get better." They mean "how do we get them out of the business in a way we can defend if challenged."
A performance plan should be a serious, honest, time-bound conversation about whether the role and the person can be made to work. It should come with real support, real measurement, and real intent. If you've already decided someone is leaving, please- for the love of HR- call it what it actually is and treat them with the dignity that comes with the truth.
**2. But sometimes there is real magic in interference.**
The reason I refuse to give up on PIPs entirely is that I have seen, with my own eyes, a person go from PIP to promotion in six months.
A real, sustained, properly surprising turnaround. The kind that astonishes everyone in the room, including the person on the plan. The kind where the manager- who was already halfway through drafting the off-boarding email- ends up writing a glowing recommendation instead.
It happens. Not often. But often enough that I have to take the possibility seriously every single time someone tells me a team member is "uncoachable." On the whole, I have to believe everyone is coachable, otherwise I'm in the wrong job.
**3. There is a huge difference between can't and won't.**
When someone isn't performing, the most useful diagnostic isn't asking "are they coachable?", it's what is actually in their way.
- Do they not know how to do it? (a skills gap- fix it with training.)
- Do they know how but lack confidence? (a courage gap- fix it with smaller stakes and more cheerleading.)
- Do they know how, have the confidence, and just don't want to? (an interest gap- and no amount of coaching is going to fix that one.)
The first two are fixable. The third is not a coachability problem at all. The third is a fit problem.
**4. How many of your team are square pegs in round holes?**
This is the harder question. Because before you decide someone is uncoachable, you have to ask whether the role itself is the wrong shape for them.
A brilliant operator who's been promoted into a strategy role and is suddenly underwater isn't uncoachable- they're misplaced.
A creative who's been handed a process they don't care about isn't uncoachable- they're miserable.
A senior person whose role has been quietly evolving away from what they originally signed up for isn't uncoachable- they're being asked, by stealth, to do a different job they never agreed to.
In every one of those cases, the right move isn't a PIP. The right move is a real, grown-up conversation about whether the shape of the job can change- or whether the kindest, most honest thing is for them to be doing a different job entirely.