How on earth can you be a good manager and not realize that saying "your performance is shit, we're going to fire you unless you take this course and we deem you've passed" is totally and utterly soul destroying to a person?

What’s the alternative? Give them a rainbow sticker? It’s business among adults, performance matters. If you can’t meet expectations then it’s not a good fit. That’s part of life.

As someone who has been in that situation, it's better than "your performance is shit, you're fired". In my case a large part of the problem was that I was not picking up on what should have been obvious cues. This provided a needed wake up call, and prompted me to improve.

A PIP should be the last chance to improve. You should have had many chances before that, with lots of clear feedback. Of course it's soul-destroying, but laying them off is worse.

More soul destroying than "your performance is shit, so shit I see no hope your worthwhile, get out?"

I think the GP is overly optimistic about a PIP. In general I'll say when I've put someone on a PIP, it's been with the expectation of firing at the end. "We have discussed this problem and I've made it clear you need to improve, this is your last chance, I need to see x, y, and z (where X Y and Z are as concrete and measurable as possible) or mm/dd will be your last day". It's making clear that whatever issues are involved have come to a head, and this is the final chance to fix them. My general assumption is that if spelling out the issues and providing coaching hasn't resolved the issue the PIP probably won't either, but I do see value in a clear process vs the cut just being whenever I decide to do it, with no warning that day is coming.

I have also actually seen this work in practice. I've had people who multiple conversations and coaching seemed to make no inroads, but putting that clear "if this isn't resolved by X day, we're done" expectation out there seemed to make it "real" and they've completely turned things around. I have promoted people I've previously put on a PIP.

That said my advice remains, if your put on a PIP it's time to start looking. I think many (most?) managers d use them cynically where a PIP is more paper trail than final warning, and the employee may be getting fired regardless. Even if that's not the case you've just been told very clearly it's not working. Something isn't working and it's better to hedge your bets and look for another job that fits better while trying to improve.

> is totally and utterly soul destroying to a person?

To some, it is, and to others, it isn't.

I wonder: Is your question a byproduct of some type of educational system which had a lot of grade inflation and people get passed on to the next year no matter how poor their progress?

In my school/high school, if you got an F in one subject, you'd be held back for the whole year. In my university, they didn't grade on a curve, and had clearly delineated thresholds for A, B, C, etc. The engineering department worked hard to ensure only competent people could get an A or B (you didn't need to be brilliant - merely competent).

By the time you get a job, you should be able to handle feedback along the lines of "You're performance is not good enough for this job". With good management, this isn't a shock, and you should have gotten messaging about performance for quite a while prior to being handed a PIP. Not all management is good, though.

It should not be an identity crisis. No one is good enough for any job, and for any team. You should not go on in life thinking you'll not fail. You won't grow much that way.

I've seen management at times give the employee a ton of leeway. A friend of mine was in a SW team, and he decided he didn't like coding. The manager worked with him to give him an alternate role that was mostly related to customer support. When they'd come with a bug report or query, he'd study the (large) code base and help them if they were doing something wrong, or file a proper bug report with the team.

He still sucked (and knew it). He started working reduced hours (with the manager's approval) to handle the stress.

I kept telling him to go find another job if this one doesn't suit him. He had other skills - he'd done HW work professionally at the same company prior to switching to SW.

This went on for two years before they finally put him on a PIP and fired him. He had a grace period of two years to find another job, but didn't.

The real problem is the unfair PIP - where they want to fire you for reasons other than your performance. It begins with escalating demands that you cannot fulfill, and they use that as a pretext to put you on a PIP.

Anti-disclaimer: I've been on a (very unfair) PIP and was practically fired. Everyone I know at the company who's been on a PIP was fired. So when I say all of the above, trust me, I know the dark side of PIPs. I think they are primarily a tool to get rid of person and the manager is usually not honestly trying to redeem the person.

But even in those cases, it shouldn't be even close to "soul destroying". It's simply the equivalent of getting dumped by a boy/girl friend. Sucks, but it's expected. You move on.

I think it’s just corporate culture in some places. I’ve done a stint in management and I’ve had the “fun” of dealing with all these performance measurements. I personally think they are rather useless in any sort of office work where your employees have a high degree of independence and complex tasks. I also think they come with a huge risk of creating a working culture where employees game the system. If you clock time on the hour then you can be sure nobody is going to help each other, because how do you clock that half hour? If you sell software by ridiculously short estimates and reward your employees for meeting them, then how happy are your clients with all the post-release support they’ll have to pay for? If you have one employee who’s build internal tools that empower everyone else, but haven’t delivered on X, Y, Z and you’re personally getting judged on those metrics then how do you keep up over all productivity when you’re forced to let them go.

There are a million examples of why they are bad, and I can’t really think of any in which they are useful on their own. Which becomes the issue when decision makers advance in ranks and “I don’t dare make decisions without covering my ass” managers slip in. Or when HR gets too much political power and push their tools as the law. Often organisations simply grow into poor cultures because the systemic value of measurements is shit compared to individual management. This is of course helped along by bad managers, who when given too much freedom create an organisational culture which is far worse than the meritocracy of data driven management.

I think it’s a little rough to judge someone who may have grown up in these cultures as a bad manager from a couple of lines of text.

Maybe they like the power, and this makes them feel powerful. Signs of a good manager, of course. /s