What Writing a PIP Taught Me About Leadership
I sat down the other day to draft a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). This isn’t something I’m doing for the first time, but it was hard the last time and it’s proving to be hard again. On the surface I’m just trying to capture stakeholder/team feedback, align on expectations and translate them into goals. The problem is finding the words is hard and I’m procrastinating … again. This discomfort told me something important about myself as a manager, and instead of circling back to the PIP (as a responsible manager would do …) I wanted to capture some of my self reflection and share it in the event it helps others.
You Value Empathy and People
If writing a PIP feels uncomfortable, it may mean you naturally empathize with the individual and are concerned about the impact on their morale, career, and confidence. I see this as a strength: leaders who treat PIPs as “checking-a-box for HR” risk damaging trust and culture. Your discomfort shows you care about fairness and the human element, not just compliance.
You Might Be Internalizing the Performance Gap
When it’s hard to put words on paper, sometimes it reflects feelings of:
- “Am I being too harsh?”
- “Did I set clear enough expectations?”
- “Is this their failure, or did I fail to support them?”
That self-questioning can be healthy, but it can also create hesitation. As a manager, it’s important to balance accountability (their responsibility for their work) with ownership of the environment you’ve provided (clarity, feedback, support).
You May Prefer Coaching to Consequences
Some leaders lean naturally toward developing people rather than enforcing consequences. If you find PIPs draining, it may mean your instinct is to coach, mentor, and lift people up. Again, this is a strength — but when performance doesn’t improve despite coaching, it can leave you stuck in the gray zone of hoping things get better.
You/I Might Be Wrestling With Identity as a Manager
Personally I spent 20 years as an engineer, then as an IC in various other roles (TSE, Product Manager) - eventually pivoting into a Product Management Lead role. People management was never my passion, but I do care about the people on my team and want to see them succeed. Wanting my direct reports to succeed is not the same as setting them up for success appropriately - aka. “doing the work of managing”. Struggling with the PIP may be part of that: it forces me into a compliance and consequence driven mode that feels at odds with the parts of leadership I enjoy (vision, empowerment, collaboration).
The Work Feels Confrontational
Writing a PIP means putting hard truths into formal, legalistic language. If you’re someone who values transparency and direct feedback in conversation, the formality can feel stiff, almost unnatural. It might feel like you’re locking the employee into a binary outcome, instead of keeping the door open for coaching and growth.
Leadership isn’t just about inspiration, vision, or coaching in the good times. It’s also about having the courage to create clarity when things aren’t working, and to do so in a way that preserves dignity and fairness. Writing that PIP made me realize that while I lean naturally toward empathy, I need to build comfort with the accountability side of leadership too.
What I learned is this: a PIP isn’t a punishment. It’s a framework for clarity. It’s a structured way of saying, “Here’s where things stand. Here’s what needs to change. And here’s the support you’ll get along the way”. Done well, it gives someone their best possible chance to succeed. And if they don’t, it ensures they were treated fairly, with transparency and respect.
It’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be. But maybe the very fact that it’s hard is a sign that I’m approaching it with the right intent.