Gettin' the Pip*
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Caption: Not 2x4 Management
A colleague who grew up on a ranch in Texas, told me of a fail-proof method for saddle breaking a bucking bronco: the Way of the 2x4.
One of the ranch hands would lead the recalcitrant horse behind the barn and teach it a lesson with the 2x4 board.
The horse would return subdued and willing to give the saddle a try, or so it seemed.
Effective?
Yeah, so is a kick in the ass (fear). It moves an unwilling object a few inches forward. But, then you have to maintain the fear to sustain the external motivation.
So, the wild-eyed bronco may have lost the vicious gleam in the eye, but the lesson may be short lived.
I suspect the ranch hand never walked behind any of the horses he'd abused with a 2x4.
All this is by introduction to a corporate Way of the 2x4: the Performance Improvement Plan (PIP).
The WSJ article has a subscript:
The Most Hated Way of Firing Someone Is More Popular Than Ever. It?s the Age of the PIP. Performance improvement plans are on the rise. Workers dread them. Managers do to.
The workplace PIP is generally regarded as the penultimate step to the inevitable dismissal of the employee; indeed, the threat of a PIP is often enough to get the unwanted staffer to quit.
However, the PIP is a tacit admission of failure on the part of the organization - the failed employee should never have been hired and the manager and the HR consultant who hired the failed employee should be (but won't be) disciplined as well.
In my career, I know of one manager (Jill) who used a PIP to address a long-term problem employee (Jack).
Other supervisors had given up on Jack, preferring to isolate and avoid him. Swedes have an idiom for such behavior, "to walk like a cat around hot porridge." Cute.
But not Jill. Like my 2x4 wielding cowboy, she rode Jack hard.
I think Jill enjoyed it, maybe channeling some personal torments into the daily monitoring required by the PIP.
Funny thing, Jack survived.
He, like the horse behind the barn, was subdued but his resentment lingered. If he was 50% effective before the PIP, he was now at 60% but with a smoldering grievance further occluding his view of and loyalty to the workplace.
What can one do instead of taking a figurative 2x4 to the problem employee?
Sticking with my equine metaphor, horse whisperers suggest there are better ways than a beating to bring along a recalcitrant employee.
Horse whisperers, like Kelly Marks, have qualities that translate to the workplace. Ms. Marks finds solutions to problem behaviors that benefit both horses and humans. How does she, and other horse whisperers do that?
Here's what get results in the pasture and in the office:
Empathetic managers and horse trainers foster a supportive environment.
Working with horses (and humans) requires patience - lots of it - to build trust and overcome behavioral issues
Whisperers communicate effectively with the horse. Clear and consistent communication in the workplace helps prevent misunderstandings.
Managers who use positive reinforcement (a kind word or a reward for specific behavior) now and then) can motivate employees and boost their confidence.
Trust is crucial. (Good luck on any trust surviving the first session of a PIP!)
Horse whisperers adapt their approach to meet an individual horse's needs. Managers of humans can do so as well.
Perhaps needless to say, these are the ways of effective leaders of humans.
*In British slang, getting the pip derives from a bird disease of the tongue. Over time, a pip is having a bad mood, feeling irritable or grumpy. In other words, it is the way both the employee and the manager feel when called upon to pretend to seek improvement in a problem employee?s performance when both know the PIP is a phony process to avoid a legal challenge to terminations.
Finally, James Carville (a Democrat party operative) in assessing his party's collapse in the 2024 election, grumbled about know-all appartchiks and supervisors who hire lame performers:
"If I were running a 2028 campaign and I had some little snot-nosed 23-year-old saying, "I'm going to resign if you do this," not only would I fire that motherf---er on the spot, I would find out who hired them and fire that person on the spot!". (Emphasis added)
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Copyright all text by John Lubans 2024
John Lubans - portrait by WSJ