My mother is a family therapist. She’s worked a lot with children.
She told me something awhile back that has stuck with me. It’s this:
Kids get sent to therapy because “something is wrong with them.” But most of the time, the kid isn’t the problem. They’re just the symptom.
When treating a child, there’s always a secret patient. Someone who doesn’t even know they’re part of the therapy process.
The secret patient is always the parent.
Interesting, right?
I thought so too.
That’s why I remembered it.
And it’s why I’ve been thinking about it more often lately.
Mostly because I keep getting hired by HR leaders to save employees on Performance Improvement Plans.
The Worst Success Rate In Business
Somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of people who are put on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) either resign or get fired.1
You know what, let me say that in a way that is more impactful.
The entire purpose of a Performance Improvement Plan is to improve performance. It’s right there in the name. But PIPs are only successful between a measly 10 and 30 percent of the time.
That’s nutso.
If my leadership coaching work only had a 10 to 30 percent success rate, nobody would hire me. Ever. I’d probably be selling bootleg Journey CDs out of the trunk of a Camaro.
Something is clearly broken with the PIP process.
Fortunately, I know what it is.
The Five Reasons People Get Put On A PIP
There are five main reasons people get put on a PIP.
Failure to meet performance expectations
Poor quality of work
Missed deadlines
Lack of ownership
Communication problems
Every item on that list assumes the employee is the problem.
That should come as no surprise. I mean, they’re the ones on the PIP, right?
Wrong.
The Manager Who Doesn’t Listen
You’d be amazed how many people are on a Performance Improvement Plan because their manager doesn’t listen.
At least I’m always surprised by it.
I was contacted by the HR lead of a company awhile back, and hired to work with a woman who was put on a PIP. Let’s call her Emily, because that’s the name of my niece.
Like my niece, Emily is smart, highly capable and had ten years of experience. Her PIP said she “missed deadlines and failed to take ownership.”
When I first spoke with Emily, I asked her what happened.
She told me, with clear frustration, that she’d warned people about the untenable timeline three separate times. Her manager told her to “just figure it out.”
So she figured it out.
To do that, she cut the scope of a project. That caused something else to not get accomplished. And that impacted a client, in a big way.
That’s why she was put on a PIP.
She’d tried to warn people three times and nobody listened. Now the paperwork said it was her fault.
It wasn’t.
Or at least not fully.
I understood why she was frustrated.
Her manager wasn’t a bad person. He wasn’t even lazy.
He was drowning in his own deadlines, and every time she brought him a problem, he heard it as a complaint, got overwhelmed, and shut down.
She wasn’t failing to communicate.
He was failing to listen.
And that brings us back to the five reasons people get put on a PIP.
The Five PIP Problems From The Secret Patient’s Perspective
Let’s look at that list again, but this time with the assumption that every behavior of the employee is partly a reflection of the manager’s patterns.
Failure to meet performance expectations
Expectations only exist when somebody defines them. As it turns out, 85% of managers don’t clearly define priorities for their subordinates. Was the PIP-ed employee aware of expectations or were they supposed to read their boss’s mind?
Poor quality of work
Poor quality is often code for “that’s not how I would have done it.” Did anybody explain to the employee the expected level of quality? Did anybody help them achieve it? Hmmm…. sounds like a secret patient issue.
Missed deadlines
Accountability always starts at the top. Who set the deadline? Were there competing priorities?
Lack of ownership
Very few companies teach employees how to make decisions, and fewer are clear about which decisions are theirs to make in the first place. Oftentimes a lack of ownership is because the person never knew they owned it in the first place.
Communication problems
Effective communication takes at least two people and there are two parts to it: the talking part and the listening part. Sometimes a person is on a PIP for not listening, when the problem is really that the talking part wasn’t done effectively.
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As you can see, the PIP doesn’t always define the real problem. It’s usually just a smoke signal.
And when there’s smoke, you need to find the fire.
As I’ve discovered, the fire rarely starts with the person on the PIP.
They’re just the one getting burned.
The PIP Is The First Time Anyone Has Actually Managed This Person
Here’s the thing about a PIP that makes me roll my eyes, and not in the way that my wife and daughter do with me.
In order to help the person on a PIP, the manager has to do four things:
Define expectations.
Meet regularly.
Coach and mentor.
Document progress.
That’s not so much a remediation process as it is the expected behavior of a manager.
Which means the moment I’m hired to help with the PIP, is oftentimes the moment when effective management actually begins.
That’s not an employee problem, it’s a secret patient problem.
Why My Track Record Is So Different
My track record for transforming people on PIPs is substantially better than the 10 to 30 percent standard.
It’s not because I’m a genius. Or because I have a secret 90-day framework.
It’s because I don’t treat the PIP as the diagnosis.
And I don’t treat the manager nor the employee as the enemy.
The PIP tells me what somebody did. It doesn’t tell me why.
It could be due to a fear that narrows thinking.
Or a broken relationship between the employee and manager.
Or a number of other reasons.
But whatever the reason, I always bring the manager into the work. Not as the problem.
Mostly as the secret patient.
Because if the manager doesn’t change, the employee will walk back into the exact same environment that produced the problem in the first place.
You can coach someone all you want. But if the environment and behavior stay stagnant, everything else will too. (that’s the pattern-environment loop)
The Thing To Do Before Putting A Person On A PIP
Next time you feel a need to put together a Performance Improvement Plan, I want you to do something else first.
Don’t ask what’s wrong with the employee. Ask who the secret patient is.
Ask whether anyone has actually managed this person in the last year, or whether they’ve just been left to flail on their own.
If this employee walks back into the same room, with the same manager, and the same dynamic that got them here, what exactly is supposed to change?
Let’s be honest, the PIP is never really testing whether an employee can improve.
It’s testing whether the secret patient is willing to.
- If you want to talk through a specific situation, maybe a PIP you’re about to approve, or a manager relationship that’s clearly part of the problem, reach out here. I work with HR leaders on addressing this all the time.
P.S. My mother figured this out with families a long time ago. You can’t fix the child by treating only the child. The kid goes home to the same house, the same parents, the same patterns, and within a month you’re back where you started.
A PIP is no different. The employee goes back to the same manager, the same room, the same dynamic.
“Performance Improvement Plans: The Subtle Art Of Being “Supported” Out The Door” by Leigh McKiernon, Career Candour, May 19, 2025
Hey Jeff the "secret patient" framing is smart. I've seen PIPs used as a formal way to document failure without ever examining the system that produced it. The observation that a PIP is often the first time someone has actually been managed is damning. It shifts the whole conversation from "fix this employee" to "what's broken in this relationship?"
I also love the parallel to family therapy it's a perfect analogy because it removes blame and invites curiosity instead. The question "what exactly is supposed to change if the environment stays the same?" is one every manager should sit with before drafting a PIP.
How do you approach the conversation with the manager without putting them on the defensive?
Excellent and insightful article. Bosses don’t set clear expectations.