Every People leader and most people managers have a PIP story that makes their stomach churn. The manager who waited way too long, vague performance goals no one can measure, the "surprise" complaint the day before termination. Most of us have or will have been there.
Here's the thing: a well-built Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) doesn't have to be a punishment or "just" a paper trail. It's a culture tool — a way to tell the truth directly, set fair expectations, move faster toward clarity, and drive real resolutions and action. When done right, it protects your company legally and operationally, your culture, your integrity, and the team member(s) in question.
Join executive coach Leila Bulling Towne and long-time Chief People Officer Cris Barrett as they offer tips, tricks, and tools to help you manage tough performance issues with decency, precision, and zero drama — aligning humanity, speed, culture-enhancement, and compliance so PIPs actually work.
Stop Building PIPs That Don't Work
- The small documentation gaps that turn solid decisions into legal risks
- What "measurable" goals really look like and how to fix vague ones
- The timing factor: why momentum and clarity matter more than perfection
Get Managers Doing Their Part
- How to make accountability everyone's job, not just HR's
- Scripts for hard conversations that don't sound robotic or defensive
- What to say when a manager tries to quit the process ("Can't we just move faster to term?")
Endings Without Anxiety
- The pre-termination checks that keep you compliant and calm
- Spotting high-risk behavior (last-minute leave, protected-class signals) early and responding right
- What the final conversation should sound like and what to leave unsaid
The Separation Checklist: What You Can't Afford to Miss
- Final pay, PTO and sick time accruals, tax implications, and benefits offboarding—what's required and where some differences lie
- Access, security, immigration compliance, recordkeeping, and the documentation that protects you long after the employee is gone
- WARN Act basics: when mass layoffs trigger mandatory notice obligations
(Tip: This applies to both voluntary and involuntary separations because clean exits matter either way!)
You'll Walk Away With:
- A PIP process and framework that works in real life and not just on paper
- Conversation language you can teach and scale across your org at all levels
- The confidence to move from fear to fairness and shared success in performance decisions — fully compliant, fully protected
Meet the Presenters
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Leila Bulling Towne
Leila Bulling Towne is the creator of AwesomeLeader.com and founder of The Bulling Towne Group. She’s been featured in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, NBC.com, Inc magazine and the BBC.com. She’s also the host of the podcast, “The Leadership Shot.” Her clients range from startup executives to super smart technical people managing teams for the first-time leaders with EQ challenges to newly promoted directors with a new span of control, to seasoned execs at Fortune 500 companies. Her sweet spots include emotional intelligence, teamwork and collaboration, executive presence, leadership brand, self-esteem as a high achiever, teamwork dysfunction and 1:1 “training” in leadership and management skills. She has over 270,000 online students.
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Cris Barrett
Cris Barrett is a seasoned talent and organizational development leader with three decades of experience shaping cultures, growing leaders, and building high-performing organizations. An architect, facilitator, and change catalyst, Cris partners with executive leaders and teams to sharpen strategy, elevate people practices, and deliver lasting business impact for employees, customers, and shareholders.
Over the course of his career, Cris has held senior leadership roles spanning global business partnership, employee communications, talent acquisition, talent management, rewards & recognition, IT and facilities at companies including Silicon Graphics, Johnson & Johnson, Yahoo!, Facebook (Meta), and Aurora, as well as several smaller high-growth technology and healthcare organizations.
His work has included launching large-scale leadership and technical development programs, advising executives through complex organizational transformations, and designing communication strategies that align thousands of employees around a shared vision.
SHRM certification has approved this webinar for 1 PDC toward SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP recertification. A program code will be provided at the end of the webinar.