Coach, or cut? Making a fair call on an underperformer — a live classroom session

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1. For the instructor

This is a ready-to-run, 75-minute classroom session on a decision every manager eventually faces: when someone on your team is underperforming, do you coach them (invest time and a fair chance to improve) or manage them out (move, with respect, toward an exit)? Students reason about one composite company, argue the call in small groups, and defend it.

You need no prep. Everything to teach this cold is in this pack: a case (section 3), a minute-by-minute run of show (section 4), the few concepts the decision needs (section 5), a group exercise (section 6), a facilitator answer key you can run without knowing the field (section 7), discussion prompts (section 8), a printable student handout (section 9), a stretch task for fast tables (section 10), and a slide outline (section 11).

How to run it in a mixed room. No business or HR background is assumed, and none is needed. Every term is defined the first time it appears. The case is deliberately contestable — a reasonable table can land on coach and a reasonable table on cut, and that disagreement is the point. Put students in groups of three or four so quieter voices get heard, and let the tables argue before you reveal anything. The answer key names a defensible call but is honest that it is close; reward the reasoning, never a guessed “right” letter.

A note on the clock. The run of show is a tight 75 minutes with little slack — the teach block especially runs over. In a 30–40 student room budget ~85 minutes in practice. If you fall behind, name (don’t fully teach) escalation-of-commitment/sunk-cost, cap report-backs at two tables, and cover two discussion prompts. Protect the group exercise and the debrief — those are the session.

One honest line to say out loud at the start: this is teaching material, not a certification, not credit-bearing, and it does not promise any outcome. It is practice at making and defending a hard people-call.

2. Session at a glance


Audience	Any future manager; no HR or business background assumed
Class size	12–40 (works in groups of 3–4)
Total time	75 minutes
What students bring	Nothing but the handout; no laptops, no math

By the end students can:

Diagnose the cause of underperformance — a skill gap, a will gap, or a fit gap — before choosing a cure.
Weigh the odds of recovery against the cost of delay, and name the two ways the call goes wrong (cutting too fast, rescuing forever).
Defend a coach-or-exit call and name the one fact that would flip it.

Further reading (for you or keen students): the self-paced “Decide” course this session builds on — Manage out, or coach? (projects/manage-out-or-coach) — covers the same ideas in more depth, including the fairness and legal-process side.

3. The case

Cedar & Co. is a composite mid-size home-goods retailer — invented for this class. Every name and number below is illustrative, chosen for clean reasoning, and is not drawn from or claimed about any real company or person.

You manage a store team of ten. Sam Ortega is one of your floor supervisors. For three years Sam was among your most reliable people — steady, well-liked by staff, good with customers. About five months ago, two things happened close together:

Cedar & Co. rolled out a new stock-and-checkout system, and supervisors now do most of their work through it. Sam has never looked comfortable with it.
Sam applied for an assistant-manager role and was passed over in favour of an outside hire.

Since then Sam’s numbers have slipped and the mood has changed. The picture on your desk this month (all figures illustrative):

Item	Figure (illustrative)
People on the store team	10
Months Sam has been below standard	3 (after 3 strong years)
Sam’s shift error rate (mis-scans, stock mismatches) vs team average	~11% vs ~4%
Times you’ve raised it informally with Sam	Once, ~6 weeks ago — a friendly chat, little changed
Rough time to hire and train a replacement supervisor	~4 months

Two other supervisors have started, indirectly, asking why Sam’s mistakes keep landing on everyone else’s shift. You have to decide what comes next: open a real, time-boxed improvement plan, or begin a respectful exit. It is not obvious. That is the point.

4. Run of show

Total planned time: 75 minutes. Adjust the group-work and debate blocks first if you run long.

8 min — Hook. Pose Sam’s situation from section 3 out loud (or project Slide 2). Ask for a quick show of hands: coach, or cut? Note the split — you will return to it. Do not explain anything yet.
12 min — Teach the few ideas the call needs (section 5): the two failure modes, and skill vs will vs fit. Keep it to the slides; the case does the rest.
5 min — Set up the exercise. Hand out the worksheet (section 9), form groups of 3–4, read the task aloud, and confirm every group knows the question.
20 min — Group work. Tables diagnose the cause, weigh the odds and the cost of waiting, and write down a call plus the one fact that would flip it. Circulate using the “stuck table” prompts in section 7.
15 min — Report-outs and debate. Take one or two coach tables and one or two cut tables. Make them name what their choice costs. Let them argue.
10 min — Reveal and debrief. Walk the answer key (section 7), stressing that it is genuinely close, and run two or three prompts from section 8.
5 min — Close and stretch. Give the one-sentence takeaway and point fast finishers at the stretch (section 10).

5. Teaching points

Teach only these. They are all the decision needs.

Coaching vs managing out. Coaching means you invest: you name the gap plainly, give real support, and set a fair, time-boxed chance to close it — often written up as a performance improvement plan (a PIP: written expectations, a deadline, and help to meet them). Managing out means you conclude the fit is not there and move, with respect and fair process, toward an exit.

The two failure modes. This call goes wrong in two opposite ways, and naming them helps you catch yourself. The too-quick cut exits someone who would have recovered — you read a bad stretch as a verdict and throw away years of knowledge. The endless rescue is the reverse: “one more chance,” quarter after quarter, while the team watches the standard quietly drop. The quick cut feels decisive; the endless rescue feels loyal. Both traps arrive dressed as a virtue.

Diagnose the cause: skill, will, or fit. Underperformance has three causes that look identical on a dashboard. Sort them by two questions — can the person do the job, and do they want to?

A skill gap: the will is there, the capability is not yet. They care and are trying but lack a technique or knowledge. This is what coaching is built for; best recovery odds.
A will gap: the capability is there, the motivation is not. They can do it but have checked out — bored, burned out, or aggrieved. Coaching a skill here is useless; you address the why first. Some will gaps recover once the cause is named; others are the first sign someone has already left in their head.
A fit gap: neither skill nor will can reach what the role now needs. No amount of coaching bridges it; the humane response is a move or an exit.

The cost of delay and team drag. Waiting is never free. Team drag is the hidden tax a tolerated underperformer puts on everyone around them — the others absorb the slipping work. Worse, strong performers read a tolerated gap as effort here is optional and may start to leave; losing someone you wanted to keep is regretted attrition, and it is far costlier than the exit you were avoiding. But cutting too fast has a price too: the ~4-month cost of replacing a trained person. This is why a good coaching attempt is time-boxed — a deadline by which you will know. Without one, “we’ve come this far” becomes escalation of commitment: throwing more time after time already spent (the sunk cost you can’t get back) instead of asking what the next month buys.

6. Group exercise

The task. In your group, decide what the manager should do about Sam — open a real, time-boxed improvement plan (coach) or begin a respectful exit (cut) — and be ready to defend it.

Handout. Use the worksheet in section 9. It has the case facts and space to work.

Steps (about 20 minutes):

Diagnose (6 min). Is Sam’s problem mostly a skill gap, a will gap, a fit gap, or a tangle of more than one? Point to the specific facts that led you there — not the count of bad months.
Weigh it (6 min). Roughly, how likely is Sam to recover, and what is a save worth versus a ~4-month replacement? What is every extra month costing the team?
Call it (5 min). Write one sentence: coach or cut, and why. If coach, state the deadline.
Flip it (3 min). Write the single fact that, if you learned it tomorrow, would change your call. This is the most important line on the page.

7. Facilitator answer key

This case is genuinely contestable — say so. Sam’s cause is a tangle: a real skill gap (the new stock-and-checkout system Sam never mastered) knotted with a will gap (resentment after being passed over). The whole debate turns on how you read the will gap — resolving or deepening? — and the case is written so the evidence does not settle it. A disciplined table can defend either call.

If a table argues “fit gap — the role changed under Sam,” push back. Fit is the weakest read here: Sam did this job well for three years, so the role has not outgrown them — what changed is a new system to learn (a skill gap) and a knock to motivation (a will gap), both coachable. A fit gap would mean no plan could ever succeed; nothing in the case supports that. Make the table point to the fact that would prove genuine fit gap — they can’t find one.

The marginally more defensible call is to coach — but only with a hard deadline. The skill gap is plainly coachable, Sam has three strong years and staff goodwill, and the single informal chat six weeks ago was not a real plan, so no fair attempt has yet been made. So: a genuine, time-boxed PIP — clear targets on the new system, concrete help, a firm deadline (say 45–60 days) — is the bet. What coaching costs: more team drag and management hours if it fails, and the risk it becomes an endless rescue if you let the deadline slide.

Cutting is also defensible, and a strong table may land there: if you read the passed-over resentment as a will gap that is deepening — Sam disengaging, not recovering — then coaching skills cannot fix a motivation problem, and a fair, prompt exit protects the other nine. What cutting costs: the ~4-month replacement, three years of knowledge, and a message to the team that a rough patch buys no benefit of the doubt.

What would flip the call: signs the will gap is deepening (Sam refusing support, interviewing elsewhere, or the resentment hardening) point to exit; signs it is resolving (Sam engaging with help, the sting of the promotion fading) point firmly to coach. Common wrong turns: deciding on the count of bad months instead of the cause; treating the informal chat as a “chance already given”; and choosing coach with no deadline — which is not coaching, it is the endless rescue.

Stuck-table prompts (use whichever fits where they’ve jammed):

Stuck on the diagnosis (step 1)? Ask: “What is Sam actually failing at — using the new system, or caring about the job? Which of those does coaching fix?” This forces skill vs will apart.
Stuck on weighing (step 2)? This is where no-business and ESL tables stall — make it concrete, not a calculation. Ask: “You don’t need exact numbers. Just two guesses: is Sam more likely than not to come good with real help — yes or no? And is training a brand-new supervisor over ~4 months cheap or expensive?” If the answers are “probably yes” and “expensive,” the attempt is worth making — the only missing piece is a deadline. There is no wrong number here; the point is the direction, not a figure.
Stuck on the call (step 3)? Ask the flip test: “If Sam met every target you set, would you be glad to keep them?” If yes, the plan is real and coaching is honest. If no, they have already decided to exit — and the fair move is to do that cleanly, not run a race that is fixed.

8. Discussion & debrief

Run three or four of these after the report-outs:

Which failure mode — the too-quick cut or the endless rescue — was your table leaning toward, and what pulled you there?
The informal chat six weeks ago changed little. Does that count as “a chance already given,” or not a real attempt at all? Why does the difference matter?
How would you tell a resolving will gap from a deepening one before you commit weeks to a plan?
What does every extra month of waiting cost the other nine people — and could that cost be higher than the cost of being wrong about Sam?
Someone says: “There’s a hiring freeze, so we can’t replace Sam anyway — just keep coaching.” What is wrong with the second half of that sentence?

One-sentence takeaway: Diagnose the cause before you choose the cure, and never coach without a deadline.

9. Student handout

(Printable. One per student or one per group.)

The situation. You manage a 10-person store team at Cedar & Co. (a made-up retailer — all figures below are illustrative). Sam Ortega, a floor supervisor, was one of your best people for three years. Five months ago the store switched to a new stock-and-checkout system Sam has never been comfortable with, and Sam was passed over for an assistant-manager job that went to an outside hire. Since then:

Sam’s shift error rate is about 11%, against a team average of about 4%.
Sam has been below standard for about 3 months (after 3 strong years).
You raised it once, informally, about 6 weeks ago — a friendly chat; little changed.
Replacing and training a new supervisor would take roughly 4 months.
Two other supervisors have started, indirectly, asking why Sam’s mistakes land on their shifts.

Your question: Should the manager coach Sam (open a real, time-boxed improvement plan) or cut (begin a respectful exit)?

Work through these in your group:

Diagnose. Is this mostly a skill gap (can’t yet), a will gap (checked out), a fit gap (role outgrew them), or a mix? Which facts tell you?
Weigh. Rough odds Sam recovers? Value of a save vs a 4-month replacement? What is each extra month costing the team?
Call it. Coach or cut — in one sentence, with your reason. If coach, name the deadline.
Flip it. The single fact that would change your mind:

10. Stretch

For tables that finish early:

Flip the will gap. Rewrite the case so Sam is clearly disengaging — quietly interviewing elsewhere, brushing off help. What now? Then rewrite it so Sam is clearly recovering. Name the two or three concrete signals that told you which world you were in.
Design the deadline. If you chose coach, draft the actual plan: three specific, measurable targets on the new system, the help you’d offer, and the date you’d decide. Then answer honestly: if Sam hit all three, would you keep them? If not, your plan is a countdown, not a chance.
Debias yourself. A manager who habitually cuts too fast reads recovery odds too low; one who never lets go reads them too high. Describe one concrete way to check your own instinct here — a second opinion, a written pre-commitment — so the call reflects Sam, not your temperament.

11. Slides

Slide 1 — Coach, or cut?

Title slide: making a fair call on an underperformer
A 75-minute working session — you will decide a real, contestable case
Presenter note: Set the tone — this is not a lecture; they will argue and defend a call.

Slide 2 — Meet Sam

Floor supervisor at Cedar & Co. (a made-up retailer; all figures illustrative)
Three strong years — then a new checkout system and a promotion that went to someone else
Now: ~11% error rate vs ~4% team average, 3 months below standard
Presenter note: Read it, then ask for a show of hands — coach or cut? Note the split.

Slide 3 — Two ways to get it wrong

The too-quick cut: exit someone who would have recovered — feels decisive
The endless rescue: “one more chance” forever — feels loyal
Both traps arrive dressed as a virtue
Presenter note: Ask which one they feel pulled toward with Sam.

Slide 4 — Diagnose before you cure: skill, will, or fit

Skill gap — wants to, can’t yet → coaching’s home turf (best odds)
Will gap — can, but checked out → fix the why first, not the skill
Fit gap — neither reaches the role → a move or an exit, not a plan
Presenter note: Same two bad months can have opposite cures — that’s the whole idea.

Slide 5 — Waiting is never free

Team drag: the others absorb the gap every shift
Regretted attrition: your best people read a tolerated gap as “effort is optional”
So a real attempt is time-boxed — a deadline beats an open-ended rescue (escalation)
Presenter note: But cutting too fast costs a ~4-month replacement — both sides have a price.

Slide 6 — Your task

In your group: diagnose → weigh → call it → flip it
Write the call in one sentence, and the one fact that would change it
20 minutes. Defend it, don’t guess it.
Presenter note: Hand out the worksheet; form groups of 3–4.

Slide 7 — The call (and why it’s close)

Sam’s cause is a tangle: real skill gap + a will gap from being passed over
Marginally more defensible: coach — with a hard deadline (no real plan tried yet)
Cutting is also defensible if you read the will gap as deepening
Flip test: “If Sam hit every target, would you be glad to keep them?”
Presenter note: Stress that this is genuinely contestable; reward reasoning, not a letter.

Slide 8 — Takeaway

Diagnose the cause before you choose the cure
Never coach without a deadline
This is practice at a hard call — not a certification, not a promise
Presenter note: Point fast finishers at the stretch task.

12. Sources & license

Sources. See SOURCES.md in this folder for the full provenance. In short: Cedar & Co. and Sam Ortega, and every figure attached to them, are composite — invented from ordinary, realistic dynamics for clean teaching, and not drawn from or claimed about any real company or person. The frameworks (skill/will/fit, the two failure modes, team drag, escalation of commitment) are standard, publicly documented people-management ideas, cited in SOURCES.md.

License & disclaimer. This module is offered for free classroom use under the canonical terms maintained in company/legal/classroom-license.md — refer to that file for the exact wording; the license text is not restated or altered here. In plain terms: this material is provided as is, for teaching and practice only. It is not a certification, is not credit-bearing, and does not promise any particular result. Nothing here is legal or HR advice; real performance and exit decisions should follow your own organisation’s policies and applicable law.

Instructor teaching material, provided as-is. Not accredited, not a certification, and not affiliated with or endorsed by any university. Uses composite (invented) companies and illustrative figures.