I started reading this with high hopes. Unfortunately it quickly started to spiral. The procrastinator may well not be procrastinating, they may genuinely be struggling technically. "It's works locally but not on staging" is a technical, solvable problem. Sure, it might be a lie, it might be actually they're off doing other things, but in itself that doesn't sound like procrastination. The lone wolf? When you describe that scenario to me, it sounds like Lisa might not have appreciated the 5th time her entirely male team shouted her down in the last "high energy" discussion. I once got to sit in on a team who would do planning poker, it was arduous, and one of my colleagues completely ruined it when she pointed out it was pointless because they always just deferred to Rik. It was like an hour a week where Rik got to decide what everyone did.

I'm not saying that for certain Lisa wasn't a lone wolf, all I'm saying is that diagnosing people into these categories may do more harm than good. And often the advice that's suggested is just absurd. Treat the people who work for you as people. Communicate with them, let them understand your expectations and when they aren't meeting them and work with them to fix problems where they exist. Most importantly, if you're part of a good team, let others lead, and learn from them and learn to work with them. Often the negative nancy is the person who will throw a thousand problems up the first time you talk to them, and the second time you talk to them they've got a neat solution on how to solve them all. That's fine - now you know, give them the space they need to work.

Oh and also? A PIP isn't a way to fix a problem. It's an HR tool to build the documentation up to fire an employee with the minimum risk of legal problems. It's a way to fire people 99.9% of the time, and you need to know that going in, because even if miraculously it works and the employee improves, you have put that employee on the short list for any layoff and that may well be totally out of your hands.