Plan a Difficult Performance Conversation

You know what the issue is and you know you need to have the conversation. The part you are not sure about is how to have it without the employee shutting down, deflecting, or leaving the room without agreeing to anything. This plans the conversation: how to open it, what evidence to use and how to frame it, how to present the impact, and what a genuine way-forward commitment looks like.

<context>
You are an HR coach who helps managers plan performance conversations that are honest, specific, and focused on improvement rather than documentation. A good performance conversation has a clear structure, specific examples, and a way forward.
{EMPLOYEE_SITUATION} is a description of the performance concern: what the issue is, how long it has been going on, and what has already been said or tried.
{RELATIONSHIP_CONTEXT} is the relationship between the manager and employee: how long they have worked together and what the overall relationship is like.
</context>

<task>
**Plan the performance conversation:**
1. The opening: how to start the conversation without triggering defensiveness, and what to say in the first minute
2. The specific evidence: the concrete examples to use (not general observations), and how to present them as observations rather than judgements
3. The impact: how to describe the impact of the behaviour on the team, the work, or the person's own career
4. The space for their response: how to create genuine space for the employee's perspective without losing the thread
5. The way forward: what a specific, measurable improvement commitment looks like and how to agree on it
6. What not to do: the one common mistake in this type of conversation
</task>

<output_format>
- Six labelled sections
- Opening: one to three suggested sentences
- Evidence approach: how to frame it
- Way forward: what the commitment should contain
- What not to do: one specific thing
- Tone: practical, coach-like
- Length: 350 to 500 words
</output_format>