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Are your bosses asking to lay her off or are you unsatisfied with her performance?

there is a general ask to Optimize the team size - not a very strong ask. On a personal note - i am not happy with her performance and she has not shown any inclianation to show ownership. I have managed to get opportunities for her and she is not picking up on them. She has >10 years of exp and my expectation is she needs to own things and not remain IC.

Hey @Niranjan Bala you will have few sleepless nights because of it, but in the long run this will be okay. I know this is not the perfect answer to the question, but there is no other way to it too.

Why don’t you try a performance improvement plan with her before you take the call of firing her? Talk to her and understand if there are any challenges she is specifically facing? Are there any blockers etc that you can remove and help in anyway. This is assuming you haven’t had a chat about her performance yet.

Actually, the moment you are in a PIP, people lose the urge to work because they know that they have fallen out of favor. It needs a miracle for a 180-degree shift from 'about to being let go' to 'staying back'.

I do think PIPs vary culture to culture. I’ve had successful PIPs in my experience.

The benefit of doubt always goes to the team member. If you think you haven’t communicated your expectations clearly, you almost surely didn’t. So, give it another shot. Set your expectations very clearly (in an email) and give her the required time to prove. If it doesn’t work this time around, your decision is probably right.

Is it feasible for you to change the way you communicate/set expectations for xyz/ to what you would have liked it to be for a month to then see what the change in behavior is? It's like a PIP but without it being explicitly so but you remove yourself as a variable and can make a more dispassionate decision either way while also satisfying the ask.