I've told him and told him but he doesn't change

• The leader likes the employee. Her earnest, warm personality is engaging and she is well-liked by her colleagues. The leader is fearful that he will hurt her feelings, or unsettle her so much that she will react emotionally. Every time he wants to say something to her he thinks, “But she is such a good person,” so he avoids telling her and hopes she picks up on signals, or gets feedback from somewhere else. “After all,” the leader says, “She’s smart…she has to be picking up on the reactions of those around her!” 
•  The manager is talented and has risen fairly fast, as a result. His technical prowess has always opened opportunities for him. The leader values his technical expertise and doesn’t want the manager to leave, so the feedback has been softened into “advice” or delivered with words such as, “You might want to consider…” So the talented manager figures he can take it or leave it.
• The leader sees herself as a good developer of people and she likes to tell stories about her own career and how she faced her own challenges in the workplace. She hopes that her staff see themselves in her stories and pick up the lessons she is trying to convey to them about their own performance gaps. Unfortunately, her employees who need the message aren’t hearing it.
• The leader doesn’t like confrontation, so he is careful about the words he uses. He doesn’t want to point the finger at the employee, so he finds it easier to position the feedback in terms of “other people,” such as, “You know that department is a challenge to work with, so you might want to…” or “You know how young people are to manage—they can be demanding—but I think it would work better with your staff if you…” The employee gets the message that other people are difficult but he is just fine.
• The leader uses vague words and phrases and thinks the manager is getting the message. When I asked a manager, who was in trouble, what his boss told him about his failure to turn around his performance, the manager said, “He told me he would have to make a change.” When I asked him what he thought that meant, he said,” He’d probably move me to a different job.” The leader told me something quite different: “I told him he could lose his job…I’d have to fire him.” So the words “make a change” can have many interpretations.
• The leader has been direct with the manager about the way he deals with customers. In fact, the leader has brought it up at least three times. Each time he said he needed to see improvement and even mentioned it during the manager’s performance review. But in the written review, it was mentioned briefly but he was rated an above average. He also received an above average pay increase. Which message would you listen to?
• The leader has been very clear about what behaviors the manager needs to change. The manager assured the leader that she would try to improve. This scene is repeated off and on over the course of three years. The manager hears the feedback and she improves for a while, but several months later, she slides back into her old ways. The last time this happened, she went home and told her husband, “Well, I got ‘the talk’ again today so I’d better be on my best behavior for a while. You know how my boss gets a bee in her bonnet.” If no consequences occur, why should she believe her behavior is serious enough to fix permanently?