[michaelochurch]

If you get it wrong then by making it official and documenting by email you will get the entire teams backs up.

Yep. Much of management theory assumes that employees are passive, like cattle, and that the employee will cluelessly make nothing of the manager who's "documenting". In reality, that puts the person into war mode.

The old phrase about never pulling a gun unless you intend to kill someone? It also applies to HR practices and "documenting". You only do that if you're sure you're going to fire someone as quickly as you can, because there's absolutely no way to turn back once down that road. The best route is to fire same-day with a generous severance, but most middle-managers don't have that leeway (either to fire quickly or to give severances). Which gets to the crux of why being a middle manager sucks so hard. You have major responsibilities (hiring, firing, defining and canceling projects) but none of the power to do them properly. You often get stuck between self-serving, arrogant executives (MacLeod Sociopaths) and checked-out minimum-effort players (MacLeod Losers) and can very easily be cleaning up the messes of both.