Advice to deal with a manipulative direct report?

Advice to deal with a manipulative direct report?

I can't believe I'm in this situation. I hired this internal candidate last November, she came recommended by a few people and one I knew personally. Turned out she had to move off her current team because she was dating her coworker and he just got promoted to the head of her department and so she was out - company policy, can't report to people you're dating/spouses/etc.

She'd been with the company 18 years, she's still young - just this has been her only place of employment and I guess I really should have thought about that a bit more. Personality wise she said all the right things about "how she wanted to grow" and "wanted to learn" and "just wanted someone to show her the way" blah blah.. 6 months later I've tried to get her out of her shell, mentor her, support her and give her things to help her get her career to the next level and I'm met with resistance every step of the way. She says she wants to be a people manager someday so I try to put her in positions to manage, and she drops every ball and I see her coworkers picking up all the slack. She says she wants to be an expert in this field, so I give her opportunities to take classes and learn, and she does them but ultimately doesn't do any work on our end to show her skills - she again keeps letting her teammates do all the work. I feel like she just wants to be in the background, doing self-paced learning and doesn't actually want to do the job she was hired to do.

When I tried to bridge this topic with my manager she told me I made a bad hire, and I had to deal with it now. When I told her some of my plans she said "she is not going to want to do that" speaking about my direct report. I said "ok.. what are your ideas" and she recommended I ask this girl what she wants to do and go from there.

Last week I had the difficult "where do you see this going" convo with my direct report. I took all the notes where she said point blank "that makes me want to kill myself" when I described some of my project ideas to get her out of her shell and into managing and so I said "alright then" and we moved on. I left her with a "maybe this isn't the right role for you, but that is ok but give it some thought" I told my boss all about the convo and my boss said "let me talk to her" ok, go for it.

This week my boss calls me, she talked to my direct report. Turns out she got an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT conversation. Apparently I am the problem according to my direct report. She said she doesn't feel supported, doesn't feel like her work is valued or seen or even appreciated (uhhh excuse me, what work? lets be honest) and that I have even "berated" her. I was absolutely floored - are you kidding me? First of all I have nothing to berate anyone about, she barely does anything not that I've ever told her I know that. I've tried to push her and said "hey I want to hear you speak more in meetings and I want you to present your findings to the team" in which she never does, lets everyone else present and when I asked her once to show me which part she worked on (since she didn't present) she said she did all the testing - so I asked why she didn't present that then.. crickets. If that is berating, please stop me but jesus. I have been nothing but supportive and now she is point blank being manipulative because she knows she doesn't want to do the work and ultimately that is a problem. She asked me yesterday if she was going to get fired - I said "no, not that I know of" but it just struck me as odd and now I know she is covering her own a**

Ugh, I don't know what to do now. I told my boss I no longer feel comfortable having conversations with her without someone else present or the calls being recorded, if she is going to lie to make me look like a problem. My boss said its not that deep and she knows the "truth lies somewhere in the middle" ughhhh no, she is lying and now I'm labeled as a horrible manager. Great! Its a holiday weekend so I feel like I can get away with cancelling our 1:1 this week but I can't cancel them all without some explanation that I no longer feel comfortable speaking with her without someone else present. I told my manager I want her moved off my team - this doesn't make me want to work with someone who is going to accuse me of things that are untrue but also if she is saying I am the problem, but I have a million other reports who are not - what does that say? If I'm the problem, move her then.

Oh and my boss did say she is going to think of moving her to another team - so now do I warn the other manager? I have a great relationship with my co-manager on the other team so I'm struggling if I need to give them a heads-up woman-to-woman that hey, watch your back with this one. I can't even believe these people are just moved around at this company? Believe you and me if it were me, I'd have just been fired. This stuff is a joke.