> A slightly more charitable way to phrase this might be “Some people prefer to be treated as professionals, with dignity and respect.”

You've just proved my point - what I might consider "handling a fragile ego with kid-gloves", you would consider to be "handling professionally with dignity and respect". It's all very subjective.

I think we would agree that a company's leaders need to be consistent and clear where they think the line is, and keep an eye on performance levels to determine if they've made a mistake.