HR often struggles to trust managers and leaders to do the people side of their jobs well; they can lack the skills, the confidence or the motivation. And yet, despite all of our reservations and beliefs about managers, we have to trust them. When you start from a position of trust – that they are grown-ups who are capable of doing this well – you do four things differently that will give you a much better chance to influence leaders.
Let’s look at four ways HR can become better at influencing leaders when we start from trust.
If you strip away most HR policies and processes, they often exist because someone once behaved badly.
Every time HR introduces a rule to prevent one rogue manager from misbehaving, we lower the level of autonomy for everyone else. It’s the equivalent of putting a speed limiter on every car because one person broke the limit once. We design our systems to prevent pain rather than enable success. But the more we focus on control, the more we reinforce the parent-child dynamic. And here’s the irony: our attempts to prevent bad behaviour don’t usually stop the bad behaviour. The people who want to game the system will still find a way; it’s the decent managers who end up feeling restricted, frustrated and disengaged.
When you stop designing around the bad and start creating for the good you not only change the power dynamic with your leaders to one that’s more adult to adult, you also free up the organisation from the bureaucracy that comes with parenting and refocus your energies away from ensuring compliance to building their capabilities.
So,
Instead of acting as compliance enforcers of multiple policies, we can change the dynamic by framing guidance for managers through broad, empowering principles – ones that presume reasonableness and positive intent. The key here is that you are not dictating how managers must manage their people. You are providing light-touch principles that enable them to use their judgement and do the right thing based on their knowledge of the individual and the context. Light touch principles such as Legal and General’s “dress for your day”, Telefonica’s “work where you are most productive” or Prisjakt’s “take the time you need” are a great alternative to detailed dress codes and hybrid and bereavement leave policies.
Detailed policies create dependency and stop leaders thinking for themselves. Light-touch principles, on the other hand, are based on mutual trust and accountability. They assume good intent and competence. They encourage managers to use their experience and judgement and to own the outcomes of their decisions. This is important because adults don’t learn or lead through instruction alone; they grow through autonomy and consequence.
Every time we make something mandatory, we send the signal that we don’t trust our leaders. But adults don’t like being told what to do, they like to choose. If we really want to influence behaviour, we need to start from trust and make participation optional. The paradox is that when you stop forcing people, more of them want to join in. So, instead of a starting point of “we have to make them do it” because we don’t trust them otherwise, try starting with “how can we make this so valuable, easy to use and interesting that they want to do it?”
We like to rescue our leaders.
We:
And so on…
We step in to “rescue” leaders because we care. Because we want things done properly. Because we can see the train wreck coming and can’t bear to look away. But every time we step in to save a leader from their own people problems, we weaken our influence and keep the relationship unequal. Rescuing feels like we are being helpful, but it creates dependency in the long term. It also prevents us from helping leaders get better at managing their people. To influence leaders, we have to take off that super-hero cape and start coaching them instead.
Yes, they’ll tell you how grateful they are and how they “couldn’t manage without you”, but rescuing is the HR equivalent of helicopter parenting – comforting, exhausting, and completely counterproductive. The more we do it, the less our leaders grow. Influence isn’t about stepping in; it’s about stepping back with confidence.
So, if you want to influence leaders, start from a position of trust. Let’s stop designing around the poorest managers, creating tons of detailed policies, avoid anything mandatory and above all, stop rescuing.
We help HR teams build the confidence and skills to work differently with leaders, whether that means coaching rather than rescuing, challenging old HR habits or finding simpler, more human ways to get things done.
Take a look at how we can help your team, through in-house workshops, programmes and the Disruptive HR Club.
The third book in Lucy Adams’ series for forward-thinking HR professionals explores why HR struggles to influence leaders — and how to build the confidence, credibility and authority to create real change.
