HR can be a tough gig. We’re on the receiving end of some pretty negative views of our profession. There’s the ever-shifting landscape of employment regulation. We spend much of our time managing conflict and emotional fall-outs and we seem to lack the levers of power that our colleagues in Finance, say, take for granted. But in speaking to hundreds of you over the years, there is one challenge that overshadows all the others; struggling to influence leaders to be better at managing people.
It’s a struggle that I am all too familiar with. For years in frontline HR roles, I tried so hard to get leaders to manage their people – with greater empathy or better judgement – and sometimes to get them to think about their people at all! Being older doesn’t give you many plusses but the ability to learn from your mistakes is one. These are my key learnings about how to influence leaders.
For years, I tried to improve leadership behaviour by designing better policies and processes. However, whilst they may create activity, compliance or reassurance, they rarely create commitment or capability. Leading people is not a technical task. It is complex, emotional, contextual and deeply human. And the more I tried to standardise it, the more I stripped it of the very judgement and discretion that make leadership effective.
One size very definitely does not fit all. Leaders are not a homogenous group and have different pressures, motivations, fears, levels of confidence and levels of interest in people leadership. Designing universal solutions may make our life easier, but do little to help leaders who are struggling in very different ways. When I took the time to understand what leaders were dealing with, what got in the way for them, and what would genuinely help, my solutions became more relevant and more likely to land. For me, it meant recognising that influence came from usefulness, not uniformity.
Many leaders struggle with people leadership but it’s rarely because they really don’t care about their teams. More often, they are time-poor, fearful of getting things wrong, uncertain about how to handle emotional situations, or simply overwhelmed by competing demands. When my leaders avoided difficult conversations, struggled with performance issues, or mishandled people decisions, I found myself filling the gap. I rewrote their emails, sat in on meetings, drafted scripts, or took work off leaders’ plates to keep things moving. In the short term, it felt helpful and I felt reassured that I was reducing risk and potential conflicts with employees. But over time, this rescuing behaviour had a cost. By compensating for poor leadership, I unintentionally reinforced it. Leaders won’t build confidence or capability if someone else is always there to step in and won’t learn how to navigate ambiguity if processes remove the need for judgement. I realised they wouldn’t develop ownership of people leadership if I continued to act as the safety net.
Letting go of the rescuer role is not easy. It can feel risky, especially when the consequences of poor leadership fall on employees. But if we continue to rescue indefinitely, we remain stuck in a cycle where nothing really improves. Influence comes from helping leaders grow, not from protecting them from the discomfort of learning.
I often sought credibility through expertise alone: deep knowledge of employment law, flawless processes, or technical proficiency. But while these things mattered, they were rarely enough. Leaders do not experience influence simply because someone knows the rules, they experience it when someone understands them and the world around them.
Demonstrating commercial literacy and a deep understanding of the business context in which our leaders operate will significantly enhance our influence. So too is being known for bringing perspectives from beyond our organisation and our function. This enables us to help leaders see alternative ways of thinking, without resorting to “best practice” as a blunt instrument.
And underpinning all of this is a willingness to embrace the messiness of people at work. Great HR is not neat, because human beings are contradictory, emotional and unpredictable. Our influence grows when we stop trying to tidy this up and instead help leaders to work with it. This requires confidence in our judgement, insight and experience. In a world where technology can increasingly handle transactions and processes, this human understanding is not a “nice to have”. It is our distinctive value.
Ultimately, influencing leaders isn’t about having better policies or the perfect HR process. It’s about how we show up. When we let go of the need to control, stop rescuing leaders from the difficult parts of people leadership, and bring a broader understanding of the business and the human realities of work, our role begins to shift. We move from being the safety net to being the sounding board – someone who helps leaders think, grow and use their judgement. And while that approach can sometimes feel slower or less tidy than relying on rules and processes, it’s far more powerful in the long run. Because real influence doesn’t come from managing leaders – it comes from helping them become better leaders themselves.
Want to increase your influence at the top table?
Our CPO Programme helps senior HR leaders build the confidence, credibility and commercial impact they need to shape the people agenda and influence how work gets done.
If you’re ready to challenge well, ask better questions and have greater impact with senior leaders, take a look at the programme.
