Hi Reader,

The HRBP role is broken.

It was meant to be strategic, helping leaders build people strategy for their units. In many companies, it turned into firefighting: solving admin problems, managing conflicts, and patching holes. I wrote about the problem and how to make a job more strategic in a Forbes Coaches Council article.

The HRBP as manager coach

In the latest Built by People Leaders episode, I talk with Jen Paxton, SVP of People and Talent at Roofr, about how strategic people partners differ from traditional HR.

The best way is to turn the HRBP into the manager’s coach. It takes four moves.

Give every manager an HRBP as their coach. The HRBP’s main job becomes helping managers lead, so most of their time goes to managers instead of cases.

Start with the basics. Most managers need help with how to run a useful one-on-one and how to give hard feedback. When a tough conversation is coming, the HRBP role-plays it with the manager first.

Ask follow-up questions. Dig into the problem before moving on. Managers open up when they can see you want to understand it and help solve it.

Offer options instead of “no.” “This isn’t right, but what about this or this?” keeps the manager moving, and it puts the HRBP and the manager on the same problem together.

Why it works

Two reasons.

First, it builds trust. It’s hard for managers to open up to someone inside the organization, and harder still when HR keeps saying no. An HRBP who asks follow-up questions and looks for options with them is someone managers come back to.

Second, coaching conversations show HR how the business works: how teams operate, where they clash and what they’re building. That’s how an HRBP connects the dots. Jen’s example: if one department is building a pricing calculator and an HRBP conversation shows another department building the same thing, putting the two together is part of the job. Once leaders see that value, they start bringing HR into decisions. As Jen put it: “It’s not me asking to come to these meetings. It’s ‘Hey Jen, I really would like you to be in this meeting.’”

Try it this week

Pick one manager you support and book 30 minutes. Bring three questions:

“What’s one conversation with your team you’ve been putting off?”

“What’s working on your team that other managers should know about?”

“Which team do you work with most, and what would make that relationship better?”

One line worth keeping

“No” is a sentence. But it also just stops you immediately.

Continue the conversation

The full episode has more from Jen: why HR should own the change management side of AI, how checking token usage helped her find an AI build worth showing to the whole company, and how she learns a new business fast when she joins a company in an industry she doesn’t know. You can listen on your favorite platform.