A Dangerous Trap
Here is a quiet truth about the HR Business Partner (HRBP) role that is rarely spoken aloud. While it’s bad enough to be a low value HRBP in which leadership teams can obviously tell that we are out of wer league and fumbling and will only work with we on the more tactical work - what is far worse is when an executive begins to understand the power and impact the role can have - and combines that with our inexperience and our desire to be successful.
Many HRBPs have shared this similar experience - we notice we are being appreciated but often for transactional, ambiguous and sometimes blatantly unethical reasons. They value how the role of an HRBP can be to smooth over their mistakes, do work on their behalf (how many of us stupidly had a coaching conversation with an employee because we thought it would earn us respect?) quickly secure last-minute headcount, resolve long-pending compensation problems, manage sensitive conversations discreetly, or quietly navigate internal system constraints that limit the executives themselves.
This is where new HRBPs get caught. we want to look valuable and trusted. Before we know it, we're saying "yes" too easily and thinking that's the same as having influence.
It's even more tough when we're starting out because the execs are experts in their business- they know their world inside and out. And we are most often coming from benefits, HR admin, or recruiting, suddenly expected to hold our own in conversations we're not trained for. We don't know the buttons to push or the hidden dynamics or in many cases what this role even does. So, we end up just nodding along to survive the meeting. (I'll dive deeper into learning the business later, but for now, the point is how fast we can become part of the problem if we don't watch out.)
The Unethical Enforcer
My first year as an HRBP was with a sales team, but I'd been with the company a few years. I really liked the EVP of Sales. She was charismatic and welcoming; if she liked you, you felt like instant insider. The day after Christmas, she called me with a new manager she'd hired the week before. Her voice was all bright, sugary enthusiasm—the kind that feels like a hug through the phone. She said, "This is Daniel, he's wonderful, we adore him. Anyway, Daniel, this is Mark, our new team lead, and unfortunately, we need to put someone on a 30-day PIP. Her numbers are not where they need to be. We won't deliver it until the first week of January, but go ahead and mark it today."
I asked if there had been any coaching. Mark started to answer, but she cut him off and just repeated, "Just mark it today and send it to me." I tried to ask if this was okay, but she shut the door with, "Thank you so much, you have been amazing, Merry Christmas, your gift basket is on the way."
The gift basket arrived. It felt nice. But underneath that feeling was the sinking realization that I wasn't being treated as a partner. I was being used for the parts of my job that let her skip the hard stuff in hers.
There were other times, too. A few months later, she just casually promised salary bumps to three people outside of any raise cycle. I wrote back asking who had approved it, and she replied, "Remember, I emailed them for you." Not that she'd told anyone, or spoken to compensation. She just told the employees and expected me to figure out a way to make it happen afterward. I ended up having to go to the VP of HR and apologize on her behalf, which put me in a horrible spot. And what made it worse was nobody coached me on how to push back. It was just assumed I should know how to handle a senior executive with twenty more years of experience and way more political pull.
During my performance review that year, she told me something that made me mad and embarrassed. She said, "As an HR person, I expect you to push back on me. I am a seller. I will always push for what I want. If you do not challenge me, you are not doing your job." At first, I wanted to argue, remembering all the times I had tried. But then I realized she was right. I was totally set up to fail. I was 28, still learning how to read a room, and she had been running billion-dollar sales orgs since before I graduated college. What chance did I have of pushing back confidently when I was still figuring out how the whole compensation system even worked?
The HRBP Battle Scars
These stories aren't rare. Most HRBPs I know have at least one that sits in their gut like a rock. One HRBP told me about being asked to cover up a homophobic incident because leadership thought dealing with it would be too disruptive. Another mentioned an employee with eight separate complaints from women on his team. The investigation confirmed the behavior. He was promoted and moved to a role with less exposure, and the official line was that it was a business decision. There was also an assistant who'd served a company loyally for years. Everyone knew she wanted to move into events. When an event manager role finally opened, it went to a young woman with no experience but the right connections. When the assistant complained, she was fired shortly after. The reasoning looked clean on paper, but everyone knew exactly what happened. She spoke up and paid the price.
These are the moments that build up the ethical scar tissue in HR. The times when you know what's right, but the organization chooses something else, and you're asked to stand by it. But you can't go back. It's pointless to rehash the moments you froze, softened, or stayed quiet because you didn't have the guts, the words, or the political safety to do anything else yet. All you can do is learn to push back early enough so you don't become part of the issue.
Holding the Line - The First Time
A few months into a job at a different company, I found myself running an investigation that would end up teaching me more about boundaries than any training ever had. Four women, each in separate conversations, gave me versions of the same story - nearly identical down to the phrasing, the timing, the moments that made their skin crawl. And all of it pointed to the same manager who we will call Charles.
Their descriptions were consistent and painfully familiar: Touchy. Sleazy. Inappropriate. Always when alcohol was involved: off-sites, happy hours, the kinds of events where people are technically “off the clock” but still absolutely within the company’s realm of responsibility.
By the time I sat down with him, I already knew what the meeting would look like. And like clockwork, he tried the classic “wide-eyed friendly guy” routine - the innocent smile, the faux-confused head tilt. When I asked him about the corroborated stories, the text message exchange, the version of his side of the story. He was falling over backwards to set things right.
“No, that can’t be right,” he insisted. “I’m just friendly, this happens all the time! My girlfriend says my friendliness often looks like flirting and she gets jealous sometimes. But I think beyond a hug and maybe a compliment on a job well done, there's been no interactions."
He closed his book as if to signal we were done, and that is when I told him we needed more information. I suspended him on the spot and gave explicit instructions not to reach out to any of the women. This is standard. This is basic. This is table stakes in HR.
He walked out of my office and instead of leaving the premises as instructed, he'd gotten his manager and a Sr Director that he dotted-line reported to. And within the hour, they scheduled time with me. When I joined the call, they launched straight into what they clearly thought was a reasonable, thoughtful pushback.
“Yeah, that wasn’t cool, but this is his culture" “He’s just friendly.” “Maybe it was mutual.” “These weren’t onsite.” “We are about to ship a huge product line and he's the only one that knows the distributors, trust me, we dont to suspend this guy or have him unhappy."
They mistook my silence for agreement. I wasn’t agreeing. I was absorbing- their excuses, their fear, their priorities. And most importantly: their absolute misread of me. I could tell by the end they thought I was with the "ah, just a 'one of the guys' thing!" That's alright then.
I told them I would review everything and get back to them.
And then I did what HR actually does, the part no one ever glamorizes: I spent the rest of the day - and well into the evening - going line by line through statements, timelines, company policy, case precedent, every angle of impact. And I found two other women that had complained about him FOUR years ago when he was a contractor. They had been buried in their files, not his. At 7pm, I sat down and wrote a full recommendation memo addressed to the CPO, CHRO, Legal, COO.
My recommendation was clear and firm: I recommended termination. In lieu of that, a strict final warning, his rating was to be moved to a 2 making him ineligible for a bonus, he could no longer manage women until he completed 2 weeks of intensive sexual harassment training and I recommended both managers attend those too.
I usually run my recommendations past the HR chain before sending so we can present a united front - I did not need to this time. She and the CHRO responded within 10 minutes in agreement. Legal mostly agreed. Operations didn’t care either way. The CPO was furious.
Everytime he pushed for revenue protection, I pushed for the women - their dignity, their careers, their safety, their right to not be collateral damage in someone else’s “he’s just friendly” narrative. I pushed for the company’s actual responsibility, not the convenient one.
And even when the pressure came, I didn’t move.
He was placed on a final warning, transferred, and five months later, he resigned. His managers completed their training, too - though whether it stuck is another story altogether.
It wasn’t a victimless victory. Nothing in HR ever is. Least of all sexual harassment, but it was the first time I drew a boundary, enforced it at every level, and didn’t back down - even when the people above me expected me to.
Holding the Line - an Introductory Guide
And because I never want to leave anyone feeling bummed out by these stories, let me say this clearly: none of us gets through this job without scars, but it's not all doom and gloom. We can't go back and re-do the times we said yes too fast or stayed quiet because we didn't know what to do.
But what we can do is keep this thought front and center: Execs by nature of their role, will always be tempted to use the HRBP role for shortcuts, even the decent, ethical ones. That temptation is just built into the job structure. Our job is to notice when we're just being useful instead of being valuable.
Tools of The Trade
There are 2 very helpful tools I provide to newer HRBPs when in this situation for the first time.
The first is simply having the courage to tell the truth. It will feel terrifying the first few times. You'll think you're overstepping. You'll think you're about to be fired. But you'd be shocked how often executives actually appreciate someone pushing back. They're surrounded by "yes" people who rely on them for their job, security, and promotion.
So the HRBP who says, "Hold on, I'm not sure that makes sense," often becomes the only person in the room who's truly thinking with them instead of just performing for them.
Sometimes it's gentle: "That seems reasonable, but have we thought through what happens down the line?"
Sometimes it's direct: "I'm concerned we're missing something here. Can we slow down and walk through it?"
And sometimes, when things are serious, it's the strongest version: "I urge you to reconsider this. There are risks I don't think we're accounting for."
The second tool is questions. Not statements. Not lectures. Questions. If you don't feel confident, or you're not sure you totally get the big picture, asking something like, "What makes this the right direction?" or "Have we mapped out the pros and cons?" can open up the whole conversation without you having to fake more knowledge than you have.
But the great thing about questions is they make the executive talk out loud. And the moment someone talks out loud, you get a glimpse into how they think. You understand their logic, their blind spots, their goals, their worries. And in that space, they often start to uncover the very problems you were afraid to name.
That's how you build influence. Not with bravado. Not by pretending. But by being present, honest, curious, and willing to ask the questions no one else is.
Dan
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Daniel "DanFromHR Space"
