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My Call. My Mess.
TL;DR
Every HR leader has a protégé story. Someone you saw something in. Someone you went to bat for before anyone else noticed them. Someone you quietly moved into position because you trusted your gut, and your gut had been right a hundred times before.
Episode 12 is about what happens when it isn't.
Kelly pushes hard to promote Rina Watts, a sharp, high-potential HRBP, into a senior role supporting Engineering during a critical quarter. The promotion looks right on paper. Kelly's instincts say it's right. But within weeks, the cracks start showing, and this time Kelly can't blame Daniel, or Jessica, or a broken process. The call was hers.
The Situation
Kelly had been watching Rina Watts for almost a year. Rina was a mid-level HRBP supporting Product. Sharp, direct, unafraid to push back on managers twice her age. She had that rare instinct for knowing when a situation needed process and when it just needed a conversation.
So when the Senior HRBP role opened up in Engineering, right as the Q3 launch was ramping, Kelly didn't hesitate.
"She's ready," Kelly told Maya over coffee.
Maya stirred her cup slowly. "She's good. But Engineering is post-reorg, still bruised from the Nikolai situation. Parker barely talks to HRBPs. I wouldn't throw anyone into that right now."
Kelly heard the caution. But she had her mind made up. "She'll figure it out. That's what good people do."
Maya didn't push further. She knew when to let things go.
The Spiral
The promotion went through fast. Kelly used her credibility to accelerate it. She told Daniel it was a retention play, told Lena the role was already budgeted, told Parker that Rina would bring fresh perspective. All technically true. But the real reason was simpler: Kelly had already decided Rina was going to make it.
By Rina's second week, she was in a skip-level with Victor, one of Parker's most senior engineering directors. He'd been at LumaCore since the seed round and had outlasted three HRBPs before her.
Victor wasn't hostile. He just clearly did not want to be in the meeting. He answered questions in as few words as possible and treated the HRBP relationship like a chore someone made him sign up for.
Rina asked about team dynamics, pain points from the reorg, what support would actually be useful. Victor said, "We're fine. Just make sure headcount doesn't get frozen again."
Two weeks after that, an engineering manager brought Rina a conflict. Two team members, unclear ownership, one hinting at looking elsewhere. Rina did what she'd always done in Product: scheduled a three-way conversation. Direct, transparent, get everyone in a room.
In Product, that worked. In Engineering, the two people sat there looking horrified. One shut down completely. The other went to Victor afterward and said the new HR person had escalated a minor disagreement into a formal mediation.
That wasn't what happened. But that became the version people repeated.
The Pivot
Kelly didn't hear about it right away. She heard about it the way you always hear about these things: by noticing that Rina's weekly updates had gotten shorter, more procedural, and carefully empty.
Maya picked up on it too. "She's not asking for help. That worries me."
Kelly told herself Rina was adjusting. Told herself that stepping in too early would undermine the confidence she was trying to build. Reasonable logic. Also conveniently the kind of logic that let her avoid looking too closely at her own decision.
Then Parker pinged Kelly directly. Not Maya. Not Rina. Kelly.
"Quick question. Is Rina permanent in this role?"
Parker didn't ask casual questions. When he reached out to you directly, he was building a case.
"Yes. Why?"
"Just checking alignment."
Kelly called Rina that afternoon. "How's it going? The real version."
Rina was quiet for a few seconds. "It's hard. They don't trust me. Every interaction feels like I'm being tested and I keep failing."
Kelly recognized the feeling from twenty years ago in her own first senior role. Except Kelly had been placed into a team that wanted her there. Nobody had asked Engineering if they wanted Rina.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"Because you believed in me. And I didn't want to be the person who proved you wrong."
That one landed hard.
The Reframe
She brought it to Maya the next morning. No spin.
"I moved too fast. I put her in a role the team wasn't ready for because I was sure about her and stopped checking whether the conditions were right."
Maya didn't say I told you so. She just asked, "What do you want to do?"
"Whatever's right for Rina. Not whatever makes my decision look less bad."
They talked through options. Pulling Rina out would follow her career for years at LumaCore. Leaving her in without support was just watching someone struggle and pretending it was development.
Kelly went back to Rina.
"I sponsored you into this role without building the landing pad. I should have prepped Parker's team. I should have paired you with someone who knows how Engineering works here. That's on me."
Rina looked genuinely surprised. "You're telling me you made a mistake?"
"Yeah. I did. And I'd rather fix it than let you keep paying for it."
They restructured the role together. Kelly brought in a senior HRBP in an advisory capacity to co-support Engineering for 60 days. She had a direct conversation with Parker about what partnership with HR actually required, and Parker listened, because for once Kelly wasn't defending a decision. She was cleaning one up.
Rina stayed. But the role changed around her, because it should have been shaped differently from the start.
The Aftermath
Maya said it a few days later. "You didn't promote Rina because she was ready. You promoted her because you needed her to be."
Kelly didn't argue.
The hardest part of being good at reading people is the day you realize your read was off, and that the confidence everyone counts on is the same thing that stopped you from asking one more question.
Dear Kelly
You've vented to a friend. You've laughed with your team. Now tell Kelly. Dear Kelly is collecting the real-world HR stories that deserve to be told, the messy, painfully familiar ones. Drop yours here. Your story might even inspire the next edition.
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