Summary
A solo HR professional's support system and reclaimed time are the two growth conditions that let real leadership development take root. This is the final post in the GROWW Framework series, Goals, Resilience, Opportunity, Wonder, and Why, for the HR Department of One. It names what most solo HR professionals are missing before they can put the framework's five pillars into practice: a thought partner who’s been there to test hard calls against, and a way to shift time from administration and repetitive processes to strategic work.
Post 7 of 7: Growth Conditions | Growing on Purpose: The GROWW Framework for HR Departments of One
Early in my career as an HR Department of One, the owner of the business asked me for something that sounded reasonable on the surface. He wanted to be able to bring me a compliance question and get an immediate, confident answer, every time. I told him I couldn't promise that, and I remember how uncomfortable I felt saying it out loud.
"A confident wrong answer does more damage than an honest pause."
I know now that my instinct was correct. Employment law changes constantly, and the breadth of what one person in this role is expected to hold, from hiring through termination, makes blanket confidence not just unrealistic but risky. A confident wrong answer does more damage than an honest pause. But knowing I was right now and knowing it then are two different things, and at the time, all I had was the discomfort of disappointing someone I respected.
The Growth Condition Most Solo HR Professionals Go Without
What I wish I'd had was a coach or mentor, someone who had spent a decade or two inside the People function, who I could have brought that exact moment to. They would have confirmed what I already sensed. Instead of apologizing for what I didn't know, I could have returned with an answer that had been tested against someone else's experience, and with the confidence that comes from knowing it would hold up. That would have built his trust in my judgment and mine in myself, faster than time and experience eventually did.
That's the first growth condition I was missing. It's not a sixth pillar to add to the framework. It's the soil the other five need to take root and grow.
Building the Job While Doing It
The second one is less about who was in the room and more about what filled my days. I've been the first full-time HR person at two small, purpose-driven organizations. Both times, I wasn't just responsible for holding the People Operations function, I was responsible for building it. Every job posting, every onboarding process, every leave request, every performance review cycle, every payroll cycle, existed because I had designed it, not because it was handed to me already working. That's a different kind of load than doing a job that already has established systems and processes.
Every new task was really two jobs: doing the work, and inventing the process for doing it.
What got pushed out by that load wasn't the administrative work. It was the parts of the job I loved: leadership development, strategic change projects, the work that uses judgment instead of just processing. I didn't have room for it because every new task was really two jobs: doing the work, and inventing the process for doing it.
This series has walked through five pillars, Goals, Resilience, Opportunity, Wonder, and Why, as the things that let a leader grow with intention instead of just getting through the week. All five are real. But naming a pillar and having the conditions for it to grow are not the same thing. Support is the soil. Time is the light. Without both, the pillars stay ideas instead of becoming practice. That's the growth I coach toward, which is why I call myself a Leadership and Sustainable Growth Coach.
Support is the soil. Time is the light. Without both, the pillars stay ideas instead of becoming practice.
Why I Call It Sustainable Growth
Sustainable Growth is the phrase I chose instead of productivity, because productivity asks someone who's already full to find room for more. I'm not interested in helping people do more. I'm interested in helping them to keep doing work that matters to them, at a pace that doesn't cost them their health or their future in this field, while still growing: their skills, their leadership, their belief in what they're capable of.
That's true of both growth conditions in this post. Support means not carrying the hardest parts alone. If you're carrying the HR Department of One role and want a thought partner in that kind of growth, I'd love to talk with you.
Time is the condition you can start examining today, without waiting on anyone. AI can carry more of the administrative load than most HR Departments of One realize. The two-minute quiz below will show you how ready you are to reclaim time with AI, and give you one real place to start.
About GROWW Leadership
GROWW Leadership helps mission-driven leaders and organizations turn intention into impact through leadership and sustainable growth coaching, training, and organizational design. Founded by Kristie Steele in Eugene, Oregon.