When a business starts to scale, all eyes tend to go to the numbers: revenue growth, customer acquisition, operational capacity. But behind the metrics, it’s people who determine whether that growth is sustainable. And increasingly, what we’re seeing is that it’s the leadership layer that breaks first.
In our latest research report, The Greatest Leap, the standout theme was a crisis of leadership. Nearly 40% of leaders said they were struggling to build a senior team capable of taking the business forward. A third admitted they find it difficult to delegate effectively. And 88% said they would grow faster if they could find more time and headspace for strategic thinking.
For HR leaders, this presents both a problem and an opportunity. Because unless you can identify and resolve these leadership pain points early, they’ll burn people out, stall development, and eventually impact retention across the board.
What leadership strain looks like on the ground
We often hear HR teams say they’re “building the plane while flying it.” And that’s exactly what this stage of business growth feels like. The challenge is, while you’re onboarding new hires, refining the employee value proposition, and keeping culture intact, you’re also watching your senior leaders get stretched thinner and thinner.
Some signs you might be hitting a leadership bottleneck:
- Decisions are taking longer or are defaulting back to the founder or MD
- There’s no real clarity on who owns what at senior level
- Middle managers are stepping up but not getting support or development
- Senior team members are working harder, but feel increasingly reactive
- Exit interviews mention “lack of direction” or “limited progression”
This is where HR has a crucial role: not in firefighting the symptoms, but in helping the business build the leadership structure it needs next.
Get clear on what ‘good’ looks like
Many growing companies don’t hit pause long enough to ask: what does our leadership team need to look like in two or three years? Instead, they recruit reactively, promote based on loyalty or availability, and they try to keep everything held together with goodwill and overtime.
The first step is to define what’s needed. What are the capabilities we’ll need at senior level if we double in size? What roles don’t exist now but will be critical in 18 months? Where are the current gaps, and what’s the plan to fill them?
Some of this might come from internal development. Some may require external hiring. But without this clarity, HR can’t build an effective succession pipeline or development strategy and the leadership strain only deepens.
Delegation isn’t just a mindset issue
We often hear that founders “just need to let go” or “trust their team more.” But in many cases, they simply don’t have the structure to delegate into. If you’re still relying on a single operations lead or one person handling finance, there’s only so far you can stretch.
This is where HR can bring real value – not by urging delegation in theory, but by helping to build the conditions that make it viable. That might involve redefining senior roles so that ownership and accountability are clear, or investing in systems that take the pressure off individuals having to manually juggle decisions. And it often requires guiding the founder or MD into a more strategic role, with the right support and infrastructure underneath them to make that shift possible.
Sometimes tough decisions need to be on the table
Not everyone who was right for the business at £10m turnover will be right for it at £30m. But businesses often delay these conversations for too long out of loyalty, fear of disruption, or hope that people will “grow into” roles they’re struggling in.
The reality is growth puts people under a spotlight. HR leaders have to be ready to facilitate honest performance conversations at senior level, help plan for transitions, and ensure there’s a fair and thoughtful process in place even when change is needed.
Culture can’t scale without capable leadership
If your senior team is burned out, overwhelmed, or misaligned, your culture won’t hold. The values and behaviours that were easy to maintain when everyone sat within shouting distance become harder to embed at scale. People need to see those behaviours modelled consistently by the people leading them.
One in five leaders we surveyed said they were struggling to maintain their culture as they grew. This is where HR needs to move beyond values posters and look seriously at the link between leadership development and cultural resilience.
Are your senior leaders equipped to lead inclusively, communicate effectively, and coach their teams through change? If not, that’s where the investment should go next.
Make the case, not the ask
If there’s one takeaway here, it’s that HR can’t wait to be asked to fix the leadership problem. Go to the CEO with a plan, show them what’s coming, and paint the picture of what leadership could look like – and what happens if nothing changes.
If leadership fails to scale, everything underneath it starts to crack, and HR is in the best possible position to stop that from happening.
Ed Hussey, Director of HR Services, Menzies LLP
The post The leadership bottleneck is real – and HR can’t afford to ignore it first appeared on HR News.
