Leah Buckley
VP of People
Art of Problem Solving
Episode 33
Ignite Growth: Empowering Employees with Clear Paths and Leadership Lifelines
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleOctober 7, 2025 · 13:24
Thesis
“Empowering employees with clear career trajectories and providing robust leadership support, especially in rapidly scaling environments, is paramount for both individual agency and overall organizational success, requiring a strong foundational understanding of company values.”
Show notes
Before she joined Art of Problem Solving, Leah Buckley's career ran through Target and Amazon — two organizations that know something about scale, operational rigor, and making hard decisions under pressure. What she brought from those experiences into smaller, growing organizations is a conviction about what employees need most: not inspiration, not perks, but clarity. A clear picture of what they're working toward, what success looks like, and how they can grow.
Her defining initiative at a previous company was navigating a pay cycle change — the kind of thing that sounds administrative until you tell employees their paycheck cadence is shifting. The organizations that execute these changes well aren't the ones with the slickest announcements. They're the ones that explain the reasoning transparently, offer support programs proactively, and have built enough trust before the change lands that people give them the benefit of the doubt.
She's also built HR business partner functions specifically to address one of leadership's least-discussed problems: isolation. When you're a manager making hard decisions, the loneliness of that role is real. A well-built HR partner function changes that — not by making the decisions for leaders, but by being the thought partner that makes leaders feel less alone in making them.
What you'll learn:
- How competency frameworks and leveling give employees genuine agency over their career trajectories
- How to execute an unpopular organizational change (like a pay cycle shift) with transparency and trust intact
- The HR business partner function as a cure for management isolation — and how to build one that actually works
- What foundational work (company values, culture clarity) must come before leveling and career pathways can succeed
- Why junior professionals should speak up, act as peers to senior leaders, and stop waiting until they're "ready"
- Lessons from Target and Amazon about building people infrastructure at scale
Built by People is presented by Previ — the free tool that helps HR teams boost internal communication engagement.
What you'll take away
- 1Building robust business partner teams provides critical support and a 'lifeline' for leaders in scaling companies, making them feel less alone in decision-making.
- 2Implementing competencies and leveling frameworks empowers employees with agency over their careers by clarifying expectations, promotion paths, and internal transfer processes.
- 3When making unpopular but necessary organizational changes (e.g., pay cycle adjustments), transparent communication, explaining the 'whys,' and offering support programs are crucial for successful adoption.
- 4Foundational elements like clearly defined company values must precede and inform initiatives like career leveling to ensure they are meaningful and effective.
- 5Junior professionals should disregard intimidating factors like titles and tenure, confidently speak up, and act as thought partners, as senior leaders highly value diverse perspectives.
What most organizations get wrong
In Leah's words
“I think getting rid of that unlocks everything. And I think as a senior leader myself now, I love so much when my teams and the folks that I work with speak up, value their voice, feel confident in their opinion, and actually act as thought partners and peers to me.”
Emphasizes the value senior leaders place on empowered, vocal team members, countering the common fear of speaking up.
“building business partner functions for certain companies has helped a lot with making sure that key leaders have that thought partner, somebody to lean on, somebody to make it feel less lonely, you know, to be at the top and, you know, and try to make those tough decisions and make folks happy and all of the things that come with management.”
Highlights the often-overlooked emotional and strategic support HR business partners provide to leadership.
“I think the ability to understand what's expected in a role, how to promote, how to internally transfer, all of those things, and then being able to use that as a foundation for career conversations, pay conversations, everything else, like, to me, I think it's a really, really critical piece for any company to have and definitely worth the lift that it takes to build something like that.”
Articulates the foundational importance of clear competencies and leveling for employee agency and broader HR functions.
“We did a lot of explaining the whys, which I think for any unpopular decision is the foundation for getting people to come along with you and helping them really see what you're seeing and that, you know, it's not a small decision. It's not something that we're taking lightly, but here's why it's important.”
Provides a clear strategy for managing difficult organizational changes by prioritizing transparency and context.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Managers in scaling startups often lack the leadership development resources and support commonly found in mature companies.
- •Employees in rapidly growing companies frequently lack clear career paths, promotion criteria, and internal transfer processes, diminishing their sense of agency.
- •Acquisition processes present challenges in aligning compensation structures and building trust with acquired company employees.
- •Managing multiple payroll cycles across integrating companies can impede scalability and operational efficiency.
- •Implementing HR initiatives like leveling and competencies without a strong foundational set of company values can render them ineffective as decision-making frameworks.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Your career journey in HR was non-traditional, as I think many have
Exploring the Career Journey in HR
Leah says her dad shaped her career from the beginning
What Shaped Your Career?
Leah, can you tell us about a moment where something was on the line
Leah, can you tell us about a moment in your career
Leah, what's the most meaningful change that employees still feel today
What's the Most Significant Change Your HR Team Made at Work?
Leah, what's a leadership initiative you've repeated in more than one company
Leah, What's a leadership move or HR initiative you've
If you could leave one piece of advice for our community, what would it be
Leo on Starting Out in Your Career
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Organizations and entities mentioned
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