As People & Culture practitioners, our instinct is to help. But every time we agree to be the proxy messenger for routine workplace friction we aren't solving the conflict, we're triangulating it.
When People & Culture/HR steps in to fight interpersonal battles for the business:
X Peer trust shatters
X Individual accountability disappears
X Line managers never build the muscle to lead difficult conversations
Our real mandate isn't to be an emotional stunt double. It's to provide psychological safety behind closed doors, help strip out the emotional charge, and coach our people to own their 1:1 dialogue with courage.
(Save formal intervention for where it belongs: policy breaches, harassment, and safety. Let the business own the rest.)
Look through the presentation to see how we should be reframing the P&C mandate.