Former HR Manager here—and everything you outlined above is so on-point. I'd worked for an eComm startup that had never had an HR person before, so I was stoked to start from scratch. I trained up and approached it by spending time with the team in every spare moment, trying to serve the employees first. At almost every turn, the leadership team "corrected" that approach, and sometimes wouldn't even share their own objectives with me because they knew how ingrained I was with so many of the employees.

They definitely threw around the term "family" often at team meetings, and it was cringey every time. There's so much more grace and respect to be had for C-level leaders who can just be real about things: "We love it that you identify our values and mission, but we don't expect you to put your whole identity into this company. You do the work we ask you to do, we give you the paycheck we promised, and we'll both ride out that relationship for however long it's meant to last." That would be so.much.better.

Anyway. :-) This was an excellent read, thanks for sharing!