The HR Trap
Why the Future of Leadership Means Rethinking HR

HR was never meant to carry leadership's hardest work. In The HR Trap, veteran Chief Human Resources Officer Kristin Berkinsky makes a provocative case: the more organisations lean on HR to absorb difficult conversations, weak management, and cultural drift, the more they enable the very leadership failures they are trying to fix. Drawing on decades in the C-suite, Berkinsky walks through what happens when you stop treating HR as the dumping ground, who should really own the hard stuff, and the three converging crises reshaping leadership today: CEO succession, the rise of AI, and executive burnout. Clear-eyed, occasionally irreverent, and grounded in real experience, this is a book for founders, executives, and HR leaders ready to reclaim accountability for culture, performance, and the conversations that matter most.