The Glamorous, Sleepless, Hilarious Life of Managing a Global HR Team

People think leading a regional or global HR team is all strategy decks, airport lounges, and the occasional “synergy” workshop in a fancy conference room. They picture me sipping coffee in front of a dashboard that magically syncs all people metrics across time zones. Cute, right? The truth? I once approved payroll at 2 a.m. while sitting on the floor of a hotel lobby in Jakarta because the Wi-Fi was stronger there than in my room.

Here’s the thing: when you manage HR across borders, you learn two truths fast. First, leadership is universal. People want to feel seen, heard, and fairly treated. Second, Excel formulas are not. I’ve spent entire nights debugging compensation models that behaved like possessed slot machines the moment I changed currency settings.

I learned HR not in conference halls but in the trenches. My early days were pure chaos: hiring for a warehouse one week, building a competency model the next, explaining to a manager why “emotional intelligence” isn’t code for “crying in meetings.” That chaos taught me judgment, speed, and humility. You don’t learn those from Harvard case studies. You learn them when you’re begging IT to fix an onboarding form before the new hire walks in.

As the years went by, the scale changed, but the work didn’t really get cleaner. It just got bigger. Suddenly I wasn’t just dealing with one country’s labor laws. I was juggling five. The first time I led a regional HR call, I proudly announced, “Let’s all go around and share our challenges!” It was 9 a.m. for me, 11 p.m. for someone in Canada, and lunchtime for the guy in Malaysia who was quietly eating noodles on camera. Lesson learned: global alignment is 20% leadership and 80% calendar math.

What’s funny is, the higher you go, the dirtier your hands still get. You’d think “Director” means you finally get to stay out of the weeds. Nope. It means when the weeds catch fire, you’re the one with the extinguisher. Sometimes I’m the one building a dashboard from scratch because the analytics guy’s asleep in another time zone. Sometimes I’m rewriting a policy because legal wants “friendlier language,” and somehow that means I become the copywriter.

But here’s what keeps it beautiful: you see people grow across borders. You see how a recognition idea from Manila inspires a program in Kuala Lumpur. You see leaders who used to say, “I’m not good with people stuff” turn into mentors who coach others through crises. You start to realize you’re not just running HR. You’re running hope, translated into seven languages and twelve time zones.

So yes, managing a global HR team means late-night calls, endless spreadsheets, and the occasional small breakdown over HRIS logins. But it also means building something that connects people who’ve never met, under a shared belief that work can be human everywhere.

And on those nights when I’m toggling between dashboards and caffeine, I remind myself: this is what I signed up for. The messy, funny, inspiring side of HR. The part where global strategy meets the very real business of people.

That’s not just leadership. That’s rock n' roll.

#HRLeadership #GlobalHR #PeopleStrategy #LeadingAcrossBorders #HRHumor