My HR rant this morning

I feel you, OP. I also get pissed when HR won't allow me to delegate all of my management responsibility to a direct report. Particularly when mid-year reviews are due.

Just go over their heads, OP.

Start allowing her to "informally " manage people. Maybe on a project by project basis. Then when they say she has no experience you can say, that is not correct. She has experience and you want to acknowledge it.

HR is always such a pain in the ass.

The worst job experience I ever had was when I briefly worked for an NYU graduate school that offered a program of study with the ridiculous title of Human Capital Management. That is, they were supposedly teaching people how to be good managers of others in business situations. Except these people themselves were completely incompetent in that regard, which is why I only lasted three weeks there.

You'll just have to find someone else to man the French frier, OP.

Now get off DL. There's a queue of customers wanting their McBreakfasts.

I had this same problem and this is how I fixed it. However, it is assuming you don't have to promote someone to leader immediately. What I did was to remain leader of the team, however, I chose someone to be the team captain. I made this person second in command even though I remained leader. The team reported to the captain and the captain reported to me. After three months of documentation what my captain did, I was able to successfully prove she had leadership abilities and potential and was able to promote them to leader.

You need to fix your writing skills. Yeesh.

According to your post, OP: "The small team reaches out to her informally for direction and seems to acknowledge her as effectively their leader." Go with that and TELL HR you are moving forward.

Are you speaking to the director of HR or some lower level functionary?

Either way, drop the ball back into their court and ask them the same question you whined about here - "how do you propose we continue to develop our people with progressively greater responsibilities if they are ineligible for roles which provide them progressively greater responsibilities?" Then, point out that this person has already informally demonstrated leadership and management skills by stepping into the role for which you are currently contemplating acknowledging and rewarding her for doing.

Ask for specific and actionable steps on this matter. Put the ball back into their court to figure out - that's what they're doing right now with you.

You got to speak HR nonsense to communicate with them. It's like trying to speak German with someone who only speaking Chinese.