Waiting for permission
What happens when you disconnect from your agency and authority
One of my clients has a relationship with a peer at work that feels like running into a wall every day. She found herself asking, “How am I supposed to get my job done when this person puts up a stop sign every time I bring up my team’s priorities and seek help from their team?”
We uncovered that she was hitting a wall because she was viewing this colleague as a gatekeeper, not a peer. She was also conflating collaboration with permission, while they are different things. She didn’t need permission (approval) to take action, she needed collaboration (joint effort) in the form of pooling resources and expertise.
This VP is not the first leader I’ve worked with who is both highly competent and is on a learning journey: a journey to embrace their individual agency, the decision-making authority their role gives them, and navigating when not to assert themselves.
When I was a director at PayPal, I went on this journey, too. One of our company values was “collaboration”, which in practice often became synonymous with seeking permission or consensus. I don’t hesitate to say that I believe this practice contributed to the turnaround state that PayPal is in today. In many scenarios, both internal and external, we didn’t do a great job of making hard strategic decisions, or taking strategic action in a timely way, because we were focused on being nice.
While “niceness” supported a pleasant working environment where people showed each other care, leaders needed to think about care more expansively. “Care” needed to include care for the long-term viability of the business. “Care” needed more people to tap into their agency and authority, put unpopular stakes in the ground, and take bolder swings.
Waiting for permission to think or act is when you need someone else to tell you proactively that it’s okay for you to do the thing. A signal, a lean forward, a yes.
As examples, waiting for permission looks like:
Permission to disagree: Seeing if a colleague speaks up first to share the potentially disruptive point of view that’s on your mind. Waiting to ride their coattails rather than risk being the outlier.
Permission to proceed: Asking a colleague if it’s ok to talk about your initiative where you need their help, rather than restating your team’s goals as part of a larger organizational strategy and seeking collaboration.
Permission to abort: Dragging out conversations with a potential customer, and being deferential towards them in hopes of making a sale, even when it’s become clear that their goals and yours are not aligned.
When we wait for permission where none is needed, we compromise our values and our potential for impact. In the case of the three scenarios above, we compromise:
Honesty and clarity - When you don’t speak up, you role-model that it’s best to stay quiet and allow the team to go down a path that may deviate from its goals.
Teaming and optimizing - When you prioritize hierarchy over teamwork, you lose an opportunity to make the most of the knowledge and skills available.
Self-respect and resources - When you aren’t clear on your boundaries, you waste the precious resources you need to advance your goals.
Barring the need to respect policies, regulations, and agreed-upon strategy, waiting for permission is like installing a stop sign on your open road. The only person holding you back is you.
Help your organization thrive through disruption
Last month, I gave a talk at Sanofi that addressed how people tend to react to disruption - and what to do about it. Disengaging, or “waiting”, is one of the common behavioral responses we talked about: how it manifests, and the impact it has on the individual and the organization. Nearly 100 Sanofi employees attended the talk, and 95% rated it “exceeded or above expectations”.
This topic is resonating across companies right now. Reach out if you’d like to partner on helping your organization to thrive through disruption rather than react to it. We can consider talks, workshops, and coaching. Email: info @ coachingwithfarah.com
What stayed with me was your distinction between collaboration and permission. I think it's easy to confuse the two, especially in organizations that value consensus. Your point that collaboration is about combining effort rather than waiting for approval really changed the way I thought about it. Thanks for sharing this.