What Happened when I Stopped Waiting for Permission to Lead?
Many people that I work with and observe, are great followers. They excel at tasks, hit every deadline, and make sure to get buy-in before they initiate anything significant.
I ponder, is leadership a title? Is it a chair at the executive table, a specific role with a formal mandate.
Should we wait for someone to tap us on the shoulder, hand us a formal promotion, and grant us “permission to lead.”
The problem? What if that permission never comes? Meanwhile, our best ideas go unheard and unexecuted. Frustration builds.
The epiphany: Leadership is an action, not a title.
How do we shift this paradigm? How can we embrace this shift, no longer waiting for the official stamp? What might change?
The Lie We Tell Ourselves About Authority
The “Permission to Lead” trap is based on a lie: the idea that we need positional authority (a manager title, a director role) to influence outcomes.
In reality, waiting for permission leads to three key career obstacles:
- Idea Paralysis: We hold onto brilliant solutions because you don’t feel “senior enough” to champion them.
- Diminished Visibility: By only executing tasks and not initiating strategy, we are seen as an asset but not a visionary.
- Wasted Time: The time spent waiting for a promotion could have been spent demonstrating the very skills required for that promotion.
True leadership is about proactively solving problems that no one asked us to solve, for people we are not formally responsible for.
The 3 Things That Immediately Shifted
When we decide to grant ourselves the permission we’ve been waiting for, the results can become almost immediate and profound. Here are the three biggest changes:
1. Becoming an “Intrapreneur”
No longer waiting for our boss to assign a strategic initiative. Instead, identify a bottleneck, draft a proposal to fix it, gather a small, unofficial team, and run a pilot project on the side. Don’t ask for budget or formal approval; consider asking for 10% of the team’s time for one week. By the time we present the successful results, we are not asking for permission – I was delivering a solution. If the solution does not work as hoped, debrief on what was learned.
- The Lesson: Leaders don’t ask for a seat at the table; they build their own table by delivering undeniable value.
2. Feedback Can Become Influence
As followers, feedback can sound like complaints or suggestions. The perspective of a leader shifts, be they self-appointed or promoted. Feedback also shifts. We can shift our critiques to one with a solution and a proposed path forward. Instead of saying, ”This process is broken,” we could say, “This process is creating X problem; we propose that we test Y solution, and here is the resource and time commitment required.”
- The Lesson: Authority follows accountability. When you own the problem and the solution, people listen.
3. Unlocked Your Personal Brand
Instead of waiting for the company to define our leadership, we can define our own professional narrative based on the problems we are passionate about solving. Addressing the problems we see. We can share insights on internal blogs and on LinkedIn. This act of “leading out loud” can attract colleagues, mentors, and executives who are looking for exactly the type of leader we can become.
- The Lesson: Your personal brand is not what your title is; it’s the proof of the impact you create, regardless of your title.
Give Yourself Permission Today!
If you are waiting for a mentor, a performance review, or an organizational chart update to tell you when it’s your turn to lead, you may wait forever, or wind up leaving for what you hope will turn out to be “greener pastures.”
What is one thing you could stop waiting for permission to execute on in the next week?
Your permission slip is already printed. It’s time to stop waiting for authority to be assigned and start earning influence through action.