Permission Slip Living

“Everything you’re doing is giving someone else permission to do the same thing.”

- Gareth Higgins, Irish peacemaker, storyteller, writer

Working long hours. Taking meetings on vacation days. Informing everyone on Slack that you are finally eating lunch at 3pm. Escalating an argument during a team meeting.

Taking time to reset and breathe at the beginning of a meeting. Using your vacation days. Giving constructive feedback. Sharing a lesson learned from a mistake.

Everything you are doing…has the potential to unlock the permission someone else needs to give themselves to do what they need to do.

I don’t send my own invoices. When I went back to full-time consulting and coaching in 2023, I immediately contracted with an admin (if you’ve had the pleasure of meeting Jess, you know how awesome she is). I know my strengths - content delivery and accompaniment - and I know what I tend to neglect or put off - administrative tasks. Some will tell you that makes me a poor business owner. I know it makes me a strengths-based business owner. I encourage others to do the same. Know where your energy goes and build your business accordingly.

And yes, the Enneagram model helps us understand this - particularly the Instinctual Biases.

I’m a Navigator. Navigating is in my Zone of Enthusiasm. Transmitting is in my Zone of Inner Conflict. Preserving is in my Zone of Indifference. That means preserving tasks like sending invoices, setting up infrastructure, logging expenses ( I owe Jess some receipt photos right now) and other administrative tasks fall to and stay at the bottom of my to do list. And as my bestie reminded me recently, I can’t be good at everything…I gotta leave something for someone else to do. Being a leader, manager or business owner doesn’t have to mean you do everything yourself. That is one way to do it.

But you have permission to do things another way.

Do your work in the way that works for you, that is in alignment with your strengths. It may not always be possible, but where it is - make it so.

Because someone will see you. Someone will be inspired to give themselves permission to do it their way too. And we can all lead more from our strengths than some imaginary way we are all supposed to be doing things.