The Permission Nobody Gives Themselves

This past weekend, I sat down to play We're Not Really Strangers - a card game built entirely around questions designed to take you past small talk. The experience was a reminder of how rarely, as adults, we're given structured permission to be honest.

One card asked: What lesson took you the longest to unlearn?

And I had to answer out loud.

Not write it down, not think it privately and move on - say it, to another person, in real time. It was one of those moments, the kind you don't get handed very often once you're an adult with a calendar full of other people's priorities.

The lesson I named was one I've circled back to many times over the years: I spent a long time living for everyone else.

Meeting expectations.

Reading rooms and adjusting myself to fit them.

Somewhere along the way, wanting something simply because I wanted it - not because it was sensible, deserved, or approved of - started to feel almost indulgent.

Saying that out loud didn't teach me anything new.

But it did something else, something I think is easy to underestimate: it let me see, in one clear moment, how far I've actually come.

It was that particular kind of clarity that only shows up when you hear yourself say a thing, rather than simply know it.

That's stayed with me more than the answer itself.

Not the lesson - the permission to say it.

Many of us are not short on self-awareness. We reflect constantly - in the shower, on the drive home, at 2am when the day finally goes quiet, usually about something we said in a meeting six years ago that nobody else remembers.

What we're short on is permission.

Permission to say the honest version out loud, to another person, without immediately softening it, qualifying it, or turning it into something more palatable.

I see this constantly with clients.

High-achieving women who have spent years pushing, performing and meeting everyone else's expectations aren't usually looking for another framework or another growth plan. What they're actually looking for is somewhere they can drop the mask. They'd love the relief of not having to hold everything together for an hour. They've been doing it for so long they've forgotten it was ever optional (kind of like the way you forget you're still holding your stomach in until someone finally tells you to breathe).

That composure has a cost, even when it looks like strength from the outside.

And many people are only willing to put it down when someone explicitly tells them it's safe to.

Which raises an uncomfortable question for anyone leading a team: how often are we the ones creating that permission, and how often are we (even unintentionally) the reason it doesn't exist?

I'm treading carefully here, because it would be easy to overcorrect. Vulnerability isn't the answer to everything, and treating it as some universal key that unlocks better relationships or better leadership sets people up to perform openness rather than practise it.

What moved me in this experience was specific: one honest answer, asked for directly, in a moment where honesty was clearly welcome.

That's a different thing entirely from oversharing, or building a culture where everyone is expected to narrate their inner world at all times.

The leaders I respect most aren't the ones who are endlessly open. They're the ones who know when honesty will actually serve the moment - and who create just enough safety that, when it matters, people don't have to perform composure they don't feel.

Selective.

Intentional.

Earned.

Not a personality trait.

A discipline.

I think about the teams I've worked inside and led, and how much unspoken effort goes into looking fine. Not lying, exactly - just editing. Presenting the tidy version of a problem instead of the real one. Nodding along in a meeting when there's a genuine reservation sitting underneath, quietly filed away for the "offline conversation" afterwards, where the real meeting will happen. Most of that isn't dishonesty. It's just the absence of permission.

Teams don't need everyone to share everything. They need to know that when something true needs to be said, there's room for it to land without cost. That's not built through a values statement or a single offsite. It's built the same way I experienced it - a direct question, asked sincerely, met with the space to actually answer it.

The same is true of the conversations we have with ourselves.

When was the last time you asked yourself something and actually let yourself answer - not the composed version, the real one?

Not everything needs to be said aloud, to someone else, to count.

But some things do.

And the lesson from that evening wasn't really about the game, or the question, or even the answer.

It was this:

Self-awareness isn't always the hard part.

Many of us already know more about ourselves than we let on - we've had plenty of 2am rehearsals. The harder, rarer thing is being willing to let it be seen - deliberately, selectively, and only where it actually matters.

Not permission asked for.

Permission taken.

What would you say, if someone asked you the same question, and you knew it was safe to answer honestly?