Stop Asking for Permission: How Ambitious Women Give Away Their Power at Work and at Home
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There's a piece of advice a mentor gave my co-host Teresa early in her career that I haven't been able to stop thinking about since we recorded our first episode of Rewritten.
She had just started a new job (a new company, new team, no track record built yet) and she was already dreading the invisible negotiation. How much flexibility is too much to ask for? When do I have to be visible? What will people think if I leave at 5? She went to a female mentor and basically asked: how do I survive this?
The mentor's answer: Don't ask for permission. Block what you need in your calendar. Get your work done. Keep it at a high level. Everyone else will figure it out.
That's it. No negotiation strategy. No scripts. Just: stop giving people the opportunity to tell you no.
Why Ambitious Women Over-Ask for Permission
Here's what I see constantly with my coaching clients, and what Teresa and I both lived through in our own careers. We are conditioned, early and often, to ask before we act. To check before we decide. To present our needs as a question instead of a fact.
And it makes sense where it comes from. You're new. You're building credibility. You want to be seen as a team player. You don't want to rock the boat when you're still proving yourself.
But here's what happens when that habit calcifies: you start negotiating against yourself before anyone else has said a word. You talk yourself out of the boundaries you need before you've even tested whether anyone would push back. You create the cage.
Teresa put it exactly right: you're giving people the opportunity to say no to something they never would have thought to question in the first place.
The men on her team weren't asking if it was okay to leave at a reasonable hour. They weren't flagging their schedule constraints in advance. They were just doing it. And nobody was tracking it.
The Permission-Seeking Habit Doesn't Stay at Work
This is where it gets interesting. Because this same pattern (waiting for someone to greenlight your choices) follows you home.
I see it in how working moms approach parenting decisions. The endless second-guessing. The need to justify every choice to someone. The way we consume parenting content not because we're curious but because we're looking for someone to tell us we're doing it right.
Sleep train or don't sleep train. Breastfeed or don't. Go back to work at six weeks or take more time. Every decision treated as something that needs external approval instead of something we get to decide for ourselves based on what we know about our own family, our own body, our own life.
We have traded one set of permission-givers (bosses, colleagues, performance reviews) for another (pediatricians, mommy blogs, other moms at school pickup who seem to have it more together than we do).
And I'll tell you what I tell my clients: none of those people are raising your kid. You are. You don't need their sign-off.
What "Don't Ask for Permission" Actually Means
Let me be clear about what this isn't. It's not blowing off your responsibilities. It's not disappearing and being unreachable. Teresa's mentor was explicit: get your work done, keep it at a high level. That part is non-negotiable.
What changes is the framing. You stop presenting your needs as a question. You stop over-explaining. You stop pre-apologizing for living your life.
You need to leave at 5 for daycare pickup. That's not a request. It's information.
You're not going to commit to a return date before your baby is born because you don't know how the pregnancy, delivery, or postpartum period is going to go. That's not being difficult. That's being honest.
I did exactly this when I had my daughter. I closed out all my clients before my due date, told no one a return timeline, and gave myself the space to figure out what I actually needed after she arrived. It had a real impact on my business in the short term. It also meant I wasn't managing other people's expectations while my body was recovering and I was figuring out who I was as a mother. The business came back. That time doesn't.
The One Question That Changes Everything
When Teresa stopped asking for permission at her new job and just started doing what she needed to do (blocking time, protecting her schedule, getting home for dinner) something shifted. She wasn't surviving the job while being a mom. She was actually living both.
She and her husband had gotten clear on what mattered: dinner together, consistent sleep routines, showing up as the parents they wanted to be. Once she knew that, the rest got easier to figure out. She wasn't saying yes to everything and hoping it worked out. She was making choices from a clear center.
That's the question underneath all of this: What do you actually need to show up as the person you want to be, at work and at home?
Not what you think you're allowed to want. Not what looks reasonable from the outside. What do you actually need?
Because if you don't know the answer to that, you'll keep outsourcing it. You'll keep waiting for someone to tell you what you're allowed to have. And nobody is going to fight for your life the way you will.
The Permission You Were Never Waiting For
Here's what I know from coaching ambitious women and from building my own path: the moment you stop asking and start deciding, things get both harder and better at the same time.
Harder because you own the choice. There's no one to blame if it doesn't work out exactly like you planned. Better because you're finally driving instead of waiting to be told where to sit.
Teresa's mentor was right. Nobody is going to defend this for you. Not your boss. Not your partner. Not the internet.
But you can. And once you start, it's really hard to go back.
Want to hear the full conversation? Teresa and I go deep on this in Episode 101 of Rewritten, including how we both walked away from "prestigious" career paths that weren't right for us, what it actually looks like to build a life on your own terms, and the moment Teresa stopped negotiating against herself for good.
Listen on Apple Podcasts |Spotify |Watch on YouTube
Is this resonating? If you're an ambitious woman trying to figure out what your version of a full life actually looks like (the career, the family, and whatever else matters to you) that's exactly the work I do. Let's talk.
Jess Wass is the Founder of Reworkit, a leadership development and coaching company, and the co-host of Rewritten: Real Talk for Working Moms Who Want It All. She helps women ditch the script they were handed and build a life that's actually theirs.
