Permission Giving

Note: Our Personal Multiplication Leadership Capacity Assessment Tool is based on 5 essential practices from our Hero Maker theme content.  The second essential practice is Permission Giving.

Overview of Permission Giving

Permission givers take the focus off their own leadership and instead see more fully the vast leadership potential God has put around them. “I see what God can do through my own leadership” shifts to “I see what God can do through the people he’s put in my life.”

• Permission givers let others know what they see in them. It’s a shift in seeing: “I see this gift in you,” and “I see God at work in you when you . . .”
• Permission givers see the potential in other people, say it, encourage it, and then equip them for what God wants to do in and through them.
• Role Recruiters mobilize people to fill the most pressing needs of the organization.
• Role Recruiters naturally see the gifts of people as critical resources for growing the local organization and overcoming its current barriers and obstacles.
• Self-Reliant Doers are critical to the operation of the organization and tend to be lone rangers who spend most of their time doing the things they perceive only they can do
• Self-Reliant Doers are so busy balancing their primary responsibilities that they find little time for directly investing in the development of others to take some of their workload.

Short Video Summary

Check out this short video (approximately 7 minutes in duration) where Dave Ferguson, co-author of the book Hero Maker, provides an overview of Permission Giving.

Making it Personal

Think about the average person you invest yourself into.  Think across the various domains of your life including family, work, church, community, neighbors, and friends. Which question below captures your actual attitudes, behaviors and practices the best?

• Are you a permission giver, having regular ICNU conversations to bless others (“I see in you…”)?
• Or are you a role recruiter, having regular conversations to recruit others (“I need you to…”)?
• Or a self-reliant doer, tackling most critical tasks yourself (“I will do it…”)?

Additional Resources

Click here to learn more about Exponential’s Hero Maker events where you can join 1,000s of other leaders who are seeking to move from being heroes to becoming hero-makers.

Click here to learn more about the Hero Maker book.

Click here to take (or return to) the Personal Multiplication Leadership Capacity Assessment Tool.