When You Stop Asking for Permission to Belong
- Sarah Gruneisen
- Jan 29
- 3 min read
Michel on inner dragons, earned presence, and the quiet power of being in the room
There is a moment in leadership that feels almost unbearable in its honesty.
It’s the moment when the inner voice speaks, not loudly, not dramatically, but persistently.
Michel named that voice without flinching:
“My dragons would say: you’re not as qualified as maybe others…
but you are allowed to be in the room because you have talent.”
That sentence carries a lifetime of tension.
The dragon that questions your right to be here
Many leaders carry a dragon like this.
It doesn’t roar.
It whispers.
It compares.
It measures.
It quietly asks whether your invitation to the room was a mistake.
Michel’s dragon didn’t deny his competence entirely.
It simply questioned his legitimacy.
And that is often the hardest doubt to confront.
Not “Am I capable?”
But “Am I allowed?”
Talent that doesn’t look like mastery
What Michel discovered, slowly, and not without resistance, is that his talent was never about being the most specialized person in the room.
His talent was different.
He sees the whole.
He notices how systems connect, where decisions ripple, how trade-offs shape the future long after a meeting ends. He can start something where nothing exists yet. He can plant seeds without needing to see the full harvest.
This kind of talent often goes unrecognized, especially in environments that reward visible mastery and immediate output.
And so the dragon’s anger persists.
From self-protection to presence
For a long time, Michel’s energy in leadership spaces was spent on protection.
Choosing words carefully.
Avoiding mistakes.
Making sure nothing he said could be used against him.
That vigilance is exhausting.
And it narrows listening.
Because when you’re busy defending your place in the room, you can’t truly see the others in it.
Something changed when Michel began to understand why he belonged.
Not because someone told him.
But because he could finally name his contribution.
When the room starts listening differently
Once Michel stopped defending his presence, the room changed.
Not because he spoke more.
But because he listened more deeply.
Defensiveness fell away, his own first.
And with it, the subtle tension others often feel in leadership conversations.
Without armor, something else became possible:
Real dialogue.
Shared thinking.
Curiosity instead of positioning.
This is one of the least discussed leadership shifts, but one of the most powerful.
The paradox of leadership authority
Michel’s authority didn’t grow when he tried to sound more certain.
It grew when he stopped needing certainty to belong.
When he could sit in a room without proving himself, others relaxed too. Conversations became less transactional and more purposeful. Decisions became richer. Perspectives surfaced that previously stayed hidden.
Not because he controlled the room,
but because he stabilized it.
What others saw, before he fully did
There is often a delay between who we are becoming and what we can see in ourselves.
The words I shared about Michel near the end of the interview captured something he had already been embodying:
💚 architectural thinking
💚 strategic insight
💚 grounded execution
💚 openness to perspective
💚 an ability to make work feel meaningful rather than mechanical
Working with him didn’t feel transactional.
It felt intentional.
That distinction matters.
The dragon doesn’t disappear, it transforms
Michel’s dragon didn’t vanish.
It evolved.
Instead of questioning his right to be in the room, it now reminds him why the room benefits from him being there.
That is not ego.
That is integration.
Leadership doesn’t require killing your dragons.
It asks you to listen to them long enough to understand what they’re protecting.
And then to step forward anyway, not louder, not harder, but more whole.
PS. PLEASE NEVER SLAY DRAGONS!!! Your Dragons are in fact YOU! By slaying them, you’re killing your biggest potential power!
A closing reflection
If you’ve ever felt like you were “allowed” in the room but not fully at home in it, you’re not alone.
The work is not to become more qualified.
The work is to understand your unique way of contributing, and to stop apologizing for it.
Because when you no longer defend your presence,
you create space for others to do the same.
And that’s when leadership stops being a performance
and becomes a place people want to think together. 🐉
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