I Don't Want Your Freedom (But I Do)

I read something from Adam Grant recently. That the most important measure of success isn't status, power or wealth. It's how much freedom you have, and how much freedom you give.

It reminded me of something my dad used to say. Success was happiness. Not money. Happiness. Two completely different ways of saying something quite similar, I think. And freedom is actually one of my own top personal values, so maybe that's why it's speaking to me.

And it's made me think about what freedom actually means, because it shows up in so many different forms, and I don't think we talk about most of them.

There's freedom of time. Having some control over your own calendar rather than every hour being claimed by someone else's demands.

There's freedom of decision. Being trusted to make a call without needing permission first, and giving that same trust to the people around you.

There's freedom of voice. Being able to say what you actually think, disagree, raise something difficult, without spending the next hour worrying about how it landed.

There's freedom from guilt. Being able to switch off, take a holiday, leave on time, without it costing you something emotionally even when nobody is technically stopping you.

There's financial freedom. Not the wealth itself, but what it let’s you say no, and yes, to. Not staying somewhere out of fear of what happens if you leave.

There's freedom of identity. Being able to actually be yourself at work rather than performing a version of yourself that feels safer.

There's freedom of pace. Not being trapped in someone else's urgency. Moving at the speed something you’re working on actually deserves rather than the speed others or the anxiety demands.

And there's relational freedom. Not having to manage someone else's mood or brace yourself for their reaction before you say or do something.

So many of the people I work with have built genuinely successful careers by every conventional measure, and freedom is still the thing missing. They can't switch off. They've built teams that can't function without them. They've climbed somewhere that looks like success from the outside and feels like a cage from the inside.

And giving freedom to others is just as interesting as having it. The leaders who create the most freedom for the people around them tend to be the ones who feel most free themselves. If someone can't let go of control, it's usually because they don't feel free themselves either.

Writing this has made me reflect properly on what freedom actually means to me, beyond just naming it as a value I hold. And when I look back, I can see exactly where the lack of it has shown up. Jobs that looked right on paper but felt wrong from the inside. Periods where I was doing well by every external measure and still felt a friction. I didn't always have the language for it at the time, but I can see now that what was missing, more often than not, was freedom in one of its forms.

And knowing that now gives me something useful - A filter. When something doesn't feel right, I can ask myself which kind of freedom is missing, and that tends to point me toward the actual decision I need to make.

My dad never had a framework or a quote for any of this. He just knew that the version of success that mattered wasn't the one with a number attached to it.

I think he and Adam Grant would have got on.

I'm Sarah Clark, an executive and leadership coach for hospitality and retail leaders. If this resonated with you, I'd love to have a conversation. Book a free consultation at nineyardscoaching.co.uk