High-agency people are annoying; that's the point
People have been calling me “intense” since I was a little girl.
Teachers said I asked too many questions. Friends said I was “a lot.” Boyfriends said I needed to relax. Bosses said I should be more of a team player, which usually meant I should stop pointing out when things weren’t working.
For a long time, it hurt my feelings because I thought something was wrong with me. I tried to soften myself, to be more easygoing, to go with the flow. But the truth is, I’m not a go-with-the-flow kind of person. I like to know the plan. I like to understand why we’re doing something. I like things to actually happen instead of just being discussed endlessly. It took me until my late-20s, but I finally stopped apologizing for that.
Most people are remarkably comfortable with chaos masquerading as planning. They’ll agree to things that aren’t real plans. They’ll sit in meetings that accomplish nothing. They’ll follow processes that stopped making sense years ago. And when you refuse to do that, when you actually want to know what’s happening and make a decision and move forward, suddenly you’re the problem.
High-agency people are annoying because we refuse to pretend. We don’t nod along to plans that aren’t actually plans. We don’t defer to processes that don’t work. We don’t wait for permission that’s never coming. And when you do that, when you move instead of waiting, when you ask instead of assuming, when you act instead of discussing endlessly, you disrupt the most fundamental human comfort: the script.
The world runs on scripts—and high-agency people break them.
That’s why they’re annoying, but it’s also why they’re necessary. Because value creation requires friction, and if you’re not making anyone uncomfortable, you’re probably not doing anything important.
What is high agency, really?
High agency is the ability to act on your own convictions without needing permission, consensus, or external validation to move forward.
It’s the friend who cancels the chaotic group trip because no one’s actually leading, and books her own solo weekend instead. It’s the coworker who stops attending the weekly meeting that accomplishes nothing and sends a note saying she’ll rejoin when there’s an actual agenda (yes, I was that coworker). It’s the person who says “I’ll just handle this myself” and then actually does it, rather than waiting for someone else to step up.
High-agency people operate from internal authority rather than external scripting. They don’t need you to agree with them before they act. They don’t need the group to validate their decision. They assess the situation, make a call, and move forward. And they’re willing to be disliked in the short term if it means getting to a better outcome in the long term.
Which sounds great in theory, but in practice, it makes people deeply uncomfortable. Because most people have outsourced their decision-making to social consensus, institutional permission, or the general vibe of the group. So, when someone just decides and acts independently, it exposes how much everyone else has been waiting around for someone to tell them it’s okay.
The world runs on scripts.
Scripts are the invisible infrastructure of social life. They’re the inherited beliefs most people never interrogate, the bureaucratic processes everyone follows because “that’s how it’s always been done,” the cultural norms that dictate how you’re supposed to behave in a meeting, a relationship, a family structure, etc.
