22/05/2026
There are two kinds of leaders who will never reach their full potential.
Not because they aren't capable. Because they were never truly teachable.
The first kind never arrived at the consciousness. They found leaders early who only needed one thing from them: results. And those leaders were good at extracting results. So everybody was happy. The leader got the output. The person got the validation. But nobody was asking the deeper question: who is this person becoming?
So they became very good at performing leadership. Delivering. Executing. Impressing. And completely stuck on the inside. They don't even know what they're missing. Because nobody ever showed them that there was another way to be developed.
The second kind knows. They've felt the pull toward real teachability. They've sensed what it would mean to give a leader genuine access, not just to their performance, but to their formation. And they can't bring themselves to do it.
I understand this more than I can say. Because at one point in my life, older, more experienced, fully aware of the gravity of what I was doing, I looked at a leader and said: *"If you ever see me going the wrong way, tell me."* I knew what I was placing in that person's hands when I said it. I knew the risk.
The fear is real. You don't know what they'll do with that access. You don't know if they're safe enough to hold it. You don't know if their correction will build you or break you.
But here is what I've learned: the cost of remaining unteachable is higher than the risk of being wrongly taught. Because at least from wrong teaching, you can recover and recalibrate. From never being taught at all, from performing without progressing, you just become a more polished version of who you already were. And that is its own kind of loss.
The right teacher is not the nicest person in the room. It is the person who is as interested in who you are becoming as they are in what you are delivering.
Find that person. Give them access. Your formation depends on it.
Adesewa | Doing Hard Things
