Teachers Not Leaders: If I’m Not Learning From You, Get Out of the Way!
The capability that got you here may not be the capability that gets you there.
As organisations grow, something uncomfortable happens.
The problems change.
The decisions change.
The people change.
The leader’s job changes.
And eventually, the capability that built the organisation may no longer be sufficient for the organisation it has become.
That’s why I’ve increasingly come to think that growing organisations don’t simply need leaders.
They need teachers.
People from whom others can continue to learn.
And leaders themselves need people capable of teaching them.
Because if I’m not learning from you, eventually I may need you to get out of the way.
EVERY NEW LEVEL REQUIRES NEW CAPABILITY
Think about education.
As we progress through school, the teachers change.
Not because the previous teacher was bad.
They were perfectly capable of teaching us at that stage of our development.
But eventually we needed something else.
Different knowledge.
Different experience.
Different challenge.
Different capability.
Organisations aren’t so different.
What works with ten people may not work with fifty.
What works at £1 million turnover may not work at £10 million.
What works when everybody sits around one table may collapse when there are several layers of management.
Growth changes the system.
And when the system changes, the people within it have to grow too.
THE FOUNDER’S PARADOX
This is particularly challenging for founders.
The qualities that enable somebody to create a business can be extraordinary.
Initiative.
Energy.
Determination.
Risk-taking.
Speed.
An ability to make things happen with very few resources.
But as the business grows, those same qualities can create problems.
The founder who once made every important decision now becomes the person through whom every important decision has to pass.
The entrepreneur who solved every problem becomes the person everybody brings their problems to.
The leader’s capability built the organisation.
Now the organisation is becoming dependent upon the leader’s capability.
That’s the paradox.
YOU CAN’T SCALE DEPENDENCY
We encountered this idea in the ice, water and steam metaphor.
A dependent organisation consumes leadership energy.
An independent organisation distributes responsibility.
An interdependent organisation combines capability.
That distinction becomes increasingly important at scale.
If everybody needs the founder’s approval, adding more people doesn’t solve the problem.
It magnifies it.
More people.
More decisions.
More questions.
More pressure on the same individual.
Eventually:
The leader becomes the bottleneck.
You can’t scale dependency.
SO WHO IS TEACHING THE LEADER?
This is where the idea of teachers becomes interesting.
Leadership development is often framed around leaders teaching everybody else.
But who challenges the leader?
Who brings experience they don’t possess?
Who can see what they can’t?
Who tells them when something that worked brilliantly five years ago is now holding the organisation back?
Who helps them develop the capability required for the next stage?
The most capable leaders I’ve encountered remain willing to learn.
They don’t interpret not knowing as weakness.
They surround themselves with people who bring capabilities they don’t possess.
And sometimes they deliberately bring in somebody who has already travelled the road they’re about to take.
INVESTMENT HAS TO COME BEFORE RETURN
Years ago, we were talking to organisations facing difficult recruitment conditions.
Several began asking a different question.
Instead of simply:
Who can we hire?
they asked:
Who can we develop?
That’s still an important question.
We saw striking returns from organisations willing to invest in their existing people.
One intervention we’ve already written about involved an investment of £12,000 and was subsequently associated with an estimated £4 million in retained revenue.
Another client identified a 27% time saving in starting new hires.
Different investments.
Different returns.
But the principle is the same.
Return follows investment.
You cannot continually extract more capability from people without putting something back.
DEVELOPMENT ISN’T JUST TRAINING
That investment doesn’t necessarily mean sending everybody on a course.
Development can mean coaching.
Mentoring.
Greater responsibility.
Exposure to different parts of the business.
Working alongside somebody more experienced.
Being challenged.
Learning to lead.
Learning to communicate.
Learning to make decisions without escalating everything upwards.
The question is not:
How much training are we buying?
It’s:
What capability does this organisation need next — and how are we going to build it?
That’s a much more strategic question.
SOMETIMES YOU DEVELOP. SOMETIMES YOU RECRUIT.
There will inevitably be capability the organisation doesn’t possess.
That’s when external recruitment becomes valuable.
Fresh experience.
Fresh thinking.
A capability nobody internally has yet developed.
The mistake is assuming recruitment and development are alternatives.
They are two ways of answering the same question:
What capability is missing?
Sometimes you build it.
Sometimes you buy it.
Sometimes you do both.
But you need to understand what’s missing before deciding.
THE BEST LEADERS CREATE MORE CAPABLE PEOPLE
Years ago, I worked with an individual whose employer had identified his potential and invested in his development.
Much later, we spoke again.
He was now a senior executive.
And what did he want to discuss?
Developing his people.
The investment had come full circle.
Someone had taught him.
He had become more capable.
He had progressed.
Now he wanted to develop capability in others.
That’s leadership development at its best.
Not simply creating better leaders.
Creating leaders who create more capable people.
GROWTH REVEALS WHAT’S MISSING
This is one of the things I’ve come to understand more clearly over the years.
Growth doesn’t simply make an organisation bigger.
Growth reveals the organisation.
It exposes dependency.
Weak systems.
Missing capability.
Leadership bottlenecks.
Gaps between people.
Things that were manageable at one size become impossible at another.
So when an organisation reaches its next stage, the question isn’t simply:
How do we keep growing?
It is:
What must become more capable for growth to continue?
Sometimes that’s the team.
Sometimes it’s the systems.
Sometimes it’s the leadership.
And sometimes it’s you.
PERFECT TEAMS START WITH YOU
That remains one of the foundations of Perfect Teams®.
Understand yourself first.
What character do you bring?
What are your natural strengths?
What don’t you naturally see?
What capability will you need as your responsibilities increase?
Then look around you.
What do others bring?
What’s missing?
Who needs developing?
Who could teach you?
And who could you develop so that they eventually teach others?
Because leadership isn’t about being the person who knows everything.
It’s about creating an organisation that can become more capable than you are alone.
So keep learning.
Keep developing.
Keep finding teachers.
And if I’m not learning from you?
Get out of the way!
Nobody is perfect.
But your team can be.
You can’t download capability.™
What capability will your organisation need at its next stage of growth?
Perfect Teams® helps leaders understand the capability they already have, identify what’s missing and build stronger, more interdependent teams.
LET’S TALK
Originally published 3 March 2022. Updated August 2026.
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