Leadership is about self-examination and allowing others to grow, By Zacch Adedeji

Today, I want to begin with an unusual request. I want us, collectively, to suspend the comfort of familiarity. For a moment, put aside the reassurance of titles, tenure, and the habits that come with how we have always operated. Instead, I invite you to imagine the leader this moment in our history requires you to become, not the leader you have been.

The Nigeria Revenue Service marks a clear break from the past. It represents a new era, and new eras demand new postures. This transition will not be secured by the weight of our positions, the strength of our resumes, or the familiarity of our structures.

It will only be secured by our capacity to adapt, to stretch, and to lead at a level of excellence that this country now requires of us. What brought us here will not be sufficient for where we are going.

Recently, I reflected deeply on an article in the Harvard Business Review titled The Hidden Beliefs That Hold Leaders Back. Its central argument is both simple and confronting: leaders rarely fail because they lack intelligence, experience, or strategy. More often, they fall short because of the invisible beliefs they carry about themselves, about others, and about what leadership should look like, beliefs that quietly shape decisions, behaviours, and outcomes.

Every one of us in this room has a plan for NRS. We have strategies, reform agendas, roadmaps, and transformation frameworks. And yet, history teaches us that even the most sophisticated plans can be undermined by internal blockers we rarely acknowledge, the unspoken assumptions that influence how we lead, how we delegate, how we respond under pressure, and how much space we create for others to think, act, and innovate.

In institutions like ours, these blockers do not announce themselves loudly. They rarely appear as resistance to change. Instead, they show up subtly, often disguised as good intentions. They show up when we believe that leadership means always having the answer, so we lead by instruction rather than by empowerment. They show up when we assume that tight control is the same as accountability, and in doing so, we unintentionally create bottlenecks around ourselves.

They show up when we unconsciously expect others to work at our speed, in our style, and according to our definitions of excellence, forgetting that strong outcomes can be achieved through different paths.

They show up when we believe vulnerability has no place in leadership, so we project certainty instead of honesty, and create environments where people are afraid to ask questions, admit gaps, or challenge assumptions.

And perhaps most dangerously, they show up when we cling to familiar systems and legacy norms, even when the moment clearly demands a fundamentally new way of working.

These beliefs are not harmless. They shape culture. They shape performance. And ultimately, they shape the future of this institution. That is why the first step in this retreat is not strategy. It is not structure. It is not technology. The first step is leadership self-examination. Because if we cannot confront our internal barriers, we cannot credibly lead thousands of people into a new institutional era.

I want to be very clear: this reflection is not something I am asking of you from a distance. It is something I have had to confront myself.

One of my own long-standing assumptions has been the belief that if I can do something in a particular way, then others should be able to do it the same way. On the surface, it appears harmless, even noble. In reality, it distorted how I set expectations, how I reviewed performance, and how I delegated authority. I often expected people to move at my pace.

I assumed my definition of quality should naturally be the benchmark. And when work came back in a form I did not immediately recognise, my instinct was to tighten control rather than to ask different questions.

That mindset did not come from malice. It came from my own history, a lifetime shaped by perfectionism, by high achievement, by the belief that mistakes were unacceptable and falling short meant falling behind. Without realising it, I projected those beliefs onto others.

Over time, I traced the root and recognised that my real fear was not that others would fail, but that I would be held responsible for their failure. That fear quietly drove rigidity, pressure, and, at times, unnecessary mistrust.

My unblocking came when I accepted, without defensiveness, that efficiency does not require uniformity, that excellence does not require my style, and that trust is not the absence of oversight, but the willingness to allow people to rise. I learned to focus on outcomes rather than policing the journey. I learned that leadership is not the replication of oneself; leadership is the elevation of others.

I share this not as a personal story, but as a collective warning and invitation. Because if a leader’s unexamined beliefs can slow down a system, then together, our beliefs can either unlock or constrain the future of this organisation. And the stakes before us are too high for that.

So as we begin this retreat, I ask each of us to do something deliberate. Take off every hat. Suspend every title. Release every inherited script about what leadership should look like. Stand here simply as leaders who understand that the future of NRS will not be determined by the brilliance of our documents, but by the humility, courage, and clarity with which we choose to lead.

Let me close with this.

The Nigeria Revenue Service will not be defined by what we say in this room. It will be defined by who we become after we leave it. We stand at the edge of one of the most significant institutional transformations in this country’s history.

The credibility of Nigeria’s revenue architecture, and confidence in the Nigerian economy, rests in our hands. If we walk into this future with rigid beliefs, we will build walls where bridges are required. But if we lead with honesty, courage, and an open mind, we will build an institution worthy of this moment.

This is our mandate! This is our responsibility! And this is our legacy!

Colleagues, let us begin again, honestly, expectantly, and with renewed minds.

Thank you for truly standing by me and good morning.

* Being the opening remarks by the Executive Chairperson of Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS), Zacch Adedeji at the 2026 NRS leadership retreat held at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja on Tuesday 10 February