4 Reasons People You Lead May Not Want to Learn or Grow

I’ve learned in leadership—you can’t teach someone who doesn’t want to learn or grow personally.

Perhaps you’ve tried. I have. I see one of my jobs as a leader to help people grow—learn new ways to do things better, more efficiently, to improve as individuals—and ultimately, as a team. I’ve at times been worn out, however, trying to help some people develop. At times, it seems they want to keep doing things the same way—sometimes even keep making the same mistakes. They never seem to seek out—certainly not embrace—new or better principles to their life.

This is not only in leadership. It’s true with all of life. There are seasons we aren’t very teachable.

I’ve discovered the reasons someone isn’t willing to develop individually may not always be the same. In fact, there may be several reasons.

Here are four reasons people you are trying to lead may not want to learn or grow:

They don’t think they need to learn anything.

This is the one which frustrates us the most, and it’s the one we accuse people of the most. It’s true, arrogance is common in leadership, but also among those who need to be led. Many leaders feel they are in a position because they are the only ones who could do the job. Everyone around them may know it’s not true, but they can’t see it. They don’t care to learn from others, because they aren’t willing to admit or see they have anything to learn. Sometimes those who still have much to learn are too proud to admit it.

They don’t know they need to learn anything.

It may sound similar, but this is a different reason. It isn’t arrogance that causes this one, but rather ignorance. We’ve all been there at times. Many times I’ve assumed I had the answers already. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in learning more—I just didn’t know there was more to learn. I’ve said before, the older I get the more I realize I don’t know yet. Some of this comes with maturity and age. Some of it comes with experience. But, many times we don’t think we need to know anything new, because we don’t see enough missing holes in what we already know.