Workplace Multiplier by Tola Akinsulire

April 29, 2026

Welcome to the Workplace Multiplier newsletter. Published Monday to Friday, equipping you to achieve your professional goals faster and without burnout or overwhelm.

What it actually costs to create the room

Howdy [First Name],

Yesterday I asked you a hard question.

Who on your team is having the real conversation with someone else…because they've decided not to have it with you?

If that question sat with you overnight, good.

That discomfort is information.

It means you already know something needs to change. You just haven't decided yet whether the cost of changing it is worth it.

So let me be honest with you about what that cost actually is.

Creating genuine room for your team is not a culture initiative.

It is not an open-door policy or a quarterly one-on-one or a staff retreat with a motivational speaker.

It is a daily decision to subordinate your ego to someone else's growth.

And that is harder than it sounds…because your ego is not the villain in this story. It is a rational response to how you got here.

You got here by being the one who knew. The one who decided. The one who delivered.

Your identity as a leader is built on being indispensable.

So when someone on your team starts to outgrow their lane, something quiet happens inside you.

You tell yourself you are protecting standards. You tell yourself they are not ready. You tell yourself there is a process.

But underneath all of that…if you are honest…is a simpler fear.

If they no longer need me to do this, what exactly am I for?

That is the question most leadership content never makes you answer.

I had to answer it.

When I started genuinely asking my team what they wanted…not as a retention exercise, but as a real question I intended to act on…I discovered something unsettling.

Some of them were ready for more than I had been giving them.

Not eventually. Now.

Which meant I had been the ceiling.

Not intentionally. Not maliciously. But functionally…my presence, my process, my preference for how things got done…had been limiting people who were ready to go further.

Sitting with that is not comfortable for someone who has spent a career being the one who raises the ceiling for others.

But it was necessary.

Because the alternative…staying comfortable while your best people quietly outgrow you…is far more expensive. You just don't get the invoice until they're gone.

Here is what I learned on the other side of that discomfort.

When you genuinely create room…when you stretch the pie instead of guard your slice…you do not become less relevant.

You become the kind of leader people are loyal to.

Not because they have to be. Because they choose to be.

That is a different kind of indispensable.

And it compounds in ways that protecting your position never will.

If any of this is sitting with you…the question from yesterday, the cost I've described today, the gap between the leader you intend to be and the one your team is actually experiencing…I want to offer you something.

A Multiplier Session.

It is a focused one-on-one conversation with me…not a sales call, not a discovery form, not a webinar.

Just you, me, and the specific leadership challenge you are carrying right now.

We will name what is actually happening, identify where the ceiling is, and leave you with a clear next step.

If you are ready for that conversation, reply to this email with the word READY and I will send you the details.

No pressure. No funnel.

Just the conversation.

Keep winning at work and in life.

Tola Akinsulire

Your Strategic Workplace Mentor