-
Kelechukwu Iro
- August 28, 2026
“You will fail”
If I am to write a letter to the me on the night before my resumption as an Ikore Graduate Trainee, this would have been my opening sentence.
And no, I am not a prophet of doom.
Failing has always been something we intentionally avoid and resent, but failing is something inevitable. Maybe you already know this. Maybe you are living it right now, somewhere between a deadline and a version of yourself you did not expect to meet this early. If that is you, stay with me.
For a long time, I saw failure as something to be avoided, easy to mistake for not being good enough. But the more I have experienced, learnt and reflected, the more I have come to understand that failure is not only inevitable. It is often necessary.
This is one of the biggest lessons my experience as a Graduate Trainee at Ikore has taught me. I entered the programme expecting to learn and gain hands-on experience. I did not anticipate how much of that learning would require me to unlearn. I relied on a faux assumption that the programme was going to be business as usual and I failed. Woefully!
Here is one of the first things I had to unlearn: the idea that impact only counts when it is big. I used to think impact needed to look like changing the world or winning a million-dollar grant (not that it isn’t worth the shot though, lol). But impact can also be quiet — showing up diligently for a routine task nobody will applaud you for.
Think of it like a puzzle: every piece is just as important. Sometimes, you are that piece, and no one will ever know it was you. Fill the gap anyway.
Another lesson came through pressure, the kind that makes your heart beat like local drum in a cultural carnival. It is easy to think you know how you will behave when everything is going well. The real test comes when deadlines are approaching, expectations are high, several things need your attention at once, and the outcome actually matters. Pressure has a way of revealing things about you that you may not have noticed when everything was calm.
I began to understand that composure is not the absence of pressure. It is the ability to respond deliberately despite it, taking a step back before responding, asking for clarification instead of assuming, admitting you need help, or simply accepting a mistake and figuring out how to correct it. None of this feels dignified while it is happening. It rarely does.
There is a difference between wanting to prove that you are intelligent and actually wanting to become better. The former makes you defensive when you are corrected. The latter makes you curious. I am learning to choose curiosity, because the goal is not to be the smartest person in the room. It is to leave the room smarter than you entered it. That requires humility to learn from people regardless of their position or experience, because no matter how knowledgeable you might be, you no fit sabi everything.
Perhaps this is where my relationship with failure began to change, right there in that humbling. I stopped seeing failure as an indication that something had gone wrong and started seeing it as information. A mistake is something to examine. An approach that fails is something to learn from. A struggle usually points to a gap that needs attention.
Failure, in that sense, becomes a cursor. A cursor points to something, draws your attention to a place, helps you navigate.
I have started to think about failure the same way: it can point towards a weakness, a habit that needs to change, a skill that needs developing, or an assumption that needs questioning. Sometimes, it points towards a completely different path, and that is fine too. You are allowed to change direction.
But failure on its own does not automatically produce growth. Reflection does. You have to stop and ask yourself what happened and why, honest enough to acknowledge your own role and humble enough to accept there may be something you do not know. Without that process, failure remains nothing more than a disappointing experience. With reflection, it becomes a lesson. This distinction, more than anything else, is what the Graduate Trainee Programme rewired in me. I no longer see failure as something that should automatically make me question my ability. Sometimes, it should make me question my approach instead, and learning to tell the two apart may be the most useful skill I am leaving with.
When I look back at my time at Ikore, the biggest transformation was not in the things I learnt to do. It was in how I began to think about myself and my capacity to grow — more comfortable with uncertainty, more willing to admit what I did not know, more receptive to feedback. I stopped flinching at correction and stopped having the anxiety that makes one frequent the rest room. I also became more aware of accountability: it is easy to take ownership when things go well, but genuine accountability is looking at what did not go well and asking what part you played in it. Not always comfortable, but necessary for growth.
Perhaps most importantly, I learnt that growth does not always feel like growth while it is happening. Sometimes you are simply trying to complete a difficult task or get through a challenging period. You may not notice the change immediately. Then, months later, you find yourself responding to a similar situation differently, communicating better, handling pressure with more maturity. Somewhere along the way, you have changed. And maybe that is what growth really looks like, quiet and backdated, visible only when you look over your shoulder at it.
I do not think the lesson from this experience is that I have somehow graduated from failure. I will still get things wrong, walai! There will still be rooms where I am not the smartest person in the room, and I am learning to be fine sitting in them anyway.
The difference is that I, Iro Kelechukwu Samuel (also known as Kaycee) no longer see those things as reasons to dread failure. The Graduate Trainee Programme did not teach me how to avoid failure. It taught me how to interpret it differently. Getting something wrong does not mean I am on the wrong path. Sometimes it means there is something I need to learn before I continue. Sometimes it means I need to adjust my approach. And sometimes, it means I need a completely different direction.
So yes, there will be failures. I will fail again. You will fail again. But the question should no longer be, “How do I avoid failure?” Perhaps the better question is, “Where is this failure pointing me?”
For me, that is the lesson I am taking forward from Ikore. Failure is no longer something I dread or need to hide. It is a cursor, sometimes pointing to a weakness, sometimes a lesson, sometimes a new approach, sometimes a better path altogether.
I may not always know where that cursor is leading me, but I have learnt to pay attention when it moves. The goal is to keep moving forward.
So if I am ever to write a letter to my future self, or to someone aspiring to be an Ikore Graduate Trainee, the opening sentence will be the same one I am handing you now, whoever you are, wherever you are in your own version of this season:
“Fail fast and fail forward.”
