Everyone Wants to Be Led 每个人都渴望被领导

After 30 years inside EO — from Forum Moderator to Chapter President to the Global Board of Directors — my single greatest takeaway about leadership is this: everyone wants to be led. They are waiting for someone with the courage to step forward, own the room, and bring them somewhere better than where they currently sit. The question is whether that person will be you.

People do not resist leadership. They resist poor leadership, absent leadership, and performative leadership. Real leadership — honest, generous, clear, courageous — is what every person in every room is silently hoping for. The moment someone steps forward and offers it with genuine conviction, the room follows.

"My number one take on leadership is the belief that everyone wants to be led. So do it. I call it permission leadership — if they give you permission to lead, then lead them. Lead them with your full self. Lead them with your conviction, your creativity, your craziness." — Carlo Santoro

This article is for two groups of people. The first is anyone — inside EO or outside it — who wants to grow as a leader. Who knows they have more capacity than they are currently using. The second is every EO member sitting inside what I genuinely believe is the world's finest entrepreneurial leadership development program — who has not yet fully claimed what is available to them.

The World's Leadership Problem — And EO's Answer

Best Practice in Leadership Delivers Results — Always

Leadership is not a mystery. The research is clear, the evidence is consistent across industries and cultures, and the practitioners who have done it at the highest levels all point at the same principles: clarity of vision, consistency of behaviour, genuine care for the people in your charge, the courage to make decisions under uncertainty, and the humility to listen before you speak.

Leading peers, specifically, is an exercise in alignment above all else. In your own business, you have formal authority. In EO — in Forum, in chapter leadership, in regional and global roles — none of that exists. The only tool available to you is the quality of your leadership itself: the clarity of your reasoning, the genuineness of your care, the consistency of your character, and your ability to build alignment among people who are as capable, as independent, and as opinionated as you are.

"The single biggest way to impact an organisation is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organisation that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them." — John C. Maxwell

Reach Out to the xLeaders — They Are One of Your Greatest Assets

Here is a resource that most EO members never fully use: the thousands of experienced past leaders who have already done what you are about to do, who carry 35 years of accumulated wisdom about what works and what does not, and who are — almost universally — willing to share it. EO is not just a current community. It is an extraordinary archive of lived leadership experience.

Before your leadership year begins — identify the two or three xLeaders in your chapter or region whose judgment you respect. Reach out directly. Ask specifically: What do you wish you had known in month one? Where did you get it wrong? What would you do differently? These conversations can compress years of learning into a few hours.

1. Reach out to a tenured xLeader you respect — a past President, a past Regional Director, a long-serving Forum Moderator — and ask if they will meet with you before your year begins.
2. Come with specific questions about your specific gaps. "How did you handle board members who would not engage?" is useful. "What is the role like?" is not.
3. Ask for ongoing check-ins — monthly or quarterly — so you have a trusted voice available when the difficult situations arise. They always do.
4. Reach beyond your own chapter. EO's network is global. The past chapter president who had the same challenge you are facing may be in London or Lagos or Melbourne. Reach out.

What Are You Going to Focus On?

When EO gives you a leadership opportunity, the instinct for most entrepreneurs is to ask: what does this role need from me? That is the wrong starting question. The right question — the one that separates development from mere performance — is this: what do I need from this role?

Think honestly about your daily world. Where are you genuinely not yet the leader you want to be? That is your list. Write it before the year begins. Be honest about it. And then treat every interaction in your leadership year as deliberate practice of exactly the skill you decided to build.

The Strategy Summit — Where the Year Takes Shape

The Strategy Summit is the chapter's annual planning workshop — a focused session where the President and board members step away from the day-to-day, work together on the year ahead, and build the shared clarity that makes great chapter leadership possible. It is not just an agenda-setting exercise. Done well, it is one of the most powerful leadership development experiences a board can have together.

A skilled external facilitator — someone who knows EO, knows the chapter leadership model, and knows how to draw the best thinking out of a room of entrepreneurs — creates a quality of session the board cannot create for itself. The facilitator holds the process; the board owns the outcomes. For the President, the Strategy Summit is often the clearest expression of their leadership style in the entire year.

The Decision to Lead

Permission leadership is not about waiting to be asked. It is about recognising that the invitation is already there — and choosing to accept it. The greatest gift EO gives its members is the repeated invitation to step into leadership before you feel ready — and to discover, every single time, that you were more capable than you thought.

Everyone wants to be led. So do it. Lead them with your full self. Lead them with your conviction, your creativity, your craziness. The room is waiting for you. — Carlo Santoro