In this EO Thought Leadership Forum episode, host Joe Apfelbaum and guest James Ashcroft explore why many individuals shy away from leadership roles. They identify fear of blame, judgment, and failure as primary barriers, and argue that a lack of self‑awareness prevents people from recognizing their strengths and taking responsibility. The conversation reframes leadership as influence and responsibility rather than power, emphasizing the importance of vulnerability, continuous self‑improvement, and honest feedback. They discuss practical strategies such as focusing on one’s strengths, delegating tasks that align with personal weaknesses, and adopting a shepherd‑like mindset to guide others. Throughout, they stress that leadership development is a conscious, ongoing process that requires stepping out of reactive survival mode, embracing vulnerability, and committing to personal growth.
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Hello everybody and welcome to the EO Thought Leadership Forum, episode number 17. We're at 17, that's ridiculous.
Yeah, it's quite a lot, isn't it, Joe?
Yes, my name is Joe Apfelbaum from EO Brooklyn.
I'm James Ashcroft from EO South Florida.
I'm so excited to be talking about this and this is about leadership today. Today we're talking about why people are afraid There's so many people out there that are just like, oh, it's not my responsibility to lead. What's up with people? Why are people afraid to lead? Like, what's wrong with leadership?
I think, I think people just aren't self-aware to understand their strengths and feel comfortable in their own skin sometimes and to put themselves out there, you know?
Maybe people are afraid to be blamed for things and they don't want to take responsibility.
Yeah.
They're afraid to be judged that they're not going to be a good leader.
Absolutely. I mean, leadership isn't for everyone. I mean, let's face it, right? I mean, some people enjoy, um, being told what to do. Other people, other people enjoy telling others what to do or inspiring others or teaching others and being whatever leadership means to them in their capacity. You know, so I think you've definitely got those who were born to lead. And just to clarify again, when I say lead, it could be teaching, it could be mentoring, it could be running your business.
It can—
it's a whole—
I look at it as taking responsibility. If you're an employee or if you're an entrepreneur or if you're a teacher and you want to lead in your own way, like thought leadership is leading with your thoughts, you need to just step up your game and take responsibility for the things that you're committed to.
Right.
Figuring out what are those things that you're committed to. If you're committed to lead an awesome team, to run an excellent company, then taking your leadership on and not being afraid to make decisions and not being afraid to delegate and not being afraid to fail, which is huge.
It is huge. There's no doubt about it.
A lot of people are just afraid to fail. They want to say, okay, it's not my fault. You know, the upper-ups decided. Dude, you are the upper-ups. Take responsibility. Right.
Yeah. I mean, just to circle back to what I was saying, you know, it just starts with taking the time to be self-aware, to understand yourself and where your strengths are and where you have your natural abilities to lead come from. Right. Knowing, knowing your strong points and then going all in on those strong points.
But it's not about power. It's not about power. It's not about forcing people or telling people what to do. Leadership is more about influence. It's about working with other people and coaching them instead of advising them as to what to do, but more leading them in the direction of what is the most effective thing to be done right now. What's the right thing? Sometimes you have to be the person that gets up and does the right thing. And that's what I view leadership as, is doing the right thing, putting yourself at risk, being vulnerable. And leading with your heart as opposed to just everything is rational and, you know, everything's in your mind, but allow your emotions and your intuitiveness to guide you to be a strong leader and work on yourself. Check yourself. You know, just because you're a leader, it doesn't mean you're always right.
Oh no. I mean, yeah, no, it doesn't mean you're always right. I think it just comes back to what you're saying. It's, it's just getting proactive and stepping up and, just putting yourself out there to lead. I mean, you, you learn to lead by leading, you know. And right, Joe, I'm sure you could—
And by failing to lead.
Absolutely. I mean, if you, if you look back on Joe from 5, 7 years ago as a leader, you probably cringe a bit, right? I mean, I, I made a thousand mistakes, you know. You gotta just, you just gotta try and fail But learn from it, become self-aware enough using those failures to then check off boxes saying, I'm good at this, I'm not naturally good at this, and then going into your strengths and shoring up those strengths, right? And that is what ultimately makes you a better leader.
Double down on your strengths, double down on your strengths. But a lot of people are afraid to do that. A lot of people are just worried about their About their weaknesses and they're focusing on their weaknesses. So as a result, they're like, who am I? I used to say, who am I to write a quote? Could you imagine this? Who am I to come up with a quote? Like me, Joe? I'm going to come up with a quote and share it on the internet?
Joe, I have, I have like a handful of strengths and like 78 weaknesses, right? If you get bogged down in the weaknesses, you're not going to have enough time or Bandwidth to focus on the strengths. You know, you have to shore up your weaknesses. You know, in an organization, that means, you know, if it's a critical— you know, say finance isn't your thing and you're running a business, then you need to get someone in your company to handle the finances. You know what I mean?
Absolutely.
So leading in that capacity is making the decision to hire somebody to handle that. But again, that comes from self-awareness, knowing yourself, right?
Awesome.
Would you come from a when you come from a state of self-awareness and using your natural talents, and you've spent time— so that we're talking about from 7 years ago to now— of actually shoring up your strengths and becoming a better leader and becoming more authentic to who you truly are, your DNA, you know, that's where great leadership happens. But to answer, you know, to come back to your original question of why don't people, more people step up and Lead. I think it's, they just don't, don't take the time to do it. They don't take the time to put in the work. They don't take in the time to learn. It's, it's, it's a conscious, it's a conscious schooling process.
You know, people are in reactive mode. They're busy surviving. They don't realize that they can stop, take a breather and be able to lead themselves. You know, maybe, maybe it's that people are afraid to lead others because they don't lead themselves.
Could, could very well be, you know, it could very well be, you know, this is, you know, I don't know.
I mean, it's like sheep. It's like, I always look at it like sheep and a shepherd. You know, if you're a sheep, right, you're not gonna just do what you need to do. You need a shepherd to kind of lead you around, tell you where the grass is, keep you away from the wolves, because otherwise you're just gonna go, you're curious, you know, you're just gonna go around and start nibbling on somebody else's grass. Let me tell you, you never want the wrong person's grass. They'll just make you into lamb chops.
They will. But I don't want people to come away from this conversation saying, you know, I'm not a great leader, you know, my life sucks and I'm not worth anything because there are truly people we need. We need people who, um, who, who allow to be led, right?
Absolutely.
I mean, you need those people. So I don't want to come across like this is, you know, you're a leader.
No, no, no, no, I'm not saying that.
But I think there is definitely people out there. So I think there's The context of the question is, why are there people in the position of leading who could be better leaders, right?
Yeah. And why are they afraid to take it to the next level?
Why are they afraid to take it to the next level? Because it's hard work. It involves being brutally honest with yourself. It involves having honest feedback from people around you and accepting it and being objective. And those are very hard things to do. It's a very personal thing. If you're leading people and it doesn't work out or people don't like you or People don't like, you know, the style that you lead.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
And they could be completely right and it just, it hurts, it stings, you know? I mean, no one likes that.
So if you want to take yourself to the next level and you want to be a leader, you got to learn to be vulnerable. You got to learn to continuously improve yourself and be open to criticism, be open to feedback and become more self-aware. Thank you very much, James, for joining us today.
My pleasure, Joe.
And thank you all for watching this. If you like this, don't forget to share it. Don't forget to comment on it. We want to hear your feedback. We want to have a conversation with you, and hopefully we'll see you at the next episode.
