How do you unleash your leadership potential? For Entrepreneurs’ Organization, it is important to support the needs of the 360° entrepreneur through business, family, community & personal experiences and help them grow, develop and reach their full capacity as business leaders.
This is why EO’s Global Leadership Conference (GLC) plays a critical role in defining what leadership at EO means, serving as a source of inspiration and a key moment to building a community for tens of thousands of EO members. GLC is EO’s flagship event that empowers members with the tools, insights, and networks they need to unlock their capabilities.
The theme for this year’s GLC is ‘Unleash’ – helping every member unearth greater success, find their greater purpose and have a greater impact on those around them. It saw an innovative in-person and virtual hybrid format that made it accessible to all through in-person events in Washington, D.C., USA and Barcelona, Spain, and virtual access on its online platforms. Over the course of five days, talks, workshops, webinars and interactive sessions helped EO members hone their skills and abilities as individuals and as a collective – finding opportunities, not challenges; stepping stones, not roadblocks.
Speakers from different industries shared their journeys, insights and learnings to inspire participants to look within their respective experiences and apply the lessons they captured from these sessions. Headlining the GLC 2022 was supermodel-turned-super businesswoman Tyra Banks, who talked about her beginnings, the challenges and the successes she experienced in her journey. Here are a few takeaways from some of the speakers during the conference.
“Don’t delegate your core competency. The biggest lesson I’ve learned during quarantine is that it’s not always about defence, you have to play offence. You have to figure it out. Another lesson I learned is that there’s strength in numbers.” - Tyra Banks, Executive Producer & Host of America’s Next Top Model and CEO of the Tyra Banks Company
“Our ability follows where our mind leads. Unleashing our potential is a strength we all have. ‘Unleash’ is more than the theme of this year’s GLC. ‘Unleash’ is a rallying cry for us, entrepreneurs, to level up, to be more of who we are, to bend the future.” - Marc Stockli, Managing Director of MOS Advisory Services
“I learned that sometimes life doesn’t work out the way that we plan it, it very seldom does, but I learned that I am the one who chooses how I want to live my life. Some goals are hard to reach, they may feel like an eternity, and my goals were definitely unrealistic. But instead of being demoralised by the vastness of that goal, I decided to break it down into one day at a time. By doing so, it just didn’t feel like it was that overwhelming.” - Karina Hollekim, professional Free-skier, BASE jumper and Co-founder and Head of E-Learning for Young Happy Minds
“The key is utilisation. One of the biggest lies is that knowledge is power. Now, is it really? At best, knowledge is potential power. It becomes ‘power’ when we utilise it and when we apply it. The number one skill to your success is your ability to learn rapidly. If you and your team could learn rapidly and translate that learning into action, it’s the ultimate competitive advantage, bar none.” - Jim Kwik, Founder at Kwik Learning
“Nothing that is meant for you will ever get away if you’re open to it. It’s okay to take a turn and a change into a new direction that is completely different from where you started and where your passion lies. It doesn’t have to be these major, big changes that we make. It could be small, little changes that we make along the way, utilising the tools and opportunities that we already have in our hands, creating different outcomes for ourselves.” - Tala Raassi, Fashion Designer, Entrepreneur & Author
“What is your victory going to be? What’s the story that you’re going to tell with your life? What is your purpose? What is your company’s purpose? What are you going to give to your employees so that they can live a life of purpose? What are you going to do with the blessings of your life? As you guys go forth, I want you to think about what I said at the very beginning – this whole ‘help one, help many’ thing. Who’s your one? Go back to wherever you live and let’s just solve it for one person. But I think I know what’s going to happen. You all don’t know how to stop at one. One’s going to turn into two, two into four, and all of a sudden, a roomful of people that are changing the world.” - Mick Ebeling, Founder and CEO of Not Impossible
“I was never willing, at any point, to say ‘I’m done, I give up’ because defeat is not a real thing until the second you say, ‘I give up.’ And even when I saw the Thuggs, I was done for the season, but I wasn’t done for my life.” - Brian Smith, Founder of UGG Australia
More insights were shared by various other speakers in the different Learning Blocks – Potential, Community, and Impact – and the Breakout Sessions during the conference. The GLC is an occasion for EO to come together and unlock the power of community. It provides an opportunity to use our connections to make entrepreneurship a force for good in the world and to unearth how we can have greater impact as an organisation.