Abstract When planning for the evacuation guidance, how to efficiently set the trained evacuation leaders is an important problem which has great impact on the evacuation process. This paper investigates the effect of the number and positions of evacuation leaders on the evacuation dynamics in rooms with limited visibility range. In the improved social force model, only the trained leaders exactly know the exit positions, and the others could only follow the guidance according to the positions and directions of evacuation leaders. According to the simulation results, only one or two leaders could get remarkable effect for a single-exit configuration. But for configurations with multi-exits, evacuation leaders would make the dynamic slower unless the guidance sufficiently utilizes every exit. The results indicate that, we should set as many leaders as the number of exits in the center of the multi-exits regular squared room, and when emergencies occur, each leader heads to a different exit. Moreover, if we do like this, the evacuation would be even faster than that with 20 random-position-leaders. This work may shed some light on the drawing up of emergency scheme for large public-gathering places like stadiums and shopping malls.