Leadership Lesson: Multipliers

Source: Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter-Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown

What is a Multiplier?

A multiplier brings out the most in other people's talents.

5 Disciplines of the Multiplier

1. Talent Magnet-Attract and optimize talent.
2. The Liberator-Create intensity that requires best thinking.
3. The Challenger-Extend challenges. Defines opportunities that cause people to stretch.
4. The Debate Maker-Debate Decisions.
5. The Investor-Instill ownership and accountability-Gives others the ownership for results and invests in their success

Building Others

Great leaders bring out the most in others.

"It has been said that after meeting with the great British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, you left feeling he was the smartest person in the world, but after meeting with his rival Benjamin Disraeli, you left thinking you were the smartest person." -Bono

Expanding Genius

"It isn't how much you know that matters.  What matters is how much access you have to what other people know.  It isn't just how intelligent your team members are; it is how much of that intelligence you can draw out and put to use."

"Multipliers are leaders who look beyond their own genius and focus their energy on extracting and extending the genius of others, they get more from their people.  They don't get a little more; they get vastly more."

Some leaders seem to drain intelligence by focusing on their own intelligence.  They are so focused on being the smartest person in the room, everyone else's role is diminished.

How Multipliers Lead

1. Engage people's genius.
2. Speak less.

Benefits of Being or Becoming a Multiplier:

People who work for multipliers don't hold back.

"Multipliers not only access people's current capability, they stretch it.  They get more from people than they knew they had to give.  People reported actually getting smarter around multipliers.  The implication is that intelligence itself can grow."

Multipliers Believe:

1. Most people in organizations are underutilized.
2. All capability can be leveraged with the right kind of leadership.
3. Therefore, intelligence and capability can be multiplied without requiring a bigger investment.

Multipliers believe that genius is all around.  Intelligence is continually growing. They have a growth mindset. They believe that people are smart and will figure it out. 

Multipliers extend hard challenges and then give space to others to figure it out.

Multipliers Traits

• Multipliers challenge people.  They are NOT feel good managers.
• Multipliers have a sense of humor-they don't take themselves to seriously.