Multipliers Liz Wiseman Quotes

When leaders teach, they invest in their people’s ability to solve and avoid problems in the future.

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. ANTOINE DE ST. EXUPERY

Multipliers invoke each person’s unique intelligence and create an atmosphere of genius—innovation, productive effort, and collective intelligence.

The Diminisher is a Micromanager who jumps in and out. The Multiplier is an Investor who gives others ownership and full accountability.

Perhaps these leaders understood that the person sitting at the apex of the intelligence hierarchy is the genius maker, not the genius.

Multipliers aren’t “feel-good” managers. They look into people and find capability, and they want to access all of it. They utilize people to their fullest. They see a lot, so they expect a lot.

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.

The highest quality of thinking cannot emerge without learning. Learning can’t happen without mistakes.

Don’t just identify the problem; find a solution.

It is better to debate a decision without settling it than settling a decision without debating it. JOSEPH JOUBERT

Victor Hugo once said, “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

Diminishers are Decision Makers who try to sell their decisions to others. Multipliers are Debate Makers who generate real buy-in.

Those who work in a fun environment have greater productivity, interpersonal effectiveness, and call in sick less often.

speaking the language of multiplication (that is, higher growth by better utilizing the resources that already exist).

Finding people’s native genius and then labeling it is a direct approach to drawing more intelligence from them.

Mistakes are an essential part of progress.

To lead on purpose, we must understand how we diminish by accident.

the leader’s job is to put other people on stage.

Impact Players Wear Opportunity Goggles The approach taken by Impact Players isn’t just marginally different, it is radically different—and

Do the Job That’s Needed.

The Diminisher is an Empire Builder. The Multiplier is a Talent Magnet.

Stress is created when people are expected to produce outcomes that are beyond their control.

The Diminisher is a Know-It-All who gives directives. The Multiplier is a Challenger who defines opportunities.

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow. WOODROW WILSON

Good leaders don’t just give people more work, they give them harder work—a bigger challenge that prompts deep learning and growth.

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.1 —BONO

Leaders rooted in the logic of multiplication 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.

THE FOUR PRACTICES OF THE TALENT MAGNET Among the Multipliers we studied in our research, we found four active practices that together catalyze and sustain this cycle of attraction. These Talent Magnets: 1) look for talent everywhere; 2) find people’s native genius; 3) utilize people at their fullest; and 4) remove the blockers. Let

Yes, certain leaders amplify intelligence. These leaders, whom we have come to call Multipliers, create collective, viral intelligence in organizations. Other leaders act as Diminishers and deplete the organization of crucial intelligence and capability. But what is it that these Multipliers do? What is it that Multipliers do differently than Diminishers?

THE 5 DISCIPLINES OF THE MULTIPLIERS Diminisher The Empire Builder: Hoards resources and underutilizes talent The Tyrant: Creates a tense environment that suppresses people’s thinking and capability The Know-It-All: Gives directives that showcase how much they know The Decision Maker: Makes centralized, abrupt decisions that confuse the organization The Micro Manager: Drives results through their personal involvement Multiplier The Talent Magnet: Attracts talented people and uses them at their highest point of contribution The Liberator: Creates an intense environment that requires people’s best thinking and work The Challenger: Defines an opportunity that causes people to stretch The Debate Maker: Drives sound decisions through rigorous debate

Jae reflected on the leader’s role: “You can jump in and teach and coach, but then you have to give the pen back. When you give that pen back, your people know they are still in charge.” When something is off the rails, do you take over or do you invest? When you take the pen to add your ideas, do you give it back? Or does it stay in your pocket? Multipliers invest in the success of others. They may jump in to teach and share their ideas, but they always return to accountability. When leaders fail to return ownership, they create dependent organizations. This is the way of the Diminisher. They jump in, save the day, and drive results through their personal involvement. When leaders return the pen, they cement the accountability for action where it should be. This creates organizations that are free from the nagging need of the leader’s rescue.

SUPERSIZE IT—Try sizing someone’s job the way you shop for shoes for a young child. How does the wise parent decide what size to buy? They start by measuring the child’s foot, and then they buy a pair that’s a size too big. And how does the parent respond when their child tries on those shoes, awkwardly parading down the store aisle, complaining that the shoes feel weird and too big and that their feet are flopping around in them? The parent reassures them, “Don’t worry, you’ll grow into them.” Try supersizing someone’s job. Assess their current capabilities and then give them a challenge that is a size too big. Give an individual contributor a leadership role; give a first-line manager more decision-making power. If they seem startled, acknowledge that the role or responsibility might feel awkward at first. Then step back and watch them grow into it.

The various ways of creating a culture of innovation that we’ve talked about so far are greatly influenced by the leaders at the top. Leaders can’t dictate culture, but they can nurture it. They can generate the right conditions for creativity and innovation. Metaphorically, they can provide the heat and light and moisture and nutrients for a creative culture to blossom and grow. They can focus the best efforts of talented individuals to build innovative, successful groups. In our work at IDEO, we have been lucky enough to meet frequently with CEOs and visionary leaders from both the private and public sectors. Each has his or her own unique style, of course, but the best all have an ability to identify and activate the capabilities of people on their teams. This trait goes far beyond mere charisma or even intelligence. Certain leaders have a knack for nurturing people around them in a way that enables them to be at their best. One way to describe those leaders is to say they are “multipliers,” a term we picked up from talking to author and executive advisor Liz Wiseman. Drawing on a background in organizational behavior and years of experience as a global human resources executive at Oracle Corporation, Liz interviewed more than 150 leaders on four continents to research her book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. Liz observes that all leaders lie somewhere on a continuum between diminishers, who exercise tight control in a way that underutilizes their team’s creative talents, and multipliers, who set challenging goals and then help employees achieve the kind of extraordinary results that they themselves may not have known they were capable of.

He’ll outstretch all your capabilities to make it happen. He is highly demanding, but you feel great. “You know you are signing up for something that will challenge you on a daily basis for many years to come. You will challenge yourself and all your capabilities. “Exhilarating, exhausting, challenging, gratifying.”3 “He’s a big source of energy. He is a source of power and a tail-wind for what we do.

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton, the venerated British explorer, embarked on an expedition to traverse Antarctica. His recruitment advertisement in The Times (London) read: Men wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

Such Multipliers look at the complex opportunities and challenges swirling around them and assume: there are smart people everywhere who will figure this out and get even smarter in the process. Therefore, they conclude that their job is to bring the right people together in an environment that liberates people’s best thinking and then to get out of their way.

In the most trying times, you would trust your people; you would extend hard challenges to them and allow them space to fulfill their responsibilities. You would access their intelligence in a way that would actually make them smarter.

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 lead people by operating as Talent Magnets, whereby they attract and deploy talent to its fullest regardless of who owns the resource. People

By “native genius” I mean something even more specific than a strength or a skill that might be highly rated on a 360 degree leadership assessment. A native genius is something that people do, not only exceptionally well, but absolutely naturally. They do it easily (without extra effort) and freely (without condition). What people do easily, they do without conscious effort. They do it better than anything else they do, but they don’t need to apply extraordinary effort to the task. They get results that are head-and-shoulders above others but they do it without breaking a sweat.

After several years hanging in there hoping for things to improve, he found himself stuck in a dying organization, watching his opportunities fade. Soon Brian became one of the walking dead that roam the halls of so many organizations. On the outside, these zombies go through the motions, but on the inside they have given up. They “quit and stay.” It

In any hierarchical organization, the playing field is rarely level. The senior leaders stand on the high side of the field and ideas and policies roll easily down to the lower side. Policies—established to create order—often unintentionally keep people from thinking. At

They started developing leaders who could multiply the intelligence and capability of the people around them and increase the brainpower of the organization to meet their growth demands.

Matthew is a smart, articulate leader. However, he often found himself frustrated and out ahead of his organization, struggling to bring a cross-functional team along with him and his ideas. He was also struggling to be heard. He had great ideas, but he was simply talking too much and taking up too much space in team meetings. I was working with him to prepare a critical leadership forum for his division. He was eagerly awaiting the opportunity to share his views about the strategy for advancing the business to the next level. Instead of encouraging him, I gave him a challenge. I gave him five poker chips, each worth a number of seconds of talk time. One was worth 120 seconds, the next three worth 90 seconds, and one was worth just 30. I suggested he limit his contribution in the meeting to five comments, represented by each of the chips. He could spend them whenever he wished, but he only had five. After the initial shock and bemusement (wondering how he could possibly convey all his ideas in five comments), he accepted the challenge. I watched as he carefully restrained himself, filtering his thoughts for only the most essential and looking for the right moment to insert his ideas. He played his poker chips deftly and achieved two important outcomes: 1) he created abundant space for others. Instead of it being Matthew’s strategy session, it became a forum for a diverse group to voice ideas and co-create the strategy, and 2) Matthew increased his own credibility and presence as a leader. By exercising some leadership restraint, everyone was heard more, including Matthew as the leader.

Carol Dweck of Stanford University has conducted groundbreaking research showing that children given a series of progressively harder puzzles and praised for their intelligence stagnate for fear of reaching the limit of their intelligence. Children given the same series of puzzles but then praised for their hard work actually increased their ability to reason and to solve problems. When these children were recognized for their efforts to think, they created a belief, and then a reality, that intelligence grows.

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;

Your biggest opportunity to inspire Multiplier leadership might be in learning to recognize your own Diminisher traits and convert these conditions into Multiplier moments.

the senior inventory managers typically lock themselves in a room and find a Band-Aid tool that satisfies the immediate request. Inevitably, the Band-Aid comes loose and those people uninvolved and underutilized in the decision-making process were then overworked trying to force the plan to work.

the senior inventory managers typically lock themselves in a room and find a Band-Aid tool that satisfies the immediate request. Inevitably, the Band-Aid comes loose and those people uninvolved and underutilized in the decision-making process were then overworked trying to force the plan to work. But this time it was different. The entire inventory management team had just signed up for the 30-Day Challenge and selected the Debate Maker discipline for their work. This time, when the urgent request came from senior management, the group prepared for a thorough debate to find a sustainable solution. They brought in senior planners and the IT group (who usually had to scramble after the fact), who could give practical input to the feasibility of any suggested solution. They framed the issues and set ground rules for debate, including no barriers to the thinking. The team challenged their assumptions and in the end developed a means of in-season forecasting that served the new demands. The solution they arrived at started as a wild idea, but with input from IT, it became a plausible reality.

Exhausting but exhilarating” captures what people continually told us it was like to work for a Multiplier. One woman said, “It was exhausting but I was always ready to do it again. It is not a burnout experience—it is a build-up experience.” As you become more of a Multiplier, people will flock to you because you will be “the boss to work for.” You will become a Talent Magnet, drawing in and developing talent while providing extraordinary returns to the company as well as to the individuals who work for you.

He listened carefully and said, “Liz, I have a challenge for you. Tonight when you go home, I want you to only speak to your children in the form of questions. No orders. No statements. Just questions.” I was naturally intrigued. He said, “I think you might find that your children know exactly what they need to do.” I agreed to take the challenge. He cautioned, “Only asking questions will feel awkward, but go all the way—nothing but questions for at least an hour or two.” That night when it was time for bed, I asked my children, “What time is it?” They responded with “bedtime.” I then asked, “What do we do at bedtime?” They responded with, “We get on our pajamas and we brush our teeth.” I continued the question routine with, “Well then, who is ready for bed?” They scampered to get on their pajamas and brush their teeth. I stood in the hallway in shock. The rest of the evening proceeded in a similar fashion, with me asking them leading questions and them responding with remarkable understanding and eagerness to act. I reported this amazing experience to Brian the next day at work. He encouraged me to keep it up, not necessarily asking questions 100 percent of the time, but beginning to settle into a comfortable level. I did this and found that it transformed the way I operated as a parent. And it most certainly spilled over to how I managed at work.

MICROMANAGERS manage every detail in a way that creates dependence on the leader and their presence for the organization to perform. INVESTORS give other people the investment and ownership they need to produce results independent of the leader. The Three Practices of the Investor 1. Define Ownership Name the lead Give ownership for the end goal Stretch the role 2. Invest Resources Teach and coach Provide backup 3. Hold People Accountable Give it back Expect complete work Respect natural consequences Make the scoreboard visible Becoming an Investor 1. Let them know who is boss 2. Let nature take its course 3. Ask for the F-I-X 4. Hand back the pen Unexpected Findings 1. Multipliers do get involved in the operational details, but they keep the ownership with other people. 2. Multipliers are rated 42% higher at delivering world-class results than their Diminisher counterparts.3

George grew people’s intelligence by engaging it. He wasn’t the center of attention and didn’t worry about how smart he looked. What George worried about was extracting the smarts and maximum effort from each member of his team. In a typical meeting, he spoke only about 10 percent of the time, mostly just to “crisp up” the problem statement. He would then back away and give his team space to figure out an answer.

The problem was that this leader did all the thinking. Vikram said, “He was very, very smart. But people had a way of shutting down around him. He just killed our ideas. In a typical team meeting, he did about 30 percent of the talking and left little space for others. He gave a lot of feedback—most of it was about how bad our ideas were.” This manager made all the decisions himself or with a single confidant.

This leader was so heavily involved in the details that he became a bottleneck in the organization. He worked extremely hard, but his organization moved slowly. His need to micromanage limited what the rest of the organization could contribute. His need to put his personal stamp on everything wasted resources and meant his division of 1,000 was only operating at about 500 strong.

Salesforce.com, a $1 billion software firm that has pioneered software as a service, has been making the shift from the logic of addition to the logic of multiplication. They enjoyed a decade of outstanding growth using the old idea of “throwing resources at a problem.” They addressed new customers and new demands by hiring the best technical and business talent available and deploying them on the challenges. However, a strained market environment created a new imperative for the company’s leadership: get more productivity from their currently available resources. They could no longer operate on outdated notions of resource utilization. They started developing leaders who could multiply the intelligence and capability of the people around them and increase the brainpower of the organization to meet their growth demands.

THE 5 DISCIPLINES OF THE MULTIPLIERS Diminisher The Empire Builder: Hoards resources and underutilizes talent The Tyrant: Creates a tense environment that suppresses people’s thinking and capability The Know-It-All: Gives directives that showcase how much they know The Decision Maker: Makes centralized, abrupt decisions that confuse the organization The Micro Manager: Drives results through their personal involvement Multiplier The Talent Magnet: Attracts talented people and uses them at their highest point of contribution The Liberator: Creates an intense environment that requires people’s best thinking and work The Challenger: Defines an opportunity that causes people to stretch The Debate Maker: Drives sound decisions through rigorous debate The Investor: Gives other people the ownership for results and invests in their success

This book is not a prescription for a nice-guy, feel-good model of leadership. It is a hard-edged approach to management that allows people to contribute more of their abilities.

The recruiter reviewed their planned interview schedule and was shocked—they had allowed just ten minutes per interview. She called to inform them that it was impossible to interview so quickly! The Strüengmann brothers disagreed. They met with each candidate for just three minutes—every candidate except their final candidate, with whom they spent three hours. They explained their unusual approach: “When we consider each person, we ask one or two questions. If they don’t fit, we simply don’t continue the conversation. If the person is individualistic, we know that he or she won’t fit in our culture. When we find someone who will fit with our company, then we spend a lot of time with this person to make sure we understand their capability and what they would bring to our organization.” The Strüengmann brothers knew how to spot and attract the right talent.

At first there were opinions, but the CEO wanted data and wanted to know what the facts proved. The executive team began to dig into the facts in a summary analysis. Again the CEO dug deeper. He asked the group to go country by country, poring over the data to look for an answer to the questions. As one executive who was present said, “Nobody got away with their own opinions.” The group wrestled with the issue until they finally concluded that they didn’t have enough information yet to make a clear decision, and they identified what additional data they needed. This company’s leader kept the debate going by demanding rigor and sound decision making. According to one of his management team members, Jim Barks-dale, former CEO of Netscape, was well known for saying, “If you don’t have any facts, we’ll just use my opinion.

CREATE SAFETY FOR BEST THINKING (THE YIN) Share their view last after hearing other people’s views Encourage others to take an opposing stand Encourage all points of view Focus on the facts Depersonalize the issues and keep it unemotional Look beyond organizational hierarchy and job titles DEMAND RIGOR (THE YANG) Ask the hard questions Challenge the underlying assumptions Look for evidence in the data Attack the issues, not the people Ask “why” repeatedly until the root cause is unearthed Equally debate both sides of the issue

Ray has learned the importance of restraint in leadership. He knows that less is more, and he never wastes an opinion.

Laying down a challenge means more than directing people to do it. It includes asking the hard questions that no one yet has the answers to and then backing off so that the people within the organization have the space to think through the questions, take ownership, and find the answers.

MULTIPLIERS: These leaders are genius makers who bring out the intelligence in others. They build collective, viral intelligence in organizations.

DIMINISHERS: These leaders are absorbed in their own intelligence, stifle others, and deplete the organization of crucial intelligence and capability.

The Diminisher is an Empire Builder who acquires resources and then wastes them. The Multiplier is a Talent Magnet who utilizes and increases everyone’s genius.

The Diminisher is a Tyrant who creates a stressful environment. The Multiplier is a Liberator who creates a safe environment that fosters bold thinking.

Multipliers use humor to create comfort and to spark the natural energy and intelligence of others.

Diminishers underutilize people and leave capability on the table.

Multipliers increase intelligence in people and in organizations. People actually get smarter and more capable around them.

Multipliers leverage their resources.

The ability to extract and multiply the intelligence that already exists in the organization is red-hot relevant.

the biggest leadership challenge of our times is not insufficient resources per se, but rather our inability to access the most valuable resources at our disposal.

people are often “overworked and underutilized.

leadership is clearly a critical force for leveraging the full capability of the organization.

Multipliers are hard-edged managers. There is nothing soft about these leaders. They expect great things from their people and drive them to achieve extraordinary results.

people actually get smarter and more capable around Multipliers.

efficiency requires collaboration.

Some leaders seemed to drain intelligence and capability out of the people around them. Their focus on their own intelligence and their resolve to be the smartest person in the room had a diminishing effect on everyone else.

Multipliers extract all of the capability from people.

Multipliers get at least two times more from people.

when people work with Multipliers, they hold nothing back. They offer the very best of their thinking, creativity, and ideas. They give more than their jobs require and volunteer their discretionary effort, energy, and resourcefulness. They actively search for more valuable ways to contribute. They hold themselves to the highest standards. They give 100 percent of their abilities to the work—and then some.

intelligence itself can grow.

resource leverage creates competitive advantage.

A native genius or talent is something that people do, not only exceptionally well, but absolutely naturally. They do it easily (without extra effort) and freely (without condition).

Finding someone’s native genius is a key that unlocks discretionary effort. It propels people to go beyond what is required and to offer their full intelligence.

Native genius can be so instinctive for people that they may not even understand their own capability.

By telling people what you see, you can raise their awareness and confidence, allowing them to provide their capability more fully.

To me it’s not about failing, it’s about prototyping.

Talent Magnets remove the barriers that block the growth of intelligence in their people.

Divide and conquer is the modus operandi of Empire Builders.

Empire Builders stifle their talent is by hogging the limelight for themselves.

The promise of a Multiplier is that they get twice the capacity, plus a growth dividend from their people as their genius expands under the leadership of the Multiplier.

As Stephen M. R. Covey says, “Trust, once lost can indeed be rebuilt.

Trust gets built in layers, brick by brick.

However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light. STANLEY KUBRICK

American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said, “All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.

Multipliers liberate people from the intimidation of hierarchical organizations and the domination of tyrannical leaders.

When leaders define clear ownership and invest in others, they have sown the seeds of success and earned the right to hold people accountable.