Have you had that boss that you would fear to offer ideas to? A leader that sucked all the energy out of the room, and always seemed to engage in a battle of the wits? There are several ways bosses, and even ourselves, can engage in behaviour that leaves their team feeling diminished. But there are ways around it.
Related article: Do You Want to Maximize Your Success as a Leader?
Two different types of leaders
We’ve all had experience with two dramatically different types of leaders. The first type drains intelligence, energy, and capability from the people around them. They are the idea killers, the diminishers of talent and commitment. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who amplify the capabilities of the people around them. These are the leaders who inspire employees to stretch themselves and get more from other people. These are the Multipliers.
Accidentally diminish
We need to understand how we can diminish accidentally, but also understand the situations that bring out our inner diminisher. There are a lot of people who are like, “Wow, I’m a multiplier most of the time.” Understand what situations bring out your micro-manager, your tyrant. It’s probably stress, tight deadlines. Understand what those situations are and have a game plan for what’s going to happen when you get into a crisis and how do you get through that and get back to more of a multiplier stance.
Multiplyers ask questions
A simple thing that just propels people into multiplier style, is moving out of the mode of telling and operating in the mode of asking. It’s learning to embrace the question as the key tool in our management toolbox. I think the best leaders tell less, and they ask more questions. They ask better questions. They ask more from the people around them, and it’s why they get more. It’s because they ask.
The extreme question challenge is: could you lead a meeting, a conversation, troubleshoot an issue, and all you do is ask? Meaning, you don’t say anything like, “Oh, I agree. That’s a good idea.” All you do is just ask question after question after question.
The five things that ‘diminishers’ and ‘multipliers’ do very, very differently:
1. How they manage talent
The diminisher tends to acquire resources. They are ‘Empire Builders.’ They use people.
Multipliers use people’s native genius. They don’t use people; they deeply utilize the genius of others.
2. The work environment they create
Diminishers tend to be stress creators. They’re tyrants.
Multipliers create safety, not stress. They tend to have a liberating effect on others.
3. How they set direction
Diminishers give directives. They set direction based on what they know and what they see.
Multipliers invite people to stretch. They define opportunities. They play the role of challenger — dragging people into new, interesting, uncomfortable space.
4. The way they make decisions
The diminishers tend to be the decision-maker. They make fast inner-circle decisions to convince people to buy into.
The multipliers tend to be a debate-maker. They invite people to weigh in and debate, which generates real and sustainable buy-in.
5. How they drive for results
The diminishers tend to be the micro-managers. They jump in and out; they’re like bungee bosses.
The multipliers are investors. They give other people ownership and all the accountability that comes with it. These multiplier leaders are not just engaging, empowering, trusting, supporting kind of leaders, they’re actually leaders with a hard edge. They challenge. They hold people accountable. They have high expectations, and it’s why people give so much to these leaders. It’s because they demand so much from the people around them.
In our Executive Development Program we cover all the steps to become a Multiplier. Contact us for more information on this or email: jake@thrive-cm.com
First published on Forbes.com/
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