Liz Wiseman is an ex oracle executive who wrote an amazing book about how we all have moments as leaders where we accidentally diminish team members and ‘shut down’ their smarts, making our people less capable. What makes it worse, is that our intent is usually to be helpful and supportive, and yet it has the opposite impact.

 She breaks out the difference between the behaviours we have that multiply the intelligence of our team (and potentially family members too) and those that diminish their capability and intelligence. You can understand the accidental diminisher traits, and where you can improve, and then, you can understand how to multiply the capability of your team members. 

This week we’re talking about the Multipliers concept from Liz Wiseman, and how it can apply to you as a leader.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Please note that this episode was transcribed using an AI application and may not be 100% grammatically correct – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

 

00:13
Kevin Lawrence
Hello, and welcome to the Growth Whisperers Podcast, where everything that we talk about is about building enduring great companies. Kevin Lawrence here in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Here with my awesome podcast partner, Brad Giles down in Perth, Australia. Brad, how is your world today?

00:31
Brad Giles
Good day, Kev. Everything is doing well here. Everything is great. Life is good, except for one thing. There’s one thing that grinds my gears, and I don’t know, I can’t even wait till you ask me. What’s the word of the day? Man, I just got to get into this.

00:50
Kevin Lawrence
You got to tell me. You got to tell me. I’m waiting. The anticipation that I’m feeling as you’re sharing this with me is just I’m.

01:00
Brad Giles
Just trying to lower my blood pressure so I could talk about it, ? Have you ever had an unsolicited calendar invite? Now, this is a bit of a nerdy kind of a thing, right? Let’s say you met someone a year ago, or maybe you haven’t spoken to them in months and months. There’s no email. There’s no phone calls, no SMS text. Out of the blue, there’s a calendar invite that appears for a time that you’d never discussed meeting on. I don’t know. That’s the height of rudeness.

01:36
Kevin Lawrence
Yeah. It’s like showing up to someone’s house and not even knocking on a door, but just inviting yourself in, and you’re a stranger to them.

01:43
Brad Giles
Yeah, I had one.

01:45
Kevin Lawrence
I had one. It was very weird. I’m like, what are you doing?

01:49
Brad Giles
I know. Don’t do it. All right, so I’ve kind of subverted the whole episode intro, but I just had to get that off my chest, and I feel better now.

02:00
Kevin Lawrence
Well, I will tell you, if we’re going to go down, I had a different one, but you’ve inspired me with a frustration, and that’s bad salespeople. Now, I have a bit of a history of I love nothing more than an amazing salesperson. It’s actually quite dangerous, because if I get going with a great salesperson, I can end up buying four X, what I went in for without a great salesperson, because they’ll identify me. We’re looking for a new coach for my place here. Went and this salesperson, and they just they’re like, well, jeez, yeah, you have really good taste. They start saying all of these things to really try to schmooze me. Generally my instant inside goes to anger and attack. Like, I remember years ago, I had someone that said, kevin, why are you such an a******? And like, what are you talking about?

03:06
Kevin Lawrence
It was generally they’re always commissioned salespeople in a retail environment, and I’m sure they’re under lots of pressure, right. They eat based on their ability to sell. Yeah, but it was everything I could do with all of my skills to calm myself and to not be rude. And I was funny. I asked my son, he was here for dinner last night and like, hey, what do about me? When there’s a cheesy salesperson, he goes, oh, yeah, you’re a jerk. It’s just kind of known. It’s like the person was doing their job, but they were approaching me in a way where it was false flattery. It’s everything I have within myself to not be rude or like to be rude unless it’s truly earned. That’s not earned. That person’s not getting in my face about something. Anyways, so false flattery, I guess I would call it.

04:07
Kevin Lawrence
And even now I get riled up. Like I got to call because you talked about your blood almost boiling. I had to call myself. It took me an hour afterwards and we bought the coach. I got the coach. It’s just I don’t know, there’s something probably need to talk to therapist about. It my psychology, but it just fires me up. False flattery. Yes. Anyway, so we’re not talking about false flattery today. We got more applied stuff.

04:35
Brad Giles
Indeed.

04:36
Kevin Lawrence
We are talking about the impact you have on people. Hey, those two stories were about impact, and this is about our impact as leaders and how and again, like that salesperson, that person did not intend. They were trying to have a positive impact on me. They truly were in their heart, and they thought they were being nice.

05:00
Brad Giles
Yeah.

05:00
Kevin Lawrence
They didn’t really realize the impact it had on me. Again, maybe I’m weird and I got weird glitches in my brain. I’m not so much blaming them. This is a book that we both know and love and a woman that we know is amazing. We both met her, and her name is Liz Weissman, who wrote this book called Multipliers that just exploded my brain. We’re going to dig into this here today. Yeah. Why it’s so powerful and why it’s critical. And it’s on our must read list. It’s right up there for those who want to be doing bookshelf, right in the top corner, right beside Winston Churchill and Top Grading and Jim Collins and Michael Porter, awesome top read. That’s what we’re digging into today, why it’s powerful and how you can leverage the model.

05:51
Brad Giles
And, it’s endured as a book. I don’t know. It must be 1020 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, she released it. It’s enduring and it’s still really resonating with people. I guess it’s timeless, a timeless concept, timeless ideas that just hits that note with people so well. The book again is called Multipliers how the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. I guess we’re really just today digging into about the book and our take and some of the takeaways that we’ve had and that we’ve used perhaps with clients.

06:33
Kevin Lawrence
Yeah. The root of it, let me all start with the kind of thing I met Liz at a conference in Texas she was speaking at, and she did a spectacular job and she was a lot of fun. She hang out with us, there was probably ten of us and she hung out with us in the lounge after we spent the whole group of us hung out the whole night and had great conversations and sharing war stories. She was awesome and super grateful. I mean, obviously a huge fan and love her work and she’s a great human and she endorsed and she’s on the COVID of my book and the endorsement on the COVID of my book. You don’t get a bigger fan than myself. And I know Brad, you’re there too.

07:10
Brad Giles
SIM she’s awesome.

07:12
Kevin Lawrence
She is. And her content is simple and powerful. After the session I was like, this is great. I went and did the assessment. I had more epiphanies because in her book she talks about multiplier leaders who multiply the intelligence and capability of people. She talks about accidental diminishers to kind of let us off the hook so we don’t feel so bad for doing it. I had a lot of accidental diminishing behaviors and the worst part about it, all, my intent, your intent were trying to be helpful for those people around us. But, and, but we’re actually like minimizing their brain and minimizing their capability unintentionally. And that’s the root of it. I’ve got good intentions on these things and I’m but having a bad, a good intention, bad impact, it was just like, wow, then I learnt some okay, well, do this instead of that.

08:11
Kevin Lawrence
There’s choices in the moment that can make us much more impactful in a positive sense.

08:17
Brad Giles
Maybe let’s go back to the beginning. Liz was an executive at Oracle and she noticed it’s her story, but I’m doing a hack job of it. She noticed that some leaders would multiply the capability of the people in their team and they would get so much more. Other leaders, inversely, the accidental diminishes that she later coined, they would shut down the smarts. All of the great talent in an organization, they would want to go and work for the person who had the reputation. This is the boss that you got to get. They’re going to get the most out of you. They’re going to access your native genius, your best capability and then steer clear of that one. She kind of noticed these two very different things, these different types of people that emerge and that was the genesis for her thinking, why is this? Doing all of the research and then ultimately writing this book.

09:26
Brad Giles
It’s, I guess born of her in the field observations.

09:32
Kevin Lawrence
Yeah. The thing that I found with this is that the model of being a multiplier diminisher, it relates to us as a work and work as a leader, but it also relates to us as a human in our lives. The same behaviors, like being too helpful, minimizing. The way I used it as a metaphor, it’s like if you have children, when your children are young, you tie their shoes. If you’re still tying their shoes at 14 years old, there’s a bit of a problem. You’re holding them back, and it’s not out of bad intention. It’s just bad behavior or bad habits and for all kinds of reasons. Let’s get to the root of it. The root of it? What she found in her research when she dug in more is that the multiplier leaders actually have a different belief system than the diminishers. Interesting, often the diminishers are actually smarter human beings.

10:33
Kevin Lawrence
That’s the problem. See, a diminisher is incredibly intelligent, and their belief is people can’t figure it out without me.

10:42
Brad Giles
Yeah. And that’s the trap, isn’t it?

10:45
Kevin Lawrence
It is. And therefore they must inject themselves. Basically, they believe the kids won’t be able to tie their shoes without me. They tie the shoes, and the truth is they are brilliant shoe tires. They are. The problem is it’s self fulfilling because if they keep tying the shoes, the kids don’t even bother trying anymore because they know dad’s going to tie them. So, see, I’m right. They can’t tie their shoes and the kids going, yeah, but if you gave me a chance, I probably could figure it out. You keep tying them, and if I don’t let you tie them, we’re going to have a fight. Yes. The diminisher truly believes people can’t figure it out without me. The multiplier is on the other end of the scale. The multiplier I’m exaggerating would be like when the kid is one years old and starts to walk.

11:40
Kevin Lawrence
I think they walk around one. From what I remember. They’re like, go find your own shoes. I’m exaggerating. They would be the parent that would have the kids tying the shoes soon after they could walk and move their fingers. Well, because they believe people are smart and can figure things out.

12:00
Brad Giles
Yeah.

12:01
Kevin Lawrence
Just from that belief system, you’re going to have dramatically different behavior. It’s a hard shift because it’s a belief system shift.

12:12
Brad Giles
It’s the underlying assumption that’s not it’s not the perfect analogy, but it’s not far. It’s, it illustrates the point. If you have people who report to you, is your underlying assumption maybe even at the subconscious level, a, people can’t figure it out without me, or B, people are smart and they can figure it out because that underlying assumption inside yourself is what drives all of these behaviors. Now, maybe you are you might have only some accidental diminisher traits.

12:45
Kevin Lawrence
Sure.

12:46
Brad Giles
Right there’s. It’s not a binary. It’s more of a spectrum. Right.

12:51
Kevin Lawrence
Maybe you might have some and it’s situational too.

12:55
Brad Giles
Yeah. I’ll move on.

13:00
Kevin Lawrence
No, the thing is not binary. People can be multiplier leaders with some and diminishes with other. People ask about Steve Jobs. There’s a lot of she had some connection to Steve, I recall. I may be encrypted, but I remember the Job story that we talked about. Jobs was known to be a nightmare post leaving Apple, but the second time to be a notably more effective and better leader to work for. The main thing, no, it was Jobs or it was Ellison at Oracle, one of those two, because she worked at Oracle. It might have been Larry Ellison, but Liz said specifically it was Larry Ellison. I watched him in meetings where he would be an amazing multiplier to one person and turn around and a few minutes later be an amazing diminisher to another, which we all do. Again, based on sometimes there is people who aren’t capable in their roles and it makes it harder.

13:59
Kevin Lawrence
It can be situational even for someone who, say, defaults to a multiplier. Most of the time they made in different situations or different people diminish.

14:09
Brad Giles
Yeah. As a part of the workshops that we run here with leadership teams for many years, we’ve asked this question of people in the leadership teams. Tell me, think about the best leader that you’ve ever worked under. It could have been a boss, it could have been even a sports coach, something like that. What percentage of your capability did they access? Give it a percent. The second question is, think about now the worst leader that you’ve ever served under and what percentage of your capability did they access? I actually tracked over many years the kind of average, right? The average was around 105% to 110% for the best leaders. Because what that means is that they were accessing more than these people even think was possible. On the downside, it was around 30% to 35%. There’s this latent 65% to 70% of capability that people are like under that worst leader that I ever had, they weren’t accessing 65% to 70% of what I was capable of.

15:31
Brad Giles
The inverse, of course, again, was that the best leader I had, they got more out of me than I even thought was capable.

15:39
Kevin Lawrence
And that’s the key, right? That’s, that’s the kid that ties their shoes when they’re two or three versus when they’re 1314. Again, exaggerating. And I did the same thing. Brad, that was one of the things that Liz talked about. We asked group after group, and I got very similar stats in the groups that did sub 50 and between 90 and 110 on the other end for those that went over the 100% scale. And it was shocking. We’d ask the stories and the most fascinating thing, the multiplier leaders weren’t like their best friend. Beer, buddy, let’s go for a beer. Necessarily, they pushed them hard and sometimes they didn’t even have a lot of love for the person. It wasn’t that oh, you’re the best, and positive. They challenged them and threw them in situations over their head. So, for example, one of my clients, his dad, in many ways, was like a multiplier, a bit of a dysfunctional one, but he told him at 17 he’s in Nicaragua, hanging out of a helicopter because he’s going to inspect oil plants, getting shot at by the rebels on the ground like that’s, throwing someone in over the head.

16:56
Kevin Lawrence
Or the stories of kids growing up on the farm, learning to drive tuck trucks at nine years old and sitting on a box, an Apple box. You know, there’s things on that. We generally found they challenged and pushed them incredibly. I go, for example, I know one CEO that I worked with and have worked with quite a bit for quite a few years. They were the most challenging CEO I ever worked with, like, to the point where it was painful, like, painful. They made me become notably better at my craft. I was good and it hurt. It was so challenging. But they multiplied me. There’s no two ways about it, that model. And thanks for sharing that, Brad. The thing is, what’s the truth about the people that feel like their leaders getting 35% of them? You can share some of yours, I can share some mine.

17:57
Kevin Lawrence
What kind of things come out of those people’s mouth where they feel like their leader got 35% out of them?

18:02
Brad Giles
Well, do it my way. This is how you do it. Do this. They don’t stretch the people, because let’s go back to the underlying assumption. People can figure it people can’t figure it out without me.

18:15
Kevin Lawrence
Yes.

18:15
Brad Giles
Okay. That means that I’ve got to pull the resources and control the decisions because they can’t figure it out. Again, the opposite assumption, people are smart and can figure things out. There’s a concept in the book called Native Genius. I think we may have already mentioned it once or twice. The first time I came across it, I was like, yeah, that’s good. The concept broadly is that the multipliers identify the native genius. The thing that an individual is natively intuitively, let’s say, at their DNA level, a genius at, right. They just can’t help. They are a genius at this particular thing, whatever that is, and then they drive that really hard. There’s this company called Apsumo here in Australia, and what they did is they identified native genius for the power that it is now. I’d seen it, and I had begun using it with leaders asking questions like, so, Kevin, you’re talking about Andrea, who works in your team and your challenge around her at the moment.

19:35
Brad Giles
What’s her native genius? That’s the kind of the simple coaching stuff that we’d be doing around that concept. What AppSumo did is they took it to a much further level, and they looked for Native Genius and they within a scorecard and in their hiring process. They would say we need a role as a product development manager or whatever it is. This is the Native Genius that we’re looking for in that role. And it was really cool.

20:04
Kevin Lawrence
Yeah, it’s awesome. It’s a great concept. Native genius ties into strengths like Marcus Buckingham’s. Work around strengths, finder just where do you thrive naturally? A couple of other examples on this, tapping into the model so she gets down into specific kind of opposite approaches or behaviors that these leaders have. One of them is the Liberator versus the tyrant. These are sub behaviors that liberates people’s thinking versus the tyrant. I’ll read the words for tyrant creates a tense environment that crushes people’s ability to think and perform. They create anxiety, so people act cautiously and are afraid to speak up. So it’s interesting. One of the companies and CEOs I advised, they had an advisor doing some work with their leadership team who was an absolute tyrant, like yelling, creating fights, embarrassing people in the meeting. The CEO is telling me about this and I started giving some advice on how to straighten out this consultant they were working with.

21:13
Brad Giles
Yeah.

21:13
Kevin Lawrence
At the end of the day, what he told me is people were upset at breaks, people were crying, people didn’t want to come to the meetings anymore, whether the consultant might have been right about the things that they were saying. I worked with that same team and the team had a lot of weaknesses. It was a messy team. I coached him and said, kevin, can I just get you to come in and just can you just straighten this out?

21:38
Brad Giles
Yeah.

21:38
Kevin Lawrence
So he fired the consultant. I came in, it was easy. All I did and I’ve learnt how to be a very good Liberator. I could still be a tyrant once in a while, but I default is that you set up a room physically, emotionally, setting it up to have healthy debates and without any prompting at the end of the session. The last time we did the team goes, what? This is the best debates we’ve ever had. We’re having debates, which interestingly is clarifying goals and making the team more accountable. We’re actually making them have to step up in their performance. By just having healthy debates, the teams coming together, the ideas are floating out and we can’t help but do better things. What about but it’s about knowing how to set a room and set up discussions and keep it in a healthy tone and healthy dynamic that more and more good stuff comes in versus people being afraid to speak up.

22:39
Brad Giles
Yeah. So you explained the tyrant. That’s a diminished trait. The inverse of that is the Liberator, where they create an intense environment that demands people’s best performance. They create stability so people are free to think, act boldly, focus on their work, which is what you’re saying. Within the book, and we’re not necessarily going to dive into all of these, but within the book, Liz identifies these key traits that are inverse on each kind of side. It’s a bit like the why is a person a diminisher and shutting down the smarts? Or why are they multiplying the capability of people.

23:17
Kevin Lawrence
Right. The key words in this thank you, Brad, for clarifying that, is that the liberator creates an intense environment.

23:24
Brad Giles
Yeah.

23:25
Kevin Lawrence
Where the tyrant creates a tense environment. The tyrant almost the energy is scary. Where the liberator creates energy that pulls you up and helps to expect better. And it’s subtlety. The other ones is the debate maker versus decision maker. Basically, decision makers force decisions in the room and then everyone else has secondary debates afterwards and sabotages it exaggerating a bit.

23:55
Brad Giles
The thing that I hear one of the most times about the multipliers book and assessment is when people dig into it, they read the book, they do the assessment and then you hear them after it say, oh my God, I’m a diminisher. I’ve got so many diminisher traits. And it’s like an epiphany. It’s like they just it just explains so many of the challenges that I experience. I didn’t really get it in terms of assessments. I’m a bit skeptical about some assessments, as you and I have spoken about before, care. That’s what I like about this assessment in particular is that it very clearly says you’re not allowing people to speak up or whatever it is. It’s very clear around that rather than saying you’re a scorpio or whatever it might be to move it silly with that.

24:58
Kevin Lawrence
Yeah. It makes it really easy to see it and you can’t help but see it in the future. To finish the thought and thanks for jumping in there, decision makers will make the decision and force it and then people haven’t had a chance to say their piece and more likely to sabotage it. Where the best are debate makers. They set up the table for debates to hear ideas and they generally make better decisions, never mind having better buy in. The debate maker is leveraging people’s brains continually. All these ones are leveraging people’s brains and helping to expect more. So we can go on. The book is outstanding. The models are simple. She has a list of started to sticks in a new updated book. It’s nine accidental diminisher personas which I can resonate with lots of them, but it gives some specific examples of things.

25:50
Kevin Lawrence
It’s outstanding book. We recommend it to all leaders. I think it’s must read on our leadership path and once you see it’ll be with you forever. Yeah.

26:01
Brad Giles
We love it and we recommend it. Especially if you’ve got a person who reports to you and you’re a bit like why are they struggling with their team? It’s really simple to either get them to read the book, watch one of Liz’s YouTube videos, or even do the assessment, and that can unlock their understanding. EQ. Inward looking, if that makes sense.

26:25
Kevin Lawrence
You bet.

26:26
Brad Giles
Awesome. Good chat. So check it out. Multiplies by Liz Wiseman I hope you’ve enjoyed the episode today. It’s been a good chat and we started off on a different note, having a bit of a complaint, but that’s okay. If you would like to see our smiling faces, of course we’re on YouTube. Just search the growth whisperers. Kevin and I both have weekly newsletters. Kevin is pretty cool and mine is pretty cool as well, I guess you might say. Digging into interesting topics that kind of relate to all the stuff we’re talking about here. You can find Kevin’s at Lawrenceandco.com and you can find mine Brad@evolutionpartners.com.au of course, if you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, please click the like button. We love to get reviews. Every time we get reviews, we see a spike in our popularity, which matters. The algorithms feed on that stuff. So do like it, check us out.

27:29
Brad Giles
We would love to have you join us again next week. Have a great week. Bye.