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It's Only Common Sense: Adopting a ‘Multiplier’ Leadership Style

Full disclosure: the ideas in this column are based on a book on leadership by Liz Wiseman titled "Multipliers: How Great Leaders Make Everyone Smarter." It’s a new update from the version that was published over 10 years ago, so it’s been totally validated for our times. To be honest, I casually picked up this book thinking, “Another book on leadership…ho hum.” But once I started going through it, I realized that this book is important in a way that other leadership books are not.

First let’s talk about what a “multiplier” is. Multipliers are leaders who use their skills to make people work to their potential. They stimulate, encourage, and revitalize not only the intelligence of those they are leading, but their peers as well.

These multipliers find ways to make people better by giving them the freedom to hold nothing back and say what’s on their mind. They allow their teams to feel liberated and feel free to offer the best of their thinking, their ideas, and their creativity.

Multipliers are what the author calls talent magnets. They attract the most talented people to their teams and then use them to their full potential, all the while making their team members feel fully empowered and free to dream, create, innovate, and most importantly, implement.

The opposite of multipliers are “diminishers” and we have all worked for these guys. They are the ones who must be the smartest person in the room, whether they really are. They are hoarders for credit, and they specialize in not only underutilizing talent but diminishing it as well.

I have worked for a couple of these people in my life and have personally felt that bitter sting of being diminished, of being made to feel that I am less than what I really am. One person surrounded himself with sycophants and what they used to call forelock tuggers who did his bidding. This person’s main pass at creativity was to come up with new and innovative ways to flatter the boss. In the end, he hired another fellow egomaniac and together they managed to drive a perfectly good company into the ground.

Okay enough of that. Let’s be more positive and get back to talking about multipliers. They are not only great leaders, but they are great fun to work for and to work with. They create teams that are fun and rewarding.

Be honest: What type of leader are you? Are you a multiplier or a diminisher?

Here are some of the traits of a great leader, a true multiplier, and a talent magnet.

1. They look for talent everywhere. They want to find people who are smarter and more creative than them. They look everywhere for talented people. Besides looking outside their company all the time, they will look for gems in their own company. They will make themselves available to their own employees by walking around the company and talking to them. There might be a person in the shipping department who is fantastic at social media, or a person hiding in accounting who is a fantastic prognosticator. They look for these people and they talk to them with an open mind, trying to find what makes their heart sing with enough passion that they are great at it.
2. They find people’s native genius. They know how to uncover and access the genius of others. They do this by talking to everyone, from those they meet on the street to the organizations I already mentioned. They are always looking for the right people to make their organization better and take it to another level.
3. They utilize people to the fullest. They look for ways to encourage these talented people to work, think, and create to their fullest potential. Sometimes they change the business plan to add these persons’ talents. As Ms. michWiseman says, “Once they’ve engaged the persons’ true genius, they shine a spotlight on them so others can see their genius in action.”
4. They remove blockers. They make sure that the right people have a clear path to fulfil their potential. They make sure that no one is blocking their path either. They look out for people, and there are some in every organization who tend to suck the air out of the room, making sure that they are not allowed to do that to the most creative ones on the team.

Finally, they do whatever they can to give their people the freedom to be great. They allow them to work to their full potential. Most importantly, they make them feel their intelligence is something akin to this example: After an hour in discussion with British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone, you left feeling he was the smartest man in the world. But after an hour conversation with his rival Benjamin Disraeli, you left thinking that you were the smartest person in the world. A great multiplier does what Disraeli did.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.