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There are two types of leaders: Multipliers, who use their intelligence to bring out the intelligence and ability of everyone else, and Diminishers, who rely on their own intelligence because they think intelligence is a rare trait and they’re one of the few who have it. Multipliers get two times more out of people than Diminishers, doubling the intelligence and capability of their organization without adding headcount. Multipliers can even increase people’s intelligence.

In Multipliers, leadership expert Liz Wiseman explains how to reduce your Diminisher tendencies (almost everyone diminishes by accident at some point) and strengthen your Multiplier behavior to be an effective leader.

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  • For example, chief marketing officer Garth does all the work himself on projects that the CEO will notice because he thinks his team isn’t smart enough to do the work themselves and will thus embarrass themselves in front of the CEO. On less visible projects, however, he doesn’t help at all, and his team can’t get the work done without him because they’ve learned to depend on him.

Diminishers access only 20-50% of their team members’ capabilities—half as much as Multipliers—because their behavior drains other people’s energy and shuts them down.

Becoming a Multiplier

Now that you’ve learned about the advantages of multiplication and the disadvantages of diminishment, the question is: Can you become a Multiplier? The answer is a resounding yes. Multiplier and Diminisher aren’t either-or identities; they’re two extremes on a continuum. Most leaders fall somewhere in between and can move in either direction, and even the strongest Diminisher can change.

To aid your transformation into a Multiplier, use the following five accelerators to speed up your adoption of the behaviors outlined above:

Accelerator #1: Change your assumptions about your team’s intelligence and capability. Behavior stems from assumptions. (Conscious assumptions are stored in the same part of the brain that stores unconscious habits.) Therefore, you can’t just copy the actions of Multipliers; you need to change your thinking to make the habits really stick.

Accelerator #2: Strengthen your strengths and weaken your weaknesses. You don’t need to be good at everything to be a Multiplier. Instead, strengthen an area you’re good at and neutralize one you’re bad at.

Accelerator #3: Do 30-day experiments. You have to practice Multiplier behaviors before they become habit, and your practice will be most effective if you experiment with individual behaviors for short periods. This is because you’ll quickly receive feedback and get regular opportunities to reassess, and small successes will encourage you to keep experimenting.

Accelerator #4: Ask someone else to choose your experiment. Someone else can more objectively identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Accelerator #5: Anticipate difficulty. While the Multiplier concepts are easy to understand, they’re not as easy to implement. Accept that changing habits is hard, give yourself permission to make mistakes, and seek support from colleagues.

Reducing Your Diminishing Qualities

Interestingly, most Diminishers don’t diminish on purpose—they have good intentions and don’t realize how their assumptions and behaviors affect others.

Likely, you have some inadvertent diminishing tendencies you’re not aware of. There are three steps to uncovering these tendencies:

Step #1: Reflect on Your Intentions

If you see your own intentions in the following list, reflect on the unintended consequences and try the suggestions for avoiding diminishment:

Intention #1: Inspiration. To inspire your team, you might share your ideas or vision of the future.

The consequences: People stop thinking for themselves because you’re doing it for them.

To avoid diminishing, keep ideas to yourself until you want people to pursue them. Additionally, outline a strategy but let everyone else flesh out the details, encourage people to use their talents, ask leading questions, give people ownership, and challenge your people to think.

Intention #2: Rescue. To keep your team safe, you might step in when something goes wrong, or even hide problems from your team.

The consequences: People become dependent, don’t experience ownership and accountability, and don’t learn from their mistakes. They also get an unrealistic sense of their own abilities because they always get good results, even if it was the manager and not them who was responsible for the outcome.

  • For example, when Sally, a high school principal, gave her colleague Marcus ownership of a data-compilation project, she knew that he was new to both the school and spreadsheets so she tried to be extra helpful. She was careful and clear about the hand-off and she offered to go over things again or provide extra training multiple times. Finally, Marcus told her that he needed less help—Sally wasn’t giving him enough space to figure it out by himself.

To avoid diminishing, you should let some of the small dangers through so people can learn to deal with adversity. Additionally, challenge your people, delegate, ask questions, and give people ownership.

Intention #3: Perfection. To encourage high standards, you might set the bar as your own performance, or point out picky errors in people’s work.

The consequences: People step back and watch rather than emulating the leader’s performance (they assume that because the leader is doing something, it’s an executive task and beyond their scope), or they become so discouraged by criticism or the distance between themselves and the leader that they disengage and give up.

To avoid diminishing, you should be clear about the criteria for excellence and completeness and check your own progress so you don’t get too far ahead of anyone else. Additionally, be clear about when failure is okay and when it's not, talk about mistakes, ask questions, delegate, and challenge people.

Intention #4: Energy and optimism. To motivate people, you display your energy and believe you and your team can achieve anything.

The consequences: People become exhausted and think the leader is disconnected from reality or won’t accept failure.

  • For example, when the author was working on a difficult project with a colleague, she often asked him how difficult the task could be. The colleague struggled with this sentiment—the project was objectively very hard and he did think they could do it, but hearing this phrase over and over again minimized the challenge.

To avoid diminishing, you should express your optimism or energy only once and encourage others to talk, and acknowledge when tasks are challenging. Additionally, encourage others to use their talent, talk less, ask questions, delegate, be clear about when failure is acceptable, spark debates, and talk about mistakes.

Intention #5: Agility. To create an agile organization, you might respond quickly to emails and problems that are actually other people’s responsibilities.

The consequences: People become less responsive because they know you’ll finish things before they can even get started.

To avoid diminishing, you should wait a certain amount of time (perhaps 24 hours) before responding to emails that are someone else’s responsibility. Additionally, ask questions and spark debates.

Step #2: Take a Quiz

Take one or both of the following quizzes:

Step #3: Get Feedback From Those You Lead

Ask the people you lead the following questions:

  • Am I shutting people down?
  • Am I doing any diminishing behaviors?
  • Are my actions being interpreted the way I think they are?
  • How do I change?

Surviving Diminishers

Even once you’ve gotten a handle on your accidental diminishing tendencies and worked at improving them, you’ll still face challenges—most of us aren’t the only leaders in our organizations and have to work with others who may be Diminishers.

The good news is, there are three strategies for surviving (or even transforming) Diminishers:

  1. Survival strategies. To survive Diminishers: Tune them out occasionally, connect with other people who can support you and help you see the situation objectively, reassure Diminishers that you can do the job and that you’re smart, and/or ask for information and use it to tailor your work accordingly. If necessary, quit and find a Multiplier boss instead.
  2. Multiplying strategies. You can be a Multiplier even if your boss isn’t because Diminishers are most concerned with their own smarts and need their intelligence validated. As Multipliers, by nature, validate people’s genius, acting like a Multiplier towards your boss will make them feel comfortable and more likely to give you more trust. To multiply a boss: Invite them into the loop, harness their knowledge, learn from them, tell them how to best use you, ask for a challenge, and/or share your mistakes to encourage them to do the same.
  3. Transformation strategies. These only work if your boss wants to become a Multiplier—while every Diminisher has the potential to do so, you can’t force anyone to change. To encourage them: Lead by example, teach your boss about Multipliers and Diminishers, only bring up one piece of feedback at a time, and/or reward baby steps towards multiplication.

How to Create a Multiplier Culture

You can use your knowledge to do so much more than just get rid of Diminishers and become a Multiplier yourself—you can create a Multiplier culture in which every member of an organization holds Multiplier assumptions and engages in Multiplier behaviors.

There are five elements of culture to apply Multiplier assumptions, behaviors, and ideas to:

Element #1: Vocabulary. In strong cultures, everyone in the culture uses the same definition for words and phrases. This allows them to name, and therefore discuss, good and bad behaviors openly and concretely. To develop Multiplier vocabulary: Discuss Multipliers. Then, ask leaders to take the Accidental Diminisher quiz, honestly discuss their weaknesses with team members, and celebrate their Multiplier moments.

Element #2: Conduct. In strong cultures, every member of the culture responds a certain way in a certain situation. They learn the appropriate response from the leader and it becomes instinct. To change the default conduct to Multiplier behavior, you need to make people aware of their Diminisher behavior and then encourage them to consciously choose Multiplier behavior until it becomes unconscious. To do this: Tell everyone in the organization about Multiplier assumptions and train people in Multiplier practices using workshops and simulations.

Element #3: Convictions. Conviction means every member of a culture agrees on what is true and shares assumptions. When it comes to multiplication, the goal is for everyone to know what makes a good leader. To develop this conviction: Define the expectations that a leader’s primary job is to multiply others and help them to give 100%.

Element #4: Myths. In a strong culture, everyone admires the same people based on their accomplishments, behavior, or traits. When it comes to business, the role models should be Multipliers, and their heroics should inspire others to copy their behavior. To mythicize Multipliers: Publicly celebrate Multiplier moments. Additionally, assess how well leaders use the Multiplier practices, which will encourage them to improve to heroic levels.

Element #5: Customs. In a strong culture, everyone adheres to the same customs and behaves the same way. In the context of multiplication, customs mean that the Multiplier concepts spill into every area of the business, from financial incentives to operational practices. To strengthen this facet of culture: Run a pilot program to implement a particular Multiplier practice, and connect Multiplier practices with existing business practices.

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Here's a preview of the rest of Shortform's Multipliers PDF summary:

PDF Summary Part 1: Multipliers and Diminishers | Chapter 1: Backgrounder

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  • People can improve.
  • Intelligence and capability are very common.
  • Because these traits are so common, their team should be full of people who have them.
  • Therefore, as a leader, all they need to do is create an environment that lets people use their intelligence and capability and improve their skills.

Multipliers access 70-100% of their team members’ capabilities because their assumptions push and inspire people to contribute as much as they possibly can, including their discretionary energy and effort (energy and effort beyond what’s strictly required to do their job). (In comparison, on average, managers access 66% of their people’s capability.)

Additionally, Multipliers can actually grow people’s intelligence. In surveys, some people reported giving more than 100%—which they had to increase their intelligence to do—when working with Multipliers.

Multiplier Traits

Most Multipliers have the following traits:

1. They’re tough and have high expectations. They know that people have a lot of untapped potential and expect them to live up to it. While people the author studied who worked with Multipliers all had positive experiences, this...

PDF Summary Chapter 2: Moving Towards Multiplication

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If you were a Multiplier, you might approach this scenario as follows: You tell Jyanthi you appointed her because you think she’s smart and her particular skills would benefit the task force. You tell her that the job is a big responsibility, but you think she can handle it and that you’ll be available to help. Ultimately, this will result in the task force leader thinking that your team is talented and in Jyanthi’s learning and engagement.

Accelerator #2: Strengthen Your Strengths and Weaken Your Weaknesses

There are five disciplines involved with multiplication (covered in Part 2), but you don’t need to master all five of them to be a Multiplier. According to the author’s research, most Multipliers had mastered only three disciplines and were neutral (in other words, not in the Diminisher range) in the others.

Therefore, to become a Multiplier, it’s most effective to:

  • Strengthen one of the disciplines you’re already good at. After learning about the disciplines, determine which is your strongest and focus on developing it rather than diluting your effort by trying to improve at multiple disciplines at once.
  • **Neutralize the discipline you’re weakest...

PDF Summary Part 2: Multiplier Disciplines | Chapter 3: Discipline A—Talent

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Four Practices of Talent Multipliers

Talent Multipliers use four practices to improve the performance of others:

Practice #1: Search Widely

Multipliers are open-minded about intelligence so they look for it beyond the obvious places. They:

1. Acknowledge that there are different kinds of intelligence. IQ is what most people think of when it comes to intelligence. Some people are good at the skills that can be measured by standardized tests, such as math or verbal reasoning, but others are good at being creative, identifying problems, or finding innovative solutions.

  • For example, Intuit CEO Bill was a football coach and economics major who led technologists in Silicon Valley. He admitted that technologists thought differently, listened to their thought processes, and asked them to teach him.

2. Look anywhere and everywhere for talent. Multipliers ignore organizational charts. They don’t look at whether someone is completing her job description; they look at how they might use her to get things done. Multipliers believe that if they can find someone’s genius, they can use that person—even if that person doesn’t technically report to them—because...

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PDF Summary Chapter 4: Discipline B—Ideas

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When you do need to participate or share an opinion with someone, let them know how strongly you feel about it by categorizing it as soft or hard. Soft opinions are simply things for someone to consider and don’t need to be implemented. Hard opinions you want to see realized.

  • For example, when one president started his job, people would ask him questions, and he wanted to be helpful, so he’d give them a casual answer. Because he was top of the organizational chart, people took his opinions as policy. After he realized this was happening, he made it clear whether what he was saying was a decision or just a musing.

2. Listen 80% of the time. Listening allows Multipliers to figure out what other people know.

  • For example, when Apple sales executive John meets with his direct reports, he spends 80% of the meeting listening or asking questions to prompt more things he can listen to. He wants to find out what his people experience daily.

Workout #3: Restrict your participation in meetings by using poker chips. Before every meeting, give yourself five poker chips that represent talking time. One chip is 30 seconds of airtime, three are 90 seconds, and one...

PDF Summary Chapter 5: Discipline C—Knowledge

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3. Cast problems as opportunities. People do better work when they feel that they’re gaining something (such as new knowledge) rather than just solving a problem.

4. Outline only the foundation. Multipliers make projects achievable by giving people a safe, solid starting point but then letting them take over. The unknowns challenge people to think for themselves, and make them curious and keener on getting involved—there’s still more that needs to be done, so there’s a role for them.

  • For example, Oracle’s top executives put together a draft of a strategic plan and gave it to their senior leaders to flesh out.
Practice #2: Challenge People

Knowledge Multipliers encourage people to fill the gap between what they know and what they need to know so that they can rise to a challenge. They:

1. Make the challenge concrete. When a challenge has clearly laid out, measurable steps, it feels more achievable and gives people the confidence that they can accomplish it. They know exactly what they need to learn to get the project done.

  • For example, Boys and Girls Clubs of the Peninsula leader Sean asks hard questions to define challenges. He once asked a...

PDF Summary Chapter 6: Discipline D—Decision-Making

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  • Lutz explained that this decision was very important because it would change how the company interacted with people.

3. Recruit and prepare the team. The leader decides who will participate in the debate and decision-making process, what their roles will be, and what they should prepare in advance. Interestingly, the best decisions tend to come from debates in which everyone has an opinion going in.

  • Lutz gave everyone on his team two weeks to complete a pre-debate assignment, which was often to find evidence to support their view.

4. Explain the decision-making workflow. The leader explains who will make the decision. Some options include consensus, majority rule, or a particular person (sometimes the leader, but not always).

Practice #2: Start the Debate

A productive debate must be:

  • Compelling. Everyone is invested in the question.
  • Complete. All the relevant information is shared.
  • Objective. Facts are valued more than opinions.
  • Informative. People learn about both sides of the question.

To achieve this kind of debate, Multipliers:

1. Remove fear of the leader. Fear makes people doubt their position or stay quiet. To...

PDF Summary Chapter 7: Discipline E—Independence

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  • For example, when Cisco CEO John hired Doug as vice president of customer support control, John told Doug that he had 51% of the vote on how to run his area of the company.

2. Assign big-picture accountability to others. If people are only delegated small tasks and only held accountable for the results of those tasks, they won’t learn how they fit into the bigger picture. Independence Multipliers make their people responsible for the overall results of a project or area of the company.

  • For example, John told Doug he was responsible for 100% of his department’s results.

3. Push people to take ownership of projects outside their comfort zone. Once people get used to having more ownership in their current role, Multipliers give them a challenge they’ll have to stretch for. This forces them to develop their knowledge in new areas.

  • For example, Mike was the director of sales operations and his job was normally to ensure compliance with company policy. His boss asked him to work on globalizing the company. Mike didn’t have any experience with global operations and protested, but his boss told him he’d be able to figure it out, and he was right.
...

PDF Summary Part 3: Dealing With Diminishers | Chapter 8: Reducing Your Diminishing Qualities

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  • Workout #2 (identifying genius) in Chapter 3: Talent
  • Workout #6 (speaking in questions) in Chapter 5: Knowledge
  • Workout #9 (give ownership back) in Chapter 7: Independence
  • Workout #10 (ask for a fix) in Chapter 7: Independence

Type #2: Big Thinker

These leaders sell the big picture of a brighter future and explain how to achieve it. Like the Fountains of Ideas, they think they’re inspiring people.

People do need to understand the big picture, but if the leader fills too much in, people don’t have to think for themselves. At best, they second-guess the vision; at worst, they become completely dependent on the leader’s ideas.

To avoid diminishing, these leaders should use knowledge practice #1 (outline a strategy, but let everyone else flesh out the details) to give their people room to think for themselves. They can also study:

  • Workout #2 (identifying genius) in Chapter 3: Talent
  • Workout #3 (poker chips) in Chapter 4: Ideas
  • Workout #6 (speaking in questions) in Chapter 5: Knowledge
  • Workout #7 (hard challenge) in Chapter 5: Knowledge

Type #3: The Savior

**These leaders don’t like to see people in trouble, so when...

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PDF Summary Chapter 9: Surviving Diminishers

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Effective Ways to Handle Diminishers

There are three types of strategies for effectively handling Diminishers. Attempt them in the following order:

Step #1: Survival Strategies

These strategies will increase your resistance to diminishing behavior and win you some space to consider further strategies.

1. Tune out the Diminisher occasionally. When a Diminisher is criticizing you or nitpicking, don’t take it personally or let it affect your self-worth. The Diminisher may just be taking out some of their stress on you (for example, she might be feeling pressure from her boss). Even if she is being vicious on purpose, you don’t have to sink to her assessment of you—you can continue to hold yourself to high standards and believe you’re smart.

  • For example, education leader Glenn didn’t want to get upset after arguing with a Diminisher, so while he didn’t like the Diminisher’s behavior, he chose not to let it bother him. He acknowledged that the Diminisher had been contentious for a reason, but he wasn’t necessarily that reason.

2. Build other relationships. Connect with people at your workplace, whether they’re clients, colleagues, or different managers....

PDF Summary Part 4: Large-Scale Multiplying | Chapter 10: Multiplier Culture

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There are two practices to develop Multiplier vocabulary:

1. Discuss Multipliers. Ask leaders to read the book and then talk about it, using the terms “Multiplier” and “Diminisher” in the discussion. Ideally, use Multiplier practices in the discussion (Shortform example: Ask questions). You might discuss some of the following questions or use the facilitator guide:

  • If a Diminisher is getting a lot done, should they change anything? Why or why not?
  • What’s one way you could share your ideas without diminishing anyone?
  • What’s the balance between giving people space and being too hands-off?
  • At what point does detail-orientation become micromanaging?
  • When should you search widely for new talent and when should you focus on the people who already work for you?
  • If you only have half an hour to make an important decision, should you call for a debate? Why or why not?
  • What similarities do you see between all five disciplines?
  • Could you use the multiplying approach outside of work—for example, with your family?

For example, Bamboo HR’s Ryan knew that...

PDF Summary Appendix: FAQs

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3. It’s harder to multiply people who are far away. The author’s research found that some people who were named as Multipliers by some were named as Diminishers by others. Typically, the people who saw them as Multipliers were direct reports, and the people who saw them as Diminishers had less contact with them. It takes more effort and conscious thought to multiply the people who are farther away.

If you’re a strong Multiplier, your people will forgive the occasional Diminisher blip, especially if you call yourself out and explain what led to your actions.

But aren’t some Diminishers successful?

Some Diminisher leaders can be successful, but this is usually because there are other factors at play such as:

  • Diminishers can have Multiplier traits too, and sometimes the Multiplier ones are strong enough to make up for the Diminisher ones.
    • For example, Steve Jobs had the diminishing trait of micromanaging, but he also had the multiplying traits of creativity and curiosity.
  • Diminishers sometimes recruit other leaders who are Multipliers, and these other leaders make up for them.
  • Diminishers sometimes do fine at leading others when the environment...