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Are you a Multiplier or a Diminisher? Find out...

When I first heard about Multipliers,many things popped up in my head, from economics, math to my prolific neighbor from India with 4 brats and pregnant wife in tow!

Fortunately, none of that turned out to be the subject of Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeowan’s recently launched first book, “Multipliers: How the best leaders make everyone smarter”, already a bestseller on Amazon.

For me the book's main message emerged as 2 fold:
1)While there are many smart leaders in the world, the smartest are the ones that make everyone around them feel smarter
2)The leaders #1 job, above everything else is to unleash employee potential.

While our history is littered with examples of great leaders, the leadership models we know appear to have surprisingly (atleast to me!), evolved primarily over the last century. From McGregor’s work on Motivation Theory X and Y and Blake and Mouton’s Task and People Grid, to the more recently evolved work around Situational and Transformatmive Leadership. Especially in the last 2 decades, leadership as a subject has been wringed by more authors than one cares to remember, and the size of the publishing industry it has spawned is perhaps a close second, only to porn literature. While many have built tomes and careers writing about leadership, for the discerning mind, there is precious little new thinking that has come out.

While what the book presents is not always new insight, the Multiplier framework is unique in that it looks at Leadership in the light of how it impacts the individual and collective intellect of a workforce. Drucker contended that the advance in production practices in the 20th century heralded a fifty fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker, throwing the gauntlet to us, 21st century Managers to similarly enhance the productivity of the knowledge worker.

So I was intrigued when over a year back, Liz first invited me to critique the opening chapter of her book. Multipliers draws on Liz’s 2 decades of experience observing and coaching senior leadership and over 2 years of research with her colleague Greg, interviewing 150 leaders across North America, Asia, Europe and Africa. Structured elegantly along a 5 discipline framework it is replete with practical advice and tools with a summary at the end of each chapter. Free of complex models and vague concepts, it does not weigh you down and serves as a handy reference.

Here is a quick peek into the 5 Multiplier disciplines:
1) The Talent Magnet who attracts smart people and uses them at their highest point of contribution.
2) The Liberator who creates an intense environment that demands people’s best thinking.
3) The Challenger who defines an opportunity that causes people to stretch.
4) The Debate Maker who focuses on asking the right questions
5) The Investor who invests in other’s success.

I was fortunate to have a view of how some of Liz’s thinking evolved on the subject and also the opportunity to attend her pilot workshop based on the book at Oracle University (best training food ever:)). When I challenged the model as a little too “Black and White" for reality, the authors' contention was that many of us fall along a continuum and make choices that may fall on either side. Infact, an interesting observation by the authors' is that many times, many of us acting in the best of faith end up being “accidental Diminishers” totally oblivious of our impact on people around us. If you are curious to find out if you are one,consider taking the following short quiz at www.multipliersquiz.com .

Being where we are today, experiencing the worst recession of our lifetimes,paying penance for decades of excesses, what we need is disruptive shifts in everything we do including how we think about employee productivity. Pretty much the same way that assembly line thinking transformed manufacturing and served as our ticket to prosperity in the 20th century.

One Multiplier practice, that I have taken on for this year, is to cultivate the skill of asking the right question and then shutting up(I find the latter part the hardest:)). Being a Multiplier and bringing out the best in people can start with something as simple as asking a question.

To close out this post I echo the books sentiment encapsulated in a wise old blessing -

Go forth and multiply!
Ranu

PS: You can learn more about the book at www.multipliersbook.com

For a good synopsis of the book you may enjoy reading Liz and Greg’s Harvard Business Review article on Multipliers at www.hbr.org/product/bringing-out-the-best-in-your-people/an/R1005K-HCB-ENG?Ntt=liz%2520wiseman

Another article about the book from Verne Harnish, Fortune syndicated columnist is available free at
http://gulfnews.com/business/opinion/what-kind-of-a-leader-are-you-1.641615

Comments

  1. Thanks Ranu. Truly enlightening.

    I take this opportunity to invite you to my blog http://neelism.blogspot.com. Please drop by and leave your foot prints.

    Warm regards

    Indroneil

    ReplyDelete

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