Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (18 page)

That night when it was time for bed, I asked my children, “What time is it?” They responded with “bedtime.” I then asked, “What do we do at bedtime?” They responded with, “We get on our pajamas and we brush our teeth.” I continued the question routine with, “Well then, who is ready for bed?” They scampered to get on their pajamas and brush their teeth. I stood in the hallway in shock. The rest of the evening proceeded in a similar fashion, with me asking them leading questions and them responding with remarkable understanding and eagerness to act.

I reported this amazing experience to Brian the next day at work. He encouraged me to keep it up, not necessarily asking questions 100
percent of the time, but beginning to settle into a comfortable level. I did this and found that it transformed the way I operated as a parent. And it most certainly spilled over to how I managed at work. I have issued this same challenge to many leaders and have seen it transform their leadership as they shifted their balance and began asking more and telling less. It has helped them draw out the intelligence of people around them and guide others through a challenge.

Take the Extreme Question Challenge to shift from Know-It-All into Challenger mode. Start with 100 percent. Try it at home—you might find that your children (or housemates) are good guinea pigs and great teachers! At work, take the first step by finding a meeting that you can lead solely with questions. You might be surprised at what people around you already know.

2. TAKE A BUS TRIP.
University of Michigan professor Noel Tichy tells a story about an executive at GE who found a creative way to seed a challenge and help his organization see a need in the marketplace.
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When Tom Tiller took over the failing appliance division at GE, the division was losing money, slashing its workforce, and hadn’t released a new product in years. Tom loaded forty people from his management team onto a rented bus and headed for the Atlanta Kitchen and Bath Show. The group was to find trends and needs, and generate new product ideas that would keep the plant alive. The group developed a new line of products and turned around the division, from a staggering loss to a $10 million profit.

There are many ways to take a bus trip. Irene Fisher of the Bennion Center took people into the inner city so they could see the needs of the poor firsthand. As a corporate manager, you might visit a customer’s factory floor to watch how a customer actually uses your product. You can take your team down to the local mall to watch people shop. But go together on a bus trip. Help people see the need that must get met. Make it a learning experience that will reveal that need, create energy, and ignite a fire within your organization.

3. TAKE A MASSIVE BABY STEP
. The corporate world has a plethora of names for this: Create an early win, deliver a symbolic victory, and—the favorite—pick the low-hanging fruit. But the problem is that most leaders do this in isolation. They pick a small group to run a pilot, which catches the attention of the management but don’t have the visibility to get the attention of the entire organization. Instead, do it en masse. Make it visible. Create a conference room pilot for a new technology and hold an open house. Win back an important customer through the efforts of a cross-functional task force. Get the entire organization to take a small, first step. But do it together, en masse, so everyone can see the results and start to believe that something great is possible. This belief is what will shift the weight of the organization out onto that high wire.

A GOOD STRETCH

Jimmy Carter said, “If you have a task to perform and are vitally interested in it, excited and challenged by it, then you will exert maximum energy. But in the excitement, the pain of fatigue dissipates, and the exuberance of what you hope to achieve overcomes the weariness.” Our research showed that Multipliers make challenges both provocative and plausible, attracting others to join them and offer their full capability, both intellectually and emotionally. Their approach generates the collective will and stretch needed to undertake the most paramount of challenges.

What is this like for the people who are willing to sign up? It is “Exhilarating, exhausting, challenging, gratifying.” This means that Multipliers get contributions from their people that far surpass what they thought they had to give, and it is this concomitant exhilaration that makes people sign up again and again.

THE MULTIPLIER FORMULA