Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (23 page)

Instead of framing issues for debate and decisions, Diminishers tend to raise issues abruptly, then dominate the discussion before forcing a decision.

RAISE ISSUES.
When a problem surfaces, Diminishers bring issues or decisions to people’s attention, but they don’t necessarily frame them in a way that allows others to easily contribute. When they raise the issue, they focus on the “what” rather than on the “how” or the “why” of a decision. One CIO routinely raised a variety of distracting issues at his weekly staff meetings. One of his directors explained, “Once he came in and raised the issue of ergonomically sound keyboards and then went on about them for an hour. He is intense and intelligent, but all over the place. He makes a millimeter of progress in a million directions.”

DOMINATE THE DISCUSSION.
When issues get discussed or debated, Diminishers tend to dominate the discussion with their own ideas. They are debaters, not Debate Makers. Looking back at Jonathan Akers, where did he fall short? He gathered the right players and he gathered the data. But he never sparked a debate. Instead he dominated the discussions with his opinions and shut down the intelligence—and drive—of the players he had assembled.

FORCE THE DECISION.
Rather than driving a sound decision, Diminishers tend to force a decision. They force the decision either by relying heavily on their own opinion or by short-cutting a rigorous debate. As one executive said in an attempt to drive closure after dominating the discussion during a task force meeting, “I think we’re all in agreement that we should centralize this function on a global level.” The group looked bewildered, knowing that this was not the shared opinion of the group. One brave woman broke the silence and responded with, “No, Joe, we have heard your opinion, but we don’t have agreement.”

What is the impact to the organization of the Diminisher’s approach to decision making? At first glance, it appears that Diminishers make efficient decisions. However, because their approach only utilizes the intelligence of a small number of people and ignores the rigor of debate, the broader organization is left in the dark, not understanding the decision, nor the assumptions and facts upon which it is based. With this lack of clarity, people turn to debating the soundness of a decision rather than executing it.

This spin phenomenon is one of the reasons Diminishers create resource drain rather than resource leverage.

DEBATE MAKING AS RESOURCE LEVERAGE

Multipliers don’t act as Debate Makers because it makes people feel good. Multipliers operate as Debate Makers because they want to
leverage every ounce of intelligence and capability they can in making and executing sound decisions.

The following chart reflects why Decision Makers leave capability on the table while Debate Makers leverage and stretch the capability of their resources:

Decision Makers

What They Do:

Engage a select inner circle in the decision-making process

What They Get:

Underutilization of the bulk of their resources, while a select few are overworked

A lack of information from those closest to the action, resulting in poorer decisions

Too many resources thrown at those who don’t have the understanding they need to execute the decisions effectively

Debate Makers

What They Do:

Access a wide spectrum of thinking in a rigorous debate before making decisions

What They Get:

High utilization of the bulk of their resources

Real information they need to make sound decisions

Efficient execution with lower resource levels because they have built a deep understanding of the issues, which readies the organization to execute

In summary, Decision Makers don’t use the full complement of talent, intelligence, and information that is available to them. This capacity sits idle in their organization. To counteract this, they continue to ask the organization for more resources, wondering why they aren’t more productive.

In contrast to this, Multipliers not only engage the best thinking of the resources around them; they use debate to stretch the thinking of the individuals and the team. While decisions are debated vigorously,
real facts and issues surface, forcing people to listen and learn. As a result, Multipliers get full capability out of their current resources and they stretch and increase the capacity of the organization to take on the next challenge.

This begs a question: how does someone learn to lead debate like Lutz at Microsoft Learning or Sue Siegel at Affymetrix? How does someone go from being a Decision Maker to a Debate Maker?

BECOMING A DEBATE MAKER

Our research and experience coaching executives reveals that leaders can move along the Diminisher–Multiplier continuum. But it requires more than just adding some new leadership practices. It often requires a fundamental shift in the assumptions of the leader. Often this shift happens when a leader begins to view his or her role differently. It can happen when leaders see that their greatest contribution lies in asking the questions that produce the most rigorous thinking and answers.

Several years ago I volunteered to be a discussion leader for a Junior Great Books program at an elementary school. It seemed like a simple volunteer job. The assignment was straightforward: lead a discussion of a group of third-grade students on a piece of great youth literature. The goal was clear: have them dig deep into the story for meaning and debate it with their peers. Despite my protests that I knew how to facilitate discussion, I was sent to a one-day training workshop to learn a technique called “shared inquiry.”
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What I found was a simple but powerful technique for leading debate.

There are three rules to shared inquiry:

• 1.
  The discussion leader only asks questions. This means that the leader isn’t allowed to answer his or her questions or give his or her interpretation of the story’s meaning. This keeps the students from relying on the leader’s answers.
  
• 2.
  The students must supply evidence to support their theories. If the student thinks that Jack went up the beanstalk a third time to prove his invincibility, he or she is required to identify a passage (or more than one) in the text that supports this idea.
  
• 3.
  Everyone participates. The role of the leader is to make sure everyone gets airtime during the discussion. Often the leader needs to restrain stronger voices and proactively call on the more timid voices.
  

As a discussion leader, it was liberating to ask the questions but not give the answers. In fact, I found it strangely powerful. And when the students spouted off their views and interpretations of the story, it was thrilling to look them straight in the eye and say, “Do you have any evidence to support that claim?” Initially, they looked terrified. But they quickly learned that the cost of an opinion was evidence. As they gained experience, they learned to respond quickly. They would assert an opinion, and then I would insist (with my best intimidating look), “Show me your evidence.” They would scurry to locate the exact place in the text that supported their claim and cite it with conviction. And because everyone was called on, every student learned to state their views and support their ideas with data.

This experience cemented my belief that there is a process and a formula for great debate.

The Starting Block

We’ve gone through a master approach to how Multipliers create debate, but here is a simplified, three-step process to get started:

1. ASK THE HARD QUESTION.
Ask the question that will get at the core of the issue and the decision. Ask the question that will confront underlying
assumptions. Pose the question to your team and then stop. Instead of following up with your views, hold yours and ask for theirs.

2. ASK FOR THE DATA
. When someone offers an opinion, don’t let it rest on anecdote. Ask for the evidence. Look for more than one data point. Ask them to identify a cluster of data or a trend. Make it a norm so people come into debates armed with the data—an entire box if necessary.

3. ASK EACH PERSON.
Reach beyond the dominant voices to gather in and hear all views and all data. You might find that the softer voices belong to the analytical minds who are often most familiar with and objective about the data.

As you rethink your role as a leader, you will come to see that your greatest contribution might depend on your ability to ask the right question, not have the right answer. You will see that all great thinking starts with a provocative question and a rich debate, whether it is in the mind of one person or an entire community.

DISCUSSION, DISSENT, AND DEBATE

Hubert H. Humphrey, America’s vice president under Lyndon B. Johnson, captured the essential principle of how Multipliers make decisions when he said: “Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.” Our research showed that it is this discussion, dissent, and debate that also hammers out sound decisions. Intelligence Multipliers know how to create this debate to generate strong support for high-stakes decisions while also building the collective muscle of the organization to deliver on promised results.

THE MULTIPLIER FORMULA