Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (30 page)

Accelerator
: 2. Start with the Assumptions.

How It Works
: Adopt the assumptions of a Multiplier and allow the behavior and practices to naturally follow.

Accelerator
: 3. Take the 30-Day Multiplier Challenge.

How It Works
: Pick one practice within one discipline, and work it for 30 days.

With the right approach, leading like a Multiplier is within reach. Some people will stumble into it over time, while others will never learn it and will possibly remain ignorant of their diminishing effect on those around them. But the assumptions and the five disciplines of the Multiplier can be learned, and this learning can be accelerated.

Let’s consider a few examples of those who have taken their first steps and are just beginning to experience the payback. I’ll share their stories and then outline the accelerators and tools that worked for them.

THE ACCELERATORS

Accelerator #1
:
Work the Extremes

In 2002, Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman published a set of fascinating research findings in their book
The Extraordinary Leader
.
¹
They studied 360 degree assessment data for 8,000 leaders, looking for what differentiated the extraordinary leaders from the average leaders. They found that leaders who were perceived as having no distinguishing strengths were rated at the thirty-fourth percentile of effectiveness of all leaders in the study. However, when a leader was perceived as
having just one distinguishing strength, his or her effectiveness shot to the sixty-fourth percentile. Having one towering strength almost doubled the effectiveness of the leader, provided the leader had no area of sharp weakness. Leaders with two, three, and four strengths jump to the seventy-second, eighty-first, and eighty-ninth percentile respectively. The Zenger-Folkman study demonstrates that leaders do not need to be good at everything. They need to have mastery of a small number of skills and be free of show-stopper weaknesses.

What does this imply for someone aspiring to lead like a Multiplier? It means that you do not need to excel at each of the Multiplier disciplines and master every practice. As we studied Multipliers, we noticed that each individual Multiplier wasn’t necessarily, or even typically, strong in all five disciplines. The majority of Multipliers were strong in just three. There were many who were strong in four or even all five, but having strength in three of the disciplines appears to be a threshold for Multiplier status. We also noticed that these Multipliers were rarely in the Diminisher range in any of the five disciplines. A leader does not have to be exceptional in all five disciplines to be considered a Multiplier. A leader needs two or three strong disciplines and the other disciplines can be just good enough.

Spencer Kaplan
²
is a director of sales operations for a global consumer products company. In this role, Spencer manages the operational infrastructure that enables the sales teams and works across several sales channels and sales leaders. The organization made an investment in Spencer to ready him for a larger, more complex role supporting the entire global business.

Spencer launched a 360 degree feedback process and met with his coach to review the data. After reviewing the results of the 360 degree feedback, he was inundated with the plethora of data and was unsure of which skills he should develop. But as he filtered the data, searching for the extremes (the highest highs and the show-stopper lows), two critical development targets emerged.

First, his chief strength was readily apparent. The organization
viewed him as a trusted advisor. His colleagues trusted his judgment and his objective analysis and knew that he operated entirely without ego. He was known for his ability to gather players from across the organization and use these people to develop collaborative solutions. Second, his vulnerability was also obvious. While the organization viewed him as a rock star, his peers and various bosses were concerned that the capability gap between him and his team was too large. While he was advising the rest of the organization, he hadn’t been sufficiently investing in his own team. The feedback from the stakeholders was clear: They could not expand his role unless his team members were growing their abilities as fast as he was.

Spencer and his coach built a two-pronged development plan. The first priority was to shore up his vulnerability by investing in his immediate team. He identified several practices of the Investor to work on: giving real ownership to his team, expanding their roles, and expecting complete work. After giving his managers greater ownership, he would step back and coach, allowing natural consequences to teach and develop them.

With this work well under way, Spencer began topping off his strength as a trusted advisor. His aim was to go beyond just developing collaborative solutions. He wanted to be able to lead the most rigorous of debates. Spencer worked in a data-savvy organization, so the role of the Debate Maker was a natural extension of his strength as a trusted advisor. He began to tackle the tough business issues that were going unresolved. He focused his development on these practices: gathering the critical players, framing the issues, and leading rigorous, data-rich debates.

With these two development goals clear, Spencer disregarded most of the other feedback. He continued to naturally practice and refine many of the other practices of the Multiplier, but his purposeful development was clear: focus on the extremes by topping off his biggest strength and neutralizing a weakness that would prevent the growth of his team, himself, and perhaps even the company.

Instead of trying to develop strength in all five disciplines, an aspiring Multiplier should set an extreme development plan. Begin by assessing your leadership practices and then work the two extremes: 1) neutralize a weakness and 2) top off a strength.

Based on the research in this book, we’ve developed a multirater assessment tool that you can find at www.multipliersbook.com. Taking this 360-degree assessment will get you started in identifying your relative strengths along the Diminisher–Multiplier continuum. When reviewing your report, look for your extremes. Which discipline is your strongest? Are any disciplines dangerously within Diminisher territory? With this information, pursue these two strategies:

The following chart illustrates these two development strategies:

WORKING THE EXTREMES—DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

Working the extremes by paying attention to your highs and lows while ignoring the middle offers an efficient and sustainable pathway to leadership development. The strategies above can become more pinpointed through a rigorous multirater assessment. In addition to working the extremes, you can also accelerate your development by adopting the assumptions of a Multiplier.

Accelerator #2
:
Start with the Assumptions

To score a strike in ten-pin bowling, you need to hit the head pin. Hitting the head pin directly will knock down most of the pins behind it; hitting it in just the right place, on the left or right side, allows the bowler to knock down all the pins in a single strike. The assumptions of a Multiplier are the head pin to becoming one. Because behavior follows assumptions, you can knock out a whole set
of behaviors by adopting the right belief. Consider the following scenario and how you might approach it with either a Diminisher or Multiplier assumption.

You are about to start your weekly one-on-one with your marketing manager Jyanthi Gupta. Another executive has asked that you appoint someone from your division as a representative on a cross-divisional task force that will assess the company’s competitive position and recommend changes to the current marketing programs. You decide to put Jyanthi on the task force and plan to use this one-on-one meeting to tee up this assignment.

FROM A DIMINISHER ASSUMPTION:
How would you approach this meeting if you assume,
people will never figure this out without me
? How would you define Jyanthi’s role? What role would you take? How would you explain the assignment? How would you monitor progress?

With this assumption, you would probably use Jyanthi as your representative—your eyes and ears into this project. She would attend the meetings, gather information, and then report back so you can weigh in on the issues. You would probably explain the assignment by telling her that she is representing you and how important it is that she not give anyone the wrong impression about what is happening in your division.

What is the result of this approach? Jyanthi spends a lot of time attending meetings, but contributes very little to the task force. She is careful to not overstep her role, so she passes up opportunities to speak out and steers clear of any controversial issues where she might be called on to influence a decision. You provide input at a couple junctions, but most of the important decisions happened live, during the meetings. At the conclusion of the task force, you find that several decisions were made that are not in the best interest of your division. And you hear through the grapevine that the
task force leader commented about the lack of engagement from your division.

FROM A MULTIPLIER ASSUMPTION:
How would you approach this differently if you believed,
people are smart and can figure it out
?

You would be clear that you chose Jyanthi for her understanding of the market and her ability to assimilate the vast amounts of market data that the task force is assembling. You would let her know that she was representing the entire division and that she was fully responsible for implementing the task force’s outcomes. You might recommend she come to meetings armed with data so she can weigh in on the issues and think on her feet during the debates. You would let her know that this task force is her project, but that you are available as a sounding board if she wants to jointly think through the issues.

What are the results of this approach? Jyanthi engages fully in the task force, gains new understanding of the competitive landscape and advocates for marketing programs that will have immediate benefit for your division. She impresses the task force leader who thinks, “This group has great talent.”

The assumptions we hold shape our views, our practices, and in the end have a powerful effect on the outcomes, often forming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

One aspiring Multiplier told us that the moment he started shifting his assumptions, he could see new opportunities everywhere. Instead of feeling overwhelmed that he was a bottleneck and frustrated that he had to redo other people’s work, he started asking, “How can I improve the situation without putting myself at the center?”

If you want to apply Multiplier skills and behaviors naturally and instinctively, try on the Multiplier assumptions and see how they guide your actions. The chart below summarizes some of the key assumptions of Diminishers and Multipliers that provide this starting point:

Discipline
: Talent Magnet

Diminisher Assumption
:
People need to report to me in order to get them to do anything.

Multiplier Assumption
:
If I can find someone’s genius, I can put them to work.

Discipline
: Liberator

Diminisher Assumption
:
Pressure increases performance.

Multiplier Assumption
:
People’s best thinking must be given, not taken.

Discipline
: Challenger

Diminisher Assumption
:
I need to have all the answers.

Multiplier Assumption
:
People get smarter by being challenged.