Executive Summary
Welcome to CEO Brain Food, a show aimed at providing key insights, fresh perspectives, and proven tools that CEOs can apply to build enterprise value, generate higher profits and develop the talent needed to succeed in their businesses.
In this episode of CEO Brain Food, Michael distinguishes the differences of the two leadership styles as identified in Liz Wiseman’s book,Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. These leadership styles are identified as “Multipliers” and “Diminishers”. Michael challenges us to reflect on the characteristics of both leadership styles, how they affect the growth of a team and the whole organization, and he provides a roadmap to focus on becoming Multipliers and how to get better at it.
Episode Highlights
01:01 – Introducing today’s topic, Multiplier or Diminisher (Leadership Styles)
01:58 – Michael recalls his experiences working with both multiplier and diminisher kind of leaders
06:09 – A Diminisher Leader Mindset
07:09 – A Multiplier Leader Mindset
09:10 – Closing the gap between “where we are” and “where we want to go”
12:47 – Diminisher leaders create anxiety
15:01 – Multipliers are “debate makers” not “decision makers”
15:43 – Five distinguished characteristics of a Multiplier
16:05 – A Multiplier Leader is a talent magnet
17:02 – A Multiplier Leader is a liberator
18:34 – A Multiplier Leader is a challenger
19:57 – A Multiplier Leader is a debate maker
20:47 – A Multiplier Leader is an investor
25:04 – The impact of shifting to a Multiplier Leadership style
27:23 – Michael leaves the audience with a question to consider
27:48 – The topic of the next episode of CEO Brain Food
Tweetable Quotes
“A Diminisher is a leader or manager whose view of intelligence is based on elitism and scarcity.” (06:12)
“A Multiplier assumes that there are smart people everywhere who will figure out problems and become even smarter in the process.”(07:09)
“Multipliers are the talent magnet, the liberator, the challenger, the debate maker and the investor.” (15:53)
“A liberator creates space for people to step up and also feels safe to fail.” (17:54)
“How smart you are is defined by how clearly you can see the intellect of others.” – John Brandon, Director of Int’l Sales at Apple Inc. (18:22)
“The challengers are going to be pushing their teams beyond their own knowledge and beyond the knowledge of the organization.” (19:25)
“Multipliers give other people the investment and ownership they need to produce results independent of the leader. It’s not servant leadership but it’s open leadership.” (24:14)
Links Mentioned
Books Mentioned
Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Good to Great)