How Playing Small Actually Fuels Team Performance (feat. Liz Wiseman)

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Hi, I'm Susan Drum, and welcome to the Enlightened Executive, where your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. Each episode we feature groundbreaking techniques and strategies to help you get the edge in personal and leadership effectiveness. This episode is brought to you by Meritage Leadership. At Meritage, we strengthen leaders and empower teams to achieve high performance. Go to meritageleadership.com to learn more. Today we're focusing on how leaders can either expand or inhibit the growth of those around them. And I'm thrilled to introduce Liz Wiseman. Liz has conducted significant research in leadership and talent development, and I'm excited to share her research in this space with our audience. So welcome, Liz.

Susan, good to be here. Looking forward to this conversation.

Yes, yes. So I wanted to focus on some of your really impactful work in multipliers. And in that book, you talk about this distinction between multipliers and diminishers. So for members of our audience who haven't read your book, what is a multiplier? What is a diminisher, and why does it matter for leadership?

Oh, okay. So a multiplier is a leader. Well, you know what? Let's start with the diminisher, because most people think about that first. A diminisher is a leader who might be really smart, really capable themselves, but the people around them struggle to be smart and capable around them. They're leaders who use their intelligence in a way that has a dampering, a reductive or a diminishing effect on others. Like, they're smart, but nobody around them is as smart as they can be and should be. Then there are other leaders who use their intelligence and capability in a very different way. These are people who are legitimately smart and capable themselves, but they channel their own intelligence and energy in a way that amplifies increases, utilizes the intelligence and energy and capability of the group. They're leaders, in short, that we're at our best around. And, you know, this really came out of my observation that led to this research that some leaders seem to amplify intelligence and other leaders diminish it and woefully underutilize the intelligence and talent of their team.

I use Leadership Circle 360, which looks. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it looks at where do you have a foot on the brake and where do you have a foot on the gas? Right, right. And usually the. The drives around protecting or belonging or controlling those three dimensions tend to be more about what the ego is protecting than what is truly looking for leadership to take the helm of and create a meaningful impact in the organization. So I'm curious to know what, what's in your mind and in your research. What drives someone to be more of a amplifier versus a diminisher?

So when we look at the, like, the source of what makes someone a multiplier and diminisher, it really stems from people's mindset. You know, the diminisher tends to operate from this assumption that people can't figure it out without them. Now, there are some diminishers who operate from, I think, like, maybe a little bit of a darker assumption. And that would be maybe that kind of diminisher that looks like the tyrannical, controlling, bossy, know it all, narcissistic, micromanaging diminisher. Like they might be operating from an assumption that, you know, no one's as smart as they are. They're the smartest person in the room. If other people look good, going to make them look bad, that, that might be kind of the, the insecure form of diminishing. But most diminishing is coming just simply from this assumption that we as leaders are needed, we're essential, that people can't figure it out without us, which puts us in this kind of spoke and hub model of leadership or this central intelligence model where everything has to come from the leader, everything has to go through, through the leader, and they create a dependency. Whereas the multiplier tends to be operating from this assumption that fundamentally people are smart and can figure it out. Now, you know, we talk about sort of doing the personal growth work to be able to grow as a leader. Susan, you know, that's the framing of this conversation. And one of the things I really appreciate about the growth mindset idea is like Carol Dweck talks about having a growth mindset about ourselves like that, you know what? I'm smart, I can figure it out. But what multiplier leaders are doing is essentially they're taking that growth mindset that they may or may not hold about themselves, but they're believing that about the team, about the people who work for them. Like, you know, this idea that I hired bright people and with good leadership, with the right amount of coaching, with the right context, with some safety, with some challenge that people want to figure it out, and they can figure it out, and they will figure it out. And so really it comes from which mindset we're operating under. One of the things that was really fascinating to me about this research was not just that these multiplier leaders get so much more from other People, it's on average 2x what the diminishers get. The multipliers are getting twice the levels of know how and insight and capability and skill and talent from their people than these diminishing leaders. But probably what was most interesting was that most of the diminishing that's happening in the workplace is coming from what I call the accidental diminisher, which is not this controlling, you know, insecure form of diminishing. It's coming from the leader who has really good intentions, who's trying to be helpful, who's trying to be supportive, who's empathetic, but yet with the very best of intentions. They're still having a diminishing effect on others. Like the source of their diminishing is positive.

It's based in good intent, but bad impact.

Good intent, bad impact. And that I think was the big aha for me and what I think has been the big aha for so many managers is bad impact can come from the best of intentions.

Right? And it's not always conscious to us what's truly driving some of that behavior that is getting in the way. So we might have really good intentions, but there's also some fear at play for ourselves or we wouldn't be acting that way. Right? So I'm curious to know what's the, what's, what's a good. Give us an example of somebody who had good intent, but actually their impact was not effective because they were a diminisher.

Let me give some examples of how this shows up. I find that there are a number of very consistent accidental diminisher tendencies. Let me rattle off a few of these for those listening. You might think about am I doing any of these things? And then I'm going to go into a couple in a little bit more depth. Maybe give you an example of a couple. My own accidental diminisher tendencies. The first is the idea fountain. And this one is one of mine. So let me just kind of go into this. The idea fountain are leaders who are kind of creative thinkers. They love a creative environment. They prize innovation like nothing is more fun than brainstorming. They're the kind of leaders who pop into a meeting with full of ideas. How about this? What about this? Maybe we should try this. Have you considered that? And it's not that they think their ideas are better, it's that they're tossing out ideas and in hopes that they're going to spark more ideas. But what happens is we end up getting idea lazy around people who are idea rich. Either we don't have to think up anything very creative because we just take one of the boss's ideas and we roll with that. Or we spend so much time chasing these ideas that we don't get anything done. This is one of my accidental diminisher tendencies. One example that really struck me was the CEO, founder and CEO of a tech company in the Bay Area and was a gaming company. And the CEO was just like, brimming with ideas. And. And he would just go into meetings like, maybe we should do this. Maybe we should add this feature. And. And he was popping off constantly to the point where the Chief Technology officer pulled me aside. He said, you know, Liz, let me tell you how I spend at least 50% of my time is running around the organization telling people to ignore all the ideas, all the things that the CEO told them to do. Like, no, we're actually not changing our build plan based on this. Like, he's just. He's just exploring possibilities. And so, like, 50% think about the vibration in this organization and the chaos and that the CTO is spending so much of his time just trying to pull people back. Not. Not. And the, you know, the CEO was absolutely brilliant. But this is an example of one of the ways that we diminish with the best of intentions. It wasn't like the CEO is trying to suffocate people. It's not like he thinks, gee, if I don't have ideas, no one else will. He just hasn't learned how to bridle.

Yeah.

His own creativity. He hasn't learned how to temper this strength to create room for other people to show up with their strengths.

Yes, yes. This is why, you know, some people really love that tool, Strengths finder. It's great. But just do more of your strengths is not actually a great leadership strategy. And that's exactly what I've seen. You could be a really decisive leader or very creative leader and play to your strengths would be. Keep adding that to the organization. But the reality is, it's like you need that balance. Right. You need to balance the creativity with really being clear priorities. And if you're going to. You're not a little speedboat anymore as an organization. As you grow, if you're getting to a bigger size, like a yacht, it's harder to turn that organization. Right, right.

And it's understanding that particularly as an organization grows, you want the strength, but you don't want it all coming from the leader. See, because if the leader is really creative, nobody else has to be creative. Let me give you a couple Other examples, the always on leader, the energetic leader who's always got something to say, always present, always contributing. They bring a ton of energy and they think of course, that their energy is contagious, but what's it like to work around this kind of Energizer Bunny always on leader. Like other people would say, it's exhausting. And you know, these are actually leaders that we, we try to avoid. You know, these are people you don't really want to make eye contact with for fear you're going to activate them. So always on leaders are, are diminishing. Rescuing leaders like big hearted, empathetic, love their people, care about their people, want to do right by the people who work for them. And when they see people struggling, they step in and they help. But you know, often people are most served when they're not helped by the leader. Like, you know, some of my multipliers. I spent 17 years at Oracle and one of the blessings of working in this hard charging environment is I had leaders who lacked empathy. Now they weren't cruel, you know, like pull legs off spiders kind of leaders. They were leaders who asked me to do hard things. Like, you know, Ray Lane, the president of Oracle, Larry Yellowson, the founder and CEO. They gave me these big responsibilities and then they never stepped in and did the hard work for me. They let me wrestle with things, they let me have hard conversations, they let me make hard decisions. And in fact, I remember really vividly Larry Ellison asking me to do something really, really hard. And you know, it was a personnel thing and it was. And I talked him out of it because I thought what he was asking me to do was outrageous and maybe damaging to the business. And I made this case about why I didn't think we should do it. And he absolutely let me do this. He let me back down from this. And I made a colossal mistake. And I should have done exactly what he asked me to do. But like, he didn't rescue me from my own mess. It wasn't stupidity. It was like my own mess was like my own lack of courage. And you know, rescuing leaders don't like to see people fail or struggle or suffer and people end up stagnating around them. You know, they are rendered sort of helpless.

Yeah.

Humiliated. And actually when we rescue people, we think we're sending this message of like, Susan, I've got you, like, I want you to be successful, like, I got your back. And really the subtext of our behavior as leaders is saying something totally different. What we're really saying is, you need me. You can't do this without me.

Yeah.

Which if we remember from just a few minutes ago, that's like the essence of diminishing logic. And, and so those are like three of them. But you know, it's leaders who are pacesetters for their team, leaders who are rapid responders, leaders who are can do optimist, leaders who are strategists, perfectionists. Like these are all ways that we bring such strength that we, we can other people.

Yes, yes. I think what's interesting is that some of this ties into what people's belief a leader needs to be right. And so you think about the rescuer they believe. This is my job as a leader. I can't let my people suffer and fail if I'm not doing that. That's sort of the internal dialogue that I've seen. Or gosh, if I don't come with all the ideas in the group and spur thinking, I'm not inspiring my team. So there's always a belief. I believe there's always some type of mindset or belief that's fueling that behavior of what they think leadership means or how they define it.

Absolutely. And Susan, I think you've hit the nail on the head about where is the source of the accidental diminisher. We know the source of the tyrannical, controlling diminisher, but the source of the accidental diminisher is often an ill conceived notion of one's job. Because it's really easy to assume that like my job as a leader is to have the answers. In fact, like people come line up outside of my office with questions and wanting direction and answers. And so it's so easy to assume that my job is to dole out answers, to bail people out, to remove obstacles, which is a very common frame. Like people think, like, my job as a leader is to remove obstacles. Well, what happens if you remove all the obstacles? I got some really bad management advice early on in my career and then I got some kind of interesting management coaching. They actually came from the same boss. But like the really bad management out of advice I got when I was a new leader, my boss said to me, liz, as the manager, your job is to do everything that is new, important and hard. Like that's your job. And then like give everything else to people on your team. And it sounded so smart. I'm like, oh yeah, of course, of course. Like I'm supposed to like throw my body on the hard stuff. And I did. And what a mess that was. So like fast forward a few months I'm like, I'm a superstar. I'm kind of what I, you know, I called and have written about, you know, like an impact player. Like, I'm doing all the visible work, but I'm also working till 10 o' clock at night. And, you know, I start my day with 10 things on my to do list, and I end my day with 15 or 20. As everyone's piling on their problems. To me, I'm building strength as a professional, but everyone else is getting weakened. It took me a few months to figure out that I had it exactly wrong or that advice was exactly wrong. You know, if you remove the obstacles and if you do all the hard stuff, how does anyone else build capability? How do you build? How do you ever move on to a bigger job if no one has the capability and confidence on their team? Multipliers are leaders who figure out how to build strength around them. Now, the other, the good guidance I got from the same boss, and I think maybe he saw the mess I had got myself in. So I'm working in this frenzy and he stops by my office one day and he sits down. And I will never forget this because I was so baffled by this conversation. I'm again, I'm a very young manager. I got thrown into, like a pretty big leadership job when I was like 25 years old. So 24, maybe. 25. He said, he said, liz, you know, I just wanted, like, you to know that if you want to sit in your office and read novels all day, that'd be fine with me as long as people on your team are getting their work done. And I'm thinking, has he lost his mind? Like, and it was such a violation of my work ethic. And I mean, I don't read novels. I'm like, I'm kind of a nonfiction sort of gal. It was just like, does he really want me to read novels at my desk? Like, who would do that? And took me a couple days, I think, to process and understand what he was saying to me, which is, your productivity isn't what's important and maybe even your capability isn't what's important. What's important is the output and the capability of the team. And that, for me, really helped me, like, between those two experiences, it really helped me reorient, like, what my job was. It wasn't to be the superstar on the team and have, like a supporting cast. It was to get the right work to the right people and, and build capability and output and productivity on my team.

Like, yeah, because that's exactly your. What is your value and how people define it. That's what I was saying. Like, their definition of leadership seems to be different about what is my actual value here and how can I most. Where do I need to reorient it versus I'm gonna shine if my team shines. Right. How much capability can I create in them? Or is there's this fear that, oh, I'll get replaced or people won't see me and they won't think I'm doing anything underneath that. That could be playing out Underneath.

Yeah. And, you know, and I like the word that you use, value. Because I do believe that, like, the smartest leaders figure out that their value does not come from being the smartest person in the room. It doesn't come from having the answers and solving the problems of being the genius. Their value comes from being a genius maker, being the person who defines the challenge, who frames a puzzle, who asks a question, and then lets other people find the answers. That, particularly as the world is getting so complex and cycles are spinning so fast, there's. There's more than any one leader can know. There's more than any, you know, given department manager can get their arms around. And that's where you need, like all brains, kind of like firing on all cylinders. Like, you need people contributing at 100%.

Yeah. I think a simple way you could think about, are you doing this or not? Is your team meeting, are you leading that meeting or are you letting some of your team lead that meeting? Because I found it very interesting when I've challenged some leaders to say, if you're leading every single meeting, how are you building the capability for your team to be able to lead a similar meeting? Have you considered rotating facilitation of that meeting and you stepping back and being more of a listener, a question asker, versus feeling like you have to drive it.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a great manifestation of this. We found. When I was doing the research, people, you know, I had people describe their diminishing leaders and their multiplying leaders. And there's this one executive from intel, and he described the diminishing leader. He said, oh, yeah, he had all the answers. He told people what to do. You know, at given meeting, he's speaking like 70, 75% of the time. And a whole host of problems ensued from this brilliant Ph.D. kind of boss. Then he described this other leader. I think his name might have been George Schneer. And he said, you know what? In a team meeting, George spoke 10 to 20% of the time. And it was to crisp up a problem statement and then to let you know, and then to step back and let his team have added. And so there's a couple wonderful techniques people can use, like take what I call the extreme question challenges. Go into a meeting and see if you can lead it only with only questions. Or send out. This is something I've learned to do, is send out the meeting agenda a couple days in advance, but not just alert people to the topics of discussion. Frame the agenda in the form of questions. Like, here are the questions we're going to be exploring. Come in with ideas and, you know, evidence and analysis to help us think through these questions. Or to take what I call the poker chip challenge, which is, you know, to put a set of chips in your pocket or just hold the idea in your head, which, I don't know, three, four or five chips, maybe you put some quarters in. In your pocket, and each chip represents something you say or contribute during the meeting. And you think, okay, I only got four chips. How do I use those to greatest impact? Maybe it's to frame the meeting. Maybe it's to ask a big question. You know, maybe I save a chip towards the end to kind of sum it up and move us forward. You know, we find the best leaders. They know when to play big, and they do. They sort of play a chip, but they also know how to pull back and play small.

Yeah.

And create room for others. Those are all things you can do to make that. That meeting one where it's like a burst of ideas from the team. Or rotate the leadership. I love that. Or let the team decide when to call meetings.

Right, Right. There's all different ways you could actually delegate some authority that you think is in your purview as the leader to do. I'm curious to know, given that they have unintended diminishers, how do you know if your leadership is diminishing? I mean, I know, but I'm asking you, how do you know if your leadership. If your leadership is diminishing or being more of a multiplier?

Well, you know, Susan, I would love to start with what. What you see, given the coaching work you do. Like, how would you help someone see it? I'll fill in, like, you know, a few things that I have found useful. But like, how. How do people see their real impact?

Well, usually they'll come with a complaint about their team. And so we always look back to say, well, what is that complaint? And how are you fueling that issue? Or not? In what ways Are you showing up that's contributing to that, showing up in your team members? So always looking for. That's just data that's reflecting back to you about your leadership. Obviously you and I know there's ways of getting information of 360s and interviews and providing the leader direct quotes and examples and themes of how people and that's usually more commonly how it happens. But even as us coaches, then when we do that, we're taking away the ability of the leader to, to stop and think about in what ways am I creating this struggle that I'm having with John or Sally. Right?

Yeah. And Susan, I couldn't agree with you more. That I think it's a helpful lens to take as a leader is like every time you have a problem, like how am I creating this problem? And it's something I try to do myself, it usually takes me at least five or 10 minutes to get past my, my own frustration about the problem. Like, ah, why isn't this person doing this? And why aren't they stepping up and why aren't they getting it across the finish line and that? And so I have my own little pity party. I get frustrated in my head and then I'm like, okay, what have I done that has enabled this problem? Because usually there's something and then you might take that to the next level, which is what am I doing with the best of intentions that's causing that person to shut down, to hold back, to play it safe, to do incomplete work, to miss the mark? Like, it's usually something we're doing with the best of intentions. You know, there's a couple other diagnostic tools. One is this little quiz. It's called the Accidental Diminisher quiz. And it's very simple. It's like a three minute quiz. And I have been shocked over the years how many people have found this to be so helpful. But I'm trying to remember like where it is. I think it might just be accidentally accidentaldiminisherquiz.com it might be that simple. I think you could just search on accidentaldiminisher quiz or go to the wisemangroup.com and you'll find it there. But it's like 10 questions and it'll help you see which one of these accidental diminisher tendencies might be going on for you. Now you can also ask your team and there are some ways to not do this. Well, like if you go to your team and say, am I a diminisher? Am I having a diminishing effect? No, Liz, not true. Of course not, yeah, great, I love you. Best boss ever. That won't work. The other thing that doesn't really work is say, hey, am I an accidental diminisher? But here's what does work is if you go to people on your team and you say, what might I be doing with the best of intentions? That's causing decisions to get delayed. That is causing people to hold back. That is keeping people from experimenting, ideating whatever it is that you want. Usually if you frame it like, what am I doing? With really good intent, that's a question people can answer. They might be like, well, you know, you come in and help before I really need it. Like, I appreciate it, but I don't really need it. Or, you know, you're so full of ideas that I always. I don't feel like none of you don't really need mine. And that's a conversation that can be had one on one. And it's also a pretty fun conversation to have as a team. You could just even write the accidental diminisher tendencies on the board and say, which one do you think might be my vulnerability? And then you can go around the whole team. Because accidental diminishing doesn't just come from the boss. It can come from really well intended colleagues.

Yeah. Who play who. Who fit into that role. Exactly. And it becomes this perfect symbiotic. But no one grows perfect symbiotic relationship. Well, thank you so much for being here with us and sharing all these great stories and ideas and concepts. I'm wondering, where can people learn more about you and your work?

Well, pretty easy to find, but TheWiseManGroup.com is a good starting place. And it's TheWiseManGroup.com if you go to WisemanGroup.com it's an interior design firm in San Francisco, which I guarantee you is a way more interesting website than mine. Like, it's way more beautiful. But we are thewisemangroup.com and there's stuff on all the books and resources and tools and a bunch of goodies there.

Excellent. All right, we'll make sure to add that in the show notes. And again, really appreciate you coming on here today. So thank you so much. And if you like this episode, you're not going to want to miss my interview with Tommy Breedlove, who guides people to discover a life of significance without compromising their drive or ambition. Let's all lead the way. Hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I'd like to point you to the next important step. Hit the subscribe button and the bell to get notified when we release new content. I'll see you on the next episode of the Enlightened Executive.