The most painful leadership book I've ever read is the new bestseller Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman and Greg Mckeown. It raises a fundamental question about leadership, one that has been waiting to be named, explored, and finally addressed: As a leader, are you a multiplier or a diminisher?
In asking the question, Wiseman and Mckeown have created a new set of terms that will be with us for a very long time affecting millions. Their premise is that you're either a leader who causes everyone around you to feel and actually become smarter (multiplier) or you're one who causes everyone around you to feel and become dumber (diminisher). It gets to the crux of leadership -- especially now that companies rely on the brains of their employees, not their backs, to stay competitive."
Genius or Genius Maker
The authors ask another important question: "Are you a genius or a genius maker?" Do you need to be the one in the room seen as having all the answers or do you draw out the genius that's within others in solving many of the complex problems facing business today?
Stephen Covey, of Seven Habits fame, makes it clear why genius makers have an edge today when he quotes management icon Peter Drucker in the foreword. Drucker notes that management in the 20th century increased the productivity of manual labor in factories fifty-fold. That was essential at a time when our economy depended more on manufacturing. "The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker," he explains.
Multipliers do this. Wiseman and Mckeown's research found that multipliers get 2.1 times more capability from their workers than diminishers. Factor in the 5% to 10% annual growth bonus they estimate because these same workers are getting smarter and more capable working for a multiplier and you get the kinds of knowledge worker productivity Drucker exclaimed is needed this century.
