How Can Your Leadership Development Make Your Staff Smarter? With Expert Liz Wiseman

My guest today is Liz Wiseman. She is the founder and the president of The Wiseman Group. She’s also the author of the very popular book, Multipliers; How The Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. The book has just been released in its 2nd edition with new refreshed and new content including:

Accidental Diminisher chapter
Dealing with Diminishers chapter
Building a Multiplier Culture section of the “Becoming a Multiplier” chapter.
Multipliers Experiments in appendix

I spoke with Liz about her research over the past 8 years on what the best leaders do to build up the people around them.“The most intelligent leaders, really smart, capable people, don’t always engender intelligence in those around them,” says Wiseman. “Their presence as a leader costs the presence of others. They often take up too much space.”

Wiseman calls these scene stealers “diminishers” and points out that when they walk into a room, it often goes quiet. Why? Because their employees know that the leader has to be the smartest person in the room. Wiseman jokes that anyone who has ever worked for even a week knows the type. But it’s not funny when you consider that Wiseman’s research shows that under diminishers, people work at 50% of their capability.