Essential leadership qualities for the growth and success of real estate teams.
Not everyone who is brilliant causes brilliance. – Liz Wiseman, author of ‘Multipliers’.
The best leaders make everyone smarter. These leaders are brilliant, achievement-oriented people who want to unlock the intelligence in others. The best leaders are genius-makers.
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It isn’t how much you know that matters.
You can likely think of a person who is brilliant AND has a knack for using their own intelligence to provoke intelligence in the people around them.
This type of leader fosters, harnesses, and infects intellectual growth in others. They become, as a leader, the multiplier to the intelligence of their team. A Multiplier
“Multipliers invoke each person’s unique intelligence and create an atmosphere of genius—innovation, productive effort, and collective intelligence.”
On the other hand, you can probably think of a really smart person with a tendency to suck the intelligence out of a group of people. They themselves may be smart, but the people around them aren’t invited to be smart. A Diminisher
Liz Wiseman explains it best in this short Youtube video Diminisher vs. Multiplier
Related: check out this interview with Liz on why she wrote the book “Multipliers”.
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What type of leader are you?
Are you a leader who brings out the best in the people around them by challenging them or by letting them become uncomfortable in order to search for the answer?
Or….
Are you sucking the intelligence out of your team by being a micromanager and potentially only getting about half of the potential from your employees?
According to Wiseman’s concept of Multipliers and Diminishers – there are key factors to determine the makeup of the two.
Present in both styles of leadership is the expectation of greatness from their team.
Multipliers invest in the growth of their team and let them take initiative, whereas team members under Diminishers can feel overworked, unappreciated, and underutilized.
Read on to help you determine your Multiplier tendencies.
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The 5 Disciplines of a Multiplier – Liz Wiseman
1. Talent Magnet –
The talent magnet attracts talented people and uses them that their highest point of contribution.
They can recognize talented people, draw them in, and utilize them to their fullest.
A Talent Magnet asks questions like:
- “What is the next challenge for you?”
- “What would be a stretch assignment?”
- “What is getting in the way of your success?”
Related: See our short 6-part video series on The 4 Points of Recruiting, which covers all of this, and one of our favorite exercises, the Three Columns Exercise
2. The Liberator –
The Liberator believes in creating an environment where the best ideas surface and people do their best work.
By granting your team members permission to think, your team is free to be and/or become intelligent.
Provide space for others to do the best work. Make a conscious effort to create a learning environment by recruiting people with a strong learning orientation and by admitting your own mistakes.
“Is this your best work??”
Asking your team if they offer their best gives them the opportunity to push themselves beyond previous limits.
It is a KEY reason that Multipliers get more than 100% of intelligence out of others.
3. The Challenger-
Great leaders don’t just give people more work they give them harder work- a bigger challenge that prompts deep learning and growth.
The Challenger encourages others to explore the impossible, uncertain, and uncomfortable place that makes us stretch both our imagination and capabilities.
By making a challenge tangible and measurable, The Challenger allows others to visualize achievement and have confidence that the organization has the collective brainpower required.
Confidence is essential for an organization to extend itself beyond its current reach and capability.
Related: See our Could do/Should do/Must do exercise.
4. The Debate Maker-
The Debate Maker gives sound decisions through rigorous debate.
When faced with a high-stakes decision, Multipliers pull toward the full brainpower of their organization.
Bring people together and discover what they know, encourage people to challenge and stretch each other’s thinking through collective dialogue and debate.
Encouraging collective and well-thought debate makes the entire organization smarter over time.
Related: See Shane Snow’s article: “How To Debate Ideas Productively At Work”
5. The Investor-
The Investor gives other people ownership for results and invests in their success.
By extracting people’s full capability, Multipliers get twice the capability from people as do Diminishers. In fact, Diminishers receive less than 50% of the capability of their team.
Related: See this resource about the greatest investments you can make in business, and a fun exercise for your team.
Surprise Findings – consistency and patterns within Multipliers:
- They have a hard edge
- They don’t play small
- Have a great sense of humor
It is important to have an awareness of the ways you can become a Diminisher; often by accident, but intelligence-stifling just the same.
Accidental Diminishers-
1. Idea Guy-
- Intention- their ideas to stimulate ideas in others.
- Outcome- Overwhelm others who shut down or spend time chasing the idea of the day.
- Workaround- Create a holding tank- ask yourself “do I want my people to take action on this today?” If not, hold the idea.
2. Always on-
- Intention- To create infections energy and share their point of view.
- Outcome- Consume all the space and others tune them out.
- Workaround- Say it just once, avoid repeating for emphasis. Create a reason for others to chime in and build on the idea. Encourage others to speak up.
3. Rescuer- Most common way leaders accidentally diminish
- Intention- To ensure people are successful and protect their reputation.
- Outcome- People become dependent which weakens their reputation.
- Workaround- Ask for their F-I-X.
Ask: “How do you think we should solve it?”
4. Pacesetter-
- Intention- To set a high standard for quality or pace.
- Outcome- Others become spectators or give up when they can’t keep up.
- Workaround- Stay within sight- stay close enough in the distance so others can catch up.
5. Rapid Responder-
- Intention- To keep their organization moving fast.
- Outcome- Organization moves slowly because of the traffic jam of too many decisions or changes.
- Workaround- Set a mandatory waiting period. 24 hours before responding to any email that falls into someone else’s job. Give that person the right of first response.
6. Optimist-
- Intention- Creates the belief that the team can do it.
- Outcome- People wonder if they appreciate the struggle and the possibility of failure.
- Workaround- Signal the struggle. Before offering your boundless enthusiasm start by acknowledging how hard the work is. Let people know “What I am asking you to do is hard. Success isn’t guaranteed.”
7. Protector-
- Intention- To keep people safe from political forces in the organization; Mama Bear; manufacture safety.
- Outcome- People don’t learn to fend for themselves.
- Workaround- Expose your team members to harsh realities in small doses so they can learn from their mistakes and develop strength.
8. Strategist-
- Intention- Create a compelling reason to move beyond the status quo.
- Outcome- people defer up and second guess the boss rather than finding answers.
- Workaround- Don’t complete the puzzle. Leave sections for the team to complete.
Establish WHY and what let the team fill in HOW.
9. Perfectionist-
- Intention-To help people produce outstanding work they are proud of.
- Outcome- People feel criticized, become disheartened and stop trying.
- Workaround- Define the standards of excellence upfront. Let people know what “outstanding” looks like and defines the criteria for completeness. Ask people to self-assess by the standards.
ASK YOURSELF:
- How might I be shutting down the ideas and actions of others despite having the best of intentions?
- What am I inadvertently doing that might be having a diminishing impact on others?
- How might my intentions be interpreted differently by others? What messages are my actions actually conveying?
- What could I do differently?
Check out our downloadable guide – Accidental Diminishers
Related: Take this quiz to determine if you have a hidden diminishing quality that, with awareness, could cause you to look to improve your leadership.
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Final Thought
The intelligence we possess is a powerful tool. When used to encourage debate and collaboration, this intelligence becomes brilliance. Take advantage of every opportunity to be brilliant.
It’s not enough to be a genius. You should aim to be a genius-maker. Bring out the genius that exists in the people around you. Dig in and ask smart and thoughtful questions.
Strive to create an environment that forces everyone to stretch and push themselves harder, building gains in the muscle of everyone around them.
Be Elite,
Debbie Lariviere
If you’re looking for strategies to improve your leadership tendencies to help your team WIN, schedule a 30-minute exploratory call with us today. Contact us.
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