Part of the ALT (Adapt Learn Thrive) to REBOOT Leadership series
brought to you by LGIT Smart Solutions
Have you ever been for a walk in the park and not turned around until you’ve had at least one novel idea? That’s what leadership expert Liz Wiseman does.
Luckily at LGIT Smart Solutions, our offices are located in the beautiful Woodlands Office Park in Johannesburg. So we regularly take a breather and refresh our mindsets with a stroll. What is of most importance to us, is what we do with those new ideas and how we lead others to own their new ideas and actions. If we want to solve real challenges at a scale that has significance, we have to move beyond ‘the brilliant idea of one person’. In her book Multipliers – how the best leaders make everyone smarter”, Liz talks about how to do just that.
According to Wiseman, you can choose to be a diminisher or a multiplier. The multiplier shows that others are important by listening, questioning, offering stretch and challenge, and then trusting enough to step out of the way and let action happen. They assume that people are smart enough to figure out what they need to do and they liberate them to get on with the doing (and learning), providing support on the sideline. In this way, the are ‘multiplying’.
Diminishers, by contrast, are the ‘smart ones’, the empire builders. They know best, tell best, interrupt and even do when deemed necessary. They are often well intended but the impact of their actions tends not to set others or the business up for optimal success. In this way they diminish what their teams can achieve. They may recruit the brightest and the best talent, but once job starts, the talent doesn’t get seen and heard.
Wizemans advice? Shop for the right boss! Look out for signs of multiplying behaviour. And try to be a multiplier yourself.
My challenge to you in this post, the second in our new ALT (Adapt Learn Thrive) to reboot leadership series, (you can read the first one here), is to ask yourself on your next ‘walk in the park’:
Are you a smart leader creating a dumb team?
Why are you smart around some leaders, and dumb around others?
What kind of leadership do you want to encourage in your place of work?
Please leave me your comments.
At LGIT Smart Solutions we make meaning through delivering quality learning experiences that uplift and build profitable businesses and communities. Over the past 19 years we have earned our stripes as a Microsoft Silver Learning Partner and Microsoft Corporate Social Responsibility Award Winner. We are Seta Accredited and are BEE Level 2.
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