Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter (10 page)

M
ichael Chang
¹
began his career in a small consulting company. As a young manager, he was forceful with his opinion and erred toward brutal honesty. Over time, he saw its damaging effects and reflected, “It certainly doesn’t get people to blossom.”

As Michael gained leadership experience, he began to realize that when you become the leader, the center of gravity is no longer yourself. He had a mentor who taught him that the leader’s job is to put other people on stage. He began to shift his focus to others, and he became less controlling and learned to give people space. Where he used to jump in and do it for them, he learned to hold back. He found that not only do other people step up, they often surprise you by producing something better than you would have. As he has grown as a leader, he’s learned to be direct without being destructive. He’s learned how to create an environment where he could tell the truth and have others grow from it.

Today, this manager is the CEO of a thriving start-up company. He has developed several practices that give space for others to do their
best work. He makes a conscious effort to create a learning environment by recruiting people with a strong learning orientation and then often admitting his own mistakes. This gives others permission to make and recover from their own mistakes. When offering his opinion, he distinguishes “hard opinions” from “soft opinions.” Soft opinions signal to his team:
here are some ideas for you to consider in your own thinking
. Hard opinions are reserved for times when he holds a very strong view.

Here’s a leader who began his career headed down the path of a management tyrant but who has become a Multiplier and Liberator himself. The accomplishment is significant when you consider the path of least resistance for most smart, driven leaders is to become a Tyrant. Even Michael said, “It’s not like it isn’t temping to be tyrannical when you can.”

Let’s face it. Corporate environments and modern organizations are the perfect setup for diminishing leadership and have a certain built-in tyranny. The org charts, the hierarchy, the titles, the approval matrixes skew power toward the top and create incentives for people to shut down and comply. In any hierarchical organization, the playing field is rarely level. The senior leaders stand on the high side of the field and ideas and policies roll easily down to the lower side. Policies—established to create order—often unintentionally keep people from thinking. At best, these policies limit intellectual range of motion as they straitjacket the thinking of the followers. At worst, these systems shut down thinking entirely.

These hierarchical structures make it easy for Tyrants to reign. And in their reign, these managers can easily suppress and constrain the thinking of the people around them.

Consider the fate of Kate, a corporate manager who began her career as an intelligent, driven, and creative collaborator. She was promoted into management and moved quickly from front-line manager to vice president and is now running a large organization. She still sees
herself as an open-minded, creative thought leader. But in a recent 360 degree feedback report, she was shocked to find that her people don’t seem to agree. As she read the report, she could see that her strong ideas were hampering the creativity and capability of her people. And her drive for results was making it difficult for people to be truthful and take risks. One of the comments read, “It is just easier to hold back and let Kate do the thinking.” Kate was stunned.

Every step she had taken up the corporate ladder made it that much easier for her to unintentionally kill other people’s ideas. The nature of the hierarchy had skewed power, making every conversation Kate had with a subordinate inherently unequal. The playing field was tilted in her favor. An off-the-cuff remark could be translated as a strong opinion and turned into policy for her division. If she rolled her eyes or sighed sharply after someone’s comment, everyone in the room noticed and avoided saying anything they thought would produce the same reaction. She had more power than she had realized. She had become an Accidental Diminisher.

I suspect I saw too many military movies in college because they all started to look alike. Inevitably there would be a scene where an army private who was privy to some debacle would stand at attention and nervously appeal to the commanding officer, “Permission to speak freely, sir?” I could never understand this strange custom and why someone would need permission to speak freely. After all, I was in college where thinking and speaking freely was the norm. However, after several years in the workplace, I clearly understood. Formal hierarchies suppressed the voices, and often ideas, of those at the bottom.

Multipliers liberate people from the oppressive forces within corporate hierarchy. They liberate people to think, to speak, and to act with reason. They create an environment where the best ideas surface and where people do their best work. They give people permission to think.

THE TYRANT VERSUS THE LIBERATOR

Multipliers create an intense environment in which superior thinking and work can flourish. Tyrants create a tense environment that suppresses people’s thinking and capability.

A Tense Leader

Jenna Healy was an SVP of field operations for a large telecommunications company. She was a serious leader who even at five feet, three inches had a way of towering over the people who worked for her. Jenna was a smart manager with strong experience, but Jenna was an absolute Tyrant.

Her colleagues said, “She created an environment of hysteria. She created fear all around her and intimidated and bullied people until she got what she wanted. Her primary approach to leadership was ‘What more can you do for me?’” When one of her managers said, “She’s a bit like the ruthless Miranda Priestly in
The Devil Wears Prada
,” I got the picture immediately.

Not only was Jenna a bully, but she struck at random. It was hard to predict what would set her off or who would be the next victim. One person recalled, “You felt like you could be the next guy. I was stressed, on the edge, and at risk around her.” Her colleagues joked, “There needs to be a storm warning system for Jenna. People need to know when it is time to duck and cover.”

Jenna’s quarterly management meeting in Denver was one such time. Jenna had gathered a cross-functional team to review the state of the business in the U.S. market. It was a typical business review with each function, in turn, presenting its “state of the business.” After several presentations, Daniel, the manager of the information technology team, began his presentation by showing the managers the data for how their field service staff was utilizing the IT tools that his team had built for them. He then inquired, “In light of these numbers, I
wonder if the service teams are taking advantage of the tools that already exist?” Based on Jenna’s reaction, you would have thought he had just told her that her team was stupid and lazy. She snapped, “You have no idea what you are talking about,” and then berated him in front of the group. The argument got heated and lasted for an uncomfortable ten minutes. When somebody finally signaled that the group was overdue for a break, there was a rapid dash for the conference room door. But Daniel stayed in an attempt to hold his ground against Jenna. With every one out in the hall, the argument escalated irrationally and turned to shouting.

While things were heated in the conference room, outside in the hall there was a distinct chill in the air. Everyone in the hall was quietly cheering Daniel for standing up to the bully, but those who were next up to present were frozen with fear. You could feel the tension. The fortunate ones who had already given their presentations wished luck to their ill-fated colleagues. These remaining presenters began scrambling to adjust their presentations, taking out anything controversial that might incite the already livid leader. The presenters watered down their presentations, and they got through the meeting, but nothing much was really said and nothing much was accomplished.

Jenna’s organization made some modest progress but continually failed to hit its revenue and service quality targets. Eventually, when she went too far and bullied one of their partners, she was exited instantly from the organization. Jenna went to another company as COO. She lasted two weeks before being demoted. Six months later she was asked to leave.

People hold back around leaders like Jenna. Such Tyrants shut down the flow of intelligence and rarely access people’s best work. Everywhere they go, they find people doing less than they really can. It is no wonder they resort to intimidation, thinking it will get them what they no doubt want—great thinking and great work. But intimidation and fear rarely produce truly great work.

Let’s look at another senior sales and services leader.

An Intense Leader

Robert Enslin is the president of SAP North America, the global software giant. Originally from South Africa, he speaks with a calm confidence. Robert is highly respected with a reputation as a fair, consistent sales leader who grows organizations and delivers results.

Robert operates as a peer to everyone he works with and is accessible to all. One of his managers said of him, “He is very good at disarming you. He is a commoner—one of us. Even if you work three levels below him, he still wants to know what you think.” As a result, people are more transparent around him. They don’t feel like they have to tell him what he wants to hear. This approachability creates safety for the people around Robert. And that safety is what allows him to run a massive sales organization with no surprises.

Several years ago, Robert was asked to take over the Japanese subsidiary for SAP to address some very specific sales performance issues. When he met with his new leadership team in Japan for the first forecast meeting, he could see the forecasting process was in complete disarray. Instead of playing the authoritarian, judging their failure and dictating his solution, Robert restrained himself and started a learning process. He helped them realize the limitations of the current process and the advantages of a new approach. He then drew on their knowledge of the Japanese business and asked them, “How can we take this to the next level?” He created space for the team to try new approaches and fix the problem themselves. He stayed with them on the issue for months until they could run a forecast process that delivered solid, predictable results for the business.

Robert was known for his collegial approach and his calm consistency, but this was tested when he took over the North American business in 2008, just as the global economy was melting down. As spending was locking up and large capital purchases were being put on hold, executives everywhere were beginning to panic. You could feel the tension as you walked through the halls of SAP’s Newtown
Square office near Philadelphia. One step past the glass door, you could feel the tension as you entered the executive conference room.

Inside another conference room, Robert and his new management team were assembled to plan their sales strategy in this new economic environment. Every person on his team knew that Robert had been meeting with the senior executives and was under a lot of pressure. They came to the meeting prepared to feel their share of the pain—after all, this was a sales organization. But Robert was calm and constant, even amid this chaos. His team began to wonder if he hadn’t been reading the news or had skipped the executive meetings. He opened the meeting by acknowledging the severity of the economic issues, but suggested they put them aside. He kept the team focused on the issues within their control. He then asked, “What can we do to differentiate ourselves right now?” Safe within their sphere of expertise and control, the group worked to identify the value proposition that would help them position their solutions in the turbulent climate. After the discussion, he then asked, “How can we help people consume our products so they get the most economic value?” Again, the group could wrestle this question down and put together a plan.

His team said, “We know he must have been getting pressure from up higher, but he didn’t create anxiety for us. He remained calm and just never wigged out. He doesn’t create whiplash for his people.”

Robert’s calmness is not synonymous with softness. He is as intense and focused as any other successful sales executive. The difference is where his focus lies. A member of his leadership team said, “With Robert, it isn’t about him. He makes it about you and about getting the best work from you.”

Robert’s steady hand and open environment provide sanity and stability to an organization that could have easily spun into crisis.

Tense Versus Intense

Tyrants create a
tense
environment—one that is full of stress and anxiety. Liberators like Robert create an
intense
environment that requires concentration, diligence, and energy. It is an environment where people are encouraged to think for themselves but also where people experience a deep obligation to do their best work.

Diminishers create a stress-filled environment because they don’t give people control over their own performance. They operate as Tyrants, overexerting their will on the organization. They cause others to shrink, retreat, and hold back. In the presence of a Tyrant, people try not to stand out. Just consider how people operate under the rule of a political dictator. Tyrants get diminished thinking from others because people only offer the safest of ideas and mediocre work.

While a Tyrant creates stress that causes people to hold back, a Liberator creates space for people to step up. While a Tyrant swings between positions that create whiplash in the organization, a Liberator builds stability that generates forward momentum.

THE LIBERATOR

The Liberator creates an environment where good things happen. They create the conditions where intelligence is engaged, grown, and transformed into concrete successes. What are the conditions for this cycle of learning and success? They might include: