Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman, Greg McKeown Read Free Book Online

ideologies. I encourage you to learn from everyone, even those whose political views you do not share. I hope you will find their stories, their practices, and their impact as inspiring as we did when we entered their worlds.

 
     
    THE MULTIPLIER FORMULA
    ----
    MULTIPLIERS VERSUS DIMINISHERS
    MULTIPLIERS: These leaders are genius makers and bring out the intelligence in others. They build collective, viral intelligence in organizations.
    DIMINISHERS: These leaders are absorbed in their own intelligence, stifle others, and deplete the organization of crucial intelligence and capability.
    The Five Disciplines of the Multipliers
1. The Talent Magnet: Attract and optimize talent
2. The Liberator: Require people’s best thinking
3. The Challenger: Extend challenges
4. The Debate Maker: Debate decisions
5. The Investor: Instill accountability
    The Results
    By extracting people’s full capability, Multipliers get twice the capability from people than do Diminishers.
----

CHAPTER 2
THE TALENT MAGNET
    I not only use all the brains that I have,
but all that I can borrow.
    WOODROW WILSON
    W hen you walk up to the porch of her house in Menlo Park, California, you can sense that Meg Whitman, CEO of eBay, has spent time on the East Coast. With its saltbox shape and white wood, it is one of those West Coast houses that looks like it should be in New England. The house just might remind Meg of her time in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while at business school.
    It was September 2007, and early in the race for the 2008 presidential nomination. There were many interesting candidates vying for the ticket for both parties. That day was a chance for us locals to get a peek at one of the candidates, and for me, it was a chance to extend our research and gain insight into two interesting leaders.
    As the guests gathered on her backyard lawn, Meg Whitman took the microphone and began to introduce Mitt Romney as a candidate for president of the United States. Her introduction was simple.
    I was a young consultant at Bain & Company and had the good fortune to work for Mitt Romney early in my career. After we were hired, all the new consultants scrambled to get on Mitt’s projectteams. Why? The word spread that he was the best boss to work for because he knew how to lead a team and he grew his people. Everyone grew around Mitt.
    You can imagine Meg, a newly minted Harvard MBA, ready to make her mark on the business world. Like many MBAs, she chose to begin her career at Bain & Company, an elite business consulting firm. But she knew landing in the right place inside would determine how quickly she’d learn and advance her career and her value in the marketplace. She heard from one of the more senior consultants, “If you’re smart, you’ll find a spot on Mitt Romney’s team.” She didn’t quite know why Mitt was such a great boss, but being savvy, she maneuvered her way onto his team. She learned why when she started working with him.
    On Mitt’s team, people were engaged. He took the time to get to know each person and to understand the capabilities they brought to the team. This went well beyond reviewing their resume. Mitt would determine what people were naturally good at and find a way to use those talents with the client engagement. In assigning people to roles, Mitt asked questions like “What is the next challenge for you? What would be a stretch assignment?” It wasn’t unusual for someone on Mitt’s team to get loaned to another group if their skills could help rescue a troubled project. In one-on-one meetings, Mitt not only asked about the status of project deliverables, he asked about the blockers. A favorite question was “What is getting in the way of your being successful?”
    Meanwhile, many of Meg’s colleagues didn’t get the same guidance and found themselves working for more typical company leaders who appeared more concerned with advancing their own careers than growing the people on their team. Team meetings