What I Learned This Week: Be a Multiplier

Source: Well-Oiled Operations Podcast

The most valuable lesson I’ve learned this week is the concept of multipliers vs diminishers.

Liz Wiseman is a leadership coach who says leaders fall into two broad categories:

• Multipliers grow, energize and get the best out of others.

• Diminishers shrink, drain, hold back, and don't get the most out of others (often unintentionally).

She says, “The best leaders don’t know everything; they know how to bring out the best in others.”

What is a Multiplier?

A Multiplier is a leader who brings out the best in others. Instead of relying on their own intelligence or doing everything themselves, they create an environment where people feel engaged, capable, and motivated to contribute. Multipliers amplify the talent, energy, and thinking of the team.

Three Things We Can Do to Be Multipliers

1. Fully engage the team. Set clear expectations, show belief in people’s capabilities, and create an environment where individuals feel trusted and challenged to do their best work. 

2. Focus on developing people, not being the expert. You don’t need to be the smartest in the room. Shift from proving your value to growing others’ value.

3. Create space for others to think and contribute. Ask questions, invite ideas, and resist the urge to immediately provide answers. Let others use and grow their intelligence.

In short, create a vision and expectations, then help and let them do their best work while celebrating their success and coaching them up when necessary.

What is a Diminsher?

Diminishers are leaders who drain intelligence and capability from others, often without realizing it. They tend to rely on their own ideas, control decisions, and step in too quickly—causing people around them to disengage, play it safe, or underperform. Even though they may be talented or well-intentioned, their leadership style limits growth and contribution from the team.

Three Things Diminshers Do

1. They jump in with answers too quickly. Diminishers solve problems themselves instead of letting others think, which shuts down learning and ownership.

2. They rely on their own intelligence over the team’s. By needing to be the expert or the decision-maker, they unintentionally signal that others’ ideas aren’t needed.

3. They create dependency instead of capability. People wait for direction, approval, or correction rather than stepping up, because the leader has trained them to defer.

Quick Self-Check for Leaders:

Ask yourself:

• Do I jump in with answers before others have a chance to think?

• Do people wait for my approval instead of taking ownership?

• Am I solving problems for the team more than with the team?

• Do meetings feel quieter or more energized when I’m in the room?

More “yes” answers may signal diminishing behaviors—even if intentions are good.

Quick Self-Check for Teammates:

You don’t have to be a leader to be multiplier or diminsher. Some teammates energize make the people around them better—those are the multipliers you want to be around and want to play with.

• Do people want to be on my team?

• Do people perform better because I’m around or better without me?

• Do I have to be the best, smartest, and get all the credit or can I share the love?

• Do people feel better or more confident around me?

Quick Self-Check for Teammates:

My two biggest takeaways from the talk were about growth mindset and muscle memory.

• Growth Mindset: Wiseman says multipliers have a growth mindset about others: They won’t do it right or like you would do it, but they can learn, and their way might be good enough or even better.

• Muscle Memory: When she was asked how she built the court to take more risks and resilience to bounce back from mistakes while maintaining our confidence, Liz said we have to build our muscle memory — the more you do hard things, recover from hard things, or climb out of the valley and figure it out, the more you can draw back on those experiences.

• And they seek to be wanted, not needed. Their people can function without them, but want them around — want their guidance, leadership, and support.

You have to go through hard things if you want to learn how to handle hard better and maintain your confidence when it does get hard.

So, be a multiplier — someone who makes the people around them better, who gets the most out of the people around them, and who brings out the best in other people.

Question of the Day: How can you be a multiplier, not a diminisher?

Watch more here: