Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter

Transcription

>>Rocky Garff: Alright, well let's get started. I'd like to welcome everyone out to this Leading at Google series talk. My name's Rocky Garff I'm a manager in the Media and Platform Solutions Group here at Google and it's my pleasure to welcome Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown, the authors of the-the Multipliers book. I actually met Greg a couple years ago when I moved into his neighborhood and over the course of the last years I've actually talked with him and Liz about the ideas in this book. I've heard them present and I-I really think it's gonna be interesting for a lot of you so. The book came out about a week ago and has made a run to, it hit the top-top 25 on Amazon and it's-it's in the top 10 for the leadership category on Amazon so it's been well received by the market and just glad to have you guys here with us today and-and turn the time over to you. [applause] >>Liz Wiseman: Well good afternoon. I am Liz Wiseman and I'm the author of Multipliers. I'm the President of a little company called Wiseman Group, and I'm here with my partner, Greg McKeown. The work that we do is really to develop executive talent, a lot of that here in Silicon Valley, and to build multiplier leadership around the world. We're really excited to be here with you. Greg is originally from London, England, which you will hear in a few minutes when you hear him talk. He came out to the States to go to business school at Stanford, and he and I have been working together ever since. Our remarks today are gonna be focused on a very simple idea. And the idea is that leaders can be multipliers. That in their role as leaders and what they do as a leader they can make people more capable, more productive, and we would venture to say smarter. They can actually be multipliers. I want to start with a very simple question. [pause] What is the fate of the smart and the talented? What do we do with our smartest, most talented, most capable people inside organizations. What do we do with them? [pause] Louder. >>voice in audience: More work. >>Liz Wiseman: We give 'em more work. What do we do with the smartest and the most talented people inside organizations? Quite often organizations promote them, and they promote them into management. But the problem is that many of these leaders have spent years being reinforced for their own ideas, their own intelligence, their own capability. And sometimes these leaders don't look beyond their own capability to really see and use the genius that sits on their team. Leaders who don't make this transition can end up draining intelligence and capability from people around them, and they can actually become what call "diminishers" -- diminishers of talent and capability. Now through our research we have seen a different model of leadership. We've seen a model where leaders use their smarts and their intellect to amplify the intelligence of people around them. And we called these leaders "multipliers." And what you're gonna see today is what our research showed that these leaders don't get a little bit more from the people they work with, they get vastly more. In fact they get up to twice the capability from people around them. As Greg and I are-are sharing our thoughts with you today, I'd you to do a couple things. I'd like you to think about a leader that you've worked with; someone around whom you were, you were brilliant, you were capable, you did your best work, you solved hard, complex problems. And then think about another leader around whom you struggled to do tough things; someone that made you question your own intelligence. Maybe around someone that you ended up holding back, you couldn't give your full capability. I'd also like you to think about your own tendencies as a leader. I'd like you to think, "Are you a multiplier, someone who uses their intelligence to amplify the intelligence of others, or are you like many of us who maybe have a little bit of diminisher in you?" And I'd like you to think about that as we go through our remarks. First let me introduce you to some of these leaders that we studied. We did a global research project over two years and these are some of the leaders that we encountered. Lutz Ziob, General Manager of Microsoft Learning. His people say of Lutz, "Lutz creates an environment where good things happen. He hires great people, he allows them to make mistakes, and he ferociously debates the most important decisions with his management team and his whole organization." Sue Siegel, former President of Affymetrix, whose partner says of Sue, she's now a venture capitalist at Mohr Davidow Ventures. Her partner says of Sue, "There's a Sue Effect. Everyone around her grows and companies grow under her guidance." He says, "I've often wonder what people are like when they're not around Sue." Greg and I went to go interview her. We had this fabulous interview. We walked out of the parking lot we're like, "Oh that was a great question! Oh that was funny! You were funny! We were so smart!" [laughter] And then we're like, "Oh, that wasn't really us." [laughs] She was smart and we felt brilliant around Sue. We kinda joked that we got Sued. But there is this Sue Effect that people are at their best around Sue Siegel. Narayana Murthy, former CEO, former Chairman of the Board of Infosys, one of the jewels of India, who built a five billion dollar company, 100,000 people strong, and he built it on the idea of hiring really smart people, smarter than himself, and building a management team that could secede him. He turned the reins over to Nandan Nilekani years before it was time for him to step down, and then Nandan Nilekani did the same thing, turning the reins over to someone else with that organization continuing and not skipping a beat. KR Sridhar, CEO of Bloom Energy, the innovators of the Bloom Box which has gotten a lot of media attention lately, and I guess there are probably a rack of Bloom Boxes here on this campus. It's a green tech firm that builds a clean fuel source. KR is a brilliant scientist himself. In fact he literally is a former NASA rocket scientist. But what he does is he creates an environment where people can experiment and he creates an environment of a lot of pressure, but absolutely no stress. How do you create an environment with lots of pressure but no stress? How would you do that? [pause] Lots of pressure, no stress. He holds people absolutely accountable for running the experiments -- run the experiments -- test the science, but he doesn't hold them accountable for the outcome. [pause] And lastly, Bill Campbell. Bill Campbell who is well known as the former CEO of Intuit, a fellow who's a former Columbia football coach turned business executive, who's not a technologist but has a reputation for working well with technologists because in his words, "They have a genius that I don't have." He sees that genius, he admires that genius, and he's able to bring out that intelligence and use it inside the organization. But maybe not so well known as the former CEO of Intuit, he has become the coach to some of Silicon Valley's top executives: Steve Jobs at Apple, Eric Schmidt here at Google, and many others at Google and-and other companies. We're gonna talk a little bit more about Bill later. We discovered these multipliers, these people as Greg and I embarked on our research journey that started in a very simple observation. It, so it's an observation based on my 17 years at Oracle where I ran the corporate university and got to work with the top executive team. And Oracle was known for hiring really, really smart people. And I looked out at this executive team and they were all brilliant. It's one they all had in common. But they didn't all bring out brilliance in people around them. I noticed that some of these leaders didn't have what you might consider to be viral or contagious intelligence. They were brilliant, but no one else around them got to be so smart. They had a way of dumbing down people around them. Yet other leaders amplified the intelligence of others and I asked this question, "Why are we geniuses around some but not around others?" As we looked at these two types of leaders, Greg and I were determined to find out why. I was out coaching a number of executives in Silicon Valley, and I saw this pattern again and again and we wanted to know why. Why do some leaders amplify intelligence and others drain it? Over the course of two years we studied 150 leaders in 35 different companies all across four continents trying to answer this question. In pursuit of that, people told us their stories. They told us about people they worked with around whom they were smart, they did their very best work. And they told us about people that they had worked with where they shut down and they became incapable. One of these stories that caught my attention was told to me by one of my clients, now a CEO of an Internet startup, but he told this story about being 18 years old; I call this story a change in command. It started when he was 18 years old living in Israel. And do 18 year olds in Israel do? [pause] They go into the military. So Gabi like all of his peers goes into the military, he goes into a boot camp program and he is slated to go in and learn to be a tank commander. So he's gonna through the tank commander training program. He does six months of boot camp. He and two of his fellow soldiers do such a great job in boot camp that they're actually tapped on the shoulder and assigned to go out to real combat duty. So they're deployed up to the North, they've been training in the Golan Heights, they're sent up to help patrol this kind of questionable border between Israel and Lebanon, and they're gonna be out in real combat conditions. In these combat conditions with six months of boot camp training Gabi does extraordinarily well. He navigates well, he operates the tank well, he works well with his fellow soldiers, he works well with his commanding officers, he handles the ambiguity and the complexity of the battlefield extraordinarily well. Well after three months they go back to Israel, and they rejoin the group that's just now finished boot camp. They're now gonna enter the tank commander training program and rejoin their peer group. But at the time they do that and they're sent down to the South of Israel they experience a change in command. Now Gabi will go, was going to be performing and learning under a new commanding officer whose name was Uval. Now Uval had to leave the Air Force for health reasons. He comes in, he's a quick study on tank operations, he's now a new commanding officer, but he seems like he has something to prove. And then specifically he's got something to prove to Gabi. [pause] Gabi does well in the classroom, but every time he goes out into the field with Uval at the command he struggles. His team goes out to perform navigational exercises, they have to find waypoints and return those way points back. They start to struggle. Uval points out all the mistakes, singles out this group's performance, and they go from being good navigators to suddenly they're now returning in the bottom 20 percent. Gabi does great in the classroom, but every time he gets in the tank with Uval supervising him, he starts to struggle. Struggle with things he had no problem doing out in combat. Now it won't surprise you when you see how these-these tanks are set up. So you've got right here, right there this is the tank commander. So that's where Gabi sits. This is the very unfortunate guy whose head is like a foot out of the tank. There's a, there's a gunner and there's a navigator, and then seated right here, right here there's a steel chair bolted to the top of the tank. That's where the training officer sits with a clipboard on his thigh to take notes and document all of the mistakes that are made. So this-this guy Uval is literally sitting 10 inches above his head. So for those of you who think you had a boss who kinda has hovered over you -- [laughter] this is nothing. So you can feel this guy breathing down here. Well Gabi starts to struggle. Every time he goes out in the tank with Uval in the chair, he can't operate. He starts to fail maneuvers, he doesn't just fail one, he fails two and three, and quickly Gabi is failing every one of his tank maneuvers. So Uval goes to the company commander whose name is Lior and says, "We have a soldier that needs to be dismissed from the tank commander training program." Well this is a huge deal, this is the end of his military career. It's not a great way for a young man to get off to-to start of his career. But protocol necessitates that before he can be dismissed from the program, he needs to perform a single maneuver out in the field with the company commander, this young officer named Lior. Well Gabi's friends are kind of wishing him luck on this very ill-fated task 'cause they know he's probably gonna fail at this maneuver and be booted from the program. Well Lior takes him and before they get in the tank Lior kinda walks him up to the tank and he stops at this model of the battlefield; it's like a table top about yay high. And he stops him and he says, "Gabi now what are you gonna do when we get to this part of the terrain?" And Gabi goes, "Well I think I kinda know, I'll probably do this and I'll navigate here and there." "Now what about if the enemy comes at you from this angle, what are you gonna do? What about if the enemy is firing from over here, what will you do?" And so Gabi and Lior take a few minutes to kind of prep. They get into the tank and not only does Gabi perform that maneuver well he performs the maneuver perfectly, which incidentally was the toughest maneuver in the entire test suite. A maneuver where all conditions change, nothing can be predicted, it's nothing but ambiguity and on the fly kinds of decisions. They get done, they come down from the tank, Lior turns to him and he says, "Gabi you are not dismissed." He stays in the program, graduates in the top ten percent, goes on to officer training, graduates again in the ten percent, and is asked to become a gnan, which is the Hebrew term for an officer that cultivates the talent of other officers. When Gabi told me this story and shared this experience with me, it reminded me of something we all know to be true -- that it's often within change of command comes a change in capability. We can be smart and capable and at our best around some leaders, but yet other leaders can cause us to doubt ourselves and to hold back. And in Gabi's case be stupefied with fear. [pause] Why is that? Why would some leaders amplify intelligence while others drain it? What were your predictions be? [pause] What would you predict? >>male in audience: If somebody has confidence in you. >>Liz Wiseman: If somebody has confidence in you. What else? Another prediction. Right here. >>female in audience: They point, they point out the things you do well versus the mistakes that you're making or are about to make. >>Liz Wiseman: They'd point out what you do well. Another thought? >>male in audience: They would encourage you not dismiss you. >>Liz Wiseman: Encouraging and not dismissive. What else would you predict would be why some leaders amplify intelligence in others? In the back. >>male in audience: People who are self conscious [unintelligible]other than thinking about yourself. >>Liz Wiseman: People who are self conscious don't perform well so they take that extreme orientation off of you. Okay. Here's, we're gonna do a little exercise. I want you to think about two different leaders that you've worked for, one around, one who was a diminisher to you, one who was a multiplier. You've got a piece of paper and there's a number of pencil, pens and pencils down there. I want you to take two minutes and consider a diminisher, what did they do? Just write down one thing that they did that was characteristic of their leadership approach. How did they manage? And we want you to write down something that the multiplier did. Okay. Then a little tougher question, which was really the backbone of our research: what percentage of your capability did each of these leaders get? Okay. This is not how hard were you working. It's with what you know, your capability, your skills, what you had to offer, how much of that did they really get from you? Okay. A percentage, somewhere between 1 and 100, 100 is they got everything from you. Okay. I want you to take minute or two to do that and we're gonna ask to hear from a few of you. [pause] Okay. We wanna hear from a few of you. Who's got one for me? I'll come find you. Right here, Yvonne. >>Yvonne: Okay. So the diminisher, what they did was they took credit for my work and limited my exposure. The percentage of the capability was 70 percent. The multiplier put me in stretch spots and believed in me -- >>Liz Wiseman: Okay. >>Yvonne: and got 110. >>Liz Wiseman: So the mul, diminisher took credit, multiplier believed in you, 70 percent and a 110 percent. Okay I'm gonna need some people who are gonna help me with the math on this. Now we did, we're gonna do a little bit of informal research. I need two people who are fast on the calculator. [pause] Got their laptops up who can do this is like a moment's notice. Okay I a couple-couple math people. I'd ask Greg to do it but he claims to not be very good at math. [pause] Anyone? Anyone fast on the math? Because you are first to offer you can add up the multiplier scores. And right here I'm gonna ask you add up the diminisher scores. We have 70 and we have 110. Right over here. Okay. You're multiplier. >>male in audience: So my multiplier expressed interest and encouragement, celebrated victories. >>Liz Wiseman: Okay. >>male in audience: And the diminisher doubted my capabilities, dismissed accomplishments. >>Liz Wiseman: Okay diminisher doubted, multiplier expressed - >>male in audience: Interest and encouragement. >>Liz Wiseman: interest and encouragement and the numbers are diminisher? >>male in audience: Forty. >>Liz Wiseman: Got forty percent. And the multiplier got? >>male in audience: Ninety. >>Liz Wiseman: Ninety percent. Okay. Another one from over here. Right here. Start with your multiplier. >>male in audience: Multiplier believed in me, trusted me, left me alone to do the work and the diminisher only, kind of like only let, let their opinions be counted and put myself, put the whole group down and didn't listen to anybody. >>Liz Wiseman: Yeah. Did you hear that? The multiplier trusted me and left me alone to do my work. It's one of the big things we found. These people give others space. They give 'em a ton of space. They give 'em hard things and they leave them alone. Okay. Multiplier got? >>male in audience: I mean I said 120 percent because it made me smarter, hundred doesn't make, and the diminisher 10 percent. >>Liz Wiseman: Okay, multiplier 120, diminisher 10. Okay. Who else has got numbers between one, zero and 100 for me? Thank you. He's telling us an important story. We're gonna get back to this. Who else? I need one or two more. [pause] Over here, thank you. Start with your multiplier. >>male in audience: The multiplier explained the needs and the diminisher, and the diminisher assigned tasks. >>Liz Wiseman: Okay one explains the need, they explain the why. It's a big part of what multipliers do is they explain the why behind the work 'cause when people tell us why, we can be really smart. The diminisher assigned the tasks. Give us your numbers, multiplier? >>male in audience: A hundred percent. >>Liz Wiseman: A hundred percent. Did you have 110 written down? >>male in audience: I did not. >>Liz Wiseman: You did not, okay. [laughs] And the diminisher? >>male in audience: Twenty five. >>Liz Wiseman: Twenty five. Okay. Up here, your multiplier and then diminisher. >>male in audience: The multiplier created a lot of excitement about the project whereas the diminisher really seemed kind of bored with the, my work and with what the group was doing. >>Liz Wiseman: Yeah. So excitement on the multiplier, boredom on the diminisher. And your numbers are for the multiplier? >>male in audience: One hundred. >>Liz Wiseman: One hundred. >>male in audience: Sixty-six. >>Liz Wiseman: And sixty-six. Okay. I want just a few more shout outs on these numbers. Let's take this group kind of right here. Give me your number on your multipliers. >>female in audience: Eighty-five. >>Liz Wiseman: Eighty-five. >>male in audience: A hundred. >>Liz Wiseman: A hundred. >>male in audience: Ninety. >>Liz Wiseman: Ninety. And? >>male in audience: Ninety. >>Liz Wiseman: Ninety. Okay, one more. >>male in audience: Also ninety. >>Liz Wiseman: Also ninety. Okay. How 'bout diminishers? Someone do some shout outs of your diminishers. >>male in audience: [unintelligible] >>Liz Wiseman: Ten percent. Ten percent of what he was able to give. >>male in audience: Forty. >>Liz Wiseman: Forty. >>female in audience: Seventy. >>Liz Wiseman: Seventy. >>male in audience: Eighty-five. >>Liz Wiseman: Eighty-five. >>female in audience: Fifty. >>Liz Wiseman: Fifty percent. [pause] >>male in audience: Ten. >>Liz Wiseman: Ten percent. Okay. How 'bout one more? A shout out. In the back. >>male in audience: Forty. >>Liz Wiseman: Forty percent. Okay. Now our math geniuses here are gonna be adding that up as we look at this. We found very consistently these multipliers and diminishers do different things. When you've got these numbers let us know. Let me know. Multiplier? >>male in audience: Do you want a sum? >>Liz Wiseman: I want an average. I did not explain that well. I want an average. Okay. [pause] Here's what we found in our research and Greg is gonna take you through the-the-the nuts and bolts of our finding. We found that these multipliers really get more from people, and they do things differently. Diminishers tend to be geniuses; people who find strength in their own intelligence. It's what they rely on, they rely on their own intelligence to get their job done. Multipliers tend to be genius makers. They themselves might be brilliant and capable, but they see their role as a leader as to create and amplify intelligence around them. [pause] Do we have our numbers? >>male in audience: Yes. >>Liz Wiseman: Average for our diminishers? >>male in audience: Forty-three. >>Liz Wiseman: Forty-three percent. And do we have an average for our multiplier? >>male in audience: Not yet. >>Liz Wiseman: Not yet. Okay. Greg, Greg will query it from you. [pause] >>Greg McKeown: So what did we find? We found that diminishers and multipliers actually do a lot of things the same, really similar. But they do a few things really differently that makes a really big difference. So what is the most important difference we found? It was the assumptions that they held. So whereas diminishers seemed to have this sense of scarcity around intelligence, that people will never be able to figure this out without me. It's like one of the executives that confessed after a meeting this 4,000 engineers in his group he says, "There's just one or two people that I find worth listening to around here. What do you need from all the rest of them, these people they're just not smart enough for me to really take them seriously." Contrast that with multipliers who have this sense of abundance that it's not you're either smart or you're dumb, it's about in what way are you smart. A sense of abundance in intelligence and capability, particularly this idea that people are smart and they'll figure this out. Give them a chance, they'll work it out. Show them what the problem is, they'll work it out. Give them that space. These assumptions lead to five particular differences between diminishers and multipliers. First of all, diminishers tended to work as empire builders so they were more interested in building their empires than they were in building other people's careers. So as an example of this you could compare two Stanford professors -- one who was so interested in his own thinking, his own research that he's busy writing his blogs and writing his next paper and so on, that the people underneath said, "I just never even get to see him. I mean he's brilliant, yes everyone knows that, but I just get no-no time, no face time, no-no opportunity." Contrast this with the late Rajeev Motwani, who of course was Sergey and Larry's advisor at Stanford. Sergey Brin wrote that, "When his interest turned to data mining Rajeev, who had specialized in the field, helped to coordinate a regular meeting group on the subject. Later when Larry and I began to work together on the research that would lead to Google, Rajeev was there to support us, guide us through challenges both technical and organizational. Eventually as Google emerged from Stanford, Rajeev remained a friend and advisor, as he has with many people and start ups since." You just think of what happened because this multiplier Motwani was not obsessed with his own knowledge and his own agenda, that he could be aware of the knowledge and insight and interest and intelligence in his students. And of course every one of us is impacted by his genius. He wasn't a genius, he was a genius maker. He wasn't obsessed with his own intellectual empire but in really accelerating the careers in the people around him. Secondly, we found that diminishers tended to be tyrants, while multipliers tended to be liberators. It's just the difference between creating a tense climate that stifles people and an intense climate that draws out people's very best and boldest thinking. Third, we found that diminishers tended to be know-it-alls. I mean they just, just thought that what they knew was the most important thing, they had to be the smartest person in the room versus multipliers who are challengers. We heard about that, these stretch assignments that really push people beyond what they know how to do. It's really just the difference between thinking that your job is to have the right answer versus thinking that your job is to have the right question. It's a big orientation difference. Fourth, diminishers tended to be decision makers. The idea is they thought, "Well listen if I could just make the decision fast enough then we'll quickly get on to being able to execute this, so I'll just make all the decisions fast, fast, fast." They'll go and do it. They thought that they could skip the debate, somehow we'll just miss that and then we'll just get on to execution. But what we learned as we studied this is that you can't just skip debate, you can't choose if debate happens, you all know this is true. You go to a meeting and nobody really talks about it and the real meeting happens after the meeting has taken place. The debate happens. What multipliers learn is that you just have to figure out when to do it, how to do it, so that it can actually help make a really smart decision, drive a sound decision. And this is what we found. They were debate makers, they would frame how those decisions were made and how the debate took place. And fifth, they were, the difference between being a micromanager, think of one manager we studied who at two o'clock everyday would walk around the cubicles just to see what was on someone's screen, "What are they doing? I gotta be here, they won't get on with work if I'm not around hovering there." And another multiplier the, which at the time John Chambers hired his first VP and he said, "Listen," he said, "this is how it's gonna work from here on out. You're gonna be in charge of this. Everything in your area 51 percent, I'm in charge 49 percent. You come to me, I'll advise you, I want to have input, but you own this." And so he had this sense of ownership that he was now really in charge, and he shifted the burden of thinking from himself onto his team. And so of course what does this lead to? They get a lot more capability and intelligence out of their people. Let's talk about how much more. What did you get here? >>male in audience: Ninety-eight percent. >>Greg McKeown: Ninety-eight percent. What did you say? >>male in audience: Forty-three percent. >>Greg McKeown: Forty-three to ninety-eight. Doesn't take a math genius to work out the approximate ratio is? Two X. If you're a diminisher you tend to get about 50 percent of the intelligent, intelligence that's available as an average. As a multiplier you get twice that capability, you get everything. And these 110 and 120s originally the idea was, "Well this is kind of off the chart. This is just an outline, let's not use it." But then after a time when we talked to people and really asked them they said, "No, I got smarter." Intelligence could be grown, could be expanded. What are the implications of this to organizations? First, diminishers are expensive. I mean they take twice the resources to get the same job done. Twice the resources at least to get the same intellectual brain trust. For once the CFO and the HR executive agree. This is a kind of leader that we want inside of organizations. And the second implication is the other side of the same point which is that multipliers get so much more brain power from their people that they essentially doubled the intellectual workforce for free. [pause] A question was put by a-a-an article that was published in United Arab Emirates recently, "What kind of leader are you?" What kind are you? What kind am I? Diminisher, multiplier? And then the second question, "What kind of leader do you aspire to be?" [pause] The activist and lead singer for U2, Bono, said, "It has been said that after meeting the great British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, you left feel-feeling that you had met the smartest person in the world, but after meeting his rival Benjamin Disraeli, you left thinking you were the smartest person." This seems to us to be a very succinct synopsis of the contrast between these two types of leaders and their approach. [pause] >>Liz Wiseman: So we ask you to reflect for a just a few minutes on what kind of leader do you want to be? A genius or a genius maker? One rooted in his or her own capabilities, the center of attention, and perhaps the limiting force for the growth of your team or one who unleashes genius inside your or-organization? Someone who leads an army of geniuses. [pause] In a recent Tweet this was I think from-from was last week one of the-the people who got an early copy of the book, a blogger said, "The person sitting at the apex of the intelligence hierarchy is the genius maker, not the genius." That was his take away in these ideas. It's at the apex of the genius hierarchy. We'd like to kind of move to a thought around how do you become a multiplier? Many of us are already there, but many of us probably have some seeds of diminisher in our leadership based on how we kinda have grown up in our career. Can you become a multiplier? And how do you become one? I'd like to just start with Bill Campbell as an example. I mentioned Bill Campbell, multiplier, CEO of Intuit, and now coach to Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, Larry, Sergey, but he didn't start out this way. When we went to interview Bill Campbell someone said, "Oh Liz you need to talk to Bill Campbell. He's a massive multiplier." So I went down, Greg and I went down, we sat with him in his office and he said, "Oh no. I'm not a multiplier. Well maybe now, but I didn't start this way." He said, "Let me tell you how I started my career. I began my career as a diminisher. I came outta Columbia, I was the head football coach, I was all about telling people what to do. I was calling all the plays. I went to work for Kodak as a marketing manager. I bossed everyone around. I told people what to do. When the sales people didn't have their sales plans right, I just rewrote 'em for 'em." He then went to Apple, worked under John Sculley, was taught that his job was to be a micromanager, to know every detail, and to check on every detail in the people around him. He started to grow out of this, he started Claris, he was doing a good job, but then one day someone came to him and they said, "Bill, you're back to your old ways. You're telling everyone what to do, you're bossing us around. We can't do our work." This was Donna Dubinsky who went on to then head Palm and she said, "Bill, we need some space. We came here because we believe in you, but you're telling everyone to do, like the leash. [laughs] It's like a choke hold on the leash. We need more space." And this little near mutiny was a wakeup call for Bill and he said, "I realize that now in your terms I was a diminisher." He learned to really see and utilize the pep-the intelligence in people around him. He went on to be CEO of Inuit. And then not only is he a multiplier today, he's what we call a "multiplier of multipliers." He's been the one to help Jeffery Bezos figure out how to scale Amazon. Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, the team here at Google and at Apple; he is the one that helps these technologists figure out how to lead in a way that harnesses all the intelligence available to them in their organization. Now one can pursue the path of Bill Campbell and take 20, 25, maybe 30 years to make this journey. We asked the question, "Can this be accelerated?" Now Greg and I admit that in our study, in our research of 150 leaders we studied the extremes. We studied the extreme diminisher, the extreme multiplier. The kind of people you thought about when we asked you to identify two leaders. But in reality there's a bell curve between this and most of us don't sit at these polar extremes. There's a few people here, we love 'em, we study them, we wrote about them. We wrote about a lot of these folks too. We took their names out of the book [laughs] kinda the witness protection program. But most of us sit right here in the middle and the most interesting group from our perspective is not the raging diminisher, it's the accidental diminisher. It's the-the good leader, the good manager who wants to do a good job, but is following popular management practice, following what they see, and they might accidentally be diminishing people around them. What are some ways that you might accidentally be diminishing people around you? [pause] Something you might do? How 'bout visionaries. Big thinkers, do we have any big thinkers in here? Sometimes people can be such big thinkers that they don't leave space for anyone else. Is there anyone here who has the gift of gab? [pause] Sometimes our enthusiasm, how 'bout idea people? People who are like ideas just come to you like this? When you come into work every day with a new idea what does it do to people around you? [pause] Have you ever had a boss who came into work every day with, "Oh, let's try this. Let's consider this. What about this?" What does that boss think he or she is doing by spouting out these ideas? What's their intention? They're inspiring people 'cause we've talked to these people. "I'm inspiring people. I'm stimulating innovation." What are they really doing to their organization? >>male in audience: [unintelligible]daily basis. >>Liz Wiseman: They're changing direction on a daily basis and you run and follow them, and then there's a new idea and then you run this way, and then you go this way, and you spend all of your mental energy chasing these people around in circles. What else do they do? >>voice in audience: [unintelligible] >>Liz Wiseman: Okay. How about answer guys? Who are people who are just quick with an answer? Can solve a problem fast in their head and pretty quick with that answer? [pause] Okay. I'm kinda one. I admit it. A little bit of an answer guy. When you're quick with an answer what does it do to the people around you? >>male in audience: It keeps them from responding. >>Liz Wiseman: It keeps them responding? >>male in audience: From responding. >>Liz Wiseman: It keeps them from responding, right. If I work with someone who's fast with an answer what do I do when there's a question? >>female in audience: You go to them [unintelligible] >>Liz Wiseman: I let them answer it. I've think, "You know what?" And I've done this, and the years I spent at Oracle was very much like I'm-I'm sure many of you feel here. I work with geniuses. And sometimes we defer, we defer to people who are fast with an answer. As Greg said these ideas are kind of getting out there. We're interested to hear what people around the world are saying about them. This is from a-a paper in-in Nairobi saying, "What are, these, yes we understand there are multipliers and diminishers, but how do you become a multiplier? Are there some simple ways to do that?" And what Greg and I would like to do is leave you with one very simple idea. And that is to move from answers to questions. Now most of us here, particularly technologists, their value early in their career coming out of school, early in the career of a technologist is to have the answers. It's what people were hired for. But the value of having those answers diminishes over time. Some leaders never figure this out. They don't figure out that their role as a leader is less about having answers, particularly as they lead large organizations where they can't know everything. But they need to add a layer, a growing layer of having the right questions. And truly as we've studied executives -- the best executives have the right questions not the right answers. So if you're looking for a simple starting point to leading more like a multiplier, it's learn to think in questions. Use your intellect and your smarts to formulate hard questions that cause other people to stop and to think and then to respond. Shift the burden of thinking from you as the leader to find the answers and shift that burden out into your organization, so your organization has permission to think. Kind of a final thought we would leave you with: how many people here saw the documentary Man On Wire? Yeah. Couple of people here. It chronicles Frenchman Philippe Petit, his outrageous act of illegally stringing a cable across the then standing World Trade towers back in 1974; stringing this cable across 140 foot expanse between the towers, 100, no 1,400 feet up in the air, no nets, no harnesses, just a tightrope artist and his pole. Now the image that most people remember is this image; the man out on the wire by himself with no support up in the air. And what did he do once he got out on that wire? Did he just kinda scurry across and declare victory? What did he do? >>voice in audience: [unintelligible] dance. >>Liz Wiseman: He danced. He like kinda rolled around on the wire; he laid down. He played, he was out there for like a half an hour, he was playing and having fun because once he got out on that wire he knew what to do. Okay. Now that's what most people remember. But I saw him on Colbert actually, and this is what I remember. This is the image that stands out in my mind. This is the image of him taking a single step. And I was so struck by what he said, he, I think it was Colbert that said, "Wh-what caused you to do this thing? What caused you to go out on the wire?" He goes, "You know being out on the wire wasn't hard." He said, "What was hard was the moment of truth when I stood there on the building on the edge of the building with one foot anchored safely to the building and the other foot out on the wire." He said, "I had to make a decision: do I shift my weight from the foot that's anchored to the building and do I shift my weight out on that wire?" He said, "Something I could not resist called me out on that wire, and I shifted my weight." So perhaps at the conclusion of our remarks you think, "You know I'm pretty comfortable in how I lead." You might be comfortably standing on that building, but perhaps you're intrigued with this idea that you can be a multiplier and that you might be able to get more from other people and create for them an exhilarating experience. And perhaps you've got that one foot out on the wire. Imagine what you could do if you had double the brain power inside your organization. What hard problems could you solve? What opportunities could be met? What would be possible? What could a team of smart, talented people do if they were operating at 100 percent brainpower? So as you think of that, we simply ask you the question: will you shift your weight and lead more like a multiplier? Thank you for having Greg and me here at Google. Thank you. [applause] Are there any questions? I know people probably have to go to meetings, but we are very happy to hear comments, questions -- [pause] I'll bring the microphone to you if you would like. >>male in audience: I'd like to hear what you guys think about Steve Jobs. Is he a diminisher or a multiplier? >>Liz Wiseman: You know Greg I was gonna hand the mic to you on the first question, do want me to take it or do you want it? >>Greg McKeown: Go ahead. >>Liz Wiseman: [laughs] [laughter] We get this question just about everywhere we go, Steve Jobs. If someone were just looking at what is publicly reported and the sort of persona of Steve Jobs, you might conclude that Steve has some characteristics of a diminisher. But when you talk to people who work for him, you will probably conclude that Steve is brilliantly a multiplier in a small circle inside of Apple and with a certain set of people. And what Steve has figured out is he has, he's absolutely a multiplier to those people. I've talked to a number of 'em who work for him that say, "I do my best work around Steve." I don't think he's figured out how to do this broadly across his organization to be frank, but what he's done is he has brilliantly hired Tim Cook who's the COO, and he was the interim CEO when Steve was out ill. And Tim is absolutely a multiplier who thinks scale. So I think Steve balances himself well. That's my opinion on it. Other questions? [pause] Go right to the jugular with the Steve Jobs question. [laughter] I like that one. [pause] Or just thoughts, yeah. >>male in audience: So you're categorizing like multipliers and diminishers, what about the people who are in the middle like you were talkin' about, like who are diminishers in one factor and multipliers in a different situation? How do you characterize, like when do you find out what-what situation you are multiplier and diminisher in? >>Greg McKeown: Yeah, so I think the question is how do you assess where you are on this continuum? We-we have three different assessments you can do. There's one that's actually free online, it's called multipliersquiz.com, multipliersquiz.com. It's ten questions. It'll be focused directly at this question, which we think is a really great question because most of us fall in between somewhere. So you can't just say, "Well, hey listen I'm not one of these tyrants so therefore it doesn't apply." Most of us are in the middle. We mean to access everything, but we accidentally don't. So this is where I would begin. That'd be my suggestion, multipliersquiz.com. There are more advanced assessments for people that are interested in going a bit further than that. Thank you. What other questions do you have? [pause] >>male in audience: I know that this isn't exactly the direct focus of what your book is, but you-you noted that a lot of times leaders remember in the past that they had to provide all the answers, and then they don't really have that much, I mean they have a lot of difficulty transitioning over to the questions? So then what happens, or I don't know if you guys know what happens to the people who start out with all the questions and then move, and then try to move up. Like how-how do they go ahead with that? Has you, have you had like any experiences of leaders who have been multipliers from the start? >>Liz Wiseman: From the start? [unintelligible] [pause] >>Greg McKeown: So I think you're question is about somebody that makes the other transition, goes from multiplier to -- >>male in audience: No if they start out a multiplier what would they do? >>Liz Wiseman: Yeah, I think the question is what about leaders who start asking those questions early on. And now that you've asked that it does make me think of-of people who start out, they may start out in large corporations, but I think these are people who come into their work with an entrepreneurial mindset and I think if you actually, I can't claim to have studied this, but if you study great entrepreneurs they very early in their career start asking hard questions. They may have brilliant technical know-how, but they couple it with asking about what's possible. And I think if you study a lot of the large companies here and the most innovative companies in the Valley, you'll see that these are people who early, early in their career questioned assumptions, asked what was possible, and really challenged the status quo. And I think they think in terms of questions. But they add that on top of like deep technical know-how. Okay, we'll go here and then over -- >>male in audience: So I started to think your talk about multipliers in particular, I was reminded of what I read in the book Built to Last by Jerry Porras and others. And one of the important characteristics they had there was it was I'll paraphrase it as lack of ego. I mean they were thinking about the organization building it. Although they were not tough but they didn't have that ego gratification, that drive to promote themselves. Is that kind of a crucial characteristic, that's kind of why I think the question about Steve Jobs came up because one doesn't associate less ego with Steve Jobs. [pause] >>Greg McKeown: Yeah, I mean this question when-when we were studying this phenomenon we were looking for something very complex in a way that would distinguish the two groups of people. But in the end we started finding ourselves increasingly saying, "No part of the difference may be a core difference is that they just don't center on themselves." So they just aren't so obsessed with having to prove that they're the smartest person; that they just are able to see other people around them. So instead of having to get their own career moving they just go, "Oh, I'm okay, I'm smart, I'm gonna figure this stuff out. I'll be promoted. No worries about that. Let me just focus on other people," did seem to be one of the critical differences. [pause] >>Liz Wiseman: Let me add to what Greg said. One of the concerns that we had is that people might read this book or there's a, there's a Harvard Business Review article, we brought a few copies for anyone who wants that, that they might take these ideas at a cursory level and they might come to the conclusion that says, "For me to be a multiplier I can't be the smart one. I have to kind of recede into the background. I have to be the guy with the questions." And it's absolutely not the case. What multipliers do is they use all of their own intelligence too. They know that their brain power is important so they in some ways -- you could look at it as a lack of ego or you could look at the flip side of that coin which is they have utter confidence in their own capability and their own intelligence. They use it, they use it to frame questions and to frame challenges and know the hard things to ask and to know what's technically possible and impossible. So they're using all of their brainpower but they have enough confidence that they don't limit the group to that. They use their brainpower in full to spark intelligence in people around them. Any other questions or comments? And a comment is as great as a question. >>male in audience: In thinking about this idea of the multipliers of multipliers, it seems like you would wind up with clusters of multipliers and in a, in a sense I think I wouldn't if I was working for a diminisher I would become a diminisher myself. So do you find these kinds of clusters of orgs that are multiplier culture-wise and diminisher culture-wise? >>Liz Wiseman: Yeah the question is do we find that these multipliers cluster together? We certainly find that people flock to work for multipliers. And-and I absolutely believe I think most people who study leadership would say that it does trickle down that people emulate what they see. We know for a, this is what we know for a fact is that a lot of well intended leaders have the heart of a multiplier and even maybe like the mind and the heart of a multiplier, but they've worked for a diminisher for so long or they've worked in a diminishing culture for so long that they've lost their way and they become what Greg and I call "this accidental diminisher." So we know that diminisher leadership breeds diminishers. But it breeds accidental diminishers not the raging kind. We haven't yet studied like do multipliers sort of like breed other multipliers. We know people flock to them. Greg any other thoughts on that? If not, there's another question. [pause] >>male in audience: I have what might be a related question. You mentioned a bell curve, did your research show a bell curve or is that an assumption? Because I, sometimes I think it might be worse than that. [laughter] [pause] >>Greg McKeown: Yeah, we-we didn't study it in terms of a bell curve. It is an assumption. We don't know where the-the-the gravity pull really lies on this. It's an interesting question though. We imagined there'd be further research that could be done. Thank you. >>Liz Wiseman: We certainly know it's a spectrum and we assume its bell curve like, but it's an assumption. >>Greg McKeown: Any final questions here? [pause] Thank you. >>male in audience: We don't always get to be leaders. In every group there's usually one at least a minority of the group would be leaders and most of them would be following a leader, and every question asked would eventually have to be answered by someone, but you seem to be saying, "Okay we should think in questions and not in answers then." I mean, I-I-I see, I see something not coming together here like eventually who is to answer the questions and are we, are we not valuing those who are answering the questions enough? [pause] >>Liz Wiseman: So the question is, is if we breed multipliers, do we end up with a lot of people who ask questions but no one that answers them? And I don't think so because multipliers they're asking that question wanting an answer, and they're gonna ask it in a way that people, people are, it's a natural gravitational pull to wanna be knowledgeable and to wanna be smart and I think you might be surprised that you can actually serve as a multiplier as a direct boss, you can do it as a peer, you can do as a so-called subordinate. You can be a multiplier to your boss. And I think you'll find that if you ask those questions people will step in to answer them. I think one of the things we found is that these multipliers create this space, and it's almost this uncomfortable space. They ask hard questions, they give big challenges, and they create this vacuum that people have to close. People have to find answers to these questions. Any other final comments? Yes. [pause] >>male in audience: Can everyone become a multiplier or is aren't there people who cannot be multipliers just like the great question can everyone, anyone become a leader? [pause] >>Greg McKeown: Yeah, the question is, is, can everyone really make this transition? And our position on this is that there may be a few people who are so entrenched and rewarded for their diminisher approaches or are so blind to their diminisher approaches that they just are really not ever likely to make that transition, but we think it's very few and far between. So there was a, one of the people that we've worked with who was known as an arch diminisher. His organization after he went through sort of a six month, twelve month process of really understanding what was going on, he moved to a different company and there with those new assumptions and approaches was known as a multiplier. So it was a shift that really did happen for this individual. So we believe anecdotally that there may be a few people that can't, but they're few and far between. Thank you. >>Liz Wiseman: It really is. Multiplier leadership is something that can be learned, you can do it from all angles whether you're in a formal management job and, or whether you the most junior person on the team. So everyone can lead like a multiplier. We encourage you to think about ways that you might do more. We've got resources here to support you. Greg and I would like to thank you for having us here. It's wonderful to be down here. We love coming to the campus. I love everything about it except the Aloe water, so thank you very much for having us. [applause]