Managing a team starts by managing oneself

This time of year is always exciting for PRISM. We just completed a successful Asia Pacific Conference and are moving forward full-speed to the PRISM International Annual Conference in May. This year’s conference is particularly exciting; not only are we holding the event in an absolutely beautiful venue—the Westin Mission Hills Resort and Spa in Palm Springs—but the content also is terrific.

Our keynote speaker is Liz Wiseman—a familiar name to those of you who study leadership. Liz is president of The Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley, Calif. A former executive at Oracle Corp., she worked for 17 years as the vice president of Oracle University and as the global leader for human resource development. Liz is the author of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. This book is not simply a collection of musings, anecdotes and pontification, it is based on pure, roll-up-your-sleeves research.

When you work with people, it doesn’t take long to realize that leadership is a skill, not a trait. Moreover, this skill is not equally developed in all people. Some people must be the smartest person in the room. These “diminishers,” as Liz calls them, stifle creativity and drain the intelligence and capability out of their teams. On the other hand, some people care less about flaunting their own success and capability and instead care more about fostering a culture of intelligence in their organizations. Liz has termed these people “multipliers,” and, under the leadership, employees don’t just feel smarter, they actually become smarter.

Liz and her team examined the differences between diminishers and multipliers and the impact they have in their organizations. Unsurprisingly, employees are more motivated and satisfied when they work with multipliers. Also, unsurprisingly, employees are more productive when managed by multipliers. You may be surprised to hear the scale of this difference in productivity: Employees managed by multipliers are on the average 100 percent more productive than those managed by diminishers.

Clearly the first place to look is at oneself, not at one’s team. Leaders owe it to themselves and their teams to strive to be aware of their own strengths and weaknesses and to work on their leadership skills in much the same way professional athletes practice and hone their skills over time.

I’m looking forward to learning more from Liz at the upcoming PRISM International Annual Conference, May 5-8. I hope to see you there!

Dave Bergeson is the executive director PRISM International, Chicago, and can be reached at dbergeson@prismintl.org.