Changing Your Default Leadership Approach

I was recently in a conversation with executives about the concept of accidental diminishers, a framework from Liz Wiseman’s Multipliers, which she describes this way:

“While the narcissistic leaders grab the headlines, the vast majority of diminishing happening inside our workplaces is done by the Accidental Diminisher—managers with the best of intentions, good people who think they are doing a good job leading.”

Accidental Diminishers are basically when a strength is overused. An example from the book that shows how this works is her description of “The Idea Guy”:

“The ideas he tosses out seem compelling, so his team begins to chase them. But as soon as they begin to make progress on yesterday’s idea, the next day brings a new idea du jour. ...As they learn to stop acting on the leader’s ideas, they also stop trying to come up with their own ideas.”

The problem isn’t that the boss has ideas; it’s that he has too many ideas. The intention is positive, yet the result completely undermines the intention. It’s like Popeye doing too many forearm exercises and forgetting about his biceps.

(If you want to find out what your accidental diminisher might be, Wiseman provides this online quiz and some “hacks” to solve them.)

So how might one avoid overusing a strength?

A helpful strategy I've seen is for leaders to experiment with “default” approaches that are the complete opposite of our habitual behaviors.

Wiseman provides several examples in Multipliers of what that might look like. Here are two I like:

PLAY FEWER CHIPS: “Before a meeting, give yourself a budget of ‘poker chips,’ with each chip representing a comment or contribution to the meeting. Use your chips wisely, and leave the rest of the space for others to contribute.” 

EXTREME QUESTIONS: “...leading a conversation asking only questions. This means everything you say ends in a question mark!”

I personally used this “default behavior” approach when I declared that I was going to be a “lazy manager.” In other words, my default response in every situation would be to find someone else to do the work. Or if someone brought an issue to my attention, I’d say, “That’s interesting. How do you plan to solve it?”

The intention behind that approach was to correct a tendency to micromanage. And only by adopting a completely different mindset—from wanting to get everything right to a stance that I wouldn’t do any work, under any circumstance—was I able to find the right balance. (At least I think I solved it—you’d have to ask someone who worked with me!)

Zooming out, the reason those approaches can be helpful is that it’s typically not easy to change a behavior that’s done so often that it’s practically tattooed on the mind. Trying to change just a little is fighting against our instincts. 

That’s where putting on a straitjacket that makes our current approach a nonstarter comes in handy. It forces us to try out a different approach, until that approach becomes natural enough that we can act with conscious choice rather than just habit. 

Finally, this straitjacket strategy is applicable to habits in other areas of our lives. 

It’s deleting that addictive app from your phone rather than trying to check it just a little bit less. 

It’s charging your phone in a separate room at night. 

And it’s adopting a “I will have no dessert this month” policy to avoid having to make a decision each time the question “Do I want dessert?” comes up. (For me, the answer to that is always Yes.)

It’s probably worth a try!