In this episode, Tony Wilson and I dug into Liz Wiseman’s “Multipliers“.
You can listen to the episode here:
You can find Tony on LinkedIn, on YouTube, or on his show “The DevLaunch Podcast“.
Full Transcript:
Mickey Mellen (00:01)
It led to the idea that there was a type of leader, those that I came to call multipliers who I saw, used, and grew the, oops, I screwed that up already. It led to the idea that there was a type of leader, those that I came to call multipliers who saw, used, and grew the intelligence of others, while other leaders who I labeled diminisher shut down the smarts those around them. That was just a real quick bit from Liz Wiseman’s book, Multipliers, and here to discuss it today is Tony Wilson. So Tony, welcome to the show.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (00:27)
Thanks so much for having me, I appreciate it.
Mickey Mellen (00:28)
Yeah, I was excited to dig into this. most books on the show I say, hey, hey, you know, guest pick one of these books and read it. You said, no, no, no, Mickey, you read this book. And so we had to delay this little bit so I could read this and catch up. And it was fantastic. So why, why did you, why did you want to talk about multipliers?
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (00:43)
I think as I look back on all the books that I’ve read over the past few years, think Multiplier stands out to me as being the type of book that has so many of those aha moments of like, can see stories, not only of my own leadership, but also leaders that I’ve worked with where I’m like, my goodness, that was the key to unlocking what was happening here. And so because it’s been so transformative for me, I was like, we got to talk about this. This is always top of mind for me.
Mickey Mellen (01:11)
Awesome. I guess it would help for those that haven’t read it. Why don’t you talk to us for a sec. What is a multiplier and what is a diminisher? What do those people look like?
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (01:18)
Yeah. So in essence, the thing that Liz Wiseman talks about in her book is she goes through and she establishes that the multipliers are the people who unlock the innate potential and I guess the smarts of the individuals on their team and help them to be everything and more that they could be. Whereas an accidental diminisher, which if I can be so bold as to say is the vast majority of us, ends up
Mickey Mellen (01:45)
Yes.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (01:48)
inadvertently causing people to actually be a lot less than they could be, produce a lot less than they could be. And so, yeah, that’s the distinction between a multiplier and an accidental diminisher. And I’m really glad that she clarifies that it’s an accidental diminisher, because I very much doubt anybody is out there to try to diminish the output of their team.
Mickey Mellen (02:10)
feel like some in the book almost were. Not that they were trying to diminish the output, but they were, like a lot of cases, like you and I talked before the call a little bit about being accidental diminishers ourselves at times. And we’re trying to get the most of our team, but it’s, you know, we’re just, we’re trying to take burden off their plate when they should be learning and things like that. I feel like there are some that are just like, nope, micromanage, let’s just go. And yes, not really intentional diminisher, but not really accidentally there, but it’s yeah. So what does it look like? What are some of the tendencies of an accidental diminisher then? Someone that thinks they’re trying to do good and lead their team the right way, but they’re
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (02:32)
Yeah.
Mickey Mellen (02:38)
making these mistakes that are hurting things.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (02:40)
Yeah. Well, I think one that really stands out to me that I am always mindful, because I feel like this is where I tend as a leader, is the tendency to parachute in at the last minute, to rescue my team from mistakes. And like, there’s obviously a fine balance to walk. You know, you don’t want to completely abandon your team. You want to be there in a crisis situation. But I think what I tend to do, and I think many people who read this part of the book,
Mickey Mellen (02:52)
Yeah.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (03:08)
also tend to do is we can see that, you know, there’s something that they didn’t quite do right. And so rather than letting them handle the consequences, the natural consequence of, you know, maybe subpar performance or whatever, what we do instead is we come in and we fix it. So the team never really experiences the full extent of the pain that they really should have in order to,
to learn from that mistake. So that would be like an example of somebody who comes in and parachutes in. I can’t remember the name of that, but they had a whole category for that type of person who comes in.
Mickey Mellen (03:40)
Yeah, there are a lot of different words and stuff that she introduced in the book. I don’t have that all straight yet either, but that was that’s a good one. And one I kind of struggle with too. We had an email the other day that came in to me and one person on my team from the client and my teammate was perfectly capable of handling and probably should and it’s always my tendency. No, no, I’ll take care of it for them so they can do their other job. And like that’s not really in the best interest of any of us to do, but I feel like I don’t want to stick it to my team. I can jump in and help. I can make their lives better, which again, I think an accidental diminisher right there is like let them deal with the client.
Learn to talk and I’m confident they would give a good response and in that case I forced myself just to like snooze the email like I know they’ll take care of and they did as always they jumped in quickly and a great job, but that’s one I struggle with a lot It’s just a little things like that that I’m trying to help and it’s really kind of hurting a little bit One thing that stood out to me I love the example Let’s see, I’ll just read this quote for the book We began this inquiry with an intriguing observation about two political leaders paraphrased by Bono musician and global activist. He says
It has been said that after meeting with the great British Prime Minister William Ewert Gladstone, you left feeling he was the smartest person in the world. But after meeting with his rival, Benjamin Disraeli, you left thinking you were the smartest person in the world. This observation captures the essence and power of a multiplier. So I think a lot of people in the book covered are very, very smart people. It’s a matter of are they showing off their smarts or are they using their smarts to make other people feel better?
Funny thing with that story, the next book I started reading was called the Charisma Myth. I’m just getting started with it. The first story was that exact same one about Gladstone and Disraeli again, which I’d never seen before. Now it’s popping up everywhere. But that was fascinating where, yeah, what I got is Gladstone is a smart guy. like, I’m gonna show you how smart I am and help everything and just use my brilliance to make everything better. And Disraeli’s like, no, no, I’m gonna use you and we can work together to make it better. But any thoughts on that?
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (05:22)
Yeah, I mean the first thing that comes to my mind is it’s kind of like being an effective leader It’s like how much oxygen are you infusing in the room? and if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’ve already sucked up all the oxygen there possibly is and You just you keep people back from Exploring and tapping into their own brilliance and that’s the thing that I think you know They gave multiple examples in the book in the multipliers book about this, but I think for for me
My main takeaway for that was what am I doing to highlight and encourage the brilliance of other people? Because at the end of the day, I want people to be able to run autonomously. I want them to be able to figure things out without my involvement. Because the more I meddle in affairs, the more I am touted as the smartest person in the room, the more they’re going to have to continue to come back to me and I’m now going to be the bottleneck.
Mickey Mellen (06:16)
Yeah, well that also saw the book some of the examples they talked about people that would normally contribute a meeting stop even trying because they know the boss is gonna take care of it So not only are you the bottleneck, but you’re also not gonna get good insight from your team My business partner Ali she’s I don’t think she’s read this book yet But she’s a fantastic multiplier because she does that in meeting she’ll stop the way I haven’t heard from you Brooke like I bet you have something good to say, please Please share with a group like she’ll call out. She’ll notice that kind of stuff. She has a great great EQ for seeing that kind of thing Another little thing I saw from the book that was interesting
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (06:42)
Mm-hmm.
Mickey Mellen (06:46)
was about pressure versus stress. I’d always kind of put those in the same bucket and they talked about William Tell shooting an apple off his son’s head. The quote says, in this scenario, William Tell feels pressure. His son feels stress. And so, yeah, you feel some pressure shooting the apple off your son’s head, but your son’s feeling stress and it’s a very different kind of thing. So I thought it was an interesting thing. So they suggest keep pressure on the team to act, but don’t create stress by holding them accountable for outcomes beyond their control. So it’s a fine line to give them pressure, but not stress.
It’s much easier said than done, but yeah.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (07:17)
yeah, totally. And I think the stress piece too, versus pressure, I think because I tend to like want to take as much of the pressure off of people as possible, really what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to, I’m trying to eliminate stress, but I eliminate pressure. And so there isn’t that like, I’m not holding them to a high standard. And that’s also a way that we are accidental diminisher is if we’re not properly contextualizing for them and holding them to that high standard. So.
Mickey Mellen (07:26)
Mm-hmm.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (07:46)
That’s another really important balance.
Mickey Mellen (07:48)
Yeah, I never thought about that before, but I did the same. I tried to keep stress off them. So to keep stress off, I keep pressure off and that’s that’s not the same thing at all. I mean kind of, but yeah, there’s a difference there. And if you again accidentally diminish her by just taking it all off and making things rosy and yeah. Another one that almost is kind of counter to what the book says. It’s not really kind of, but it sort of does. It’s a little bit longer quote, but he says, as discussion leader, it was liberating to ask the questions but not give the answers. In fact, I found it strangely powerful and when the students spouted off their views and interpretation of the story, it was thrilling to look them straight in the eye, say,
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (07:53)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mickey Mellen (08:18)
Do you have any evidence to support that claim? Initially, they look terrified, but they quickly learn that the cost of an opinion was evidence. As this becomes, you’re encouraging people to speak up, but you’re also saying, no, no, you can’t just speak up and spout off opinions. want you, I guess that’s kind of adding pressure to it. Like you’re wanting them to contribute meetings and stuff, but not just give opinions. You want them to give evidence. And it’s kind of tough then to be, I guess that’s again, being a multiplier, but it feels almost diminishing to say, no, no, don’t talk unless you have something good to say, but please talk. Like it’s, it’s kind of a counter there.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (08:25)
Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah. And the thing I think about is there’s so many times where I’m having a conversation with one of my teammates and, you know, I give them, I ask them a question and I do my best not to say, yes, this is the right answer or whatever like that. And sometimes I see it on their face. I see this like hesitance. They’re just like, I feel really uncomfortable giving an answer. And I just had to continue to remind them over and over again. I’m like,
Mickey Mellen (08:58)
Mm-hmm.
you
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (09:09)
Sometimes I’m asking you the question, not because I think you’re wrong, but because I want you to show that you’ve thought through this, right? Like, you probably have the right answer, but I just want you to kind of like work through this stuff because that’s how it gets kind of cemented into your mind. And then the next time you have a conversation with me, that’s gonna be what you’re doing to prepare, is like you’re getting yourself ready for this and justifying your answers.
Mickey Mellen (09:15)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm I like that Yeah, that’s really good Yeah, it’s kind of I feel like we’ve given our team a pretty safe space to not worry about giving wrong answers like that Which is good and again, I got to think through it is that being diminishing somehow it may be somewhere in there But it also takes me back to bad decisions versus bad outcomes and I tell the team all the time like if something goes poorly with a client if I feel you made a good decision in the moment and it happened to have a bad outcome that’s okay if you made a bad decision we need to talk about if you made a good decision and things went sideways
It happens and we’ve seen it in sports all the time where their teams make the right decision and doesn’t work right and it doesn’t turn out right But it still a good decision. It’s just it doesn’t work And so once they understand that like hey I made a decision because of a B and C and it went sideways and we get I would have made the same decision like it’s all good Let’s keep it on track So in the book they have a lot of different pieces they unpack I think one worth talking about here is the five disciplines of the multiplier what makes a good multiplier and there’s five things that talks about that that make a good multiplier so I want you want you to help me unpack these a little bit so the first one is
Attracting and optimizing talent. So, multipliers are talent magnets. Can you talk about that a bit?
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (10:34)
Yeah. Well, I think even in the book, the accidental diminisher is the one who like they hoard talent. So there’s a difference between attracting. That’s right. That’s right. The empire builder versus somebody who’s attracting the talent. And I think the way that I remember, if I remember correctly in reading this is like the distinction here is I want to be a beacon for people who are high performers, but I’m not trying to just do everything I can to kind of hoard them here.
Mickey Mellen (10:41)
Correct, yes. An empire builder, they say, yes. Yep.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (11:02)
If I recognize that they are gonna be better in a different situation or on a different team, like my purpose is primarily in seeing them thrive. So rather than me, yeah, again, trying to hoard people in and trying to say like, look at how many numbers I have under me. It’s all about what can I do to be serving them and their best interest? I think if I remember correctly.
Mickey Mellen (11:11)
Mm-hmm.
You
Yeah, that seems right. It’s a tricky thing, but they’ll see that. Over the years that will pile up and say, wow, talented people that go to that person end up even better as a result and it becomes awesome. It feels tough at first to give up the good people to go somewhere else, but it works well. reminds me a little bit, I ran a blog years ago about Google Earth. It a Earth blog, but the best posts were sending people off the site, which is counterintuitive to trying to make money, but they realized if they came to the site they would get great information even if it took them elsewhere.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (11:31)
Yes.
Mickey Mellen (11:48)
you know, would then encourage more people to come visit and same kind of thing. mean, your best people will come to you because you’re gonna do what’s best for them, even if it’s sending them elsewhere. So the first thing, yeah, attracting and optimizing talent. The second is creating intensity that requires best thinking. And I think you kind of hit this little bit already, but I you wanna say anything else there.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (12:04)
Yeah, I think again, there’s one of the things I want to say they talked about in this chapter was talking about like properly setting the context. So making sure that I think this is one of the things that adds stress, but not proper pressure is when the situation at hand is not made clear. So there’s not proper context here. So I think in order to properly to do this multiplier
Mickey Mellen (12:23)
Hmm, okay, yep.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (12:34)
attribute well, you need to be really, really good at properly setting the context. Like, here’s the situation at hand, here’s what’s required, here’s the impact if it’s not met. And there’s a couple other things I think they talk about. It’s either in this chapter or was in a subsequent chapter, but that’s what I’m remembering about this particular one.
Mickey Mellen (12:53)
Yeah, I like that. The third one is extending challenges. Diminishers and know-it-all who gives directions. The multiplier is a challenger who defines opportunities.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (13:02)
Yes, and I think these two kind of like blended together a little bit. So I might be thinking about this one, because this is the one that really resonated well with me. That when I have all the answers, nobody else can really speak up and bring to the table their best solutions. But when I’m challenging and I’m setting the context, in fact, if I’m doing it right, there’s a very real possibility that we may come to even better solutions than I would have figured out all on my own. In fact,
Mickey Mellen (13:05)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (13:31)
I think that’s the way to do it is like invite other people in because yeah, multiple brains are gonna be lot better than just my one.
Mickey Mellen (13:39)
I mean that’s kind of the whole point of the book I think is that right there is yeah encouraging people to give back and give their opinions and give their ideas versus just saying you’re all here now let me tell you what’s going on and that’s that’s the diminisher right there. The fourth one debating decisions. Diminishers are decision makers who try to sell their decisions to others multipliers and debate makers who generate real buy-in.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (13:51)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Well, and I think it reminds me of what you had said earlier just about when people come to the table with their opinion, asking them to justify it with the evidence. yeah, there is that where it’s like, want to be able to, and I’ve done this particularly with client calls, know, we’re having like meetings about budgets and stuff. And I’ll ask, you know, one team member is going to say, this is what I think the right answer is. And then I’m going to come to the other person, I’m going to say,
Mickey Mellen (14:11)
Mm-hmm.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (14:29)
Okay, now argue against that or why is that not the right approach, right? And then get them to think critically because they might all be on the same page, but I want them to really grapple with the decision that’s in front of them. If all we do is we just say this is the one answer and then we don’t actually like beat it up, there’s no conflict. We haven’t really arrived at the best possible answer.
Mickey Mellen (14:32)
Yeah, I was just gonna say that. Yep.
Yep, and I like to gave the example of okay if two people that are already in conflict about it and say alright stop for a minute switch sides argue the other guy’s side more and again we’ve talked about this in different episodes here Charlie Munger was big on like if you can’t argue the other sides better than you can argue they can like you’re in trouble you need to know the other side’s argument better and that’s why I enjoy seeing things with theology and Android versus iPhone even things like Flat Earth just understanding why the other side might think that way and you know politics it’s just it’s fascinating to understand that and gives you better arguments for your beliefs then too you know understanding why people
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (14:56)
Mmm. I love that. Yep
Mm-hmm.
Mickey Mellen (15:21)
feel the other way they do and that can be great to say, you too, switch, which he said in the book, it’s awkward at first. Like, no, I don’t believe that, but it forces them to try to come up with ideas and help them see the other perspective and give a little bit of empathy and can really work quite well. And then the fifth of the five disciplines of the multiplier is instilling ownership and accountability.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (15:27)
Ha ha.
Yeah, this is huge. Because I think the other thing they talked about, she talked about in this chapter was essentially like holding, yeah, holding them to account for the decisions that they made. rather than, because I think this is where my tendency to come to come and just like sweep in and to fix things before the impact has been felt. Being able to really let people handle the decisions that they made and to run with those.
so that they learn from them in the future. Like that’s where true accountability is bred, is when you’re giving people a space to figure this stuff out through their own hardships. And yeah, mean, like, again, it’s really, really tempting to want to come in and keep people from being accountable, because we feel like that’s somehow putting them in a bad spot, or that’s like not kind.
Mickey Mellen (16:09)
Yep.
I want to protect them more, yeah.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (16:31)
And but you think about it, it’s like you and I, like, and anybody else listening to this, we have learned what we’ve learned, not because we’ve made all the right decisions, but because we’ve made poor decisions and then lived with the consequences of those decisions and like, learn from the consequences of those decisions. So I think, yeah, somebody who is able to walk that fine line of, I’m going to give you support so you’re not completely floundering, but also I want you to deal with or work through and be accountable for the decisions you’ve made.
Mickey Mellen (16:41)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (17:00)
That is a really, really important mixture to have.
Mickey Mellen (17:02)
Yeah, and I’m better I think with our team with ownership than accountability. I’m good about giving them ownership I’ll say hey, you’re a developer whatever tools you want to use like it’s your your ship, you know, which I guess is some accountability But it’s more just ownership of their their part of the business like our project manager for years I’ve always said hey, I wonder what system we should use I’m like no no, you’re the project manager if you want to change systems if we can if you don’t we don’t like you have a hundred percent ownership of it which I guess gives accountability if things were to go wrong with it, but it’s yeah, it kind of kind of works out there so
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (17:06)
Hmm.
Mickey Mellen (17:31)
Yeah, the five disciplines of the multiplier were attracting and optimizing talent creating intensity that requires best thinking extending challenges debating decisions instilling ownership and accountability and Again, like you said they kind of blur together and I think that’s by design to a degree I mean you’re not gonna remember like okay I need to make sure to debate decisions like you just have to sort of get all this just in a package and have it just yeah merit in your brain and Marinate in your brain if I can speak there Yeah, and make it all work. So yes, fantastic book. We’re getting a little low on time here. So I thought
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (17:54)
Mm-hmm.
Mickey Mellen (18:01)
If you have other thoughts here, anything else you want to share from the book for people that haven’t read it?
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (18:05)
You know, I think more of just the application here, because I think this is the strength and the benefit about a book like this is just how many times you’re going to find yourself applying it in your day-to-day life. And so just a practical application that I’ve seen is what I’ve started to do in my practice. So accounting and finance is kind of my firm. It’s what we do. And with the bookkeepers that we work with or the accountants we’re working with, especially for the new people,
Mickey Mellen (18:16)
Mm-hmm.
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (18:33)
one thing that’s really common is they’ll come to me and they’ll say, hey, what should we categorize this transaction as? Or, hey, what should we do in this situation? And I’ve learned that the worst thing I could possibly do is to give them an answer right off the bat. Instead, I invite them and I say, what do you think? What’s the thought process going on in your mind? And then the conversation is no longer about what’s the right answer, it’s about
How are you coming to the conclusions that you need to come to on your own? And then we drive that. I mean, we just did it today. We had a conversation. We do monthly coaching calls with our teammates. And we just had a date. We give some feedback. And we’re holding a very high standard to say, we expect you to run autonomously, to think independently, and to be a professional in this field. Who cares if you’ve only been in for two or three weeks? We’re going to hold that same standard.
all this to say, you know, if you get a chance to read this book, which I would highly recommend you do, I’d also find all the nuanced ways that you want to apply it in your particular business, because I think that’s really where the concepts in here are going to really kind of come to life.
Mickey Mellen (19:35)
Yes.
Yep, and that’s one thing I appreciated as I get near the end of the book because for a little while I thought it was kind of dragging and kind of just hitting the same points over and over with different stories and stuff but I realized over time all the different stories gave me little insights on how it might apply as I did things. So if those curious, the audible length is about 11 and a half hours. I read the Kindle book but I keep the audible length as kind of reference for books just to understand how long it might take. it’s on the longer side but not that long. But again, over time as I got through the stories were very helpful. but this story applies kind of like that and this one I can see here and that one doesn’t apply but
enough in there that it gave me some again some places to apply because yeah with any of these books I mean if you read it that’s great but if you don’t apply anything then what you just do so yeah we need to apply stuff so Tony this has been fantastic how can people find you and connect with you
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (20:21)
That’s right. That’s right.
Absolutely. Well, I’m on LinkedIn. I haven’t been posting as much recently, but I’ll be posting a little bit more come the new year. So find me on LinkedIn. You can also find me on my YouTube channel. I’ll be ramping up production there. And I also have a podcast called the DevLounge Podcast, where we interview digital agency owners and experts to basically give some insight into how to better grow your digital agency.
Mickey Mellen (20:40)
Awesome.
Gotcha, and I’m curious, you said you’re be posting more on LinkedIn in the new year, so is this like a new year’s resolution? Do you have a different strategic plan? What do you think is gonna cause that change?
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (20:58)
different strategic plan. So I had been doing one approach and now I’m going to be doing a slightly different approach where I’m mainly focusing on YouTube. I’m going to be repurposing content for LinkedIn.
Mickey Mellen (21:06)
Okay.
Awesome. Well cool. Yeah, I’ll have links to your LinkedIn and your YouTube and your podcast all in the show notes So if anyone wants to find that just come look at the show notes and check them out. So Tony This is fantastic. Thank you so much for suggesting the book and for coming on here to chat about it
Tony Wilson, CPA, CMA (21:20)
Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Mickey Mellen (21:22)
Thanks.
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