How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter

There’s an untapped wealth of intelligence and capability in your company. Here’s how to access and develop it, starting now.

Another instrument leaders can use to tap into employee intelligence is the environment they promote in the office.

“Good leaders create an environment with lots of pressure, but no stress,” said Wiseman.

She illustrated this with the story of William Tell, the infamous archer, who was told to shoot an apple off his son’s head. Tell felt pressure, she said, but his son felt stress.

Pressure is the overwhelming drive to do well. Stress is the hope that your boss knows what he’s doing. The difference is control. Human beings work better if they feel responsible for a deadline or accountable for how a project turns out.

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“Hand the pen back,” Wiseman said, illustrating a transfer of control from leader to employee. “You think you have the right answer, and you’re about to put it on paper, but hand the pen back. See what they’ll do with it.”

The most fulfilling – and the cheapest – way to increase the amount of intelligence and capability in your business isn’t to hire more employees, but to get more out of the employees you already have. And these are people who really want to give you everything they have.

The Logical Difference

Once you’ve made the choice to be a Multiplier, you need to understand what sets you apart from the Diminishers. What makes a leader one or the other is simply a difference in logic.

Diminishers think, ‘People won’t figure it out without me.’

Multipliers think, ‘People are smart and will figure it out.’

It’s not as much about trust in your employees as it is the realization that you hired smart people and they are more capable than you know of making decisions and solving problems.

Wiseman discovered this fact through a simple bedtime ritual with her children. Aged two, four and six, the children never seemed to have bedtime figured out. Every night, she would have to dish out dozens of commands. Turn off the TV, put your toys away, brush your teeth. The whole charade could take hours.

One day, a coworker suggested she only speak to her children at bedtime through questions. Skeptical but curious, Wiseman went home to try it out.

“What time is it?” she asked once it was bedtime. “Where do your toys belong? Where are your pajamas? What do we do after brushing our teeth?”

“We say our prayers,” her children answered. Wiseman was shocked.

“I thought to myself, ‘How long have they known how to do this?’ It sure didn’t seem like they knew how to do it the night before. So I tried it again. It turned out they knew how to pack their backpacks, how to make their beds and how to clean up their toys.

“This shift in my house, which was really just a shift in me, changed everything. And then I thought, ‘Do my employees also know what to do?'”

You’ll find that they do. Asking questions is just one way to become a better leader. Your employees don’t need insruction as much as they need encouragement, challenges and a little faith.

Attempt to challenge your employees with a new project or difficult assignment at least once a week, said Wiseman. Don’t tell them what to do or do it for them, but give them space to figure it out. You’ll not only get significantly more from them, but they will be happier too.

So try handing the pen back. See what happens.

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