“We judge others by their doings, but ourselves by our intentions.” Edward Wigglesworth – Accidental Diminisher: well-intended leadership, who think they are doing a great job leading, but faintly or completely unaware of their negative impact on their environment.
Every leader, in fact we all have accidental diminisher moments. The secret is knowing what your vulnerabilities are, spotting them in action and turning these situations into multiplier moments.
You can increase your awareness as a leader by identifying your own diminishing tendencies.
ACCIDENTAL DIMINISHERS
IDEA GUYS
- Intention: This type of leader is a creative, innovative thinker, idea generator, who loves an idea-rich environment. They are throwing ideas in to stimulate ideas in others.
- Impact: They overwhelm others, who shutdown or spend time chasing ideas after ideas, until they eventually give up. They not only stop acting but they stop trying to come up with their own ideas. So it is easy to get idea lazy around people who are idea rich.
ALWAYS ON
- Intention: Dynamic, charismatic leader who is always engaged, always present, and always has something to say. Their intention is to create infectious energy.
- Impact: They use up all the space, and drain energy as they are consuming all the available oxygen around them while others suffocate. When a leader is always on, everyone else is always off.
RESCUER
- Intention: A good leader with noble intention who wants to ensure people are successful and protect their reputation. This leader more often than not, lends a hand, resolves a problem, helps people across the finish line.
- Impact: People become dependent, helpless which weakens their reputation. Instead of feeling successful employees experience frustration and depleted confidence. They are not learning and developing.
PACESETTER
- Intention: This is an achievement-oriented leader who leads by example and sets a high standard for quality or pace. He exemplifies the values of the organisation such as quality, customer service, innovation etc..
- Impact: Others become spectators or give up when they can’t keep up. These leaders tend to get out ahead of their team thinking that other people will follow, but actually people tend to slow down. And when they lead by setting the pace, they end up creating more spectators than followers.
RAPID RESPONDER
- Intention: This is the leader who prizes agility and fast turnaround to keep their organization moving fast and respond to their stakeholders quickly. He is quick to respond, troubleshoot problems, and make fast microdecisions. When he sees a problem, he solves it. E-mails don’t last long in his in-box. He opens, reads, and resolves immediately.
- Impact: Their organization moves slowly because of the traffic jam of too many decisions or changes coming from the leader. And people tend to defer to them and they wait.
OPTIMIST
- Intention: This leader always sees possibilities and believes that most problems can be tackled with hard work and right mindset. She is a ‘glass half full’ kind of person. And her intention is to create belief that the team can do it.
- Impact: These leaders can came across that they undervalue the struggle the team experiencing and the hard-fought learning and work. Employee may wonder if these leaders have lost their connection to reality, causing people to play it safe or not want to attempt hard things.
PROTECTOR
- Intention: These are the ‘Mama Bear’ or ‘Banyan Tree’ type of leaders, who shield their staff from the hazards of corporate life and keep people safe from political forces in the organization.
- Impact: Unfortunately nothing grows under the Banyan tree, so these leaders prevent people from learning from hardship and taking full responsibility. They don’t learn to fend for themselves.
STRATEGIST
- Intention: The strategists are the big thinkers who casts a compelling vision of the future to move beyond the status quo. They show the team a better place, a destination worth striving for and sell it with evangelical zeal.
- Impact: They paint such a big vision that other people don’t have to do the big thinking and they end up in myopic, often small thinking. These leaders also don’t give space for their people to think through the challenges themselves and develop the intellectual muscle needed to make a vision a reality.
PERFECTIONIST
- Intention: To help people produce outstanding work they are proud of. They go beyond setting a high standard for others to follow (as the Pacesetter) and want everyone around them to have the same satisfaction of getting it just exactly right.
- Impact: People feel criticized, become disheartened, and stop trying. People feel no matter how hard they try nothing is ever good enough.
Can you identify your areas of vulnerability?
Which of these accidental diminishing tendencies can you recognize in your leadership practice? Remember, we all have accidental diminisher moments.
Source: Multipliers – How the best leaders make everyone smarter by Liz Wiseman