Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Liz Wiseman: Multiplying Genius

Episode Date: February 17, 2016

Liz Wiseman shares her insights and research on the art and science of leadership. She walks us through her journey that has allowed her to understand how leaders can diminish or multiply the genius in others. In this episode: -How her childhood and relationship with her father shaped her -Observing the different types of leadership in the workplace -Creating an environment where people excel vs. shrink -Space between action and intention -Coping with a tough boss and having the grit to overcome it -Courage to leave the corporate world -Defining intelligence -Intelligence as a tool or a weapon -Struggling with “letting go” -Traits of the multiplying vs. diminishing boss -Disciplines of multiplying leaders -The importance of how one leads in the home -Identifying someone’s native genius -Understanding when to be big and small_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N. com slash finding mastery. And in this conversation, I sat down with Liz Wiseman. And Liz recently wrote a book called Multipliers. And the subtitle is How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. And what you'll come to find, I think, from Liz is that she's definitely an optimist. She looks to find what's good and what's possible in people and opportunities. She's definitely scrappy. She's an open book. And so she takes us in lots of different avenues on the path that led her to understand what she would say as at the center of leadership. She enjoys iterating quickly.

She understands the space between intention and thought. And we dive into that in the conversation. And what she's come to understand that her mission is to help leaders to become more aware of their intelligence and how it either shuts down or facilitates space for others to explore their own genius. All right. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. Those of us who are interested in taking insight, taking the ideas and the relationships that we build with other people and moving them across a mission or a life that has meaning and value and adds to the world, I think you're going to love this conversation. So let's jump right into it with Liz Wiseman.

Liz, thank you for coming on and having this conversation. Oh, absolutely. My pleasure, Michael. Yeah. And you've been in the field and in the space of teaching leaders and executives concepts and understandings and practices on essentially how to help them be better. And you've got three books that, I'm sorry, two books that I've been tracking and deeply interested in. And more importantly than the books, I want to talk about first how you set down this path. And the curiosity is like, when did you first begin to be interested in the psychology or the thinking and the behaviors of how people excel? When did that first begin to take place for you?

Oh, you know, I think I became interested in it as a practice and a field way before anyone else was interested in me doing it. Meaning, you know, I came out of college knowing this is what I wanted to do. And I think I've been observing for a long time, always studying how people operate. And some might say I've always been interested in the human condition. But I came out of college wanting to do this absolutely clear about it. And I wanted to teach management. Why management? You know, I don't know. I've just always been fascinated with leaders and probably because I'm fascinated with human intelligence and contribution. And I think the way I see leadership is leaders create a safe place for people to contribute. Leaders are the ones-

Where'd you come from? Oh, okay. So say that again. They create a safe space for people to contribute. All right. How did you come to that? There's so many definitions of leadership. It drives me bananas sometimes.

But how did you come to that understanding? Well, I think a lot of this comes back to how I dropped into the workforce right out of college. So some of it comes from where I wanted to work and where I ended up working. And maybe I'll start with where I ended up working. And maybe I'll start with where I ended up working and we'll get back to where I wanted to work, but they didn't really want me to work there. But where I ended up working is I took a job for Oracle and Oracle was this small maverick software company. They were growing really rapidly. I joined Oracle having turned down jobs at IBM and Procter and Gamble, kind of real jobs with real companies. And I took this job where so

many of my colleagues said, or, you know, colleagues, they weren't really colleagues. These were fellow students, all, you know, people trying to, to get jobs are like, what are you going to do? Do they make toothbrushes? You know, like, Is that a toothpaste company? And it was just a small software company, but they were gobbling up talent. And so they had this recruiting strategy of hire the top graduates from the top, what we would call today STEM programs, out of the top universities in the nation. They had a list of 17 universities. I did not go to one of those 17. I kind of snuck in through the side door. But what happened is I landed in this pool of brilliant people. So these are all top grads from top universities, incredibly smart. And it's not

like I felt like I didn't belong there. I don't think I ever felt like this imposter syndrome, but I was in absolute awe of the intelligence of the people I worked with. I'm like, every day, I never felt like the smartest person in the room. And like I said, I didn't feel like I shouldn't have been there, but I felt like, wow, I'm getting a PhD in like world studies

just by hanging out with these colleagues. So I'm in total awe of the brilliance around me and amazed at what a group of driven, ambitious, brilliant people can do. I'm also intrigued by what a mess that can make when you get a bunch of really smart type A people all trying to make something happen. It can be a bit of a mess as well. But here's what I noticed as I was watching this. I noticed the impact that leaders have on the intelligence of people around them. So super, super smart kids. And I watched how some leaders seem to bring out that intelligence while other leaders seem to suck it right out of the room. Like somehow the leaders were smart, but the people around them didn't get to be smart.

Yeah. And how did, it's such a, I know it's the essence of the, your research and what you've come to understand. How did you, how did you come to understand that though? Before we go into what it is, which is like, how do people suck out? How do people create a draft where people excel? And how do people create conversations and perceptions where people want to shrink? But how did you come to have this insight first? I think I just watched. And maybe I'm feeling like I don't know how I came about it, but it was just so obvious to me. And I think part of why I watched is because I came in as a bit of an underdog.

I never felt like I was the smartest person in the room. So I studied my colleagues and I was just constantly watching how other people worked. Now that makes it sound like, like it makes it sound like I was sitting around doing absolutely nothing, but you know, sitting on sort of a proverbial park bench, watching my colleagues. And I wasn't, I mean, I was desperately contributing because, not because I'm super hard working, but because we were involved in such a huge task. I got thrown into management at, you know, I consider it as a child. I was 24 and just a year out of business school when, you know, I'd been teaching programming for a year. And actually, that's a whole story in and of itself because I actually knew nothing about programming when they asked

me to teach programming. And so I had to really watch what was going on around me. What do programmers actually do? How do they think? Because I have to be one or at least pretend to be one as I'm teaching all these new grads. And I think it was because I was always underqualified for my jobs that I watched the people around me and what they were doing. What gave you the, I want to tap into the thoughts or the strategy before you had the insights and understandings. And the reason being is because if we can get that right, if we can get attuned to strategies or ways of thinking, I'll call that a psychological framework, that if we can get that understood, I think we can, and that becomes sturdy and robust and doesn't get easily knocked over by the external conditions of the world, then we end up putting ourselves in a better position to not only observe, but to understand. field of people wanting to create environments where others excel, is that your first part of

it is that you observed and you observed, it sounds like a tabula rasa, like a blank slate. You're working hard and you're observing, but what gave you the right almost to say, I can go into this space that I don't know much about and I can, I can be fine or I can figure it out on the fly or I can add to it. How did, how did you develop that strategy? Oh goodness. I, you know, maybe there's a simple answer to this. I don't know if it's the real answer. Okay. But, you know, I feel like I was born with a bit of a genetic defect on this with probably what some people might say is like an overdose of growth mindset.

And, you know, that's the simple answer. But I think if you double click on that, there's something more interesting. I have always been, I think it's a Pippi Longstocking. Someone said it was Pippi Longstocking who said, oh, I've never done anything like that before, so this should be just fine. It's always been my approach to things, which is, oh, I don't know how to do that. This should be fun. I'm trying to figure out where that came from. And I don't have a good answer to it.

Are you ready for this? Yeah, but would you please tell me? I have no idea, but okay. All right, so let's go back. Let's just go back quickly to get a quick frame of what were your parents like? Where were you born? Yeah, I was born down in Los Angeles and Los Angeles County. And, you know, I was born to what I would call today a multiplier mother and a diminisher father. Okay, well,

wait a minute, really? You don't understand? You just absolutely took your framework and said, listen, my parenting, my early childhood was I had one that supported me and one that took away and took up too much space where I couldn't be me. And so you felt this, you understood inherently what it felt like to have both types of leadership, if you will. Absolutely. So I could see it. But I think, Michael, I think it's more interesting than that.

I don't know that it gets like darker and more mysterious than that, because I don't know that I had a dark and mysterious childhood, although my sister would say. So when my sister wants to insult me, she says, oh, Liz, that's because you have a happy filter. Like you don't remember those childhood experiences because your little happy filter filtered those out. The rest of us remember those things. I'm like, oh, because I don't really remember having a bad childhood. I remember actually having a great childhood. So she and I joke about that. But here's where I think it gets interesting is I had a father who was a good man and a decent

man, but a terrible communicator. I think there'd probably be a diagnosis for it today or a word to describe it. I think some of it stemmed from a learning disability, but he had a really hard time expressing himself. Are you capturing the idea of Asperger's or autism or something else? I don't know. It was kind of like grumpy man disease. I don't really know that there's a term for it, but he was sort of like an old grumpy man before he was old. It's likely. I can't pretend to know, but men that are easily frustrated or grumpy or just moody, likely what's under the surface is either depression or anxiety. And there's a whole host of things that could take place, but that would be always where my antenna come up to say, in some ways, a really tragic life. And when he ran into conflict,

he would just sort of shut that down. He ended up, kind of sort of divorced himself from his parents, and that he decided that he disagreed with his parents, and he was gonna essentially separate from his parents. And he made that declaration and he never looked back. And I remember watching that as a kid, as my grandparents came to the door to come and visit, and he said, well, no, thank you. And I watched that, but yet I saw a really good man who was trying to be a good father, trying to love his family. So here's where I think it gets interesting. What I could see at a very, very young age is I could see the difference between my father's

behavior and his intention. Like I saw this kind man and this loving man and someone who really wanted to be caring and good and, and supportive. But yet I could see how hard it was for him to get those words out, how hard it was to talk to his parents, how, how hard it was to, to say those things. And I think that's... How old were you? I was, when he kind of left his family, left the family, I was little. I was like maybe two or three. But I watched sort of the grumpiness, but I saw also this tenderness. What age do you think you remember?

Because this is my, I'm grinning right now because I'm curious what age you remember being able to find the space, the gap, the space between intention and action. And I'll tell you why I'm really curious about this thought for in a minute, but what age do you think you were when you found that space between intention and action? Okay, that's a hard question because now I'm having to really reel back and think. I would say it was probably third grade or fourth grade would be my guess. I'm trying to figure out if there were any pivotal moments.

No, I don't know if it was, but it was- It was young. Yeah, it was young. It was young. And I could just so clearly see, I never wondered like, ah, does my dad not like us? Or this and that. I felt so incredibly loved and cared for by both my parents. But my dad was really grumpy and had a really hard time. And in fact, I was in college. I was probably a... Before you go to college. Oh, yeah. Okay.

This idea, I think, is... I want to share why I'm grinning on the other side of this, is that I think if, as we continue to unfold this part of the conversation, I think that this is your talent, the thing that if you just hold that phrase for just a moment, people that can observe the space between are able to understand and have insight. So those that are just observing just action, but miss intention, I'm sorry, but miss the intention that precedes it, just get caught up with the noise of what is concrete. And those that miss the alignment between action and intention tend to live in fairyland because they're not dealing with the concreteness of what is real, and they're assuming that the intent is enough. But embracing the space between intention and action is likely one of your gifts,

if not the center gift. And it's the same thing. If you just take that brilliant little insight from a nine-year-old or a 10-year-old and move it forward to a 19-year-old mind or a 29-year-old mind, that likely what was taking place is that you were able to observe the space between the action that people were conveying and the thing that was inside of them, their intention or their spirit of who they are. And that space between is the same thing that if you follow some of the great world leaders of inspiration, such as Buddhism, just for a moment, his insight was that all people begin with suffering. And that was the center of the person.

And so if you can understand that and you can embrace the space between suffering and action, you understand the person. And I'm not saying that you're a living incarnational Buddha by any means, but I'm saying that honoring the space between and being able to be present enough to catch it and to embrace it allows for a deep level of compassion and insight. And when people speak to me about anything in life, I get blowback often from friends, which is, Mike, I already told you that.

And the blowback is, aren't you paying attention to the things I'm telling you? And I'm saying, yeah, but that's noise. Like what you ate for breakfast is way different than the space between the intention that you wanted to have about breakfast. And so I think that we might be able to nod our heads that you are naturally attuned to that space. I think you're right. I am attuned to it I don't know if I would have been as attuned had I not you know grown up with the father that I grew up with that's right yeah you know and or maybe that that amplified it but I very much remember this in fact I'm trying to find like what were some of those early experiences I'll give you one I don't know what was the most early, but my dad was using a hot glue gun. So my dad was a builder. He was incredibly creative and he just was magnificent with a hammer and a nail and a saw. And I would help him build. He had a hot

glue gun, just the kind you get at the craft store. And I wanted to use it. It was telling me it was hot and something I wanted to use it. And my father decided that he was going to seize the teaching moment and teach me that this was hot or dangerous. And so he said, stick out your finger. And so as a little girl, I stuck out my finger and he squirted hot glue on my finger and it was really hot and it burned my finger. I probably blistered it. And I'm like, Oh, ow. Yeah, that's hot. And even in that moment, I remember like, Oh, what he just did to me, that wasn't mean he was trying to teach me something. And that's a pretty crappy way of teaching a little kid that something is hot. Like he might have said like, here, why don't you touch that sort of the dispenser, you know, the hot part of the hot glue. Like that would probably be a wiser thing to do. It's probably intending to hurt me. He was trying to teach me, and that was the best way that he knew how. with other siblings who were combative with my father. And I'd be like, oh, okay, they're not actually intending to create conflict.

They're just doing the best they can in this situation or other people. And so how is this not naive optimism? How do you separate that idea? Because naive optimism is what keeps people in battered relationships because they just keep finding the good, even though there's no real reason why they should believe that anything will ever change. Like, how is this for you different? I think I understand it, but I'd love to hear how you think about it. Yeah, you know, I have been accused of being optimistic. I don't know.

And I've probably been accused of being naive as well. So put them together. You might as well call me naively. I'll stay back on sort of my orientation as a child. You know, today, my father would probably be called a bully, sort of an emotional bully. And I want to be really clear. You know, I love my father would probably be called a bully, sort of an emotional bully. And I want to be really clear. I love my father. I had a great relationship with him.

He was in no way abusive or anything, but he probably would have been called a bully. And one of the things I also learned really early on is the only thing that bullies really respect are other bullies or an iteration of that is someone who is willing to stand up to them. So my father and I had a great relationship. In fact, goodness, I hope none of my siblings are listening to any of this is, you know, I think my siblings would say, oh, well, like you were the favorite. And, you know, maybe it was because I sort of understood him, but I think it was because I stood up to him. And so when my dad would do something that I thought would be, I mean, I can't remember what

I did when he put the hot glue on. I would have been like, dude, no, like, hey, that's not cool. And one of the experiences I remember is my freshman year in college, where I was funding all my own education. My parents said, you know, you're sort of on your own for funding college. And I got my very first transcripts in the mail. And I knew they were really good grades. You know, this wasn't every semester, but in this particular semester, they were all A's and no MIs. They were just all A's. And, and I came in and I walked into the kitchen and I saw my father, um, opening up my grades and I'm like, Hey, you don't get to open those. And he's like, well, kind of, what do you mean? And, and I'm like, no, those are my grades. Um, you know, call it, this is my experience. Those are my grades.

I've earned those. And I'd be delighted to show them to you, but that will be my choice whether or not I show them to you. And my dad was like, oh, listen to you, you know, big college student. And, and, and again, I knew that they were good grades, but that was mine. That was my choice. And I think very early on, I learned these dual skills, if you will. I don't know if they're gifts or skills. Maybe the first is a bit of a gift, the seeing the space between someone's intent and their actions and understanding that space is what builds relationships and helps people grow. But then also being willing to assert myself and stand up. I don't know that anyone's ever accused me of not being assertive or passive.

I'd actually consider it a compliment if I ever heard that. Cool. Yeah, I think that is a skill. I think courage is built, and it's built by taking risks, and it's built by demonstrating the ability to take a risk in the face of being fearful for a cause that matters to you. And so I'll definitely kind of put my money on the table that it's something we're born with. I'm sorry, that it's not what we're born with, that there's a skill to build around it. And there's also genetic coding that makes it easier or harder for people to take risk.

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Because I didn't. I didn't have any, I had no sense that there was even something after high school. And I can explain that process later, but did you know you were going to go to school or was that? So I did get a lot of directives from parents, like maybe today's parents would be directing kids about their college experience, you know, starting at what, seven, you know, when they enroll them in Mandarin classes. My father had started some college, never finished. But my mom, who had started college when she was 18, 17 maybe, married at 18, dropped out of college when she started having children, stayed at home with us for a number of years. And then when the youngest, my brother Drew, was in preschool, she went back to the school. So I was in elementary school and in my junior high

years, as I watched my mother go back to school and get her bachelor's degree. And so she wasn't almost done with her bachelor's when she dropped out. She probably had to drop out in her freshman or sophomore year. I watched her get her bachelor's degree. I watched her then go get her master's degree. You know, we all picked up household responsibility. So my mom could write her master's thesis. And, you know, she studied education and speech pathology. And when you have a mom who is in school getting a master's in speech pathology, you become a lab rat. And so we were like play dates were go with mom down to San Jose State campus where she got her degree and go into the lab and get tested for speech and hearing. I just thought this was a normal childhood. I didn't realize that other kids didn't do this. So I watched my mom do that. And I think,

although there was really no college planning conversations in my family, I just assumed, I kind of always believed it was an honor to be able to do that because I watched her work so hard to do that. And then on this path that you've created to have the insight, the insights which we haven't still expressed yet, you know, what has been, what comes to mind when you think about the single most difficult moment in your path to understand what you've come to understand? I think probably the most difficult moment. Are you debating whether to say it out loud or not? No.

Are you searching for the thing because they're far away from memory? I'm searching for the thing because, again, it's this naive optimist. I don't interpret a lot as hard. I just interpret it as a puzzle, a challenge. I'm trying to find something that's hard. I also don't have much of a private space. In fact, my mom, who's always sort of mortified at, I don't know, my sense of humor or my willingness to share is I once told my sister in jest, I said, oh, I can't tell you that. That's private. And my mom was just so delighted. She's like, oh, private. I didn't know you knew what that word meant.

And she said, and my mom is a former school teacher and principal. She said, oh, she's being quite cheeky. She said, can you use the word in a sentence? And I said, oh, yeah. Do you want to see my private parts? And of course, I said that knowing that that would just be the ultimate mortification for her. And she just said, Elizabeth, you're incorrigible.

So no, I'm really searching for the thing that was hardest for me. And I'll give you a couple of places that were hard. One was when I was at Oracle and I'd been there a couple of years and I had been doing well and, you know, I had been given some big responsibilities and some promotions. And I had a boss who was really, really difficult to work with. And, um, you know, it wasn't that he was a tyrant or a diminisher. I think he was, um, not mentally well. In fact, you know, he had, he had said he had been diagnosed with some conditions that I think most people would find it hard to work someone with, with those conditions. And, and it was just, um, it was more than I could really bear.

And it felt like torture and mental abuse working for this person. And I used to come home from work and tell my husband, I'm like, I can't keep working for him. I can't keep doing this. I'm going to quit. And my husband, who's really practical guy, he said, you know what, Liz, if this guy is as sort of nuts as you say he is, like the company will take care of that and you just outlive him. And I'm like, I kind of hate that answer. I sort of wanted to dramatically quit like with this big, you know, and I would take my husband's advice and he'd kind of send me back out onto the battlefield and I would do it again. And I got to the point where I finally couldn't take it any longer. And I went and I talked to, um, to, to my boss's boss and just said, you know what, I just need to tell you, I can't keep doing this. I, I really need to find a

different role or something like this. And, you know, they dug into it and, and, you know, they found this was really a problem and they took care of that problem. And I kept going, that was tough. And it was tough to go and say, you know what, I can't do this. I can't keep working. So that was the moment, like going into your, your supervisor's supervisor office and say, this isn't right. Yeah, that was tough. But just going back out when it felt wrong, that was tough. Oh, that part. Okay.

They were both really hard. And this isn't, I don't know that it sounds really difficult, but for me, there was something about just staying in the game. And one of the bosses I used to work for, whom I adored at Oracle, he used to say, you know, when you play in the NFL, you play hurt. Now, that's probably a politically incorrect thing to be saying these days. But going in and playing hurt a bit was something that I learned to do, is that sometimes you just have to go in and you have to stay at it even when it's hard and it's painful.

And the fact that I didn't give up, that I stayed in that situation and in that company. And I'm not talking about a real abusive situation. I'm just talking about kind of an SOB of a boss and someone who was kind of crazy. I'm just talking about kind of an SOB of a boss and someone who was kind of crazy. I'm really glad I took my husband's advice and just outlasted because it was there that I was given so many of the opportunities to lead, to manage, to be part of an amazing

growing company, to be able to continue to observe and, and do the work that, that I've been able to do. I think there's a couple of things that are difficult for people. There's lots like to do anything amazing is hard. And if you're, when you do hard things, it's just hard. And we need to find a place that we have, you know, a place for recovery, a sanctuary, if you will, when we're doing hard things, but will, when we're doing hard things.

But when we're doing hard, like the difficultness of not having alignment in your life, when you're like, I don't, I don't, I shouldn't be here or I shouldn't be doing this because it's not right. That's a whole different thing. And I'm wondering if, well, that is like, I'm trying to tease out my mind why this was hard for you. If it was the misalignment, because I feel like I'm being cowardice doing the thing that I really want to leave and dramatically say, you know, you're, you fight and that doing the difficult thing to stay in the fight gave you perspective and resiliency to be able to do other difficult things that will lead you closer to the thing that you wanted most? It was difficult just going back in, knowing that this wasn't right. We shouldn't have managers and leaders like this in areas of significant responsibility. I think that was hard. Here's another one that was hard for me. It was hard for me to leave Oracle.

I loved working there. I had this amazing experience. I still look back and go, man, I can't believe they gave me the level of responsibility they did when I was so young and so inexperienced. Like where else could I have gotten this kind of experience? So it was amazing. But leaving after 17 years to go out on my own and to go do coaching and research and pursue some things I was really excited about and passionate about, it's all led to the work I'm doing today. But when I left, I think everyone thought, oh, it's a midlife crisis.

I was probably 40 when I did. And I was having lunch with one of my colleagues. He was on my management team. And he was kind of like, okay, Liz, so now that you've been gone for six months, like when are you coming back? And he didn't ask, when are you coming back to Oracle? It's like, when are you coming back into the corporate world?

You know, when are you going to take a chief learning officer job? Because we're getting the band back together. Like, we're all waiting. And I said, oh, I'm not coming back. And he said, but what you're doing is such a waste of your talent. That was hard. Because there's a part of me that thought, well, wait a minute, maybe he's right. Because I think he was saying I had some talent for working in a complex organization and leading

and managing and working with senior leaders. And, and here I was going off on my own with no big company behind me, no name. You know, when you leave a big company, I had been a vice president at Oracle. And, you know, you go to your first couple parties afterward, you know, sort of the classic cocktail party conversation. Someone says, what do you do? And you tell them. You know, you can see they're doing a calculus of how quickly can I end this conversation and go find someone important to talk to. And so when you're off on your own, it's a lonely thing. I could see that I was going to do some work that was really important to me.

And maybe it would be important to other people. But it was hard to have the courage to go and say, no, I'm not going back. I'm going to go do my own thing here. What was your vision? Like, what did you have your heart and your mind set on creating when you left a steady gig to take your insights and go blaze a trail on your own? Like, what was that vision that you set, which is going to lead us into now, eventually? Well, this will be so disappointing to hear. I'm not a visionary. I had no grand vision. I am a dog on a bone. And I had been watching this. I'd been building and developing leaders

inside of Oracle. And we had been doing a number of things to help leaders build the skills to tackle really, really tough problems. And I left to go and do something with that. And I wasn't sure what it was. I had some ideas that I thought I might research, maybe write a book about, maybe help other leaders do that. But I really just set out to help leaders build the capabilities to tackle really tough problems. It was no more grand than that. Okay.

Yeah, I love it. I mean, but that is a vision. Like I want to go do this outside of Oracle. I want to create my own ecosystem and culture and business, whether it's an N of one or N of 12. And I want to go out and move the ideas across many different cultures or companies, I should say.

And then what are the skills that you would build or the capabilities, to use your language, that you would help others build so that they could tackle and do difficult things. Well, I think it was how to use that intelligence is a tool or a weapon. And, you know, for leaders to help their organizations tackle really tough problems, their intelligence has to be a tool. But I had seen so many people use their intelligence as a weapon to shut some go to, and I'll leave the name of that training out to not, I don't know, to be disparaging, but there's a particular training that executives go to to teach how to ask questions to expose ill thinking and to expose where logic breaks. And the the spirit i'm familiar with it okay all

right so we're going to talk about the same thing that the spirit of it is great it can be an accelerant to efficiency when two people love each other care about each other and they're really curious and they want to understand deeper to go faster but with a little bit of fear behind it and a little bit of, um, uh, machismo that it's a really aggressive, uh, cutting and it's a public cutting that takes place. Is that, is that close to the thing that you've, you've come to, to help people with? Well, you know, it's funny when I started my, my research research on this, and my research started with a coaching engagement, and it started with a coaching engagement of a really, really, really smart executive, someone with a pedigree education.

And he could see, and I could see that his intelligence was really shutting down the people around them. And he knew he needed to use that in a different way. When you say intelligence, are you speaking about G, like the general intelligence, the capital G intelligence, or intelligence in the other five or six subdomains of art, movement, creativity? Are you thinking about the general capacity to think quickly and to assimilate ideas?

I think so. So it doesn't come out so much. It's not born out of the multiple intelligence framework. So when I started the research, we wanted to have a really clear definition of intelligence. And we ended up using a definition that I think had been adopted by 152 researchers on cognitive psychology and brain physiology. But intelligence defined as the ability to think and act with reason.

Okay. And then from that, the ability and act with reason. Okay. And then from that, the ability to act with reason. Oh, gosh, did I lose some of that? Say that again, because I think technology did not help us. Yeah, say that again for us. The ability to think and act with reason, and to solve hard, complex problems,

and to adapt to changes in the environment and you know which may be the ultimate form of intelligence because you know as as darwin has kind of helped us all see it's not the strongest necessarily that survive or maybe the most intelligent it's the those that are the most adaptive to changes around us. So that was the intelligence, measure of intelligence, meaning your knowledge, your skills, your talent, if you will. It might be your business savvy, your technical skills or acumen. And what I was trying to do, and this was just born out of me. Like I said, I'm not a great visionary. I am a dog on a bone.

And when I lock onto a problem, it's really, really hard to let go, which is why I think the most difficult things for me have been letting go. Yeah, I'm really good about locking onto stuff. It's hard for me to let go. Yeah, because I'm surprised you didn't say the difficult thing was not getting the first job that you wanted, that you so wanted. Rejection is not the difficult thing. It's the letting go of Oracle, this place, you know, it was the cradle of my career. I mean, I had grown up there and I was good in that environment and leaving to go off

into a place where I had no idea how it worked or even if you'd be successful or happy or whatever, you know, those were tough. I'm good at the lock-on. You're good at lock-on. Okay. Are you good at risk-taking? Oh, you know, well, I think so. Yeah, because you ask such interesting questions.

I've never considered that. I'll tell you what I think I'm good at. I don't know if I'm good at risk taking. I don't know that I would be some big capital wielding entrepreneur. I'm really good at imperfection. I'm really good at working in scrappy ways and not getting it right. So I sign up to do things I've never done before without a whole lot of thought or analysis because I'm really good at just sort of iterating and finding my way through and never find a lot of shame in not getting it right the first time. So I don't know, I think I'm good at anything. I have this ability to just laugh at myself and go, well, that didn't go quite right.

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That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash finding mastery. That really fits in your model of openness as well. And I'm sure you've heard the phrase where you're, we, you, whomever, we are as sick as our secrets and this open framework that you have and this tenacity to keep going on the thing that's interesting to you and the ability to do the difficult things over time along with seeing the space between intention and action in an optimistic frame meaning that something good's about to take place let me keep working and i understand the intention and action around people. So that seems to me to be your psychological framework of how you see the world. And there's also another level here of compassion, of wanting to help and understand and give.

And it seems like those are the basic pillars of your framework, unless I'm missing part of it. Well, I would think so. And I'm not particularly goal-oriented, which is part of not being visionary. I don't know how you feel about this. I imagine in the work that you do, goals are really important.

And I just, for myself, I never set goals. I'm one of these lazy New Year's resolution people. I rarely do this. My life goals are pretty simple. Raise a good family and be useful to the world. And when I die, I hope I'm still a good person, you know, like, you know, like try not to get grumpy and mean and vicious, you know, in the process as life doesn't go right or is, you know, things don't work right for you. So I'm, I'm really very

simple that way. Um, so I don't really do goals. I just hold intentions. Yeah, there you go. I think hold intentions of how to be useful. ran SEALs Team 5, Pete Nashak is his name. And he says this statement, it just lights my entire being up, is that when something matters to you, you'll do whatever it takes. And if that's a true statement, which 100% is true to me, for a loved one, for a cause, for something that matters to me, I'll do whatever it takes. That my responsibility then is to figure out what matters most and then align my efforts or to help somebody align their

efforts to get closer to experiencing the truth of that thing that matters most to them. And when we get clarity on that, we will do whatever it takes. And it sounds like you have that tenacious kind of, okay, yeah, goals. Like, first, let me just get clear on what I want. And I'm going to go to work. Yeah. And even it's far more emergent than that. There's a great op-ed piece that David Brooks wrote for the New York Times. And I think it was called The Summoned Life. I think that's the name of it. But he contrasts two very different ways of living

and working. And one is a very goal-oriented. And you see, I'm so not goal-oriented that I can't even remember the name of that model about someone who's very clear about what do I want to do? How do I want to contribute? And they put a lot of energy into figuring that out. And then they work backwards toward that. And then he contrasts it with a different model that he called the summoned life, which is people who just go about their life, their business, observing for needs. And he cites, you know, a number of great leaders of great leaders, sort of the Gandhi kind of moments where you see an oppression or you see something that is wrong to you or something that needs to be righted or done. And you just say, I could probably be useful here. And then you stay at it. And that's always

been my approach to my work. I don't operate with big grand visions, but when I see something that is unexplored or something I think is useful or needed, and I just happen to have, I'm in the right place at the right time, or I happen to have a skill set, or as you alluded to, maybe a gift set that could be useful there, I just say, I could do that, which is just how I've done everything. You know, there was one moment where I was at Orica, I was running the university. So I'm sort of in charge of training and education for the company globally. And it's a big job. But there's this one, we're doing this executive development program, it involved the strategy and teaching strategy to the executives. And I was working with the executives team, because this program is their channel for teaching the executives. And, you know, we find that the strategy wasn't particularly clear. And we were getting some lively feedback from the participants about that. So I raised the issue to the executives. They're

like, okay, we're going to go work on it. I just started showing up to these meetings. And I remember one of the product executives, he said to me, he goes, Liz, why are you here? This is a strategy session. And like, you're kind of the training gal for the company. And, and I'm like, yeah, but you know what? I think that you need me here. I think I have a way of looking at things that will probably be useful. So I just invited myself. And he was a little bit annoyed with, I don't know how presumptuous that was or just annoying. But he's like, okay, fine.

And I ended up playing a pretty pivotal role. And we ended up re-architecting the strategy of the company. And I sort of did the authoring of that because I was good at synthesis and I could listen and observe. But I just sort of invite myself. If there's a piece of work that needs to be done, I think it could be useful. I'm like, I'm just going to like. Yep. I love it. I'll just do that. What you've just decoded, or if I could decode that would be that it starts with this inner dialogue that you can do things. And that's the essence of where confidence comes from. And then you made yourself valuable. You created value to the company based on this belief that you have value. And you said, well, if I matter and I have value and I have insights and understandings and skills and gifts, I'm definitely going to bring

them wherever I go. So why would they not want me? That's a really eloquent way to say to people that might be still listening to us, hey, how are you doing that in your life? Do you have an awareness of your inner dialogue? And do you know the value that you bring just because you breathe? Like, what is that value? And then can you give that to other people? And it's the giving of oneself to someone else that is where the deepest value is made. It's the relationships where we become. And it sounds like that's exactly what you've done.

And then quick, if I could just get a little asterisk in here, I think that, I don't know if you know this, but coach Pete Carroll, the head coach for the Seattle Seahawks and I created a joint venture and we we've taken his intellectual property and my intellectual property. We've fused it together and he's, he has a great understanding of how people work together. And then my understanding is how we can train our minds to excel. And we've offered that to companies just to see if they'd be interested. tactics and very little time talking about how to train a person's mind, which it's their mind that is their asset. And it's unbelievable how business has done what it's done so far, especially the large businesses we've been able to get to know, because they don't train their mind. They're training some leadership stuff,

but not training the thing behind the style of leadership. And I think that's why, that's essentially why I wanted to have this conversation with you is to understand the thing behind leadership. And you think about this, Mike, see now you've really got me going. See, now you've really got me going. See now, now you got me mad. And because I think about all the mechanisms inside our organizations that teach us

not to step up. Either it's a boss who ends up shutting people down, the diminisher boss. And there's sort of a tyrant version of the diminisher boss, but there's a nice, gracious version of the diminisher boss that ends up shutting people down by saying, essentially, you know what, don't worry your pretty little head over these tough things. I'll handle the tough things because I'm in management. And you just handle the easy stuff. And people end up saying, oh, I'm not supposed to step up. I'm not supposed to do hard things. That's above my pay grade, so to speak. Or with the best of intentions, we create job descriptions, helping people know how they're supposed to contribute. I think it's one of the worst things that we've done to our modern organizations is carve people up and say,

you know what, do this, but whatever you do, don't do that because that's stepping on someone else's toes. That's a land grab politically. I think we need more of an amoeba model where talent can flow to problems. And we need, instead of job skills and competencies, we need to have a deep understanding of the term I use. There's lots of different ways to frame this. The term I use is one's native genius. It's what is it that you do easily and freely and it's a bit how families are designed what you're capturing in my mind is that uh there's there's a clarity of um it's not like the modern family is not you go do

this mr and you go do this mrs and the children go do this, Mrs., and the children go do these things for chores. It feels like that's how families happen now, is that there's a more elegant way to respect and have regard for the talents and skills that people bring, and that they can express that, I think you called it native genius, through the relationship. Is that close to what you're looking for? Well, I think so. And I think the family structures are really interesting. I think parenting or leading in our homes

is the ultimate form of leadership, not just because it's important. I do have a personal value that says it's the most important work we will do in our lives is the work we do leading in our own homes. I very much believe that personally. But I actually think it's the ultimate form of leadership because you can't hire your kids and you don't get to hire them and you don't get to fire them. You sort of get what you get and it's a very organic, influenced-based model of leading.

And when that family structure works right, people understand what people are good at. And like my husband and I are good at such different things. We had a little marital crisis once because he I worked together, when one of my colleagues said, hey, we should do that Myers-Briggs profile so we can all understand each other's profiles. And then they displayed it on one of those, like, kind of a scattergram, a chart. And there was my husband and I on opposite ends of the quadrant with me as like an ENTJ and he is an ISFP. And I look at that and I'm like, ha, that explains everything. And it's like, we don't share a common cognitive or personality trait. We're so different. And it's a source of great tension sometimes. And it's a source of incredible goodness for our family because we just

gravitate towards different things. I take this role, he takes that role. You know, family vacation is probably the ultimate test of this where you see everyone's skills come in. Like I have a daughter who's particularly good at navigational kinds of things. Other people are good at spontaneity. Some people bring the planning needed. And you watch this organic structure and problems get solved where everyone gets to contribute what they're brilliant at. There you go.

And they're forgiven for the things they're not so great at. You know, it's a great concept. and bringing that into business sounds like actually a wonderful idea, a breath of fresh air. I'm not sure if it's easily applied. And I want to ask you a question of what do leaders do that bring out the best in others, and how does that actually seem, what are the frames that leaders can actually bring out the worst in others? But before we go there, I just want to clean up. Myers-Briggs is a personality preference assessment.

And ENTJ stands for an extroverted intuitive thinking judger. Not judgmental, but quick decisions, basically. And this is just for fun. I'm sure you've seen it. If you map that onto the Star Wars characters, have you seen that graph? Oh, I haven't, but do tell. Yeah. So yeah, Princess Leia is what you come up with. Oh, I am. Okay. And so it's a, it's a fun little, it's a. Okay. So while we're at it, Mike, would you map I S F P, which would be my husband? Yeah. So an introverted sensor, right? And the F stands

for feeling and P stands for perceiving. So what that means is that they introvert their feelings and they show the world the logical kind of sensing, but they're really easy and go with the flow. And it's also known as the artist. And so this was, let me look this up really quickly. It's amazing that you can do this. Do what? That you have the facility to remember those or to look those up quickly. Oh, I'm looking up what, there's only like E and I, introvert, extrovert, S or N,

the second letter, which is intuitive or sensing, and then T and F, obviously thinking, feeling. But I don't remember the characters. I'm going to look this up. I don't know this character. It's Bale or Ghana. And so he looks very, very serious, though. Very serious. But he must be a feeler. But, you know, I do have my moments where people of different styles make me crazy.

And then when I calm down from that and I think, you know, I'm really grateful to be on a team, particularly in a family where there are different types. Like I often think, what would my kids, we have four kids, and what would my children be like if they had two of me as a parent? Yeah, right. Like, oh, heaven help my children if there were two of me. We would never go on vacation. We would only do tours. And, you know, they would never eat lunch if they had forgotten their lunch. See, my husband's always like, well, I'll run it down to them. I'm like, no, they need to suffer the consequences of having not thought that through.

They need to be hungry today. But thank goodness for our balance. Thank goodness. Okay, so can you take a look at that thought about how do leaders, what do leaders do that stifle people? And what do leaders do that help bring out the best in others? You know, we found, I think the most important part of it is the mindset. Maybe I'll start with the ultimate finding is we found that these diminishing leaders get less than half of people's intelligence.

48% was what came out in the research, meaning they're bringing people on board, they're hiring really smart people, and then they're woefully, grossly underutilizing them. And you think about what that does inside of organizations and what that does to the person mentally, emotionally. So teach us, how can we bring out the best in other people? What is your process or how do you, how do you help others bring out the best? It starts with a mindset and the mindset is simple. And I want to just, just for a moment, pause on this diminisher mindset. The diminisher mindset is nobody's going to figure it out without me. Okay. Think about if a coach has that mindset. Think about if a manager or a mom has this mindset versus people are smart and they're

going to figure it out. It's the mindset of a multiplier leader. And you think about what kinds of things they do. You know, if you really believed your team was smart and they were going to figure it out, well, you would feed them information. You would give them challenges, not goals. We found five things. One is they operate as talent magnets, these multiplier leaders that bring out the best in others. They identify people's native genius, the thing they do easily and freely, and then they put it to work. And they don't just put it to work in the bounds of like a job description, as we talked

about. They find big problems and they put it to work on that. Because who doesn't want to go to work where someone recognizes what you're uniquely brilliant at and recognizes it, lets you do it, shines a spotlight on it, and then challenges it so it gets grown and stretched. So that's one. Is the leader's job to get the genius of another person or to ask the person, hey, what are the things that you enjoy doing that you're really good at that are natural for you that you'd love to do? And is there a calibration or how do you see the role of the leader to ask or to know?

You know, I love that you brought this up. I had always envisioned it as something someone observes probably because I am a good observer and I watched this. I study people. I sit in meetings and I'm studying what is that person brilliant at? Why do they do that? And why do they keep doing that? Why can't they help but criticize? Ah, it's because that's part of their native genius. So there's a hard way to do it, which is to observe, to calibrate. The easy way is to sit down with someone and say, Mike, what is the thing you do easily and freely? What are you brilliant at? And how can we use it? And how can we better use it? It's the shortcut. And I think it's even more powerful.

I think that there's one thing that comes before it. And that one thing that comes before it is the person that's asking the question to have done some of the lonely work, to have a sense of their position in the conversation. So it's not a totally naive question, even a loving question, but it would be, I have a thought, but I want to calibrate this with you. And I don't want to get in the way of it, but I want to ask you first and then have a way to respond that's not just a fly off the cuff, but actually taking this conversation really seriously and doing some of the lonely or alone look prior to the question. Do you agree or disagree with that?

I absolutely agree. So let's not go to the extreme lazy approach, which is just like, hey, what you're good at and how do we use it? I think, you know, having done some homework there, sort of like with the idea of having skin in the game, I think we're like, we need to have neurons sort of in, in the game on this. In fact, it's funny, just today I had a coaching session with the CEO and we were working on this idea of native genius and we ended up agreeing to cancel our session because he hadn't been able to spend enough time observing for us to really be able to do great work on this.

How do you help people observe themselves? To observe themselves or to observe others? Either way, yeah. Well, here are the questions I like to ask on this is, what does this person do better than anything else they do? What do they do better than anything their colleague does? Head and shoulders better than others. What do they do without being asked? What do they do without pay? What do they do without recognition? You don't have to give people gold stars and service awards for these kinds of things.

You know, what do they do compulsively that they essentially can't help do? And then what do they do across domains, meaning they do it at work, they do it at home? Those are usually the kinds of questions that I think about or I coach people to use. I love those questions. As a kind of native genius. Yeah, I love it. And if we're trying to search for the thing that you've been searching for, it's asking somebody basically what it is that you're naturally good at, you find joy in, you do it for free for the rest of your life? What are those things that you find yourself doing that no one had to teach you really,

you taught yourself and it was easy, but you're good at it? Yeah. And it can be tough because it's funny, a lot of people don't really like talking about what they're brilliant at. If I could have a wish in the world, a magic wand, is that we would all get more comfortable talking about our own brilliance. And essentially, what leaders who bring out the best in others are leaders who are assured of their own brilliance. And they're so assured of it that they're over it. It's like, hey, I'm Joe. I am brilliant. And I am now over it.

So I don't have to come into work every day trying to prove it. That I can contribute all of my own thinking, my gifts, my capabilities. And I can receive that of others. I think we end up diminishing when we're not assured of our own genius or maybe we're too assured of it. That's so good. I think we just have to get over it. Yeah, that is really cool. Yeah. In my perfect world, we'd be like, hi, I'm Liz. I'm brilliant at this. What's your brilliance? And we would not be too upset about this conversation. Isn't that what Instagram's for? Just to show the highlights of the world?

So that's one of the things I think leaders who bring out the best is they see people's native genius. They create space for other people to think. I call this, they act like liberators. So they hold a space where other people can think differently than them, or they give them time, like just in a practical level. If you're going to hold a meeting, send out an agenda in advance so people have space to gather their thoughts and to think. They're challengers. They ask people to do hard things they're leaders who tend to think in terms of questions not answers you know if you want a fast path to i think this is probably the single most powerful shift a leader can make is shifting out of the mode of of knowing and operating in the mode of discovering or inquiry. It's like, quit providing

answers and start asking questions. One of the observations I've had in elite performance, whether it's sport or otherwise, is that the people that are helping the person become great, call them a coach. And usually it's domain expertise expertise coaches like a technical coach or you know if it's a i don't know musician there's a particular coach that helps them be better at their craft or an athlete that's a whatever sport it is call it football that it's a technical coach that helps them become better that there's there's at least two bands i think there's actually four but i'll just shorten it up right now there's um performance coaches and then there's elite high performance coaches. And what that upper band does is that they ask really good questions. And it's the questions that allow people to, it's because they have a high regard

for the other human involved. And they understand that the information that the doer is capturing is really relevant and important. And they don't just tell the person what to do. The coach doesn't tell them what to do. They inquire and they collaborate and they explore with that person so that both of them are better after the conversation. It doesn't mean it's always easy. There can be tough, difficult conversations to have which are necessary. But there's bands of coaching that I've been able to

observe. And with the lowest band, obviously being an amateur coach. Well, and you know, I'm sure a debate that you participate in, think about, hear about is like, what makes for a great coach? Is it someone who really knows very little about the sport or the activity or someone who knows a lot. And I think it's an interesting debate. I think it's a false trade-off. It's the wrong, totally. Yeah. I can't wait to hear what you're going to say because I got a very well-rehearsed in my head thought around this. So give me that thought. And see, I'm not shy. I'll hold my thought. But I have a thought about this as well.

Start with yours. Okay, the beginner's mind. And the beginner's mind is somebody who has acquired a deep understanding and they've gone on the path to embrace how much that they don't know and the conviction to work to understand deeply. And so it's not a telling, it's an exploration. And so what ends up taking place for, in my mind, what ends up taking place is that there's a rich humility and a deep knowing, and the curiosity is expressed through a beginner's mind. And to hold that tension between both

because the person knows a lot, but they also know that there's much more than that. They also know that what they don't know is far greater. And so it's that dynamic play between the yin and yang of knowing and being curious and not knowing. Mike, are you there? Yes, I am. Oh, I lost you for just a moment. Okay, yeah.

I do think it's, you know, the best leaders know when it's time to draw on the wisdom of experience, and they know when it's time to, as the wisdom of experience. And they know when it's time to, as I like to say, get their rookie on and come at it from a place of not knowing. And I think what I find in these leaders that I call multipliers is they use their deep knowledge and intellect as a starting point, not an ending point. So rather than use their knowledge of the domain, special teams, offense, defense, the line, rather than use that to tell people what to do, they need all of that depth of insight to know what's the right question to ask.

Because questions aren't created equal. And you see like kind of a bad coach is just like asking questions. But when you get really good coaching, they're asking you questions. And that question itself reflects a deep, deep understanding of the dilemmas and the trade-offs and what's hard. You're like, wow, it probably took you years of practice to be able to know that was the question to ask. And when you can watch that or be part of that, it's wonderful. It really is. It really is.

And can I ask you what one of your or two or three of your favorite questions tend to be? Not that there's a stock question that fits into every conversation, but what are some of those questions that you find yourself exploring the most? Well, you know, let me offer a few of the starters. There's, because I think asking questions and leaders asking questions, I think it is both a quantity and a quantity, a quality game, is the question that I think is such a universal is, what do you think? What do you see happening? What do you think we should do? And I find that just asking that question gets us halfway to where we need to be. And then asking that question, is there a second follow-on to that that gets you the other way?

Well, I think that you need to know what the issue is. And so I don't know that I have a universal question. I can think of times when people have deeply understood. I think the question that you asked at the beginning of our conversation is, what is it that has caused you to be able to see this? I think that's a question that reflects a deep understanding of the kind of work we do. And no, you know, someone who hadn't spent years of practice wouldn't know to ask that question. That's really cool. That's a brilliant question. If we don't say so ourselves. Okay, great. I love this. And because the art of questioning requires an exposure of not

knowing. And because if you ask a question and you don't know what's about to come out of a person's mouth, the person who asks the question has to embrace the not knowing. And my understanding is embracing the not knowing, the unfolding and unpredictable moments that are about to happen is an incredible ability to go through life it creates an incredible way to go through life and it is a skill it is and you know um there are many other things that these these leaders who bring out the best do but i want to pause on this because I do think it is the most important. And I think it is, it is a way of living. And I think it's contagious. I had such a fun experience just a couple weeks ago. It's football season. I love high school football because my son is a high school,

plays high school football. All of my kids, my husband is a really phenomenal athlete. He played football in college. And fortunately, he blessed our children with a little bit of athletic capability. So all of our kids have participated in sports. I am terrible at watching their games because all I can do, you can predict what I do at their games. In fact, Michael, it would make me laugh so hard if you could predict what I do at their games. Oh, I wouldn't even have a real clue, but let me try. You want to play it out a little bit? Just for fun, just for fun.

If you can predict, what do I do at their games? Okay, so is it indoor or outdoor? They're outdoors. Okay. Oh, you said football. Yeah. Or just any of their sports. And it's not that I sit there and I'm on my phone or I'm sorting the mail.

But I'm not watching the game. But you say, okay, that's a hint. I'm not watching the game. I've gone to hours and hours of youth sports. And it is so rare for me to actually watch the play. I love it. hours of youth sports. And it is so rare for me to actually watch the play to the point where I don't start paying attention until someone is like one of my children's about to score. Okay. It would be funny if you could, you could have guessed this. I'm watched the coaches. That's

what I'm interested in. I watched the sidelines. I, you know, I can, we could finish a game and my husband will talk all about every play and who did this and that. I'll be like, can you believe that coach? And I watch for good coaching and I watch for bad coaching. I'm totally fascinated by it. So I have been really working to watch the play of the game. So my son, he plays football and he plays middle linebacker, which is defense. And his coach said to me, you know, not long ago, he goes, yeah, we could use Christian. We'd love to see him play more on offense. And, you know, we were having a little chit chat about that. And so later that, that week I said to my son, I said, oh, you know, how come you don't want to also play on, on offense? And he goes, well, I don't really want to play on offense because we don't, you know, our quarterbacks are not great right now.

Their quarterback was out with an injury and they had kind of a substitute quarterback in. And I said, well, hey, you know, your coach really would love to see you contributing on offense as well. He goes, no, I don't want to do it. And so I start asking him about this. And this is what my son said to me. He's 16 years old. And he said, Mom, he said, I know how you like people to figure things out for themselves. He said, you can figure this out. Because I had been pestering him.

Why don't you want to play on offense? And he said, Mom, you can figure this out. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just tell me, why don't you want to play on offense? And he said, mom, you can figure this out. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just tell me, why don't you want to play on offense? And he goes, mom, you could figure this out. And I'm like, oh, he really is giving me a dose of my own medicine on this. And he said, mom, what position do I normally play on offense? I said, you play tight end. And he goes, okay, you know, football, you know, enough to figure this out. And he goes, what do tight ends do? And he just starts asking me questions. I'm like, oh, okay. Okay. I can figure this out. I

can probably, I said, okay, tight ends, they block. I know they block. And I know they, they catch like short passes and they run with those passes. Like, I think that's what they do. He goes, yeah. And he's like, so I think you can figure this out. And I'm like, oh, okay. I think I can. I think I can.

So if you have an inexperienced quarterback, he's probably not a great passer. He's probably, you're running the ball a lot. I'm like, you don't want to play tight end because you're just going to be blocking the whole season. And he gets this big smile on his face and he goes, I knew you could figure that out, mom. That's great. You know, and you know, it's also part of that that's taking place is when we have a great exchange like that, our brain lights up and

all the reward centers are pinging. And the amount of dopamine that's flowing to get the reward and the motivation to stay in the conversation. And dopamine is just such a wonderful neurotransmitter that what you guys just did together is actually create this really cool neurochemistry bond at the same time. And that's one of the things, great questions too. Totally. It was totally dope, this conversation, because I am feeling good because I'm figuring it out for myself. And it's not just that kind of dope. It's I'm seeing my son practicing this art of leading by asking. And it was a rudimentary because there was just a little bit of snarkiness in his tone of like, mom, I know you can do this. Come on. And I'm watching that. And then I'm also seeing that all of the work that I've been doing, trying to lead him

and my other children by asking questions that caused them to think he had been noticing this and he could see that this was an important way of leading. So it was so rewarding. And I think when leaders ask really good questions and they are willing to hold that space between question and response, I think there's some really interesting research done in K-12 environment where they studied the amount of time that teachers hold between asking a question and when then they jump in with an answer. And they found that if teachers can hold five seconds of silence or five seconds of buffer, that the quality of response go up, the quality of learning, like all of the right educational indicators go up. And it was so fun to see my son practicing that back with me. But ask the question, be willing to hold that space, letting other people figure it out. And it does really cause people to do their best thinking and their best work. Love it. Okay, let's go back to the five essential, or not essential, the five characteristics

that you help build. And I think we're on the second or third one, which is questions. We're on the third. So that third discipline, if you, so the first discipline is being a talent magnet, seeing and using genius in others. And we call it talent magnet because talent tends to flock towards people who lead this way. The second is creating space, being a liberator. The third is thinking in terms of questions, being a challenger,

and inviting people out of their area of comfort and into areas where they don't fully know what they're doing, sort of dragging people into a zone of unknowing. And then the fourth is that they lead debate, that they don't necessarily provide answers and they don't always make the decision, but they know on the vital issues to lead a team in really hard hitting debate. And it's a kind of debate that doesn't tear down a team or divide a team. It's a type of debate that unifies people around a common position. And it's so, this is one of my favorite disciplines to watch great leaders do.

And then the last thing we know is that they operate, I call it, they operate like investors, but they move accountability over to other people. They give other people ownership and control, and then all of the accountability that comes with it. Like one CEO, he said, this was actually John Chambers at Cisco when he was hiring his first vice president into the company. He said, Doug, when it comes to this part of the business, Doug ran customer support,

he said, you get 51% of the vote and 100% of the accountability. And, you know, he wanted to contribute as well, but they move ownership and accountability over to others. Love it. And they don't rescue them as they're struggling through that. But you know what, Michael, one of the things that I found in studying all of this is, you know, when I looked at what these diminishing leaders did and I looked at what these multiplying

leaders did, what I found is that so much of the diminishing is done by leaders who are operating with the very best of intentions. So they want to help, but they don't know how. Yeah, they want to help. And I think this is part of what I saw back to being a kid and seeing this difference between intention and action and consequence and the effect it had on someone is we find that so many of the things that look like good leadership are not. Like the creative, idea-rich kind of leader ends up shutting down ideas around others because people are chasing ideas. Like, oh, let's try this, let's do

that. Or they don't need to worry because they can go to the leader if they want an idea. Or leaders who are always on, the passionate, energetic leader often crushes the energy of a group. They've become so big that they filled all the space and other people have to shut down. So how do you manage that? Because you want leaders, you want people, at least I do, I want people to be big and to take up as much space as they possibly can, but not smother other people. But I certainly do want to help people be the best version of themselves. How do you do that when another person's around them says, man, you're just taking up too much space? Right. And it's tricky. I think the question

to ask and to keep in our mind is, when I am at my best, does it cost other people their best? Meaning if I'm at my best, do other people have to be at their worst? Whose responsibility is that in your mind? I think it's the leader's responsibility. And do they turn it down so others can turn up? Here's a good example just on space. So, you know, we often think that leaders should be charismatic or passionate or big. And we often think that leaders should be consistent. And what I found is that the most powerful leaders aren't consistent. They're not always on. The most powerful leaders know when it's time to be big, and they know when it's time to be big and they know when it's time to be small and they they might come into a meeting they might open a conversation big with a big point of view a big question a big aspiration and then they retreat and they go small maybe it's because they asked a good question and now they're going to hold that space for other people to step into. And their pattern of communication would be far more up and down

rather than consistent, because when they dispense their opinions in small but intense doses, it allows them to be really big, but then it creates a vacuum for other people to step up. Like be big and know when it's time to be small. And then everyone contributes at their best. You watch us. It's one of the things I watch on the sidelines instead of watching my kids play is I'm watching how those coaches hold themselves during the games and when they come in big and when they just hold, you know, and let the kids play. I think I need to understand this,

this better. Like, um, and I don't mean that we're going to do it now, but what I mean is that I need to understand this better because, um, I think that you're onto something that I have, it's a blind spot that I haven't understood. And it's that dynamic play between maybe it's vulnerability and strength and courage is another way to think about it. But it's the bigness of being your best doesn't mean that you know know and it's not about smothering other people but sometimes i've i think i i'll go back to 2002 when this very concept actually created a challenge in my marriage and it was that play between the two that we had to work out and figure out like how do we both be big and it came there is there enough space and

the answer is yes um that we can both have a strength and a bigness and a tenderness at the same time to know the correct ebb and flow and um i i think this last point that you have here is really eloquent and nuanced and um allows people to not be a bull in a china shop, but to actually understand the fragility of the china shop and also take care of it at the same time. It might make sense to make a distinction between being fully present. Like, I think you can be fully present all the time in a relationship, in a meeting. That's right. Yeah. But that's different than being big or being on. Yeah. Yeah. That helps with the nuance that I was looking to try to capture. And when people are present, when we are present, then we find a better rhythm.

And it's that rhythm that when you're in touch with that rhythm, that there's a nice dance between two minds, two spirits, two bodies. Yeah. Okay. That's a really, I like the way that you just captured that. Do you have some sort of mindfulness training practice or have you been interested in that? And the reason I ask is because it's a training methodology for presence. You know, I don't and I haven't. I'll give you a very simple version of this. One of the things I use to help leaders who either struggle because they're too big, or struggle because they're not big enough. And I just, I give them a set of poker chips. And the very first executive I did this to, you know, someone who was just big, really, really smart,

gift of gab, very energetic. And he was holding a two-day strategy session with his team. And he said, he made the mistake of saying to me, Liz, I really want my team to own this and step up on this strategy. And so I said, Matt, are you willing to play a different role in this meeting? And I gave him these poker chips. I had five of them and I wrote, I think 120, 90, 60, 45, and 30 on these poker chips and told him that each one of these represented a contribution that he might make. And, you know, he looked at that and he could see that those were measures of time. And this was a two day meeting and he goes, okay, so these are minutes, right? And I said, no, those are seconds. You know, so his biggest contribution, what I was suggesting his biggest

contribution during a two day meeting was a two minute play. And he's like, Liz, this is, this is, this is irresponsible. It's unreasonable. I can't do this. And I watched him struggle with this and accept this challenge. I was in that meeting with him because I had been doing some coaching and consulting work for his team. And he said it was the hardest thing he's ever done in his life, you know, his professional life. Hardest thing and probably the most valuable. And what I did is I watched him play those chips. And it wasn't the playing of the chips was interesting, but it was what he did when he watched him play those chips. And it wasn't, the playing of the chips was interesting,

but it was what he did when he wasn't playing a chip. You know, it was like struggling because he wanted to say something, but he realized that they weren't valuable contributions. But what it did is it forced him to be mindful of everything that was happening in those two days and everything that was happening, because he had to know when were the moments where he was needed and only he was needed what a cool strategy yeah requires discipline oh incredible discipline and awareness really it's really powerful and i do think it can help with with mindfulness as well on that note i've got two questions left. How do you articulate mastery?

You know, I spent the last couple of years studying, you know, I spent a couple of years studying this question of intelligence and how leaders use their intelligence. In the last three years, I spent on a research project asking this question, how does what we know get in the way of what we don't know, but need to learn? And I think one of the things I've realized is that mastery has very little to do with knowing. And it has everything to do with learning. Because right now as our world is changing really fast, and we're dealing with new problems every day and often not facing the same problem twice, the critical skill right now is not what you know. It's how fast you can learn. And I think what mastery looks like is mastering the climb up a learning curve? How fast and how high can we get up a learning curve and then knowing when it's time to get off of that plateau, to let go? Again, remember, letting go is hard for me. Letting go of what we know and starting to ask a new question and to move into that space of what we don't know.

That's probably how I define mastery, is our ability to scramble up a new learning curve and know when it's time to get off and get on to a new one. I love it. I would have never have included that in that way as part of a way to capture it. So the beginner mind, certainly, but the idea of scaffolding, going from one train of thought or expertise, if you will, and knowing when to, and process of learning is actually a better phrase than expertise, and then getting onto another one. Awesome. That's really cool. So here's the second question. Where can people find out more about what you're doing? I know we could go to thewisemangroup.com, what might be a beginnings and picking up your handful of books. And I know you've had written three. There's two that I've really enjoyed. I have not gotten the third book,

but can you tell us more about where to find you and all that good stuff? Yeah, the Wiseman Group is a good place to start. That is our little firm that is dedicated to helping leaders solve really tough challenges. And then that's got pointers to the book website. So there's multipliersbooks.com. And that's plural because there's actually two of these books. So there's multipliers, which you're probably familiar with but then a couple years after that came out we found that so many of the people who are reading it were educators and educational leaders that we did another

research project and wrote a book for educational leaders it's the multiplier effect tapping the genius inside our schools and that was a really fun project. And then Rookie Smarts is another website if you're interested in this idea of why learning is more valuable than knowing in this new game of work, you can go there. Or on Twitter, I'm at Liz Wiseman. Did you say at Liz Wiseman? At Liz Wiseman. Okay, perfect. Yes. I'm at Liz Wiseman. Did you say at Liz Wiseman? At Liz Wiseman. Okay, perfect. Yes.

I'm pretty easy to find. Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so let's ask folks to send some questions your way and find you on social media, find you on Twitter, in fact. And then I think that the book is an absolute prerequisite to understand the process of helping people excel by not getting in their own way, by you not being able to influence them unwillingly to get in their way. And so I just want to say thank you. And I know that we've been on this conversation a long time.

I feel like I've got lots more I want to learn from you, but thank you for being interested in being part of this conversation. because these are just topics I could tell Michael. You and I have so many things that we share a passion for these kinds of questions. And I think we've come at it from a different perspective. And it's been just delightful talking with you. Thanks, Liz. And if folks want more information, iTunes for Finding Mastery, please share it. Please help us out at some level by telling a friend about it. And then you can also, if you would,

go to at Michael Gervais, ask questions, help out the learning curve there on Twitter, and then facebook.com slash finding mastery. All of that can also be found on findingmastery.net. And please go check out Liz's work at Liz Wiseman on Twitter and grab the books and share it with friends. So thank you so much, Liz, and look forward to the next time we get to explore some ideas together.

Thank you. Okay. All the best to you. Take care. Bye. Bye-bye. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're

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