The KUPMC Blog

Comments Delivered By Lieutenant Tracy McCullough, Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Department
On January 20, 2012

Hello and Good Afternoon,
I would like to personally take this time to welcome you all to the 2012 KU Emerging Leaders Academy. We would like to thank our family and friends for their continued support and for their ability to bring out the best in us. We would like to thank our Supervisors for investing in us and for recognizing that we are Emerging Leaders. Noel, I would like to especially thank you for being a great instructor and for being an inspirational and motivational leader. You welcomed our ideas and our opinions. We were able to build a strong relationship with others because we all realize how important networking and communication can be.

A few weeks prior to the start of the Emerging Leaders Academy, my grandson was born. He was only two pounds and two ounces. I can’t express to you how many times one of my classmates or Noel asked me about his welfare. I immediately knew that everybody had a genuine concern for me.

We talked about our professional goals. Education is very critical to our success. Take the time to invest in your career. Seek out training opportunities. Display good work ethics and be willing to take the next step up the career ladder. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.

We also talked about our personal goals. I don’t believe that I have ever told anybody, with the exception of this class, that one day I would like to have a monkey as a pet. For the most part, my classmates were very receptive of this idea; well, with the exception of John and Carol.

During this class session, we took the strengths finder test. The test was able to determine what our five strengths are. My strengths are self-assurance, maximizer, learner, activator, and arranger. I use these five strengths every day at my workplace. Focus on your strengths and sharpen up on your skills. Use your strengths to motivate and influence others to be successful. A good leader can inspire, motivate, and lead. Be the multiplier in your organization.

I especially enjoyed the Mentor Shadowing Assignment. We were given the opportunity to shadow someone whom we admire. I shadowed Mr. Jeffery Fewell, the Administrator for the Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Department. I was able to have a one-on-one conversation with him. I asked him some questions about his career, his success, and about his genuine concern for his subordinates. I remember asking him, “Mr. Fewell, how did you build the morale of your troops?” He answered, “I show them that I am human and I show them that I care.” He advised me that determination is essential. Set the example and be selfless.

For all of you Newly Emerging Leaders, continue to strive for excellence and bring out the best in others.

“Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” – Sam Walton

Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.” – Conrad Hilton, Hilton Hotels

An email was sent out on December 9, 2011 to Fire Department staff by Carol Gonzales, the City Manager of City of Shawnee, with wonderful news about John Mattox, one of our Certified Public Manager graduates:

As you know when Chief Hudson retired I appointed Chief Mattox as interim chief and allowed myself time to think about the appointment of the next chief. Department head positions play a critical role in leading departments, this organization, and, they provide leadership in the community. Selecting the right people to fill those positions is one of the most, if not the most, important decisions that I make in my position as City Manager.

During the past few months, I have worked closely with Chief Mattox and have seen clearly his commitment to the fire profession, the department and the City. As I have gotten to know him better, I have come to greatly appreciate his common sense approach, direct communication style and positive outlook. He is a person of great compassion and integrity, and has already demonstrated the willingness to make the hard decisions that are necessary for strong leadership. I believe he is innovative and will set high standards and expectations, encourage forward thinking, and be open to ideas and suggestions from all staff.

For those reasons, and because John’s extensive experience in the fire service, the roles he has played regionally and nationally in professional associations, and his formal and continuing education have prepared him well, I am appointing him as the Fire Chief for the City of Shawnee, effective today. The fire service is a changing industry, and I believe John Mattox is the best person to lead our outstanding department into the future.

I am proud to serve as the City Manager of a City with such an excellent fire department. I thank you for your support of Chief Mattox, and I thank you for your outstanding public service.

Carol
—-
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves and congratulate John on this wonderful promotion and opportunity! This is a very deserving honor for him – his leadership, dedication, and commitment to public service shine through in so many ways. We know that great things will happen under his leadership. – The Public Management Staff
—-
Click here to read the announcement that was on the City of Shawnee’s website.

Comments Delivered By Craig Weinaug, Douglas County Administrator
On November 18, 2011

As we approach another election cycle, I feel a mixture of excitement and dread as our attention is drawn again toward discussion of public issues. It certainly seems to me that at the state and national levels, some candidates base their entire campaigns on a baseless claim. They tell voters that government is responsible for virtually everything bad going on in the world today. Candidates for elected offices at every level compete to be perceived as the candidate who would eliminate the biggest chunks of this thing we call government.

Even in TV sitcoms and in almost all popular culture, any character part of a mayor, state legislator, or any other public job is almost always portrayed as incompetent, lazy, and/or just plain comically stupid.

Government is rarely presented in public debates or in popular culture as a positive force.

I once had a conversation with a young lady who was working toward her M.P.A. degree. She had interviewed the governor of the state where she went to undergraduate school. When he found out that she was pursuing a career in public service, he could not understand why a topflight student would seek a career in the public sector as her first choice when she could make so much more money in the private sector.

I am here to make an important point that seems to have been lost in public discourse: Government is the means that we have to collectively pay for and provide those services that we collectively need.

Government is not a boogeyman. Government is roads and bridges. Government is schools and libraries. Government is the military keeping us safe around the world, and government is public servants keeping our water and air safe at home.

The vast majority of government workers are public servants who have chosen a career in public service because they want to make better life for all of us.

Government includes our teachers who spend every day of their professional lives giving our children the opportunity to be all that they can be, regardless of the level of success of their parents.

It includes occupational rehab specialists that work with our neighbors with disabilities so they can live with dignity and be productive citizens regardless of the disabilities that they may have.

It includes law enforcement officers and fire fighters that are prepared on a moment’s notice to risk their lives so the rest of us can be safe.

It includes road engineers that devote an entire career in the continuing effort to make our roads as safe as possible and minimize the loss of life.

It includes public health officials who work to protect us all from the outbreak of diseases that would regularly threaten our communities, if it were not for their perseverance.

It includes the social workers at SRS who work to ensure that there is a safety net for the children of our citizens who have lost their jobs.

It includes the psychologists at our community mental health centers who work to meet the critical needs of our neighbors with mental health disorders. In many cases, the services of our mental health centers make the difference between a productive life and a life spent in and out of jail or worse.

It includes building inspectors who try to assure that our businesses and homes are safe and secure for us to live and work in. Government includes the emergency communication specialists that can quickly direct virtually any type of emergency personnel to meet a citizen’s need, and when needed, they can even give instructions to someone on the scene to clear the air path of a suffocating citizen.

It includes the garbage collector who picks up your trash and safely disposes of it in a sanitary landfill, and the public works employee that makes sure that when you flush your toilet that your human waste flows away from your house safely and does not flow back into our lakes and rivers until that sewage is clean and harmless.

It includes court officials who spend their entire careers balancing our constitutional safeguards against the need to incarcerate those who are a threat to our safety.

Government includes economic development specialists who work hard to make sure that our state retains and attracts jobs for all of us, including our children.

It includes the army enlistee who risks her life on the other side of the globe to keep us safe.

Government includes every member of this graduating class.

We are engaged in a great debate in this country and in this state about how much government we can “afford,” and it is an important debate. There are no easy answers.

There are always going to be people who want to distort the debate by characterizing what we do as somehow inferior or unnecessary or inefficient. Don’t let those charges go unanswered. Do your job well, do it with pride, and stand up for yourself and your colleagues.

We strive to find the balance between the services that we provide as public servants, the investments our communities need to make for the future, and the taxes it takes to support that vision without passing the bill on to the next generation.

And at every level of government, in every department or division or agency there are dedicated and determined public employees who are working every day to help our elected officials to strike the best and most appropriate balance.

Government is what we do. It is the work that you have dedicated your careers to and by earning this degree I know you are committed to doing it well.

Public service is a high calling. It is essential to who we are as Kansans and as Americans. Let’s perform that service with pride.

The following is reposted from the blog The Inspired Teacher. She offers some insights about the challenges of listening and speaking–even when we mean well.

I went to a conference recently. The first speaker was from the state department of education and I was ready to listen; in fact, I did listen, but I could not follow her remarks. Why? I simply could not understand what she was saying.

In her first sentence, she used two unfamiliar acronyms. While I paused to decode the first one, I missed several words which followed. The second acronym was completely new to me, so when she said it, I could not understand it all. Thus, in spite of a wide vocabulary, I could not grasp the meaning of her sentence.

The same problem continued throughout her remarks. I spent more time wondering if I had decoded the acronyms than I did absorbing her advice and information. As you can imagine, I was annoyed and frustrated. But suddenly I saw it as a learning experience: I was feeling the same sensations that students feel when they don’t understand the vocabulary or references that I use in the classroom.

In a related incident, I was the speaker at a staff meeting. After I presented an involved list of steps for meeting the goals in the school improvement plan, one of the teachers said, “I would really appreciate a list, so I could keep track of all these things.”

“She already told us we would get one!” said one of his colleagues impatiently, at the very moment that I held up the checklists I was ready to hand out. I paused to talk about his knowledge gap.

“You know, Justin’s comment brings up a common issue,” I said. “He has been here, and he looked pretty attentive, but he still missed, or didn’t remember, that detail. Everyone misses things. It’s human to miss things. Whenever our attention wanders for just a second, we lose a detail or an idea. It’s important to remember that when we talk to the young people in our classes. They will have the same gaps and not because of bad intentions.”

In both cases it was as if the listener was looking at a scene through a window with stickers all over it. He/she missed meaning because parts of the whole picture were obscured by blockages, whether of understanding or attention.

Add these two issues together and you get what I call the Swiss Cheese Syndrome.

Listeners are highly likely to have holes—big and small—in their comprehension of our words, just as Swiss cheese is normally full of holes. We are wise to expect gaps and do what we can to fix them, rather than let the situation make us angry or discouraged.

What can we do?

First, be aware. We have to stop assuming that if we know a given word ourselves, then everyone knows it. We can plan in advance to include simple words in explanations and descriptions. Generally, the more syllables the word has, the more likely for it to be unknown to someone. In addition, content vocabulary and scientific words must be explicitly taught, and then reviewed and used–up to a dozen times for full comprehension by all students.

Second, check constantly. Ask for a student to restate a point. Be sure to call on those average learners, not just those whose hands are usually waving. It is too easy to assume that if one person in the class knows something, then the whole class knows it. Direct your learners to summarize for an “elbow partner.”
Have each student write a summary as a “ticket out the door.” The methods are numerous once we recognize the importance of using them.

Most of all, remember that when you feel like moaning “but I TOLD them that,” it is pretty likely that some of the students are thinking, “I never heard her say THAT.” Just take a deep breath, know that it is the Swiss Cheese Syndrome in action, and try again.

One perennial need in public sector organizations is training that helps staff transition from a role of technical expertise—water quality inspector or budget analyst, for example—to a role requiring managerial and supervisory skills. Our Certified Public Manager® (CPM) program is designed to address skill gaps for new and experienced managers to help make sure they have the tools to perform at the best of their game and contribute to staff engagement.

CPM is a nationally-accredited management program and certification in which participants develop and strengthen their management skills through a competency-based curriculum.

The Kansas CPM program is offered on a calendar-year schedule and uses a blended learning approach of classroom hours, online learning, and outside assignments. Along the way, participants complete a capstone project focused on an opportunity for cost savings, revenue generation, process improvement or innovation in their workplace. Over 1,200 people have completed the Kansas program since 1993.

Agamani Sen, Chief Design Engineer for Douglas County, Kans. Public Works (left), participated in CPM in 2010. Her capstone explored how to increase the number of internal design-build projects in Public Works by applying staff expertise in culvert design and installation to some of the County’s smaller bridge projects; she determined that for every bridge that is able to be completed as an internal design-build instead of by consultants and contractors, there is the potential for approximately $150,000 in savings.

Put another way, the savings from any single bridge replacement completed in-house will pay for either one additional small bridge project or two to three culvert projects. In this era of shrinking revenues, this is a profound benefit to the County.

CPM program director Terri Callahan notes that for agencies to continue finding the resources to send staff to the program in such challenging economic times, “we have to make sure the program offers real benefits to sponsoring departments whether in the form of cost savings, process improvement or innovation via the capstone or in the enhanced skills that make for more effective managers.”

For Agamani Sen and Douglas County Public Works, the benefits were real on both sides. Her capstone was a project that Agamani long suspected could generate savings for the County, and participating in CPM allowed her to carve out the time to research the details and create a plan for implementation. Meanwhile, she found the class content to be extremely useful, with topics such as emotional intelligence and project management offering valuable perspectives on different styles of management and allowing her to gain insight about her own approach.

Beyond this, she says that “meeting people from so many organizations, to get outside of my own world, was inspirational.”

“What is inspiring to me,” says Craig Weinaug (KU MPA 1976), Douglas County Administrator, “is the dedication participating staff show to staying on top of their responsibilities while making the time to get all they can out of the program.”

Craig further notes that “Agamani’s project provides very tangible evidence as to why continuing investment in the education of public employees not only benefits the individual, but also the organization. This investment becomes even more critical when revenues are shrinking, and we have to be as smart as possible in how we spend the remaining tax dollars. We send employees to the CPM program every year, and we have always been very satisfied with the results.”

The Public Management Center is now accepting registrations for the 2012 CPM program which will begin in January with locations in the Kansas City area, Topeka, and Hays.

For more information about the program, visit www.kupmc.org or contact Terri Callahan at tcallahan@ku.edu or (785) 296-2353.

The November 2011 newsletter for the School of Public Affairs and Administration is now available! Check it out to learn more about:
• Our fabulous Director of Custom Courses, Jonathan Morris
• SPAA faculty member Chris Silvia
• A terrific supervisory training/collaboration project between the PMC and the City of Olathe
• And much more!

The Green Tape Doctor

The Green Tape Doctor is Leisha DeHart-Davis, an associate professor in the University of Kansas School of Public Affairs and Administration. She conducts research on effective organizational rules, which she refers to as “green tape.” Feel free to email her with your questions on creating effective rules for public sector organizations (lddavis@ku.edu).

Is It Time To Write a Rule?

I once interviewed a public manager who told me, “I decide to write a rule when I’m becoming stressed from people coming into my office with the same issue or problem.”

The manager’s comment suggests that rules can solve workplace problems. But when to write a rule is sometimes unclear: on the one hand, managers need administrative capacity to empower action. On the other hand, they do not want excessive bureaucracy in their workplaces.

How do you know when a written rule is needed? Here are three questions to ask:

** What is the worst that will happen if you do not write a rule? Answering this question is a good way to figure out whether a workplace issue is important enough to write a rule. If the worst-case scenario is likely and imposes unacceptable costs on organizational integrity or operational effectiveness, then a written rule may be in order.

** Are you clear on rule objectives? Written rules are well-suited to clear objectives. Even general objectives – reduced personal Internet usage or increased employee professionalism – greatly simplify rule-writing and help focus the rule on what you are trying to accomplish.

** What is causing the issue? Written rules are like the practice of medicine: prescribing the remedy requires diagnosing the ailment. Take time to investigate the causes of a workplace issue before formulating the rule. If the issue pertains to depleted sick leave, talk to employees to find out what’s going on. Written rules are more effective when designed with root causes in mind.

If the worst-case scenario is unacceptable and if you have clear rule objectives and a good grasp on root causes, then your workplace problem is a good candidate for a written rule.

Is there a workplace issue that you solved using a written rule?  What was it?

When the Green Tape Doctor returns to our blog, look for advice on creating logical rules.

This special report from American City & County highlights an exciting project we’ve been working on with the City of Olathe so we’re reposting here.

Olathe, Kan., builds a collaborative culture to improve service delivery
By Jeff Johnston

Nowhere is the image of a silo more familiar than in America’s heartland, where the tall structures that contain harvested grain function as essential hubs in the spokes of agricultural commerce. But, silos take on negative connotations when they describe government departments that function independently with limited interaction or coordination with other organizations.

As resources become more scarce and service demands increase, many cities and counties are breaking down their organizational silos to foster cooperation and collaboration among their internal departments. By coordinating the use of limited funds, equipment and staff, cities and counties are finding new efficiencies and maintaining or improving their service levels.

Olathe, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, recently embarked on a journey to eliminate the organizational silos between its departments and build a culture of collaboration instead. Knowing that they could not just tell departments to work together, City Manager Michael Wilkes and Assistant City Manager Susan Sherman sought to develop department heads’ collaborative leadership skills and recognize those skills in their performance reviews. The city worked with the University of Kansas Public Management Center and the School of Public Affairs and Administration to develop a supervisory training program for its managers that, among other things, included practical exercises designed to teach supervisors the skills they need to be effective collaborators. Researchers at the university are measuring the effectiveness of the training program and tracking the city’s transition to its new culture.

A ‘Shift in Thinking’
For the last decade, Olathe has been on a quest to deliver exceptional public service and has been measuring its progress toward that goal with annual citizen surveys. The surveys, administered by locally based ETC Institute, gauge residents’ satisfaction with city services, including emergency services, parks, water and wastewater, street and building maintenance, and communication. As all departments have been working toward improving their survey results, however, each became inwardly focused on their individual operations. “We were doing so much as a rapidly growing city, a lot of people were just focused on what they did and not what other departments were doing,” Sherman says.

Although collaboration was essential for certain tasks, such as emergency planning and response, elsewhere it was not pursued. “Everybody is so task-oriented, and collaboration really takes time,” Wilkes says. “We get so focused on the task and accomplishing the task and checking the stuff off the list that we don’t look for those opportunities to collaborate with others.”

So, when Wilkes and Sherman set out to create a new supervisory training program for city managers, they wanted to incorporate collaborative leadership skills training into the program. “We’re not going to get [all] the people that we’d like to have; we’re not going to have all the resources that we need for all of the stuff that we need; so, we’re going to have to figure out different ways to deal with and address our problems, and collaboration and innovation are the ways we’re going to get there,” Wilkes says.

The city began working with the University of Kansas Public Management Center to develop the program that would start with the city’s executive leadership team and, over one year, bring together managers and assistant managers in groups representing each department for three days of training. The main goals of the program were to link the supervisors’ responsibilities to the city’s stated vision, values and mission, and to teach collaborative leadership skills.

“When we talk about collaborative leadership, what we’re really talking about is that we have to learn to align very different goals at times; we have to coordinate multiple partners; we have to learn to share information effectively; we have to learn to work through conflict so that we can achieve the best possible solution to these pressing public problems that are not isolated to any one sector,” says Heather Getha-Taylor, assistant professor in the University of Kansas School of Public Affairs and Administration. “We’ve realized that producing public value is best achieved when we overcome the fragmented and siloed approaches – when we can take an integrated approach and solve problems using expertise, resources and information that spans boundaries.”

The training program also aimed to change the mindset of department supervisors who were focused on being direct service providers and building up the capacity of their departments internally. “It represents a need for a shift in thinking,” says Jonathan Morris, instructor and program manager for the University of Kansas Public Management Center. “If local government has traditionally been the direct service provider, what we hope to address in this training is to get the leaders and supervisors to rethink their role and see themselves instead as the convener of multiple providers, as the collaborator of public and private entities or intergovernmental collaboration. So, as you begin to rethink that role, it requires new skill sets.”

A small group setting and specific exercises created an environment that encouraged collaboration. After the three-day training, participants met with their small groups independently to discuss how they were putting their new skills into practice and making progress toward a collaborative project with another department. Also, collaboration was added to the performance goals of managers, who needed to show how they were engaging other departments, Wilkes says.

Collaboration Pays Off
To measure the results of the training program, University of Kansas researchers are conducting a long-term survey of city supervisors. Participants not only report their immediate reactions to the training, they must report on changes in their behavior and results over time.

A final report is due in October, but preliminary survey results show that the training has been successful in showing managers the value of collaboration. “Those who participated in the training perceive collaboration as key to getting their jobs done, and they agree that collaboration is worth the extra effort involved,” Getha-Taylor says. “We see a strong positive relationship between participation in the training and self-awareness, listening and communication skills. Those are the key collaboration skills that we need to be developing.”

In practice, collaborative efforts paid off for Olathe last winter when it experienced some of the heaviest snowfall and winter storms in recent history. In preparing its snow response plan last year, the streets department for the first time worked with the fire and police departments to develop a snow-clearing strategy. Previously, the streets department created its plan independently and had divided its crews to focus on different types of roads.

By working with the emergency departments to prioritize route clearing and by strategically directing plows during and after storms, the city improved its performance even during one of its worst winters. “We were good at snowplowing before, but we were outstanding in the winter of 2010-2011,” Wilkes says. “We had more snow than we usually have in Kansas City, and we got better results from our customers than ever before. And, I think it was because we worked together in a way that we had never worked together before.”

Although collaborative efforts might take more time and the outcomes might not be clear at the beginning, Wilkes and Sherman have seen that the risks are worth the effort. To break down the silos, they say local government leaders need to brush up on a few skills and then arm themselves with a little courage to take the first steps. “The first thing to do is to jump in and try something. Take a little risk and try something you haven’t done before, and hope it is successful,” Sherman says. “But if it isn’t, learn from it and try again, and try again.”

Jeff Johnston is an Atlanta-based freelance writer.

In an interview in the New York Times, Peggy Klaus, author of The Hard Truth About Soft Skills, was asked “What exactly are soft skills and why should we be worried about them?”

She replied that “the hard skills are the technical expertise you need to get the job done. The soft skills are really everything else — competencies that go from self-awareness to one’s attitude to managing one’s career to handling critics, not taking things personally, taking risks, getting along with people and many, many more.”

Basically, soft skills are those that enable you to put your technical skills productively to work.

Can you resolve a conflict with a co-worker about a work plan or about cubicle distractions? Can you sell the value of your approach to your boss and teammates? Can you write an email that gets the results you need? Can you challenge someone’s idea in a productive rather than destructive way?

Then celebrate and thank your soft skills. And as you mentally make note of everyone you work with whose lack of soft skills makes them unpleasant–or even unbearable–to work with, the pivotal role of soft skills in the workplace becomes very visible. Without the soft skills to support the technical abilities of a staff, projects simply don’t get very far. Even the US Department of Labor sees soft skills as “the competitive edge.”

This is a hugely important lesson that most of us have learned the hard way as we struggle to work with those who make everyone around them miserable. But having learned this lesson, make it work for you: make sure your hiring processes are designed to measure soft skills as well as hard skills.

There are some terrific web resources to help you do this. The Soft Skills blog offers questions divided by skill area to ask about. And if you’ve ever heard of or used behavioral-based interviewing, the focus is on soft skills. Here’s one good explanation and resource. And here’s another.

Meanwhile, don’t pass up any opportunities to improve your own soft skills. They’ll be key to moving into the next job you desire, and in the interim your co-workers will thank you for it.

One of the foundations of our Emerging Leaders Academy is the use of Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment. The intent is to offer participants some insights into their areas of strong natural talent that can inform their process of setting professional goals.

Why? Because of the benefits that flow to both the organization and the individual when someone is working from their strengths. The person themselves feels energized and engaged and is able to make significant contributions to their projects and teams. When people are working from their strengths they often willingly give 100% because it’s intrinsically satisfying to do so.

In this age of shrinking budgets and payrolls, those organizations where most people are working at the top of their abilities instead of slogging through their work at 50% will perform better and will be more competitive in keeping their best staff.

But people can land in what should be their dream job according to their strengths and still underperform despite all motivation they may have to do their best. What makes the difference?

Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown offers some important insights about this in their 2010 book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. As the title suggests, their extensive research and interviews with executives in companies around the world led them to identify the characteristics of managers they call Multipliers. These managers do more that just accomplish more with less. They get more by using more of people’s intelligence and capability and make them excited to contribute at 100%–or even more when they bring out abilities people didn’t know they had.

The authors contrast Multipliers with Diminshers, those leaders who stifle others largely due to their beliefs about the limitations of the people who work for them. Here’s how they describe the mindsets of these two types of leaders:

The Diminisher’s view of intelligence is based on elitism and scarcity; intelligence is thus a scarce commodity. Further, they see intelligence as static, that it doesn’t change over time or circumstance. As the authors note, their logic seems to be “people who don’t get it now never will; therefore, I’ll need to keep doing the thinking for everyone” (19). With this approach, they can easily create environments where people are, paradoxically, both overworked and underutilized.

Multipliers, however, have a rich view of the intelligence of the people around them and see it as continually developing. They assume that people are smart and can figure things out, and that they are smart in unique ways so can make important contributions and will get even smarter in the process.

Clearly, these two mindsets lead to very different ways of interacting with and directing others.

Wiseman and McKeown’s interviews with people who’ve worked for both types of managers in the same organization has led them to assert that Multipliers can do more than twice as much with the same level of resources because they bring out the best efforts and ideas in those who work for them. Importantly, the authors note that Multipliers do this not with some sort of touchy-feely approach but by driving their people to do their best–and creating circumstances that allow them to do so.

Among the findings of their research that surprised them, Wiseman and McKeown point to the fact that most Diminishers are what they call “Accidental Diminishers” who are not aware of the restrictive impact they have on others. Most of them “had grown up praised for their personal intelligence and had moved up in management ranks on account of personal–and often intellectual–merit. When they became “the boss,” they assumed it was their job to be the smartest and to manage a set of “subordinates”" (25).

That is, these Diminishers imitate what they have observed others do. It simply never occurs to them that more could be achieved by leveraging the strengths and intellects of those on their teams–because they don’t believe there’s much there to leverage.

The book is particularly compelling because of the way it dovetails not only with Gallup’s extensive research into working from areas of strength but also with the insights from work on emotional intelligence and the need for self-knowledge and self-management before one can build effective relationships with others.

Leaders must have the self-knowledge to recognize what effects their actions have on those around them if they are to be bring out the best in people. Multipliers suggests that they must also believe in what is present in others, waiting to be brought out.