Ruminations of a grumpy old git and putting your positive pants on

Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies on day 37 of no lockdown.

Period as an ivory tower academic 43 days

I am a self-confessed grumpy old man. Grumpiness is not necessarily always compatible with having a positive attitude. There is an entire industry out there regarding how one can transform one’s life by being positive and likeable. At a superficial level, this is self evidently true. If you are consistently negative, pessimistic and critical and don’t have a bias for action and being helpful, then you are not likely to be successful and people won’t like working with you. You probably also won’t achieve much.

People who are relentlessly positive, encouraging, polite, hardworking, likeable, and non-judgemental are easy to work with and do make progress in life. If you are forming a team, you want people like this on your team. These are the people who want to give everyone an A and help to lift the mood of a team.

Several years ago, I attended a compulsory three-day course based on the book, “Multipliers” by Liz Wiseman and the Wiseman Group runs a whole industry based on her book and ideology. https://thewisemangroup.com/books/multipliers/. I found the 3-day workshop very useful from a networking perspective and getting to know some of my colleagues better. We were given a complimentary copy of the book at the course and the less useful part of the course was an attempt to indoctrinate me into the ideology and philosophy of multipliers and diminishers which is the core ideology propounded in the book.  The book is still on my bookshelf and does not fall into the category of profound or interesting to me. It’s not in any way inspirational or thought-provoking instead it’s banal and superficial.

Liz Wiseman tries to classify people into two broad personality categories. “The first type, Diminishers, drains intelligence, energy, and capability from the people around them and always needs to be the smartest person in the room. The second type, Multipliers, are the leaders who use their intelligence to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. When these leaders walk into a room, light bulbs go off over people’s heads; ideas flow and problems get solved”.

It was explained to us as an axiomatic truth that all great leaders are multipliers. I remember a senior HR practitioner expounding the virtues of multiplier leaders who are likeable, inspiring and bring out the best in you without ever making you feel uncomfortable, uncertain, or anxious. Proponents of a certain philosophy or ideology state things in an axiomatic fashion as self-evident truths. There is however this unfortunate thing called objective reality and it is not concerned with your axioms.

Is it true that all great leaders fit into the definition of multipliers? Actually no. Just before attending this course, I had just finished reading the fascinating biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Read that rather than Multipliers. https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648537. There is a good case to be made that he is one of the most successful and influential business leaders of the last century.  He was known for tearing a person apart verbally in a public forum. That is one of the reasons why he was not liked by many. His rude behaviour did have consequences for him and was one of the reasons he was fired from Apple. However, he was a perfectionist and enormously tenacious and was later rehired by Apple and led the company to become the biggest publicly traded company in the world with a current market capitalisation of $2.85 trillion.

It is worth looking at one of the many stories from people who worked for him, and I reference one here. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/former-apple-employee-guy-kawasaki-once-stood-up-to-steve-jobs-here-is-the-amazing-response-he-received.html. “He demanded excellence and kept you at the top of your game. It wasn’t easy to work for him; it was sometimes unpleasant and always scary, but it drove many of us to do the finest work of our careers”.

Mastery is not achieved without sacrifice and suffering. Does this mean that Steve Job’s behaviour is justified and right? I don’t know and it’s not for me to say however many chose to work for him knowing full well what he was like. When I was younger, if I had had that opportunity, I would probably have taken it. Perhaps I would have been abused and fired and perhaps I would have also found the experience deeply uncomfortable and scary. Perhaps I would have quit to work in a kinder and gentler organisation.

Steve Jobs is also not an aberration, similar stories emerge from Bill Gates (in his heyday), Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to name just a few. The real world is way more complex, dark and non-binary than simplistic ideological books like Multipliers imply. Lest you think I like it that way I do not. The world was not created for me or to be pleasant to me. The real world is a challenging and difficult place and humans are a complex mix of admirable and unpleasant characteristics. Sometimes it is the unpleasant characteristics that create success. Remember I am also a nihilist. Not everything is noble.

Does this mean that you will be successful if you behave like Steve Jobs? Of course not. It has a high likelihood of getting you fired. You are not Steve Jobs. If you behave like a multiplier, you will most likely be employable and I would suggest somewhat mediocre in an intellectual sense. That does not mean that you might not rise in your organisation and help to drive it over the cliff. If that works for you have at it.

It is my hypothesis that the most successful organisations are those which are difficult to work at. Towing the line and being likeable and a multiplier will not be sufficient. The quality of your thinking will define you. In mediocre institutions, you get to do things you and several of your colleagues around you know is dumb, but you can do it in a multiplying way. Comfortably numb until the inevitable and next restructuring in a long series of restructurings comes around. Then the HR practitioner who taught you to be a multiplier will be ready to stab you in the back. If you are a good multiplier, you are probably employable at another organisation because you are likeable.

I’m feeling grumpy and for a small fee, I can diminish you.

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions and please keep them coming.

Regards

Bruce