"If you are one of the fortunate few, you have a manager who is perceptive and takes note of your native genius. If, on the other hand, you are among the underutilized majority, you needn’t sit idle, waiting to be discovered. You can broadcast your capabilities and help your colleagues pick up the signal.”
- Liz Wiseman
Welcome to the next step in your Multipliers mini learning journey!
In her groundbreaking bestseller, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, Liz Wiseman explains how her research has shown that people can serve as Multipliers from any direction, even upward to a diminishing supervisor or laterally among team members.
Diminishers can get caught in a cycle. Their diminishing behaviors cause us to be defensive and cautious, so we tend to contribute less of our intelligence; this response can provoke the Diminisher to engage in even more diminishing behaviors.
But there is good news! We can help them break the cycle and teach each other how to multiply, rather than diminish, our talents and abilities.
What Is Native Genius?
These are skills that come easily to you (and for that reason you may not even recognize them as genius), tasks you're especially good at that others may struggle with, or things you most like to do or find yourself doing most often.
- What are you good at?
- What do you do naturally and without much effort?
- What do you do freely, without being coerced or incentivized?
Here's an example: You are naturally great at fixing broken processes – you find the source of the derailment and get things back on track.
Once you’ve figured out your genius, give it a name, like troubleshooting, (or even a superhero name like #ProcessSurgeon) and then outline a number of ways that your genius can be put to work. For example, you could help your department get a late project delivered on time, win back a troubled account, or lead a cross-team task force to reduce bureaucracy.
Remember, if you want to work at your highest point of contribution, you need to let people know your value.
Identify it, label it, and put it to use!
Don’t sit idle. Define your native genius here!
*The information below will be used to dynamically generate your personal Genius Guide as a PDF. Your PDF will be emailed only to you. PDFs are not stored on the server.