From academia and the non-profit arena to the corporate world-of-work, I have many clients who complain about bosses who are ineffective leaders. Are their leaders intelligent and talented people? Yes. But, are they able to lead a team, motivate others, and empower success in their colleagues? No!

I have come to believe that while some leaders are born, most are developed and our current professional marketplace does not place enough emphasis on training effective leaders. This leads to discontent amongst the troops and ultimately low morale and low productivity. There are some enlightened organizations that train from within but I wish it was part of every organization’s professional development curriculum.

Liz Wiseman, worked at Oracle for 17+ years and considers herself a genius watcher. She was the VP responsible for the company’s global talent development strategy and ran the Oracle Corporate University. Her book: Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter teaches valuable lessons for current and aspiring leaders.

During Wiseman’s 17+ year leadership watching and developing experience at Oracle, she discovered that some leaders drain intelligence and the capabilities of the people around them. Their focus on their own intelligence and their narcissistic need to be the smartest person in the room had a diminishing effect on everyone else around them. For them to look smart other people had to look dumb or incompetent and in turn, the Diminishers created a vacuum suck of all the creative energy in a room. Meeting times were doubled and other people’s ideas suffocated and died in their presence. From these so called leaders, intelligence only flowed one way – from them to others.

The Multipliers, on the other hand used their leadership intelligence in a much different way. They used their intelligence to amplify the capabilities of others on their team. People got smarter and better in their presence and ideas flowed freely and challenges were overcome. When these leaders walked into a room the energy level went up on the team and difficult problems were solved because every team member had a say and was involved.

So why do some leaders boost the mental IQ in a room and others suck the mental life out of their employees? The Multipliers bring out the intelligence in others by building collective and viral genius in an organization.

Wiseman identified 5 disciplines of Multipliers:

1. The Talent Magnet: Attract and optimize talent
2. The Liberator: Require people’s best thinking
3. The Challenger: Extend challenges
4. The Debate Maker: Debate decisions
5. The Investor: Instill accountability

By extracting people’s full capability, Multipliers get twice the resources from people than do the Diminishers. Wiseman shared a success story about Bill Campbell, former CEO of Intuit who fully admits that he is a recovered Diminisher. A courageous team member called him on his micro managing, intelligence draining leadership style and pleaded for him to give the team space to create ideas and solve problems. It was a hard lesson for Campbell to learn but in the long run it gave him the insight he needed to become a more effective leader.

He now subscribes to the philosophy of creating brilliance in others on his team by empowering them to succeed. This is a difficult lesson for many of today’s unsuccessful leaders who don’t have the professional development resources to learn to become Multipliers. Others don’t have courageous team members to call them out on being ineffective leaders so they continue to diminish and dysfunctional teams plod along.

If confronting your diminishing leader is not within your comfort zone, or you fear job security, perhaps a mysterious copy of Liz Wiseman’s great book in an office mailbox will plant the seed anonymously. Are you a Multiplier or a Diminisher?

I just read an article by David Cutler who wrote a book called The Savvy Musician. He outlined various competencies for success in musical careers that are applicable in all professional work arenas.

• An Entrepreneurial Mindset. The ability to problem solve, create opportunities, think outside the box, market remarkably, and manage your own projects.
• Leadership and Vision. Individuals who possess a strong sense of vision and the courage to lead with influence are rewarded on many levels.
• Collaboration. Successful professionals value working with others, creating projects that are greater than themselves. Consider joining forces with the not so obvious constituents in your circle of contacts: community members, educators, business leaders, neighbors, etc.
• A Strong Brand. A brand is much more than your name or logo. It is the sum total of how others perceive what you do. What distinguishes you from the pack and how will potential clients or colleagues know that?
• Risk Taking. Most people are terrified of failure, playing it too safe and buying into the myth that anything less than perfection reflects poorly on them. An overly safe approach often results with a failure of the largest order – professional goals. If you crave success, be willing to fail and learn from it.
• Internet Mastery. The web offers unprecedented opportunities: social networking, blogging, podcasting, news releases, viral sensations, etc. It’s simply not enough to do these things – you must do so strategically for the greatest impact.
• Financial Literacy. Prospering financially doesn’t simply mean raking in piles of cash. Success requires a deep understanding of how money works – earning, spending, and saving.
• Research Skills. The most successful professionals do not reinvent the wheel. They take advantage of pre-existing resources. They establish relationships with mentors, embrace creative modeling, and devour resource materials in their field.
• An Understanding and Interest in the World. Only those who are engaged in the challenges, values, and realities of their communities are able to create products and provide services that fill gaps and resonate with others. Successful professionals are relevant.

When you play the career game with these rules in mind you will be well prepared for success.

Former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright is paving the way for the future women leaders of the world and unlocking the door to the proverbial good old boys club. At Wellesley College, Ms. Albright’s alma mater, a new Institute for Global Affairs named after her will be offering students around the world access to non-partisan lectures, seminars and internships with topics ranging from political science and economics to religion. The goal is to address the issues at the core of international societies and empower women leaders with an opportunity to make a difference.

Albright believes that women see the human part of issues and pursue power in order to do something with it, not just to have power for the sake of having it. With only 600+ women holding cabinet positions worldwide, Albright is on a mission to groom the next generation of women leaders.

At a recent professional development conference, I participated in a workshop with law and MBA students who described their top competencies for leaders. These women are the leaders of tomorrow in the business and legal arena and here is what they believe is important for leadership success:

• Good leaders should foster the potential of others in an organization.
• Optimistic leaders are more effective.
• Effective leaders learn to be assertive and not aggressive.
• Strong leaders are comfortable in their own skin and lead by being authentic and true to themselves.
• Successful leaders understand human motivation.

These emerging legal and business professionals have some great insight about what makes a leader successful. I’ll be discussing leadership in greater detail in a forthcoming blog post and I will share the wisdom of leadership expert, Deborah C. Stephens, my mentor and colleague. Cheers to Madeleine Albright for her efforts in blazing the leadership trail for women and may her new institute at Wellesley be a valuable resource for the future generation of female leaders.

Always an athlete, Debbie Waitkus played on the soccer team at the University of Arizona and after graduate school she went on to establish a thriving corporate career as president of a 37 year old, $130 million private mortgage banking firm.  She always attributed golf as one of her keys to success since she would take her clients on golf outings to establish and steward professional relationships and business deals. When the CEO of her firm implemented a new strategy that didn’t follow suit with her professional values, Debbie knew it was time for a change and what better way to plan her reinvention than to leverage the game of golf in a new business. Read Full Story