Feb 7, 2013 | Blog

HCI Summit Spotlight: Liz Wiseman

Develop Your Workforce
Engage Your People
Optimize Your Talent Strategy

In just under two months, we’ll ditch this winter snow and bask in the warm sunshine of Orlando, FL for HCI’s annual Human Capital Summit. By now you’ve probably heard about the Summit theme: Building Successful and Adaptive Talent Management in a VUCA Environment (VUCA – describes an environment characterized by: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity); and you’ve also started monitoring the list of rock-star keynotes as it continues to grow each week. In our most recent Summit Spotlight, we covered best-selling author and predictive statistician Nate Silver, and this week I’d like to tell you more about Liz Wiseman, author of the runaway bestseller, Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter.

 

So, let me introduce you to Liz– a former executive at Oracle Corporation, Liz worked in various executive-level roles in the Education and HR organizations during her 17 year tenure (from Direcot of Oracle University, to VP of HR Development, to VP of Global Products). Now, Liz is the president of The Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley. In addition to advising senior executives at blue chip clients such as, Apple, Genentech/Roche, Salesforce.com, Gap Inc., SAP, and Microsoft, she has also written the important business bestseller: Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter.

 

Liz knows a few things about leadership in a volatile environment…perhaps most importantly that when talent is required to be lean and agile – the ability to inspire, motivate and drive the workforce towards increased production and innovation is critical for success. Based on her extensive research with over 150 leaders in 35 companies in the field of leadership and collective intelligence, she categorized leadership roles into two dramatically different types: Diminishers and Multipliers.

 

  • Diminishers – Those leaders who drain intelligence, energy, and capability from the ones around them and always need to be the smartest ones in the room. These are the idea killers, the energy sappers, the diminishers of talent and commitment
  • Multipliers – Those 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. These are the leaders who inspire employees to stretch themselves to deliver results that surpass expectations.

 

We’ve all experienced both types of leaders throughout our careers. The Multipliers however, are the ones that get more done with less, are better at developing and attracting talent, and perhaps most importantly, have a stronger ability to cultivate new ideas and drive organizational change and innovation. In other words, the Multipliers are those leaders that are vitally important for survival as well as success in the VUCA world.

 

Register today for the HCI Human Capital Summit, April 8-10th at the Dolphin Hotel in Disney World, Orlando and hear Liz Wiseman’s keynote as well as many more! We hope to see you there.