Are You Accidentally Diminishing Your Team Rather Than Multiplying Their Potential?
How many of you go home at the end of the day feeling spent, while your team seems to leave the office with energy to spare?
If you find yourself carrying the mental load for the entire department or organization—solving every fire, double-checking every email, and making every final call—you might be falling into a common leadership trap. You might be an Accidental Diminisher.
The Problem of Good Intentions
Most leaders don’t wake up wanting to crush morale. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. Accidental Diminishers are often the most hardworking people in the room. They diminish their team's capability out of a desire to help:
The Rescuer: Jumping in to save a project because they don’t want their team to fail.
The Fixer: Providing the answer immediately to "speed things up."
The Empire Builder: Hoarding resources and talent to protect the team, but ultimately stifling growth.
The Micromanager: Believing that "if I want it done right, I have to do it myself."
The result? You increase the pressure on yourself, but you decrease the actual output of the group.
The High Cost of "Quit and Stay"
When a leader uses their intelligence or influence to dominate, the team experiences a phenomenon known as "Quit and Stay." Your people haven’t left the company, but they’ve stopped bringing their best selves to amplify the work. They do just enough to stay off your radar, but they withhold their best thinking, their creativity, and their initiative. Why bother thinking critically if the boss is going to decide or fix it anyway? What is the cost to the organization if we leave half of the team’s intelligence on the table?
Three Shifts to Amplify Your Team
To move from a Diminisher to a Multiplier—someone who uses their position to amplify the ideas of everyone around them—you should make three fundamental shifts in your daily habits.
1. From Knowing to Asking
You don’t need to have all the answers; you need to have the right questions. When you provide the answer, the thinking stops. When you ask a provocative question, the work begins.
The Shift: Instead of "Here is how we solve this," try "What do you see as our biggest obstacle here?"
2. From Directing to Defining
Stop telling your team how to do the work; tell them what done looks like. When you micromanage the process, you take ownership away from the employee. When you define the outcome, you give them the space to innovate.
The Shift: Focus on the "What" and the "Why," and let them own the "How."
3. From Holding to Handing Off
This is the terrifying art of letting go. It feels safer to keep your hands on the wheel, but you cannot scale a team if you are the only one allowed to drive. Handing off responsibility means accepting that they might do it differently than you—and that’s okay. Be ready to support new ideas and processes that improve overall results.
The 24-Hour Challenge
Acknowledging this shift is hard. It feels vulnerable to relinquish control. But if you want a team that is as energized and invested as you are, you have to create the space for them to lead. For the next 24 hours, try to lead only by asking questions. Watch what happens to the energy in the room when you stop being the individual with the answers. Wait time is a key component. Ask the questions, provide adequate wait time, and start to listen to the multiple answers that could solve the problem, be the next great idea, or take the organization to the next level financially or culturally.
If you are ready to learn how to multiply your leadership potential and develop organizational talent, let’s connect.
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