Multipliers

Wiseman's distinction is between leaders who amplify the intelligence around them and leaders who drain it — and, crucially, that most of the draining is done by people with entirely good intentions.

"Accidental diminisher" is the most useful phrase I have found for coaching capable, well-meaning managers. These are not the bullies. They are the ones who help too much, who answer before the room has had a chance, who rescue a struggling colleague in a meeting, who are so obviously the smartest person present that everyone else stops trying. Every one of those behaviours reads as generous from the inside. Nearly all of the capability damage I see in organisations is done by people trying to be helpful.

That reframe does something a competency framework cannot. It lets a good manager recognise themselves without being told they are bad at their job, which is the only condition under which most people will actually change anything.

The binary is too clean, of course. Nobody is a multiplier or a diminisher; everyone is both, depending on the day, the pressure and the person in front of them. And the research base is lighter than the confident tone suggests.

But as a mirror to hold up in a coaching conversation, it outperforms almost anything else available, and it produces the thing you want from that conversation: a manager who goes quiet, and then says "I do the second one, don't I."