The Real Reason It’s So Easy to Be an Accidental Diminisher

It’s February, the fitness center crowds are nearly back to normal; your carefully crafted meal plan a distant memory; and your best delegation efforts now look more like micromanagement veiled in the guise of “being helpful.” Like the ups and downs of fitness and dieting, leaders face a similar kind of cycle when it comes to shedding unproductive, accidentally diminishing behaviors. They whole-heartedly want to ask more questions, give people space, or invite ideas from others. They are even motivated to do it because they’ve seen the value when they manage to “be good,” staying true to their leadership diet.

If your resolution to be the leader you know you can and want to be is already slipping away, here are 6 steps to get you back on track.

As the definition suggests, Accidental Diminishers do things with the best of intentions, thinking these behaviors bring out the best in their people; in essence, they are unaware of the subtle diminishing effects on people’s intelligence, like the meetings where staff nod in agreement, rarely speaking up. But we find that once leaders are alerted to how their behaviors stifle their teams, they are motivated to become less diminishing and more multiplying. So, what is it that keeps the “Idea Guy” ideating, and the “Always-On” leader pontificating?

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not a lack of will-power or motivation—and they aren’t accidentally diminishing you out of spite. At the core, motivation to change is necessary, but not sufficient to overcome the hidden barriers that keep us stuck. The most common approach to change is to simply try something new, whether that is incorporating a “replacement practice” or just eliminating a bad behavior. But for those of you who have been on the dieting cycle (whether it was fitness or leadership), you know just how hard it is to sustain the “new you.” This may be effective in the short run (think about the influx of questions you asked after reading The Multiplier Effect, or attending one of our sessions), but…