Are You A Multiplier or a Diminisher?
- Beth Torres
- Oct 7
- 3 min read
TL;DR
Leaders either amplify the potential of their teams (multipliers) or suppress it (diminishers). There’s no middle ground. Being a multiplier means creating clarity, enabling growth, and building a culture of accountability where people do their best work. Diminishers, often unintentionally, create confusion, dependency, and fear. Leadership effectiveness hinges on one thing: whether your presence expands or limits others’ capacity to perform, think, and grow.
The Multiplier Effect of Great Leadership
In every organization, there are two types of leaders:
Multipliers, who bring out the intelligence, creativity, and ownership of others.
Diminishers, who, through control, confusion, or ego, shrink the thinking, initiative, and energy of their teams.
Multipliers know that leadership isn’t about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about creating the conditions where smart, capable people can thrive.
They:
Create clarity instead of chaos.
Set expectations, not traps.
Empower decision-making rather than bottleneck it.
Build trust through accountability, not fear.
When you lead like a multiplier, you unlock compounding returns where people grow, teams align, and performance accelerates.
Clarity Is Kindness
One of the most overlooked truths in leadership is this: clarity is kindness.
When your team knows what’s expected, how success is defined, and what “good” looks like, they can move faster and more confidently.
Diminishers, often with good intentions, create ambiguity by:
Constantly shifting priorities.
Withholding context.
Avoiding hard conversations.
Overexplaining or micromanaging.
That confusion breeds frustration and dependency.
Multipliers do the opposite: they simplify. They make direction, priorities, and accountability unmistakably clear. If your people are uncertain, they can’t perform. Clarity is about freedom to execute with confidence.
Growth Requires Space and Support
Multipliers know that enabling growth means providing both stretch and safety. They challenge people to take on more than they think they can handle, but they also provide the support and feedback to make it possible.
As a leader, your job isn’t always about simply removing challenges; sometimes you also need to coach them to rise to them. That means:
Asking questions that expand thinking.
Giving feedback that strengthens, not shames.
Allowing room for mistakes that lead to growth.
Growth never happens in comfort zones, but it also never happens in fear. Multipliers find the balance.
Accountability is the Foundation of Trust
A culture of accountability is about alignment and ownership.
Multipliers use accountability to reinforce trust:
They set clear goals and follow through on commitments.
They hold people (and themselves) to high standards.
They celebrate results, not activity.
Diminishers, on the other hand, often confuse control with accountability. They overstep, double-check, and redo others’ work “just to be sure.” That behavior destroys accountability and fast.
True accountability empowers. It says, “I trust you to deliver, and I’ll support you in doing it.”
Multipliers Scale Themselves. Diminishers Drain Themselves.
Here’s the biggest differentiator between multipliers and diminishers: energy.
Multipliers scale their time and influence because their people operate independently and confidently. They lead through frameworks, questions, and empowerment.
Diminishers, even with great intentions, end up exhausted by constantly rescuing, correcting, or chasing progress that never compounds.
If your team can’t make decisions, move forward, or win without you in the room, you’ve become the limiter.
How to Shift from Diminisher to Multiplier
Audit Your Leadership Habits.
Ask yourself: Do I give direction or make decisions for others? If it’s the latter, you’re unintentionally diminishing.
Replace Answers with Questions.
Multipliers don’t try to solve everything, and instead, they aim to create thinkers. Replace “Here’s what to do” with “What do you think we should try?”
Define What Good Looks Like.
Ambiguity kills momentum. Clarify success measures for roles, goals, and outcomes.
Build Accountability Rhythms.
Make commitments visible, track follow-through, and recognize ownership.
Create Space for Learning.
Let people experiment, fail safely, and reflect on lessons learned.
Choose What You Multiply
You can be a multiplier or a diminisher, but never both. Every interaction either grows or shrinks the capability of your team.
Leadership is about how much capacity you create in others, so choose clarity, accountability, and growth. When your people thrive, your business does too.
Ready to Build Multiplier Leaders in Your Organization? At Apexium Growth, we help leaders create high-performing teams by aligning clarity, accountability, and growth. If your organization is ready to scale smarter by multiplying talent instead of managing activity, let’s talk. Book a 30-minute strategy call today.
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