Today's guest blog is written by Liz Wiseman, the author of Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter and co-author of The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools.

Do the smartest leaders create the smartest organizations or can the seemingly smartest leaders have a diminishing effect on the intelligence of others?

As educational leaders feel the ever-present burden of doing more with less, many leaders draw on their own knowledge and insights or simply work harder. For example when Suzanne (name changed), a new assistant principal, was tasked with creating an intervention program for the school's underachieving students, she knew she would need buy in from the staff. So she set up a planning committee of math and language arts teachers. But before convening the committee, she built the intervention plan in totality in her mind. The committee meetings just served as a forum to validate her ideas. The teachers attempted to contribute but were shot down and shut down as she flogged them with her previous experience with these programs. The teachers withdrew and turned their energies elsewhere; meanwhile,

Suzanne forged ahead with her plan. The result was a student schedule disaster that took weeks and district office assistance to repair. Students caught in the schedule nightmare lost two weeks of instruction and precious learning.

When leaders rely too heavily on their own intelligence, they can easily underutilize the full genius of their team. Their well-meaning attempts to lead can actually shut down ideas and cause others to hold back. People learn it's easier, and safer, to let the boss do the thinking. These leaders become "diminishers" of intelligence.

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