Leadership researcher and best-selling author Liz Wiseman of the Wiseman Group highlights the powerful role of "impact players" in an organization -- people who not only get the job done but step up to serve in times of ambiguity. In her discussion with Kate Herman, People Resources lead at The Motley Fool, Liz translates meaningful lessons from her latest book Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger and Multiply Your Impact into actionable takeaways for anyone wanting to find purpose and excel in the ever-changing, modern landscape of work.
Kate Herman: Hello Fools, and thank you for joining us today for what I know is going to be a very worthwhile and wonderful conversation with our friend, the renowned researcher and author, Liz Wiseman. Welcome, Liz.
Liz Wiseman: Oh Kate, so good to be here.
Kate Herman: We're glad to have you. This is a dream come true. A lot of Fools and our members have been fans of your work for a long time. So we're really glad to have you here today. By means of a quick introduction, Fools: Liz is the CEO of the Wiseman Group, which is a Silicon Valley-based leadership research firm. Her client list, no big deal. Disney, Nike, Google, Twitter, you name it. They've worked with her. She's widely published in business and leadership journals, and she's also authored several books of her own, including the Fool favorite, the best-selling Multipliers a few years back. Today we're going to spend some time talking about Liz's newest book, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger and Multiply Your Impact. Sound good?
Liz Wiseman: I'm ready. I'm eager. This is a fun group for me.
Kate Herman: Fantastic. Let's dive in. First, just to level set for anyone who's listening in and might not have had a chance to run out and read Impact Players yet. Let's level that playing field a little bit. There's five practices of Impact Players that set the groundwork for your whole book. Can you talk to us about those five practices right up front, just so Fools understand the key principles behind the idea of being an impact player at work?
Liz Wiseman: Well, these practices are what Impact Players do compared to other, solid contributors on the team. If I could step back, just like, what we studied was trying to understand in a room full of equally smart, talented, capable, hard working people. Everyone's capable, everyone's trying hard. Why are some people making a huge impact doing work of extraordinary value and other people are going through the motions? We compared, we asked 170 managers to compare what we call an "impact player" with someone who I ended up calling a "typical contributor" and "ordinary contributor." Probably the most important thing to understand is that these typical contributors -- these weren't lackeys, these weren't people struggling. These were people who were doing a fine job. Manager said they did their job, they were focused, they took direction, they took ownership, they carry their weight on teams. I'm like, wow, that sounds pretty good. Like, what's wrong with that? What we found is that the ordinary contributor was absolutely stellar in ordinary times. But when things started to get ambiguous, uncertain when things felt chaotic out of our control, which feels like just an average workday.
Kate Herman: Yep.
Liz Wiseman: Now, the impact players handle those situations very differently than other solid contributors on teams. There were five of them. The first was how they dealt with messy problems. The ordinary contributor does their job and they do it well. But the impact player is doing the job that needs to be done. Meaning they're paying attention to what's going on around them, and they're flexy, kind of rangy with how they define their role. You know, often defining their role as problem solver in a domain. The second is how they handle unclear roles. Where other people wait for direction. When you're in a meeting and you can't quite figure out who's really in charge of this meeting or project or initiative -- others wait for direction, wait for role clarification. Impact players, they step up. They take the lead voluntarily without formal authority, but they don't just take charge. They step up, lead and serve, but then they step back and they follow others with the same energy commitment. They're leaders and followers.
Kate Herman: Yeah.
Liz Wiseman: They flex between these two stations. The third is how they handle unforeseen obstacles when, you know, something out of your control, unprecedented drops in your path. Whereas others, ordinary contributors tend to escalate those problems up in organizations, the impact players just hold onto it and they've got this completion gene, they finish it to get it all the way done. But they do it in a way not that exhausts them and others, they end up finishing stronger. The fourth of these five practices is how they deal with moving targets, where the environment is changing, the market is changing, the situation is changing, the budget is changing. Others tend to stick to agreement, stick to what they know. The impact players are adapting and changing. It's like they wake up in the morning and say, "while I was sleeping, I bet the world changed." How do I need to adapt and change today? They ask for input and feedback, and then they are constantly adjusting. Then the last is just how they deal with heavy workloads, where others look to other people for relief -- their managers, their colleagues -- which ends up adding to the burden that people already feel when work is heavy. The impact players, during heavy times, are making work light for themselves, for others, and teams.
Kate Herman: I love that. It's such an interesting exercise to think about what this book would have looked like if you wrote it five years ago versus in 2021. Because as you say, what is now just a normal workday might've felt extraordinary five years ago. I think of a phrase that our communications director has used in the past, what I wouldn't give first some precedented times, huh? [laughs]
Liz Wiseman: Here's the interesting thing is, the interviews were all done in the summer of 2019.
Kate Herman: That's fascinating.
Liz Wiseman: It was in the end of 2019 when I'm going through all of this data, and I remember that I was on an airplane and I was going through the final synthesis of all of this data, and I was looking at the situations that the impact players handle differently than others and I'm like, oh yeah, this can all be grouped into these five categories. Messy problems, unclear role, etc. Then I realize, well, these have actually become the new normal. That it's not that this is from the pandemic. This is just what work has become.
Kate Herman: Yes, very much so. In that zone, I'd love to zoom in on one of those five practices, which is the "make work light." The idea that instead of reaching out for help and sharing the burden, an impact player by nature is just going to say, I'm going to carry this ball across the line, this is mine. I'm going to do this. In a time where both our members and our employees here at the Fool are feeling a bit of a pinch from the ongoing circumstances with the stock market. Am I right, Fools? We're feeling that. Right?
Liz Wiseman: Yeah.
Kate Herman: What guidance do you have for how to make heavy demands or heavy circumstances, feel a bit lighter for others, but maybe also for yourself? Is there a mental game to making it feel less burdensome for you? How do you do it without taking on too much for yourself and becoming overburdened yourself? What did your research find in that zone?
Liz Wiseman: Well, I'll tell you what, we didn't find: We didn't find that these impact players take on other people's work. It's not like they made work light for others by saying, oh, hey, I see you're carrying a heavy burden. Can I do that for you? Yes, there might be moments where that is one way you make work light. I remember a moment where I just couldn't do anything more than I was doing in my job. I was just, like, drowning with a big job, a young family. And I remember a colleague popping her head into my office and saying, "hey Liz, I know you want to read more than you do," because I couldn't read all of the industry pubs and she just said, "do you want me to read for you?" I'm like, what? She said I read the Harvard Business Review every month. I read the Wall Street Journal every day. I should say like, oh, I read The Motley Fool newsletter as well [laughs]. She wasn't much of an investor, but she said, I'm reading these things, do you want me to just sum up for you, like, articles that I think would be a value to you? I remember, I almost cried out thinking about this relief. I felt like I have this big executive job, and I just can't do that and here's someone who's already doing it, who's going to do a little bit extra, and will have a radical effect on my ability to carry this heavy load -- both at work and at home. So yes, sometimes it's hey, I can offer you a hand to help. But more often than not, what it was is that these were people who were just easy to work with. They didn't create a phantom workload of -- we all know that there's workload, and then there's the workload around that, that makes it hard. Like, drama and politics and bickering on teams. These impact players, they just don't participate in that. It was one of the things we found on the survey when we asked managers, what do they do, what do they not do. It was one of the things that impact players never do. Is they just don't spend their time there because there's no value there. In fact, it's anti-value. It's eschewing the noise around the work. It's being easy to work with. A ten-minute request is eight minutes, not a two-hour meeting. We all know those colleagues who do great work, but there's a tax that comes with their work -- like, oh, I've got to go listen to the speech, I've got to go kiss the ring, I've got to go do this. It's just going to be harder than it has to be. Versus the colleagues who are like a tax rebate, like, you know what? We don't need a full hour for this meeting, we can get it done in 15 minutes. Oh, you know what? Here's a report, and I just wrote up a little summary so you don't have to read the whole thing. They're concise, they're focused, and they're a delight to work with. A lot of ways we can make work light is just being low maintenance so that all of the team's productive energy can go to carrying the hard work. We just don't put extra rocks in our backpack as we're climbing up. Maybe perhaps my favorite part of this -- and it might be because I was voted class clown of my high school graduating class -- so I'm always on the hunt, really, for my mom because I think she thought I was going to somehow bring shame upon the family -
Kate Herman: An ever-present risk.
Liz Wiseman: An ever-present risk. [laughs] We found that people just said, you know, they're fun, they're funny. When we asked managers, what do people do that you most appreciate? Bring fun to the team, like make our work fun, make us laugh. Keep us laughing and it's not like you have to be a comedian or a clown or a bit of a fool to do that. It's just not taking yourself so seriously that everyone has to tiptoe around you.
Kate Herman: Yeah.
Liz Wiseman: It's bringing levity, so that the energy can go toward issues of gravitas.
Kate Herman: Taking your work seriously without being too serious. Very good.
Liz Wiseman: Don't you love working with people who take their work seriously but don't take themselves too seriously?
Kate Herman: Yeah, it really is a game changer, and it can be so much more efficient as well. I know for a lot of Fools, there's big motivation in doing things so that other folks don't have to, so that they don't let other people down. A big part of that is that's a way for us to have fun together, is if we're all doing our part and celebrating along the way, it really does ease the burden considerably and the converse is true too.
Liz Wiseman: It does. I think our current environment warrants like I mentioned, that bringing lightness and laughter isn't always the way to create lightness on a team. Sometimes it's holding space for difficult issues and for people to talk about those difficult issues. One of the things we found is that they make work light by creating a sense of belonging. Not just like, hey, we're all having a good time, but it's like -- it's OK to belong here, it's OK to be you. It's a sense of inclusiveness that makes it easier for people to participate in the team and in the fun, which are sometimes issues that are quite serious.
Kate Herman: Yeah, for sure. Let's pivot a little bit to the impact player mindset. Viewers watching are going to be familiar with the investor mindset. We actually have Tim Beyers is one of our investor analysts who spends whole podcasts and sessions talking about that. We also talk on the People Team about having a Foolish mindset, which is just sounding delightfully overlapping with a lot of the research that you've laid out here. This idea, we lean into the work that we have together and we raise our hands and say, how can I help, what can I do, especially in leaner times, that is a hallmark of some of our best and brightest at the company. Can you share a little bit about your take on the mental aspects of making a difference at work? When you talk about the mindset of an impact player -- we've just covered a lot of ground there, I think -- but how would you sum that up?
Liz Wiseman: Well, I think the mindset behind this is what's the most important, because any time you do a piece of research, there's a whole bunch of behavioral things you can uncover. But it's hard to remember-oh, I've got to do these five things and each of these five things has four components, so now I've got 20 things I'm supposed to do. It's really like, what is the belief system behind this way of working? It's not that this is a way some people work. It's really a mode of contributing, and it's a mode that we tend to go in and out of. I can point to times where I've absolutely been an impact player in organizations and on teams. Like yay for me. But I can point to-- Small victory party. [laughs] But I've had points where I've been stuck in this "ordinary contributor" mindset. Not my job, not my problem, not my circus, not my monkey. This is my role. And I've gotten in that mode. Sometimes it's for minutes, sometimes it's for days, sometimes it's maybe for a longer period of time, like a year or two. It's a way of thinking we go in and out of. What I'm always looking for is, what is the belief system behind that? Because if we can uncover and inspect and tweak our beliefs, the behavior naturally follows. So what is the belief behind this impact player mindset? It's essentially, it's a belief that we have power. It really is a belief that I can make a difference, that my work makes a difference -- that I can take charge without somebody appointing me in charge. I could take ownership even if I'm not the most powerful person in the organization. That I'm integral to a team. Meaning my work on a team matters. The way I show up affects the whole team. It's a belief in one's own power and efficacy, and it's heavily related to internal locus of control and agency. Essentially, impact players are people who believe they're not just players in an organization. They're people who make things happen. I think it's coupled. It's like power, which we've often treated as a dirty word. Do we want people who are really full of their own power? Well, only if it's coupled with this other kind of mindset -- which is a mindset of service. Which is, you know, everyone works in the service industry. Regardless of whether you make a product or you offer a professional service, like, your work serves somebody.
Kate Herman: Sure.
Liz Wiseman: This is belief that I can make a difference and I'm here to serve, regardless of what position I am in the organization. I think it's really looking at our work with a sense of it is an honor to serve, and it is an honor to be of service. It's not like, oh, well, we serve when we're low in the organization, but our goal professionally is to escape service.
Kate Herman: Yeah. Do you think-- w hen you think about this aspect of power and the mindset, does everyone have it in them inherently to be an impact player? If they want to tap in to their inner impact player, what's the first move?
Liz Wiseman: Well, I think not everyone works this way. For certain. I believe that people want to work this way. I would go so far as to say, I believe that everyone would prefer to work this way -- rather than, hey, I'm just a job holder. Here's my position. Here's my little box, and I have to stay in my box. I don't think we want to stay in boxes. I think we want to do work that matters, that has purpose, that's important, which means we have to be able to flex and go after that. Can everyone do it? I think there are people who are at a serious disadvantage, who perhaps have grown up -- whether it's grown up in the work world, or grown up in your life -- being told, stay in your box. What is it? Like, "children are to be seen and not heard" or "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down." I think there are a lot of us who come at this with a disadvantage, with some programming that says, "you know what? It's too dangerous to stick out, to stand out, to step out. Just avoid risk." I think if someone has had those kinds of experiences, I think this is a learned way of working, but it absolutely can be learned and it can be learned with some good coaching and with good leadership as well as a little bit of self coaching. Where would you start? For me, it really, the root of so much of this. I see these two master skills that cross so much of the practices of impact players. The first is, I would either call it "prospective taking" or "upward empathy." It's about looking at the people we work for, and rather than be like, "they're causing me grief," -- which is pretty easy to do if you've got a diminishing leader. But it's looking at the people we work for, whether they're bosses or clients or stakeholders, and saying, " what's hard about their work? What's hard about their life? What's making things difficult for them? I wonder if maybe what's making things difficult for them might be me. What are they trying to do that they're not able to do?" What's the word? It's having empathy for the challenges of those that we serve. It's this art of perspective taking in any situation to say, I see what I'm trying to do, but what is my client trying to do? What is my boss trying to do? What are my colleagues trying to do? How do we construct truly a multi-view kind of win in this situation? Maybe just looking around and understanding what's important right now is at the root of it. It's hard to do valuable work if you don't understand what is deemed as valuable in this moment in time. Then, I think a second place to get started is just to look at situations that are full of ambiguity. Instead of seeing them as threats, start to look at that through an opportunity lens, how might this be a chance to be useful? How might this be a chance to create value? How is this a chance for us to rethink what we're doing? Which I think sometimes we have to train ourselves to do, because it's easy to want to back away.
Kate Herman: Yes. Especially absent specific guidance or direction, you think, "is that even my place to step in and take over? Or to offer my ideas or to contribute in that way?" And Fools who are following along here, now starting to understand maybe differently -- that's usually where the best opportunities present themselves. I like that a lot.
Liz Wiseman: By definition, that's where opportunity is, because those are situations other people are going to shy away from. That might be more of Blue Ocean kinds of opportunities. If you're willing to go there, there is incredible value that can be created.
Kate Herman: I love that. Every Fool employee has the opportunity to have a peer-to-peer coach. We're sort of a self-taught, self-trained group of Fools. I think we're almost 70 strong at this point. Fools in the wild, who might be listening to this at a later time: expect a lot of coaching conversations around impact players at the Fool coming up soon. I want to switch directions completely. You and I were talking about this a little bit before we kicked things off today, the idea of purpose and being a purpose-driven company. The Motley Fool certainly considers ourselves to be a purpose-driven company. We're here to make the world smarter, happier, and richer, as you and I talked about. Impact players are purpose-driven performers. What would you say to people who might not yet know what their purpose is? Is it important to know your purpose before you can be an impact player?
Liz Wiseman: Well, first thing I would say, don't worry, you're not alone. There's lots of people. I think it's one of the big dangerous we've done, be purpose-driven, follow your passion. There's two big problems that come with that. One is, some people are like, I don't know what that is, but I'm supposed to by the time I'm a junior in high school and applying for college. That does not feel good. It creates a lot of anxiety when people are trying to have figured things out in life, that it's too early to have figured out. The second is, what happens when someone is working with such purpose or passion, that they're doing it through their lens and their lens only? The way they look on teams is hard-charging people who are running in the wrong direction. It's like, well, we have this collective purpose over here. I think a much healthier way to do this -- and it's really the way of the impact player -- is to treat purpose or passion more as a verb than a noun. Rather than working on one's passion or purpose, it's like, work with passion and purpose. It's about figuring out what's important in the organization, what is our collective purpose here? How do I channel all of my energy on that? When we do that, we create value at a much larger scale. I think when we decide like, I don't know what my purpose is, but let me work purposely on what appears to be our collective agenda, it's amazing how we stumble in to our own purpose. There's a wonderful column on this by David Brooks of The New York Times. It's called Summoned -- either The Summoned Self or The Summoned Life. It was written maybe, ten plus years ago. It's about how so much great leadership and great activism was done by people who didn't really have a clear purpose, but they just noticed a need, and they went after it. Well, here I am and here's this need, why not me? They made incredible contributions to our society by being summoned toward a greater purpose.
Kate Herman: Food for thought, for sure. I've got one last question for you before we end our session today. This has been wonderful. And it's a personal one. Liz, I want to know from you, what are you doing differently in your own life as a result of what you researched and learned as you wrote Impact Players? Here's your doozy of a question. [laughs]
Liz Wiseman: Easy because it's forced me to really dig deep. What am I really doing differently? Because I think, any time I do research -- whether it's on Multipliers, it really helped me to be more of a multiplier, to think much harder about this. This has helped me to go, oh yeah, some of this I knew and I was doing. How do I do more of it? But the part that really -- I think I'm very different, I'm working very differently now -- is I think I work a lot harder and more thoughtfully about how I gather feedback and how I make it easy and light for people to tell me the truth. This fourth practice about "ask and adjust," it's about people who are willing to change as the environment is changing. There was this point in the process with the book where I was out getting feedback and it was toward the tail end of that feedback. I'm looking for little tweaks now.
Kate Herman: Sure.
Liz Wiseman: There was a group of feedback providers that came in with some feedback that people on my team were afraid to tell me. We call this the Jason Five, because Jason, on our team, he was the one who got this feedback. It came from five people. They were all in a very similar demographic, all lived in the same area, similar cultural situations, and he didn't want to tell me because they hated the book. I mean, hated the book.
Kate Herman: Anything specific about it or just the whole concept?
Liz Wiseman: They hated the way it was framed, they hated the concept. Two other people were like, "I love Liz Wiseman, I've read her book. I love Ms. Wiseman's book. I hate this book."
Kate Herman: I still hate this book.
Liz Wiseman: Jason was afraid to tell me. He talked to some other people on the team and they're like, no, we know Liz really well. She needs to hear this and she wants to hear this. He was still kind of afraid of me. Calls me up and he tells me and I'm like, "yeah, what do they know?" [laughs] It's just five people. We now refer to them as the Jason Five. It's an anomaly. Because, they had fundamental problems with the whole concept and that was framed.
Kate Herman: We're not starting over.
Liz Wiseman: I am not starting over. I am now two weeks away from manuscript delivery date.
Kate Herman: Oh, boy.
Liz Wiseman: I think I released a couple curse words.
Kate Herman: Plausible.
Liz Wiseman: I'm about to discard it. I don't know if it was a desire to do good work, or the desire-- or, like, the knowledge I had now about how impact players operate and particularly around this treating feedback as information rather than judgment. I'm like, you know what? These five people have just given me information that nobody else has given me. I was contemplating, what do I do with it? Do I make a few little tweaks? Do I ignore it? Do I take a few little tweaks. Then, after about 48 hours of processing, I'm like, I rewrite the book. I rewrite the whole book. I didn't rewrite every word, I just reframed it. I dropped a central concept that the book was built around, and I just let go of it. I called my publisher. I told her, I'm like, "I need six more weeks," and she said Liz, "That's the bravest thing I've ever seen an author do." Because all the other feedback was so positive and I'm like no, if this can't work for everyone, it's not a good piece of work. It was hard, but man did it feel good. I think the book is much stronger as a result of it. But it was really hard to hear this.
Kate Herman: I'm sure.
Liz Wiseman: I think it is something that I do differently now, is like, how do I make it safe for people to really tell me the hard truth? Which is, this is the concept that The Motley Fool is built around. In some ways it's, an impact player mindset is how do I surround myself with Motley Fools who can tell, in this case -- what? the duke? -- the truth without--
Kate Herman: Yeah, tell the truth to the king without losing their head. [laughs]
Liz Wiseman: It's like, I need this intel. I would have produced a subpar or sub-excellent, sub-impactful book if there wasn't a channel for people to say, "hey, we hate this part." I want all my work to be based in truth.
Kate Herman: Love that.
Liz Wiseman: When you get at my age or stage of a career, it can be really easy to just dro wn out the Motley Fools and just listen to the fans.
Kate Herman: Yep. Say, "I'm the expert, I know what's what, I know what people want to hear." It's interesting, as you say, we've got some undertones of that here. The Motley Fool is driven by our take on the golden rule, and we look at that through the lens of our four key stakeholders. One of them obviously is our employees. We talk about "stand together and know where you stand." That's one of our golden rule principles. It's a nod to feedback and also to whichever working group you're in, we're all under the same umbrella. I teach that class for on-boarding whenever we have new Fools join us at the company. One of the things that we get into is this notion that sometimes people conflate tough feedback with being rude or being hurtful. We're a culture of kindness, kind of by default. We've had periods of time where Fools maybe haven't gotten that tough feedback that they needed to course correct or haven't gotten that contrary opinion. Because other Fools didn't want to rock the boat or hurt anyone's feelings. As you say, you can compartmentalize. Here's how I feel about it, but what am I going to do about it? Those can be two separate reactions and responses that you have as you go so. Well-played to you. Kudos for the pivot. [laughs]
Liz Wiseman: It is hard. Those 48 hours were full of consternation. But I think one of the secrets is to be able to separate self from work. Honestly, I don't really want anyone to give me feedback on myself. That never feels great. Whether it's good feedback or bad feedback, it just always feels like a judgment. But I want information on my work.
Kate Herman: Yes.
Liz Wiseman: When we can say, "I am different than my work" -- which is sometimes hard to do when you're a writer. [laughs] Instead of feedback, which has tones of judgment, it's like, give me information I need to course correct so that might work hits the mark. That's so much easier to do, and that I can do.
Kate Herman: We talk about measurable, actionable feedback, which cannot involve things like "gray is not my favorite color, just FYI." [laughs] That's not measurable or actionable feedback. [laughs]
Liz Wiseman: My eye color.
Kate Herman: Well, I think Liz, you've given us all lots of thinking about today. I really appreciate you being here. Fools that are tuned in, I'm Kate Herman with The Motley Fool People Team. We've been joined today by Liz Wiseman, author of Impact Players and many other books and articles and pieces as well. Liz, we appreciate your time today so much. Thank you for joining us and for sharing some of what you learned with our Foolish audience today. We really appreciate you being here.
Liz Wiseman: It is absolutely my pleasure.
Kate Herman: Excellent. Thank you so much. Fool on.
