⚡Takeaways: Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact
About the Author
Liz Wiseman is a researcher and executive advisor who teaches leadership to executives around the world. She is the author of New York Times bestseller Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools, and Wall Street Journal bestseller Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work.
She is the CEO of the Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. Some of her recent clients include: Apple, AT&T, Disney, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, Tesla, and Twitter. Liz has been listed on the Thinkers50 ranking and in 2019 was recognized as the top leadership thinker in the world.
She has conducted significant research in the field of leadership and collective intelligence and writes for Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and a variety of other business and leadership journals. She is a frequent guest lecturer at BYU and Stanford University and is a former executive at Oracle Corporation, where she worked as the Vice President of Oracle University and as the global leader for Human Resource Development.
Table of Contents
⭐ The Book in 3 Sentences
🎨 Impressions
🤔 Who Should Read It?
💡 How the Book Changed Me
✍🏾 My Top 3 Quotes
📘 Summary + Notes
About the Author
Liz Wiseman is a researcher and executive advisor who teaches leadership to executives around the world. She is the author of New York Times bestseller Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, The Multiplier Effect: Tapping the Genius Inside Our Schools, and Wall Street Journal bestseller Rookie Smarts: Why Learning Beats Knowing in the New Game of Work.
She is the CEO of the Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm headquartered in Silicon Valley, California. Some of her recent clients include: Apple, AT&T, Disney, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Salesforce, Tesla, and Twitter. Liz has been listed on the Thinkers50 ranking and in 2019 was recognized as the top leadership thinker in the world.
She has conducted significant research in the field of leadership and collective intelligence and writes for Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and a variety of other business and leadership journals. She is a frequent guest lecturer at BYU and Stanford University and is a former executive at Oracle Corporation, where she worked as the Vice President of Oracle University and as the global leader for Human Resource Development.
Table of Contents
⭐ The Book in 3 Sentences
🎨 Impressions
🤔 Who Should Read It?
💡 How the Book Changed Me
✍🏾 My Top 3 Quotes
📘 Summary + Notes
⭐ The Book in 3 Sentences
Impact Players are the highest-performing members of any organization primarily because of the multi-dynamic perceptions they hold about change, time, opportunity, and how these perspectives influence their role, the role(s) or their boss(es), and the organization at large.
The five practices which differentiate Impact Players from other employees are: (1) they figure out the real job to be done, (2) step up and lead, (3) move things across the finish line, (4) learn and adapt to change, and (5) make heavy demands feel lighter.
Anyone can become an Impact Player or lead an entire team of Impact Players so long as they are willing to expand the depths of their own mindsets and beliefs of what meaningful work is.
🎨 Impressions
This book helped me to understand the value certain individuals contribute to an organization and how to enrich my own professional life by adopting the best practices of Impact Players. Meaningful work, however, is not simply about the capacity of self. Rather, it is about the purposeful growth and extensive contributions of self and the ripple effect of implications these actions have on the dynamics and output of a working relationship, collaborative effort, or organization.
🤔 Who Should Read It?
As a collective body of work, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact, is a very dense read that explains the differentiations of Impact Players and Contributors in welcomed depth. That being said, you’ll benefit from reading this book if:
You wish to grow in your motivation and focus as an employee within an organization.
You are a manager or supervisor in need of strategies for moving a team of employees from satisfactory to multi-dynamic.
You are perplexed as to why you are continually passed over for promotional and/or challenge opportunities...and discrimination of any kind is NOT a factor.
💡 How the Book Changed Me
How my life / behaviors / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book
It helped me to understand the dangers of underplaying my role within an organization, which allowed me to grow in the empathy I hold for managerial colleagues. I wouldn’t trust an opportunity to someone who demonstrates a lack of self-trust.
I realized that I am by definition, an Impact Player, but that my presentation and delivery; particularly during the initial months of being part of an organization, does not does not demonstrate this. Success and advancement from my end of the school comes as too much of a shock and often at the end of a chapter at a workplace, as opposed to a steady output throughout my tenure. Treading softly with a big stick through the workplace not only fails to serve me, but it also fails to serve my team.
As a rising leader, it is my job to identify these traits within my employees and amplify them so that others can replicate. It is also my job to communicate clearer expectations of what I want from my team using the “What’s Important Now” protocol.
✍🏾 My Top 3 Quotes (+1 Bonus)
Even in well-managed organizations, there are hidden pools of aspiring leaders and Impact Players who are not seen or getting their turn and who are not receiving the same levels of investment and reinvestment. The work world is missing out on the influence and full contribution of too many players (23).
For Fiona, “no” is a squishy word, one that has a lot of wiggle room. She explained, “When I’m told no, my reaction isn’t to fight back. I ask why they said no. I then start from no and find a path forward” (107).
[Impact Players] may have a lot to say, yet they don’t always say it. Rather, they contribute intentionally, remaining aware of when it’s time to play big and when it’s time to play small. They don’t throw all their ideas out at once but instead dispense their thoughts in small but intense doses, targeting the issues on which they can have the most significant impact” (180).
On the significance of agency and choice in the workplace:
When leaders create conditions in which people can contribute fully and wholeheartedly, work is exhilarating. Work becomes more than a mere job or even a career; it becomes a joyful expression of our most complete selves (273).
📘 Summary + Notes
What is an Impact Player?
[Impact Players] are smart and talented and have an extraordinary work ethic. There’s also their mental game: how they view their role, work with their managers, and deal with adversity and ambiguity, and how willing they are to improve (5).
Impact Player Mindset: A mode of thinking that, when consistently adopted, leads to high-value contribution and high impact.
Contributor Mindset: A set of assumptions and practices that gets the job done and makes a contribution but falls short of full potential and high impact.
Understanding the Impact Player
The following is a summation of the four key differences in how Impact Players think and work.
Impact Players Wear Opportunity Goggles
These employees dive into the chaos head on by tackling the problems everyone can see, but that nobody wants to own. Invitations to make changes are what they find intriguing, not intimidating.
Impact Players React Differently to Uncertainty
Uncertainty and ambiguity are an opportunity to add value to an organization or project; thus, warranting a fundamentally different reaction to the challenges ahead. Impact Players accomplish this by:
Doing the job that’s needed
Stepping up and stepping back
Signs of Ambient Problems:
No owner: Everyone knows it, but no one knows who owns it.
Recreational complaining: Venting without resolution expectations
Hacks & workarounds
No documentation: Workarounds are shared, but not in formal communication
Hidden costs
Selectively seen: Problems are only seen by those most affected and unseen by those who have the power to address the issue
Finishing stronger
Ask and adjust accordingly
Impact players were able to adapt because they were confident in their ability to learn. But they were also comfortable enough with themselves that the prospect of failure - an inherent risk of learning - didn’t compromise their self-worth. It is a posture of confidence - the belief that I have value that can grow and evolve (138).
We don’t need to be deemed worthwhile by others; we just are. We understand that although we may love our work and derive satisfaction from it, we are not our work, and our work doesn’t determine our worth as a human being.
Decoys and Distractions
Sticking to strengths
Game face
Feedback frenzy
Make work light
...discovering her team members’ native genius - a term I use for what people are naturally and astonishingly brilliant at. Native genius is what people do easily, without much conscious effort, and freely, without needing to be paid, rewarded, or even asked. When we work within our native genius, we get the job done easily and brilliantly, which means we create the largest impact with the least amount of effort, and work becomes lighter for all (184-185).
Recognize Others
...performance improves when leaders express gratitude for their team members. Gratitude reduces anxiety and depression, strengthens the immune system, lowers blood pressure, and creates higher levels of happiness. It can also mitigate the negative effects of stress in and out of the workplace. Further, gratitude is contagious and can create a ripple effect that drives the organizational culture toward positivity (187).
User’s Guide to You
Native Genius: What does your mind do easily and freely?
Uses: What are various ways your native genius could be applied at work?
Instructions and Care: What type of information, feedback, and support do you need from others to do your best work?
Warnings: Where do you tend to get stuck or derailed, and how can people help you stay on track?
Impact Players Tap Into Unwritten Rules
Workers of this variety understand the rules of the workplace better than others by tuning into the needs of the organization and determine what’s important to their immediate colleagues. Simply put, they figure out what needs to get done and ascertain the right way to get it done.
Impact Generates Investment
These employees are flexible, quick, strong, agile, and collaborative as well as eager to help others find solutions while others point fingers at problems. In challenging environments, Impact Players are assets that appreciate over time.
Elevating Contributions
Provide an FYI: Let other people know what you’ve done to make their work easier.
Add a Surprise: Do more than is expected of you.
Innovate and Share: Improve a process, then share the innovation with colleagues.
Share Evidence of Success: Periodically share compliments and kudos you receive through the facts.
Build Champions: Build mutually supportive relationships with your peers and stakeholders. Talk each other up.
Promote The Work, Not Yourself
Building a High Impact Team
Jake Reynolds, “ We walk a very fine line between having fun and having too much fun” (235).
Recruit talent with the right mindset, people who are competitive, curious, and coachable (the three C’s). Bring in people who want to win, who won’t stop until the job was finished, and who would listen and learn. The leadership team can teach them the rest. Hire people who already have the qualities that are most difficult to develop and then actively cultivate the other qualities.
Developing teams and players: read and discuss an article, watch a talk, or listen to a podcast.
After each competition, Jake raised the bar and up-leveled the challenge. He understood what would happen if he stopped giving them new challenges: “When you plateau, you lose people.”
