Last week, I shared some ways that understanding the Working Genius model can help us as individuals. This week, I want to share a little about how the Working Genius model can help teams. Those teams can be at work, at home, in churches, non-profits, and other volunteer groups as well.

In last week’s article, we talked about how understanding the Working Genius model and your own Working Geniuses helps you understand yourself better, including helping you show a little more grace towards yourself and others. Understanding that what is easy for us might not be so easy for our teammates and what we struggle with might be areas that they are gifted in can help us appreciate the teams we find ourselves in so much more.

Understanding your own working geniuses is a great starting place, but understanding the geniuses, competencies, and frustrations of those you work with takes the helpfulness and value of the Working Genius model to a whole other level. Whether it’s with your co-workers, your family, teams at church or other organizations you are involved in, knowing how each of you are wired for work will help you see where you might be able to maximize the potential of individuals, recognize gaps that exist in your work process, and identify areas in which certain team members may be at risk of burning out.

Last week I posted a quote from Patrick Lencioni that said: “People who utilize their natural, God-given talents are much more fulfilled and successful than those who don’t.” Can you imagine what it would be like if those you work with in any environment, yourself included, had the opportunity to to better utilize their “natural, God-given talents”?

Exploring the Working Genius model as a team or in the family, gives your team not just a common understanding, but it gives you a common language to communicate the ideas and feelings around different types of work that you may never have been able to clearly put words around before. Being able to say to someone, “I know that taking the time to make sure all the details are taken care of is draining for you because Tenacity is one of your areas of frustration, but thank you for pushing through to get that done” can go a long way in truly seeing, knowing, and expressing appreciation for your teammates. All of that helps to build a stronger team.

Knowing the working geniuses, competencies, and frustrations of those on your team also help you see aspects of work where your team might be struggling. If your team is great at coming up with ideas but doesn’t always do so great at following through, it might be that no one on your team has the genius of Enablement or Tenacity. This can be an ongoing issue and source of frustration for your entire team, but if you realize what is going on then you can begin to address it and look for people who do have those gifts to help your team out. In contrast, if no one on the team has the genius of Wonder or Invention, your team can easily find themselves stuck in a rut and losing momentum. All six of the geniuses are needed for work to be accomplished. If your team is missing certain geniuses, then a couple of things might be happening. Your team’s work is probably suffering on some level, or you may have teammates who are very frustrated and on the verge of burnout because they are being expected to “take one for the team” and spend most of their time functioning in an area that is not their area of genius.

Learning about the Working Genius model together helps you see both the individuals on your team better and the big picture of how your team is functioning. The insights that you can learn from diving into this together, can help individuals become more fulfilled and successful and can help your team as a whole become more effective at accomplishing your mission.

Again, like I’ve said before, please understand that I am just barely scratching the surface of the Working Genius model in these articles and there is so much more to it and so many more benefits that you can experience as you understand it better. As always, if you want to learn more about it you can check out the book, The 6 Types of Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni or the Working Genius podcast. I would also love to help walk you through the process of taking the assessment and understanding more about the model and what it means for you specifically or your team. If you would like to know more about the Working Genius model or have me work with you or your team as a Working Genius Facilitator, please reach out to me on the Contact page of this website.

Last week, I shared a little about what I learned about my Working Geniuses and some of the insights that I got from learning about this model and taking the assessment. This week, I want to talk a little more about how the Working Genius model can be helpful personally.

Understanding the Working Genius model and in particular understanding your own Working Geniuses helps you understand yourself better. While we never want to become self-focused, being self-aware is very important. When we are aware of what makes us tick and tendencies that we have, it equips us to interact better with others, be better friends, family members, co-workers, leaders and Christ followers.

While there are many ways that understanding the 6 Types of Working Genius can help you, there are two in particular that I want to mention today. First, it can help you better understand what fuels or energizes you when it comes to work and what aspects of work make you feel burnt out. Often we think burn out comes from working too much and the response to avoid it is to just cut back on work. Sometimes that helps, but sometimes it doesn’t if you’ve ever found yourself wondering why that is, the Working Genius model can help. It isn’t so much about how much work you are doing, but what kind of work you are doing. The more work you are able to do in your areas of genius the more energized you will feel and less likely to burn out. If you are having to spend a lot of time in your areas of frustration, then you are much more likely to begin experiencing burn out. Even if you are having to spend a great deal of time in your areas of competency, you can begin to experience burn out and frustration. Understanding your Working Geniuses and exploring ways to minimize your frustrations and maximize your geniuses can be immensely helpful in the energy you have not just for work, but life.

With that said, let me give a bit of a disclaimer: all of us have to do things in our areas of competency and frustration at times. Whether it is at work, in our families, or just day to day life, there will be things that we need to accomplish that don’t fall into our geniuses, but understanding this model helps us understand why certain things are more draining and difficult for us than others. Just understanding this can give us some relief and compassion for ourselves and others. It is so easy for us to feel guilty or be harsh with ourselves because what seems so easy for others around us just isn’t easy for us. Maybe you see others coming up with great ideas and you just don’t understand why you can’t. Maybe you feel like you should be better at follow through and finishing tasks and have felt at times that something must be wrong with you because you just can’t seem to pull it together. This is the second helpful aspect of understanding the Working Genius model that I wanted to mention today. Understanding ourselves in this way helps to eliminate some unnecessary guilt over things we just aren’t great about and understand that we have geniuses in other areas. It can even help us to be less judgmental and more compassionate with others as well.

Some of this comes from the fact that the Working Genius model gives you a language to be able to communicate these ideas and feelings that you may never have been able to clearly put words around. While knowing that something is a working frustration doesn’t give you an excuse to just stop doing those types of things, it does give you the understanding and words to begin to talk with family members, co-workers, and leaders to help them understand why you struggle in those areas and what areas in which you are likely to be more successful. Having conversations about these things opens the door to begin to explore ways to spend more time in your areas of genius and less in frustrations and competencies which can be beneficial for you and those around you.

​Please understand that I am just barely scratching the surface of the Working Genius model in these articles and there is so much more to it and so many more benefits that you can experience as you understand it better. As always, if you want to learn more about it you can check out the book, The 6 Types of Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni or the Working Genius podcast. I would also love to help walk you through the process of taking the assessment and understanding more about the model and what it means for you specifically. If you would like to know more about the Working Genius model or have me work with you as a Working Genius Facilitator, please reach out to me on the Contact page of this website.

Last week, I reviewed the book, The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team, by Patrick Lencioni. During the next three Mondays, I want to talk a little more about the significance of this great model for understanding ourselves, the teams we work on, and how we accomplish work.

In the book review, I mentioned that when I took the assessment I discovered that my Working Geniuses were Discernment and Wonder and I briefly mentioned that this was part of the reason for the name of this website. On the home page of the website, you can see an article that explains the main reason for the name and I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already, but I also want to explain a little about how The 6 Types of Working Genius Model shaped this as well.

When I learned about the Working Genius model, I had a pretty good idea of what my geniuses would be and taking the assessment confirmed it. Just in case you didn’t read the Book Review and aren’t familiar with the Working Genius model, the six types of Work include: wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing, enablement, and tenacity. The Discernment aspect was not really a big surprise for me. I love brainstorming and working with others or even at times by myself to think about various ideas and make them better. Sometimes I do this even when it’s not really helpful or asked for. I’ve been known to be in grocery lines or hospitals with family and friends and start going off on how I think they could be doing things better. At times I’ve been told by whoever I happen to be talking to that I should “Go ahead and go tell someone who works there and not them.” The emphasis definitely being on “not them.” I’m rarely bold enough to take that suggestion and offer the unsolicited advise to someone other than the person I happen to be with. That’s probably due to a number things. One might be because Discernment is a responsive genius and not a disruptive genius. A bigger reason is probably because Galvanizing is one of my Working Frustrations and going up to someone in a business or organization out of nowhere with a suggestion does not give me joy. If I’m asked for my input, however, it does generally energize me.

My other Working Genius was Wonder. Like many people with this genius, I knew this sounded a lot like me, but I’d certainly never really thought of it as a strength, let alone a genius. In fact, my wonder seemed more like something that just annoyed people and even got me in trouble at times. The  Genius of Wonder involves asking a lot of questions. Why are we doing this? Why don’t we do that? Would it be better if we tried this? Why couldn’t we…? What do you think is causing this? You get the idea. I’d never really considered that Wonder is the first part of the process of work. There wouldn’t be ideas or processes or products to discern and implement if someone doesn’t first wonder about why something is the way it is and what might be done about it. Like every Working Genius there are appropriate and not-so-appropriate times for this genius and sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of that.

So when I started brainstorming different names for this website, and was thinking about the importance of us recapturing wonder it reminded me of the Working Genius model. The wonder that we talk about recapturing throughout this website isn’t exactly the same as the Working Genius of wonder. We’re talking more about being open to seeing the amazing things that God is doing and has placed around you. You don’t have to have the Working Genius of wonder to be able to remember how to recapture the wonder that children so naturally have. For me, understanding my Working Geniuses helped me take some steps to recapturing that wonder because I understood myself better and had more grace for myself and others.

So while Discerning Wonder has some deeper meanings, it’s also a bit of a play on words from my Working Geniuses. Understanding this model has helped me. If you would like to learn more or would like to see if it can help you or your team identify your sweet spots in the process of work and possibly have more understanding and grace for yourselves and each other, please use the contact page to reach out to me. I’d love to talk with you more about this great model.