Why Working Genius Is Helpful Personally

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.