[00:00:00] Hala Taha: Yeah, fam, welcome back to the show. I have to say one of the most important things in life is to feel happy at work. We spend so much time working and we need to make sure that we're in jobs that bring us joy, that bring us energy and don't suck the energy out of us. So today we're going to be talking all about working geniuses and working frustrations.

Now if you've never heard of these phrases before, don't worry about it because we have Patrick Lencioni, the inventor of these phrases, coming on the show today to break it down for us. Patrick Lencioni is one of the most well known business management authors. He's written over 12 best selling business books, including his latest book called The Six Working Geniuses.

So we're going to find out about all six working geniuses. I'm sure as you guys are listening in, you're going to be like, Oh my God, that's my working genius. It's pretty obvious once you listen. And if you want to find out for sure, you can go to youngandprofiting. co slash work and take the working genius assessment.

Patrick Lencioni is an expert on team building, team efficiency. He's the CEO and founder of The Table Group, which is a consultancy that helps organizations improve their operations, improve their company culture, as well as their team efficiencies. Patrick is absolutely amazing. I had such a great conversation with him.

We went for an hour and a half. So we're actually splitting this episode into two parts. Part one is going to be focused on the individual. We really break down the definition of working geniuses. We understand what competencies are, frustrations are, how we can deal with having to do the things we don't want to do at work, AKA chew glass.

We talk about how these talents work together to put together a complete project, and we really focus on how as individuals we can leverage our working geniuses to elevate our careers and be more happy at work. Okay. Part two is really all about organizations and teams. How is this relevant for teams?

How do we roll it out to organizations? How do we identify gaps? How do we improve our productivity, have better meetings, and so on? So I love this conversation. It was so eye opening. I'm so excited to roll out. working genius to my organization. I took the assessment and I loved what I found out about myself.

It was really helpful for me to figure out where I really need to focus and outsource and lean into the strengths that I have. So I think you guys are going to love this conversation as much as I did. Without further ado, here's part one with Patrick Lencioni.

Patrick, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. 

[00:03:23] Patrick Lencioni: It's great to be here. This will be fun. 

[00:03:25] Hala Taha: I am so excited. So you are a legend in the management space. You've been writing, speaking, and consulting on organizational health and team effectiveness for 25 years now with the Table Group. And you're a founder, you're an entrepreneur, and even though you love your job, you love your industry, you've still been frustrated at times at work.

And I can relate because I'm the CEO and founder of a company that I love called Yap Media. I'm Living my dream as a podcaster, selling sponsorships and running people's social media. But even me, it's like a roller coaster. Even in the same day, I might be finding joy and then at the same time I'm frustrated.

I know that I love my job, but it's still frustrating. So let's talk about you. Take us back to this time where you were frustrating as the CEO and founder of your organization. What were you feeling and what were some of the insights? that you gleaned from this experience? 

[00:04:22] Patrick Lencioni: Well, Hala, it only lasted for about 20 years.

And I didn't understand it because I love the people I worked with. I loved what I did. And I'd come to work excited. I didn't have the Sunday blues. I liked my work. But then I would get there and then I'd be really happy in one moment and then frustrated another. And this went on for a long time and I never got it.

And finally, one day, one of my colleagues said, what's going on with you when that happens? And I said, I don't know, but I want to figure it out. And so I sat there for the next four hours, God willing. I mean, it was amazing. I don't even quite remember what happened, but I was writing at a whiteboard.

That's what I do. I like to come up with things. And I realized that there were six different kinds of work that needed to get done in our company. I really loved two of them. And every day I came to work excited to do those. And then I'd get dragged into doing something else that I didn't really like.

And people thought, well, you have to do that because you're the Leader and the CEO, but as it turned out, I didn't, but I was constantly getting sucked into that. And that's when I came up with this model, but I wasn't trying to come up with the model. I was just trying to explain my own frustration. We had one of our consultants saw it and then he met with a CEO the next day.

And the CEO was complaining about something that was frustrated. And he explained the model to him and the guy had tears in his eyes. And he was like, Oh, wow, this is my thing. And we realized there's something universally applicable here. And we built an assessment in the next three months. And released it and without a lot of fanfare or advertising, it took off and there was something universal about that.

So now we've had like a million people take this assessment. It's growing faster than anything I've ever done. And we are hearing from people how it's changing their lives and allowing them to do what they're meant to do, what God made them to do rather than the things that they thought they were supposed to be doing that weren't good for them.

So that's the story. It was by accident. Most of the things I do are by accident, just being out in the field. So that's what happened. 

[00:06:11] Hala Taha: Patrick's referring to the working genius assessment. So it's called working genius. So talk to us about everybody's God given talents and why you believe that people are more fulfilled and successful when they're leaning into their God given talents.

[00:06:28] Patrick Lencioni: It's interesting. Cause I take all the assess over the years. I've taken Myers Briggs and disc. I like them all. We use them in our practice and consulting to CEOs and their teams. But there was never any, that was really about what you did. They were more personality or perspective. And this is about the actual tasks you like to do.

And what it comes down to is joy and energy. What fills you with joy and energy? Sometimes we can get good at things. We don't actually like did that in my life, because when you need to achieve, whether you do that because of wounds or because you really want to, You get good at things you don't like, but the things you're best at are the things that actually give you joy and energy that fill you up.

The things that you can spend 12 hours doing in a day and go home and feel like, what a great day. I feel energized. And then the other things that I don't like. I can do for three hours in a day and get really tired and really frustrated. So that's what this is about. It's about how to identify the things that we were put here to enjoy.

We still have to do things that we don't love sometimes, but if you have a job where you're called to do too many things, you don't like, and you're not exercising your geniuses, That's misery. And I don't believe God put us here to be miserable in our work. 

[00:07:42] Hala Taha: How do you feel like the pandemic made all of this more exacerbated?

How did it make it worse in terms of us with our working geniuses and talents and having to work together as teams? 

[00:07:56] Patrick Lencioni: I love flexibility at work. I do love flexibility work, but I think people are meant to be together. And yes, there are some jobs that you can do remotely sometimes, and I love that people can stay home with their kids sometimes, or work from the road, and all those things, but the fact that we went all in on remote work, I think really deprived people of the range of interactions that they needed to build relationships, And to derive the sense of fulfillment that they need from work.

And there are certain places that are still operating as though that exists. And morale and productivity have not recovered in those places. I think we are meant to spend a good portion of our working time together. Now, that doesn't mean that there are some jobs that have to be remote. That's great. I have learned how to have productive Zoom calls and do things remotely, but there is still no complete substitute for doing what you love and doing it in a room with other people that you care about.

[00:08:52] Hala Taha: I agree. I have a fully remote team, and I think it's hard for some folks, and especially in this day and age, we've got to learn how to work together online. And a lot of things that I took away from this assessment, I feel like I can implement even though I have a remote team. I'm super excited about that.

[00:09:09] Patrick Lencioni: Absolutely. And you know, there are healthier teams that work remotely than teams that are together that are dysfunctional. So really becoming a functional team, which is what my career has been about is helping teams get more functional. That is more important than whether you're remote or not. And we learned how to do some really amazing things on zoom, like engage in healthy conflict, like really have deep creative conversations.

It's harder to do remotely, but it can be done, but all things being equal. I think that spending time with each other. It is an advantage if you can make it work. 

[00:09:44] Hala Taha: It is. Okay. So like all good entrepreneurs, you had a problem yourself. You went about to solve that problem and then you decided you were going to scale it out and give your learnings to other people.

So you put out this book called the six types of working genius and you have this working genius assessment. I took the assessment, so I can't wait to go over my results. But first I want to understand. These six working geniuses, I want to understand more about them. Can you define what a working genius is exactly?

[00:10:13] Patrick Lencioni: Right. And there's six of them. So there's six possibilities, but only two are what we call our own working genius, the ones where we get joy and energy. I like to say if you were pouring coffee in a cup and it were a Yeti mug and you screw the lid on tight, your working genius will hold that energy all day.

There's two others that are in the middle, which we would call your working competencies. And I know yours because I looked at your thing and those are things we don't hate doing them. We can do them fairly well. They're like pouring coffee into a cup and putting a little plastic lid on it. It'll stay warm for a while and so we could do that.

But then there's these two that are called our working frustrations, which is like pouring coffee into a cup that has a hole in the bottom. And our energy and our joy are just drained by those. there's these six, Categories, which I'll explain in a second. And everyone has two that they love, two that are okay.

And two that they really struggle with. And if we don't know what those are, then the best chance we have at enjoying our work and fulfilling our potential is kind of a crapshoot. The first job I took out of college was the best job in America at the time. And it was totally wrong for me. I did not understand why I struggled.

Why I wasn't happy and why those two years went by like 10 years. And it was because I look back now and I realized I was doing exactly the things I wasn't meant to do. 

[00:11:28] Hala Taha: It's so interesting when I was looking at my assessment I felt we'll go into this later. I actually felt like some of my competencies and frustrations I used to be better at when I wasn't necessarily an entrepreneur with all of these responsibilities So I actually felt like they changed over time.

[00:11:48] Patrick Lencioni: Here's what we found You We think you're born with these, but, I felt the same way you did because I used to be really good at things that I would have preferred not to do, but in order to be successful, I had to make myself. And when we talk about these things, we had a guy once come on, and one of the geniuses is called tenacity, which is the finishing of things.

Okay. And that's neither your nor my genius. We like to start things, but the last stage of things and finishing things and grinding toward the end isn't our favorite thing. And this guy said, Hey, I'm a doctor. I went to med school. If I got through med school, this must be one of my geniuses because I did really well.

And we asked him one questions. Did you like it? Did you enjoy that? He goes, no, I hated it. I couldn't wait for it to be over. We said, yeah, there's a difference between succeeding at something, even if it drains you of your joy and energy. And right away he goes, oh yeah, it's definitely not my genius. So sometimes people have to say, yeah, I did that.

I did it because I had a goal in mind. I wanted to accomplish something, but it didn't really feed me. And I think the things that feed us were born with, I remember as a kid, my geniuses, I didn't get to exercise them and it frustrated me. And I didn't even realize it until I became an adult and came up with this.

[00:12:59] Hala Taha: I love it. I feel like my assessment described me to a T. Let's go over the six working geniuses. What are they? 

[00:13:06] Patrick Lencioni: So the first one we're going to start with our head up in the clouds, we're going to go from the highest altitude down to the most practical on the ground. And it's kind of how work the flow of work happens.

So the first genius, you and I don't have this genius, but it's really important. It's called the genius of wonder. And it happens at. 60, 000 feet head in the clouds. And this is a genius that most people don't even think of as a genius. In fact, they were probably told not to do it most of their life. And it's called the genius of wonder and people with the genius of wonder ponder things.

They can sit and think about things and ask questions without an answer. They're like, is there a better solution out there? Are our customers happy? Why are things like this? What's the point of all this? Where every new idea ultimately starts. Is somebody asks the question, why is it like this? This model came about because one of my colleagues who had wonder said, why are you like that, Pat?

I'm curious as to why you get frustrated and then why you're happy. And somebody asks the question. My wife is a wonderer and she is constantly asking. The big questions and when you're young and you do this, your teachers tell you to stop and they're like, why aren't you on board? And why are you still asking questions?

This is a critical genius and most people that have it have never really been understood or rewarded for it. This is probably the most mysterious of them all. That's the first one. The second one is the person who comes along and this is you and I share this genius. And that's the genius of invention.

And when somebody asks the question, why are things like this? We go, I don't know, but I'm going to figure it out. And we get a whiteboard and a pen and no restrictions. And we love to come up with new ideas and solutions out of nothing. And what I thought is everybody liked that. And there are people that hate that.

When I asked them to do that at work in my office, they're like, I hate that. I have none. That's their frustration. And that's one of the things we realize is that one man or woman's trash is another man or woman's treasure. The very things I love. Other people are like, please don't make me ever do that.

So wonder starts at the question invention comes up with that new idea. And those two are what's called ideation. The first two. After that comes what we call discernment. This is a really interesting one. Discernment is people that have the genius of instinct and intuition and gut feel, and they look at something, even something they don't know about, and they have this way of thinking that they can kind of identify the right thing.

It's like those people that you ask for advice about everything. We have one in my office. Her name is Tracy. She has great discernment. People are constantly saying, well, ask Tracy. Should you refinance your house? Ask Tracy. Should we go to Europe on vacation this year? Well, ask Tracy what she thinks. My wife will say, I'll say, dude, does this look good for this thing I'm doing?

She goes, ask Tracy. And Tracy said when she was a little girl, all of her friends did that too. She just has this amazing gut feel about things. that everybody trusts. It's pattern recognition. It's not linear thinking. It's being able to look at something and go, yeah, that's the right answer. She's the editor of my books.

She never studied that. When I write a chapter in a book and I send it to her, if she says, this is a great, I know it's true. And if she goes, this doesn't make any sense to me. I'm like, I'm going to rewrite it, even if I disagree. So discernment is the third one. The next one after that is your other genius.

It's called galvanizing. Galvanizing is people that get joy and energy out of getting up in front of people and inspiring them and encouraging them and exhorting them and rallying the troops. And some people love to do that. As it turns out, I don't. I can come on a podcast and talk about it once, but I'm not good at keep pushing and keep people going.

And that's what led to this model because every day I'd come to work and my staff would go galvanize us. They didn't use those words. They're a galvanize us. And I was like, Oh, gosh, I'm so tired of this. And yet there's people like you. And there was a guy in my office who go, Oh, I'll do that every day.

And so I made him my chief galvanizing officer. You're going to do that. And he's like, Well, do I really have the authority to do that is no, no, no, it's a gift. It's a gift that you're good at his job. Satisfaction went way up. So did mine and the productivity of our office changed overnight. So galvanizing is really important.

The next two are what we call implementation. And the next one is called enablement. I don't have this one and neither do you, according to your report, it's a working frustration for us. And that means this it's really important to understand this enablement. There are people who wake up in the morning and say, I just want people to ask me for help.

Now you, and I love to give people advice and get them excited. But we don't necessarily want to help people on the terms that they need. If my wife says, I need your help. The first thing I do is like, Whoa, wait, wait, what kind of help? And if it's the kind of help that I love to do, then I'm like, yes. But she says, I just want you to do what I ask you to do.

I actually kind of wilt and I feel really guilty. Like I'm supposed to be a good person, but there are people in the world. And they are glue on teams and you'll know people in your organization that are like this, who just love, they get joy and energy of just being asked to help and they say, yes, they're the first to volunteer whatever you need.

I'll do it. Yep. I'm on board. Let's get started. And we love them. We need them, but we don't all have that. So enablement, yeah. Is the fifth genius and the last one is tenacity and that is it's one thing to want to help it's another thing to want to finish people with tenacity love to make their numbers and drive closure and and hit the goal and in fact they're not actually happy unless they're completing thing and I'm actually only happy if I'm starting things and then I move on to the next thing before it's finished.

So that's the sixth one. It spells widget, which was a kind of an accident. It goes from wonder to invention, to discernment, to galvanizing, to enablement, to tenacity. And those are the six types of working genius. 

 So cool. And I really do feel like it really describes people accurately. Every time you're saying that I'm like, Oh, that fits Kate.

[00:19:15] Hala Taha: That fits Jason. You start to think, Oh, she's got these two. And it makes a lot of sense. So let's go on to my results selfishly. Okay. So, I was invention and galvanizing, which totally makes sense because my whole life I've been inventing things, starting businesses since I was four, I'm president of everything.

My whole life started so many charity organizations and different companies, blog sites, you name it. I'm just always have a team of 50 around me no matter what I'm doing, even if I'm not paying people. It's crazy. I'm just really good at motivating people and thinking of new ideas. My whole life. 

[00:19:52] Patrick Lencioni: It's your genius.

[00:19:54] Hala Taha: It's me. And I feel like it's very entrepreneurial. So I did want to ask you, are there certain working geniuses that are more entrepreneurial or make for better entrepreneurs than others? 

[00:20:08] Patrick Lencioni: Entrepreneurship requires every genius, but the people that start things, the ones that get it going right away, that serial entrepreneur that really sparks the idea is your type is perfect for that, but now without people with tenacity around you.

And that's what a genius of yours is surrounding yourself with people that do things well, that you don't. So entrepreneurship, you need people who finish things. You need people that come alongside and help. You need people that ask the questions. But your thing at the heart of entrepreneurship, it's like, I have an idea and I'm going to get out there and I'm going to share it with people and I'm going to ask people for their help.

So I would say your type is about the tip of the spear on entrepreneurship in many ways, but you need to surround yourself by people that do the things that aren't your favorite. So when you think about a startup company, for instance, let's say five people get together to start a company. If they're all your type, it's going to fail.

[00:21:02] Hala Taha: Yeah. 

[00:21:03] Patrick Lencioni: Right. 

Because they're all going to want to do the same things. And I've seen this in the Silicon Valley before, because I've done a lot of work there. I live in the Bay Area and there's these companies that get together and everybody wants to be an entrepreneur and nobody wants to be the one to, no, I want to just crank.

I want to take inspiration from you and then deliver on that. And if you don't have that diversity on your team. It's not going to work. It's like a band. If everybody wants to be the songwriter and the lead singer, it doesn't work. And the drummer has a different thing and the keyboards do a different thing.

And usually that corresponds to some working genius. So it's a really interesting thing, how we all need them. But the tip of the spear in entrepreneurship. And IG is perfect. 

[00:21:49] Hala Taha: I love that. I love hearing that I'm a good fit to be an entrepreneur because it's what I'm doing. So I have working competencies.

These are different than frustrations, different than my working genius. And these are things that I actually feel like I'm really good at, to be honest. So my working competencies were tenacity and discernment, which especially tenacity. I get shit done. Sorry for my language for like, I get my stuff done and I love getting stuff done.

So I was curious to understand why is it only two working geniuses and what are we supposed to do with our competencies? Are we supposed to try to make them strengths? Are we supposed to just leave them alone? How should we handle it? 

[00:22:27] Patrick Lencioni: Don't try to make them stronger than they are because people do that too often.

When Michael Jordan got out of college, he spent his first two years in the pros. He was really good at defense and dunking the ball and going to the hoop. And people said, well, should we then make him become a great shooter? And people said, no, no, no. Make him continue to work on his strengths. He will become a great shooter because he won't feel like that defines him.

And he'll do that without pressing. So you're going to be good at those things. And the fact that those are your competencies is really important because you are not allergic to finishing things and you're not allergic to evaluating things in discernment. But the thing is, if I made you do finish things and you had no input into the innovation around it and getting people excited and your job was just to crank, you'd realize that that would exhaust you after a while.

[00:23:16] Hala Taha: Got it. That makes a lot of sense. 

[00:23:19] Patrick Lencioni: So it's something that you don't mind doing, especially if it's in service of the idea you came up with and helping people rally around it, but to do that in a vacuum would be painful for you. 

[00:23:30] Hala Taha: That makes a lot, a lot of sense. Okay, so my working frustrations were enablement and wonder.

The enablement part was. So eye opening for me, because as of now I have a 60 person team and I'm still hands on managing my sales and marketing team, but I'm also the CEO and founder of the company. So I'm the CEO, CMO, sales leader of my company. Now I find that As of now, today, in 2024, I'm a different type of leader where I just can't handhold anyone anymore.

And anybody who's not a rock star, who's not moving as fast as me, I'm just, all right, you're slowing me down. I'm pulling you in now because you're getting it and This person's off to the side, but I wasn't always like that. I started with a team of interns and volunteers. 

And I used to handhold everyone and teach everybody everything and be very, very patient. And now it's just have different responsibility. I just can't be that person anymore. So it made me realize that I need to get some sort of middle manager between some of these employees and Made me realize how valuable my business partner, Kate, is who is super patient.

And I know if she took this assessment, she would have enablement. 

[00:24:44] Patrick Lencioni: Exactly. And that's the thing about this assessment is that 10 minutes after getting the results back, you go, I got it. It makes sense. And you know what to do. We've seen companies reorganize, and I don't just mean the titles and reorganize how work gets done.

They look at this and they go, Oh my gosh, we're not even tapping into that genius of yours. And the people are like, I know if you let me do that more, I'd be so much happier. Yeah. And you're looking at your people going, they have enablement that is allowing me to do what I do best. And I know that I have somebody else who's going to be helpful and listening and patient with everybody and all that.

But if everybody had that, you wouldn't get things done either. 

[00:25:19] Hala Taha: Yeah. 

[00:25:20] Patrick Lencioni: The word diversity in this is so critical. Now, the other genius that's a frustration for you is wonder, which is if people just sit around and ask questions and ponder things and don't have a bias for getting something done, that's probably frustrating to you.

[00:25:35] Hala Taha: I was thinking through this and I was like, man, I hope I'm just not this egotistical founder because I'm like, I think I have all these with wonder. I'm just like, I know what to do. I don't need to wonder about it. I know how to push my business forward. I don't need to wonder about everything. 

[00:25:49] Patrick Lencioni: Yeah. Or five minutes of wonder.

That's enough. Here we go. 

[00:25:52] Hala Taha: Exactly. Exactly. 

[00:25:54] Patrick Lencioni: Well, I will tell you something to go a little level deeper, which is a new book. I'm working on something right now. And that is sometimes because of the way we're raised, we have this desire to achieve. I had this growing up and I was actually really good at the things I hated.

The first job I got out of college was a job organized around the very things I liked least. But because I had this achievement mentality, it was like, then I am going to do it. And I've come to realize now that I have wounds that I didn't even know were wounds. I thought they were my superpowers. And you're young and you're like, I can power through anything.

And that doesn't mean we're meant to. So, as you understand your geniuses more, it'll be nice for you to be able to go, I don't have to be good at that. But for the longest time, when I was young, I was doing all the things I didn't necessarily like. And I said, see, I'm pretty good at this. 

[00:26:47] Hala Taha: Yeah. And sometimes we have to, to get the experiences.

[00:26:52] Patrick Lencioni: Absolutely. Absolutely. And then you're going to be a parent and you've got to do everything. I can't go, well, my kids diapers need to be changed. I'm not a T. I don't finish things, so I guess I'm not going to do that. No, no. No, there are certain things in life. And in fact, even in any job, every CEO, every leader has to do all of them a little bit.

But if they over index on the ones that drain them of energy and they don't give themselves the experience of spending a lot of time in their genius, it's really bad. It's really bad and burnout. And really, I think a lot of addiction comes from that a lot of really difficult things because we are meant to exercise the gifts we've been given.

[00:27:30] Hala Taha: Yeah, and entrepreneurs are more prone to burnout. 25 percent of entrepreneurs are more have burnout, more prone to depression, addiction, to your point, anxiety, stress. So we do need to manage our energy levels, which is what this assessment is all about. 

[00:27:45] Patrick Lencioni: Yes. And we need to not feel guilty about not loving every part of what we're supposed to do.

One of the things on our assessment, a team of five people, like if you have a low entrepreneurial organization, all five of them can take it and they can look at it and they're going to go, Oh my gosh, you mean you like that? Oh, you do like that. Would you do that instead of me? And I could take this off your plate.

And literally this is more of a productivity tool. We didn't design it that way. We thought it was just a personal understanding insight. Okay. But we've seen that when five people that work together each understand one another's geniuses and frustrations and competencies. They adjust and everybody gets to do more of what they love and the productivity and success goes through the roof.

And that happens like in an hour. They look at this and go, holy Toledo, I know what we need to do. 

[00:28:32] Hala Taha: So let's talk about how people can take this assessment. Young and Profiters, I highly encourage you guys to check this out. It takes 10 to 15 minutes. You can go to youngandprofiting. co slash work to take it.

It's a 42 question survey. I literally did it in 10 minutes. You get your results right away. And like I said, it's eye opening. As soon as I read the report, I was like, this sounds exactly like me, and I know exactly what I need to do. Can you talk to us about how do people utilize their results typically?

[00:29:01] Patrick Lencioni: Well, first of all, if anybody took math, I didn't remember how to do permutations and combinations because there's six geniuses. It means there's 15 pairings. Okay. Your pairing is what's called the evangelistic innovator. You like to come up with new ideas and evangelize them. You have energy for those.

And everyone has a two word descriptor. These are the things people look at and go, oh my gosh, that's exactly who I am. And what should you do with that? The first thing you should do is you should share it with the people you work with and the people you live with, because it's going to help them avoid what we call the fundamental attribution error.

And the fundamental attribution error is when you do something that I find annoying, holla I'll attribute to your character, but if I do something that causes people to think I'm annoying, I'll attribute it to my environment. And this is where relationships break down. I need to go, oh, you're wired that way.

You're constantly excited and exuberant about all these ideas. Not because there's something wrong with you because that's who you are. Whereas some people can go, gosh, that's so annoying. Well, we all do things that are wonderful and annoying, and it's because of how we're wired. And when we understand that about each other, we actually start to under the prayer of St.

Francis is to seek to understand more than to be understood. So we seek to understand one another. The other thing you should do is talk to your manager about it. Or talk to your colleagues about it. We had a guy who called us and said he was going in for his performance review and he knew it was going to be bad.

He had had a bad year. And the night before he took his working genius and he looked at the results and he was like, Oh wow. He walked into the room, he handed it to his boss and his boss's boss. I think they were both there and said, would you guys look at this before we go over this and they looked at it and they were like, Oh my gosh, you're totally in the wrong job.

And he goes, yeah, I think so too. And they're like, you know, we have another job that you'd be great at. And he said, I spent 25 on this darn assessment, showed it to my boss, and I got promoted instead of fired. 

[00:30:49] Hala Taha: Oh my God. 

[00:30:50] Patrick Lencioni: Too many people get fired from organizations where they're good cultural fits.

They're just in the wrong chair. And it's so hard for managers to know, like, what's wrong with this person? We had a CEO, Hala, who was going to fire his head of sales, this wonderful woman, who was, A good cultural fit and she had made her numbers and her staff loved her and the customers loved her. She was fantastic.

But then the market changed as they always do and entrepreneurs know this better than anyone. And when the market changed, he said to her, hey, you know, we need a whole new sales strategy. And she was dumbfounded. She was stumped and he kept going back to her. So did you come up with that? And she goes, no, I can't, I got nothing.

He goes, I was about to let her go. And we did the working genius. And I realized she had no invention at all. She was all about implementation. She had enablement, her staff left her, her customers left her because she was always responsible. She was a tenacity. So she made her numbers delivered on what they said.

But she didn't have an invention, so they borrowed a guy from marketing to come work with her, and in three hours, they came up with a new sales strategy, he said, I almost fired one of my best people, and leaders do this all the time, because I couldn't understand that she's not great at everything, and that we can borrow skills from other people, or work across divisions, or change people's roles, or s To fit their geniuses.

So I think this could be such a good way to avoid losing good people over hiring when we have people in our organizations that aren't being fully tapped. And so we're finding that this is growing faster than anything, Hala, that I've ever done. And it's having a greater impact on organizations and people in their lives than anything we've ever worked on.

So it's crazy. 

[00:32:38] Hala Taha: It's really, really cool. I love taking it. I'm going to have my whole team take the assessment. So again, guys, if you guys want to take the assessment, go to youngandprofiting. co slash work. I'll put the link in our show notes so you guys can get access to it. And I want to talk about what we should do when we have to chew glass as entrepreneurs.

There's this famous quote from Seth Godin, Elon Musk, nobody knows who really came up with this. He said, running a startup is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss. And basically what Elon and Seth meant is that as an entrepreneur, you want to work on all these new shiny things. A lot of us are inventors, but you end up having to work on the problems of your business.

You have to chew glass, do the things you don't want to do. Like you said. Entrepreneurs have to do this, and especially people young in their careers, which I think there's a lot of young people listening, where they're having to chew glass. They can't pick and choose what they can work on yet because they haven't built that foundation.

So how can we manage our energy levels and suck up and do our frustrations at work, our working frustrations? 

[00:33:47] Patrick Lencioni: So much of working genius is about alleviating guilt and judgment. So when you have to chew glass. What's worse than having to chew glass is feeling like there's something wrong with you for not liking it.

When you have to do something and you go, Oh crap, I have to go. Do a performance review or do enablement or do tenacity for us. Enablement would be a good one. Instead of saying what's wrong with me, I guess I'm a fraud or I should like this. It's good to go, Hey, this isn't the thing I love, but I know I have to do it.

I'm going to go in there and do it. And I'm not going to feel bad about myself for not loving it. Like in our office here, my son works with me, he doesn't like tenacity. And so he'll go into an office and go, Hey, I'm going into the tea cave. You guys, I got three hours of tenacity work to do. I'm going to roll up my sleeves and do it.

I'm probably going to be kind of grumpy. And when I come out, I'm probably be exhausted. And it's his way of saying it's important. I'm going to do it well, but I don't like it. And when you know that you're allowed to say that. It's like, yeah, I can do stuff that I don't like, but if people are like, what's wrong with you, you're supposed to like doing the accounting.

If you're an entrepreneur, you're supposed to love every part of your job, but when you can go, no, I actually hate this, but it's necessary. I'm going to go push through it. And if you don't do it perfectly, you should go. Yeah, I'm probably never going to do it perfectly. Some people actually love this stuff.

So I really think it's taking that guilt. So when we're chewing the glass, we can go, man, I can't wait till this is done. So I can go back and do the stuff I love. 

[00:35:13] Hala Taha: I could also imagine that it will help us just become aware that, Hey, this is probably something I'm going to procrastinate because I hate doing it.

And let me put some boundaries on myself. Let me do like a Pomodoro technique and time myself to do it. Let me gamify this. Let me do something to get it done. 

[00:35:30] Patrick Lencioni: Exactly. And we don't need to do those things with the stuff we love. 

[00:35:33] Hala Taha: Exactly. 

[00:35:34] Patrick Lencioni: And in fact, when we do those things with the stuff we love, it's kind of a bummer because we're like, Oh no, don't limit this.

Let me just enjoy my work. So I love the, what you said, it's find ways to get through it without making yourself feel like there's something wrong with you for not loving it. 

[00:35:48] Hala Taha: So how do personality traits interact with working geniuses? How is it different than personality traits? 

[00:35:54] Patrick Lencioni: This is a great question.

We're really working on this right now. We like Myers Briggs. StrengthsFinder and all those other things. StrengthsFinder is interesting, there's so many of them it's hard to remember, but Your personality is the noun is what you bring. We use Myers Briggs a lot. My Myers Briggs type doesn't say what I like to do.

It says what my preferences are about how I think and how I, how I just approach the world. Working genius is what you do. It's the verb that goes with the noun. And what's interesting is I know people that have my same Myers Briggs type, my same personality, like we're extroverted and we're idealists and we like to keep our options open, but they have a completely different working genius.

They take that personality and then they actually get crap done and they like details around that. Whereas I am an ENFP, but I like to invent and discern things. And so what we've realized is so often we look at a person's personality type and we think that tells us what kind of job they should have.

And it doesn't, not at all. It tells you generally motivates them in life, but not what that translates to in terms of. The role and what you do every day, because when we used to use Myers Briggs, we were like, so should I be in marketing if I'm an ENFP and we're like, well, first of all, what do you mean by being in marketing?

And secondly, what do you love to do? And so it's a very different and the combination of the two is great. But the thing that's really lacking out there is people don't know the tasks that they love. 

[00:37:24] Hala Taha: So I'm an evangelistic innovator. What are you and what are some of the common pairings out there that people should be aware of?

[00:37:33] Patrick Lencioni: I'm an ID, which means I like innovating and discerning, which means I'm what's called a discriminating ideator. Discriminating means this, when I write, I'm an author, I've written a lot of books, my first draft is usually pretty good. Because while I'm innovating, while I'm writing, I'm actually editing myself too.

Because I'm kind of like, that doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense. I have so many good friends that are your type. Right. And I love working with them. They have a hundred ideas. They're constantly come up with them and they'll check in with me and go, Hey, can you discern this for me? And then the discernment part, what you have in your competency is what says, Hey, those are the three that you should pursue.

Those other seven are okay. Or these two wouldn't work. And to check in with a discerner. And go check me on this. Does this sound right? And they'll go, those are the three that you should pursue with abandoned. So I am pretty good at figuring things out quickly, but what I don't do is I don't do what you do, which is stick with evangelizing it.

I need people around me that love to do that. And when they'll look at my idea and they'll go, that's a great idea. I'm going to go out and tell the world about it. I'm like, thank you. And I'm going to tell them again and again and again. So I'm, what's called the discriminating ideator, which is more about the judgment than the action.

[00:38:46] Hala Taha: Interesting. And what are some of the other pairings that you have in this assessment? 

[00:38:52] Patrick Lencioni: If you're a WI, which my wife is and some close friends of mine, which are the first two, which is all ideator, they're called the creative dreamer. And they're just like, you know, it'd be cool. I have this idea. And you're like, yeah, but we got to go tell the world about this.

Like, oh, I don't know. And they change their mind a lot. They just love to stay up there at 60, 000 feet. You're galvanizing is closer to landing the plane and then on the other end of the scale There's the E and the T that are the implementers and that's the loyal finisher. The ET is the loyal finisher They love other people to set the direction other people to get things organized and then they're like I will Do what you ask me to do and I won't stop until it's done.

And let me tell you I love WI's and I loved ET's but in the same meeting It can be really frustrating because if I'm having a brainstorming meeting, the W. I. Is so happy and the E. T. Is like, uh, I got work to do. Can we just get through this? Or you're brainstorming and they're like, well, that'll never work because the budget doesn't.

And you're like, no, no, no, you don't have to implement it yet. Or if you go to an implementation meeting and the W. I. Is there and you're like the day before the launch and the people like, okay, this is what we need to get done. And the W. I. Says, Hey, I have an idea. Yeah. Maybe we should, and you're like, no, no, no, this is not the time for new ideas.

We have to actually do this. So one of the things we say is. When you're in a meeting, identify what kind of conversation you're having. 

This isn't a GT meeting, which is we're going to get stuff done. Or this is a WD meeting where we're going to actually just throw things against the wall and evaluate them so that people can go, Oh, okay.

I'm not very good at this. So I'll sit back and be patient. Otherwise people come to meetings and the ET wants to drive things to closure. The WI wants to brainstorm and everybody's pissed off. Because we didn't really know what kind of discussion we were having, and they were just bringing their best selves to the table.

[00:40:43] Hala Taha: Totally makes sense, and I love that. I love the fact that this assessment allows you to know more about your co workers, so that you can be proactive and be like, okay, I've got two people that are going to be opposites in this meeting, and I don't want to just spiral out of control, so let me just set some boundaries before we even get started.

[00:40:59] Patrick Lencioni: You know what I love about this, Hala, is that you can also have conversations that seemed dangerous or even offensive before, Like you're in a meeting and somebody will go, you know, I wonder if we should rethink this. And some of you go, that's your W, huh? That's not a criticism. It's like, Oh, this is your W coming out.

And they're like, yeah. And they go, you know, I don't think that we're in a W place right now. I think we should do that another time. And it's not offensive. They're like, Oh, Oh, okay. We're actually meeting them where they're at. And there's another meeting where you'll turn to somebody and go, Hey, we need your W.

Are we doing the right thing? So it's so great to be able to have those conversations or, you know, Sometimes somebody's being too e and they're too much trying to please people and you're like, Hey, you're managing this person. They're not meeting their numbers. We've had a problem. You're really patient, but maybe you're being too accommodating and that's probably your enablement.

And so rather than saying there's something wrong with you, it's like you're naturally inclined to this. We usually love that, but maybe it's not appropriate here. And people receive that really well. They're like, Hey, you're just recognizing me for who I am. 

[00:42:05] Hala Taha: Yeah. I could imagine that that would lead to a lot more employee satisfaction and retention.

People just being happier at work. 

[00:42:13] Patrick Lencioni: Absolutely. And usually in an organization, there's a place for everybody if you know what they are. And if you have a small organization and there's only a few people there, you're an entrepreneur and somebody's geniuses don't line up with what you need. Instead of rejecting them and making them feel like a bad person, What you say is, Hey, you know, you really should use these skills and we don't have a role for you here to do that, but you're meant to use them.

So we're not saying you're not a good person. We're just going to help you find a place where you can be who you are, as opposed to trying to justify it by saying, well, you didn't deliver, like there's something wrong with you. I will tell you, Holla, that first job I had for two years, which was right out of college.

And it was the number one job in America. Somebody wrote a book that you're the best places to work in America for college grads. And this was listed as number one. And I got the job, I don't know how. And it was all wrong for me. I didn't know that. I just thought I failed. And 35 years later, I'm figuring all this stuff out.

And I'm like, oh my. I didn't fail, I just took the wrong job and probably had, had they known what my working, it's funny, I don't know if you know who Meg Whitman is. 

[00:43:22] Hala Taha: Of course, I worked at Hewlett Packard for five years. 

[00:43:24] Patrick Lencioni: Oh, okay, well, I worked with Meg in my first job at Bain Company, right? I really appreciated her because she pulled me aside after two years at Bain and she said, Pat, you would be a good partner because that's what I ended up doing.

She goes, but this analyst job that we hired you for. This isn't for you. And I was like, no, it's not. I hate it. But she said, you'll be a good partner one day, but this kind of work right here. And the problem sometimes in companies is we make somebody prove themselves in one kind of work in order to get promoted into another kind of work.

They were meant to just do that one. The best salesperson isn't necessarily the best sales manager, but Meg, even back then said to me, you're going to do really well someday, but this kind of job right here is not good for you. 

[00:44:06] Hala Taha: And honestly, as I'm thinking about my employees, I can already tell who's in the right job and who's not.

[00:44:13] Patrick Lencioni: Yes. 

[00:44:14] Hala Taha: I need this so and so and so to take the assessment because I know in my gut that they're not in the right job because they're great people, very smart, but not doing rock star work. 

[00:44:27] Patrick Lencioni: And when they get seen that way and you can say to them, Hey, there's nothing wrong with you. We just have you in the wrong role.

And you're meant to work in the right role. That's so liberating. 

[00:44:39] Hala Taha: Something that helped me put this all together was really thinking about the working geniuses as the recipe to actually complete a project. And you have these three stages of work. So I'd love for you to explain how all of these work together to actually complete a single project because we need all of them to do so.

[00:44:58] Patrick Lencioni: Yes. So early stages in an organization, the W and the I are really at play. And the D too, and the G a little bit, but that's the ideation phase. And, you know, we talked to these guys at Nike a few years ago, and they talked about how they had people that do product ideas, you know, ideation. And so they come up with some idea.

We can put gel in a shoe or, you know, whatever they come up with their ideas. And that's called ideation and that's early on, but then somebody needs to take that idea. The middle two are called activation and the discernment and the galvanizing is evaluating. Whether the idea is good and working with the innovator to tweak it.

And then when it's ready to go galvanizing people and getting them on board and at Nike, they were talking about how they went from ideation. They skipped the middle stage for a while. And then there were people in implementation, the E and the T that's the later stage of work where you're actually just getting it done.

The product's been set. The plans are there. Now we just have to execute. And if you go straight from ideation to implementation, Which is what they were doing. The people in ideation are like, why don't those people implement our ideas better and the people in implementation or why don't they send us better ideas because nobody has tweaked them and rallied people around what needed to be done.

So the three stages go from ideation to activation to implementation. Now, of course, you're doing a little bit of each at every step. It's never completely linear. When you move out of the ideation phase, it's really important that people realize that, and they focus their efforts, and there's some people that have a harder time with that, and so when you can talk to them about that, and go, hey, listen, we have three weeks until this launches, we really have to stop going back and questioning everything, or, hey, we're at the early phase here, and I know you want to implement things, and you want a timeline, but we're not there yet, so come to the meeting, but sit on your hands if you have to while we're brainstorming this, because we're not ready to start putting the detailed plans in place.

[00:46:54] Hala Taha: Is this something that we should actually think through before our project? Like, who's going to be responsible for each of these three phases? How are we going to put this in a project plan? Or is it just like a natural thing that happens? 

[00:47:08] Patrick Lencioni: I think the answer is somewhere in between and probably closer to yes, we should do what you said originally, but it's never going to be perfect that way, but I do think we should go like, hey, we're at the early stages of this, we have to have a W.

I. D. meeting where we're going to get together, wonder, invent and discern, that's all we're going to do, so you're probably best at leading that meeting for the next week, why don't you realize that that's what you're going to help us do, and if there's other people that struggle with that, let's be aware of that, and it's interesting because you have I, Which is an ideation, but you have G, which is an activation, which leads to implementation for you.

This is an interesting thing. Holla. I say this a lot. I think that there are times when you're innovating, you're ideating, and you have to let people know that you're not galvanizing because you could probably go to people go. Oh, this would be a cool idea. And the implementers are like, okay, you want us to start right now?

And you got to go, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just ideating. 

[00:48:05] Hala Taha: Yeah, this is so true. 

[00:48:06] Patrick Lencioni: So I often say to people, I'm not gene right now. I'm eyeing because otherwise they'll want to go out and implement something. And you're like, oh no, I'm just throwing it against the wall for your discernment. Rather than galvanizing you for your enablement.

Does that make sense? 

[00:48:21] Hala Taha: Totally makes sense. 

[00:48:23] Patrick Lencioni: And there's other times when you're like, okay, we should do this. And people are like, well, I'm not really sure. Oh no, I'm not ideating right now. I'm galvanizing you. I need you to act. We've already discerned this. It's just the language and knowing what stage of the conversation you're in or the project you're in or the work that you're in.

And a lot of entrepreneurial companies are really comfortable with the ideation. And then they get frustrated when it comes to implementation. That's why even the most. Innovative young company in the world needs. 

[00:48:50] Hala Taha: All right, young improfiters, that was the first part of my conversation with Patrick Lencioni. I'm so excited by this idea of working geniuses, and it makes total sense when you think about it. We each possess a different bucket of skills and abilities, and you're going to be more fulfilled and successful when you lean into, rather than away from, your true talents.

Sometimes we can get awfully good at things that we don't actually like, and we may be able to get by doing those things, but we could be accomplishing so much more if we spent that time doing things that actually bring us joy and energy. And if you want to find out what activities bring you the most joy and energy and what your working geniuses are, You can go to youngandprofiting.

co slash work and you can take the assessment yourself. It's just 25. And when I took the assessment, I found out so much that I already knew deep down inside, but it helped me describe it and verbalize it so that I could share that information with my team. And it totally helped me. described exactly what I like to do for work and it helps me understand what areas I should lean into and what areas I should continue to outsource.

I've been doing it naturally, but it's so good to get validation that I've been on the right track. Again, if you want to learn how to use working geniuses for teams, check out part two next week. And thanks so much for listening to this episode. If you listened, learned, and profited from it, then why not share young and profiting with a friend or a colleague?

Perhaps they would enjoy figuring out what type of working genius they possess as well. And if you did enjoy the show and you learned something, then please take a couple minutes to drop us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. If you prefer to watch our videos, you can find us on YouTube. Just look up Young and Profiting.

You'll find all of our podcasts there. If you want to reach out to me on social media, you can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. And of course, I've got to thank my amazing production team. Thank you guys for all your hard work. I'm so grateful for you all.

This is your host, Hala Taha, AKA the podcast princess signing off.