[00:00:00] Hala Taha: Yeah, fam, welcome back to the show. And today we are airing part two of my conversation with Patrick Lencioni. We're going to be talking all about working geniuses for teams. Now, if you didn't listen to part one of my episode with Patrick, I would go back now and take a listen to that. Part one of the episode is really the foundation of learning about working geniuses, working competencies, and working frustrations.

We go over these six different working geniuses and that part one episode is really focused on the individual. So how can we understand what our working geniuses are? How can we understand what to do with our competencies and frustrations and how to treat them? How do all these different six core working geniuses work together to put on a project?

And we really focus on the individual with Patrick Lencioni. Now Patrick Lencioni is an expert on team building and team efficiencies. He wrote over 12 bestselling business books. He's one of the most famous business authors. He has a consultancy group called the Table Group that helps companies improve their operations, company culture, and team efficiency.

So he knows all about how to have rockin teams, which is what we're going to be talking about today in part two. Really focused on teams and organizations. How do we roll out? the working genius assessment to our teams. How do we use that to identify gaps within our organization? How do we use that to retain our employees better?

How do we use that to improve our meetings and productivity as a whole? So I think you guys are going to learn a lot from this conversation. Let's jump into part two of my conversation with the amazing Patrick Lencioni.

So I want to move on to more team effectiveness, productivity, talking about how we can roll this out to our whole organization.

So let's start there. If we wanted to roll this out to our organization, what are the stages of actually doing that? What should we think through? 

[00:02:53] Patrick Lencioni: We're doing that more and more now. The first thing is. And the good news about this is the results resonate with people so quickly that there's not a lot of organizing.

You have to do. In other words, once a team, I think it's good to do it in teams, but we have organizations where everybody in the company does their working genius and suddenly people are and they know what they are. People remember what they are. And so people are going around the office going, Hey, we're Could you come to this meeting?

Well, I'm not in your team. I know, but if you come to them, we really need some galvanizing. We don't have anybody on our team that does that. So first of all, just get as many people in your organization to know what they are. The language, the vocabulary, and the way people work together is going to change.

Okay. But then do the team map. The team map is a piece of paper that shows you in all six geniuses where you have people with geniuses or frustrations. And so you can see the gaps. And right away, literally, you look at it. I had a team I worked with. Hala, and it was a technology company, but a big one. And they had nobody on the executive team with invention.

None. Nobody. And it was a technology company. 

[00:03:56] Hala Taha: Wow, that's terrible. 

[00:03:58] Patrick Lencioni: And they were frustrated for 10 years. They hadn't had a new idea. They were using their old products and they were like, why can't we come up with a new product? Well, we looked at their type and it's because they were all about implementation.

They're all like, well, we got to make our numbers. We got to have our tight schedule and nobody there like to sit back and ask questions and come up with new ideas except for one guy on the team. And he was their lawyer, and they were like, why don't you take over new technology acquisition? He's like, well, I'm the chief legal counsel.

And they're like, yeah, but you like it, don't you? And you're good at this. And he's like, I love it. I would love to do that. Two years later, he was no longer even in the legal department. He was running that part of their business. So the answer to your question about how do you roll this out, get people to do this and talk about it on their teams.

And they are going to solve problems. Just looking at it and going, well, hell, I could do that. I love that. And somebody else is going to go, you love that? Why? I hate it. And they're like, well, because I'm this and they're going to go, well, let's change the way we're getting this done. So there's not a lot to do there, but there is this, we have a program, which we call certification, which is you can take one person in an organization and make them an expert in this in two days, we have this training thing where you can do it online.

It's virtual and in two days you can become an expert and then you can be the consultant to your organization to help them figure out how to do this. 

[00:05:13] Hala Taha: I love that. 

[00:05:13] Patrick Lencioni: We've had like 3000 people get certified already. Companies will say we're sending three of our people through certification and they're going to teach everybody in the organization how to use this.

[00:05:22] Hala Taha: I'm definitely rolling this out to my organization because, first of all, it's so cost effective. It's 25, not expensive, and the amount of money that you'll save from productivity and not having to hire, it's just a game changer. And even just the activity itself, I feel is going to make my employees happy and feel like we care about them.

And I'm just going to roll it out as An activity that we do across the company, and then everybody has new language, which creates a deeper bond because everyone's talking about. Are you, are you an innovator? Do you have tenacity? It's something else to bond everybody together as well, 

[00:05:58] Patrick Lencioni: and it's not a judgment because there are some things that people go.

I don't want to be put into a box. I don't want to be limited. They don't respond to this like that very much at all, because it's about joy and energy. And everybody wants to be able to share to people, Hey, I really love doing this. So if you could let me do this more, I'd be really happy. They don't feel like they're being judged.

It's really about revealing to other people what their favorite things are. So it doesn't feel like any people get condemned. It feels like it's people feeling understood. 

[00:06:25] Hala Taha: The other thing is that I want to implement it as part of the hiring process. 

[00:06:30] Patrick Lencioni: Oh, I got to tell you a story. So in hiring, there's certain legal limitations about using assessments.

[00:06:38] Hala Taha: Oh, really? 

[00:06:39] Patrick Lencioni: Yeah, but it's not as bad as people think. But we actually had a lawyer come to our office. I worked with him and his team. I didn't know this. He was the guy that argued the case before the Texas Supreme Court. To not let them use assessments in hiring, because they thought it could be biased and all those other things.

So he hated assessments. I did not know this. We did working genius with him and his team at the end of two days. I found out that he was that guy and he goes, 

I think this one works because he was actually giving people feedback and he goes, I can't believe how everybody is resonating with this. And I make, it makes sense to me.

And I'm actually now talking to them using the working genius because it's related to work itself. It actually allows us to avoid hiring people who are going to be miserable or hiring somebody and putting them in the wrong job. So we're developing, it's almost done, an AI tool where you could type in a one paragraph job description.

We want this person to do this and this and this and this, and it'll spit back to you the most likely working geniuses that will help them. Find the person that would do that and you know, who loves it is employees who are getting hired and they're like, I don't want a job. I'm going to hate 

[00:07:49] Hala Taha: exactly. 

[00:07:50] Patrick Lencioni: So it's a great matchmaking tool and we use it when we talk to people.

You can't necessarily force people to, but a lot of staffing companies, they're going to get their candidates all to do it. They're staffing companies to do this now. 

[00:08:02] Hala Taha: Okay. 

[00:08:03] Patrick Lencioni: And then when their clients call and say, Hey, we need somebody to do this job. They look at their working genius and they go, Hey, I think this job would be great for you.

Or I think I have a person who would love this. It's taking staffing and hiring from a crapshoot, where 50 percent of the time a person's like, I don't know why I took this job, to one where we're getting a lot better at knowing who's going to succeed and who's not. 

[00:08:23] Hala Taha: I'm sort of disappointed because I was so excited that I was like, okay, I'm just gonna make this mandatory.

Because, for example, I'm looking for an EA and I need to make sure they can create. And I need to make sure they have tenacity. I need those two things. Yes. Innovation and tenacity. 

[00:08:37] Patrick Lencioni: I love it. So, an EA is a perfect job. Because one EA is not the same as another. Hey, one CEO is not the same as another. It depends on what kind of company it is.

So, you're looking for an EA. What you can say to them is, Hey, I would love for you to take this if you want to. It'll help you. It's a gift. Here's a gift for you to do this. Then, I'm just going to describe what I want. And if you think that it's a good match for you, then that's fantastic. We'll talk about that.

But oftentimes it's the candidate who will look at it and go, Oh no, please don't hire me for this job. This is going to be miserable for me. Because for you, you're saying you want somebody with tenacity and you said somebody who can create. 

[00:09:17] Hala Taha: Yeah. invention and they've got to get stuff done. 

[00:09:21] Patrick Lencioni: Okay, so that's called the methodical architect.

If I had an administrative assistant, and we're hiring one for me right now, because I'm moving to a new place. I need a new one and I need a dt, which is Discernment and Tenacity. You know why? Because I will not give them detailed job descriptions. They're gonna figure out how to help me. Now, if I were a different personality as a CEO, I would tell somebody what to do, and I might want them to be an et, which is to do whatever I tell you.

But I'm going to say to them, could you figure out what you think I need? Because I don't know. And that's really different. And in your case, because of the work you do, you want somebody who's actually creative. Now, there's a lot of people that don't want an EA that has that. So it's not so much about every job with that title.

Needs the same thing. Frankly, one person's executive assistant is different than another's. One person's head of marketing is different. People talk about this, like what would be a good head of marketing? And I'm like, I don't know. Do you want somebody who's lead generation and closes deals? Or do you want somebody that's kind of with a new brand strategy and understands the market from a strategic standpoint, those are two different roles, do you know how often, and you know, the CEOs hire a head of marketing and they don't even know what their working geniuses are and they say, well, they were good at marketing before.

Yeah, but they did a totally different job. So I think working genius, I don't know how to make it mandatory for a candidate, but usually you can say to the candidate, if you want to figure out. what you are, I'll tell you what we want, and then you can convince me that you think you could do that. 

 I love it.

[00:10:59] Hala Taha: That's what I'll do. That's the approach that I'll take. So another thing with teams is that you say that there's sometimes genius gaps. Can you talk to us about some of the common genius gaps and how we can actually figure out if we have any gaps in our organization? 

[00:11:14] Patrick Lencioni: Yeah, like if there's an organization that has no T, right?

That like you look like there's five people working on something, nobody has tenacity. They're like, how come we We have these great ideas. We get motivated and then they never seem to get implemented. Or you only have one T on your team and you're killing her or you're killing him because every time you get to the last stage, we're going to that person going, okay, can you finish this?

And the finishing stage often takes a long time. And we're crushing that person. I did an organization once where I looked and they had like 10 people startup and one person on the team had tenacity and I think her name was Laura. And I said, Hey, Laura, I just met them for the first time. Do you ever think you're going to get crushed?

And does everybody else think she might quit because we make her do too much? And they were like, Oh my gosh, how did you know? Cause she's the only one that finishes and they're like, Oh no, we got to hire more finishers or actually rethink about how we do these things. Or if you're a 

company that has no W and I, you might be the most organized, efficient company in the world, but nobody's actually saying, maybe we need a new product or maybe our customers aren't happy.

So you're not identifying the opportunities. So any gap in the six things, if there's an egregious gap causes problem, if there's no enablement, I had an organization that I worked with that was served churches. So they're very kind, but nobody had enablement. And they were like, how come nobody helps?

Shouldn't we be helpers? We work with churches. It's like, Oh, nobody has the genius of enablement. Nobody comes along and says, yeah, I'll volunteer to do that for you. And so any gap is going to show up and usually teams look at the gap on the thing and in five minutes they're like, Oh yeah, this is why that project failed or this is why we were good at this thing, but why we're not good at this thing.

So it's pretty predictable. It's pretty self explanatory. 

[00:12:59] Hala Taha: And you say that the best way to identify these is by visualizing everything with the team maps? What's that process like? 

[00:13:07] Patrick Lencioni: Everybody takes their assessment on an account, and then they just say, print a team map. The piece of paper comes out and it says, wonder, and it shows the list of people that have it as a genius and the list of the people that have it as a frustration.

And if there's none, then they all have it as a thing in the middle. It's very easy to see, and there's green and red. So you look at this thing and you go, Oh, my gosh, we have no green in discernment, or we have a whole bunch of reds in my organization. We had a whole bunch of reds in invention, and I was the only green.

And so not only was I the only inventor, but the other people in my organization really hated having to come up with new ideas. And what that told us is two things is one. We can't be pulling me out of invention too much because. There's nobody else that's going to fill that gap. And when we hired the next person, it would sure be nice if they had invention as a genius or at least certainly as a competency.

So there was a little bit more of that in the atmosphere on the team. 

[00:14:05] Hala Taha: Yeah. It reminds me of my organization so much. I started with a social agency, super innovative, always going viral. And then I launched my network. Kate's running my agency. She's more of enablement tenacity. And I'm always just, we're using the same strategies that I did.

And then I'm trying to figure out the new strategies and I'm getting mad at her. Cause I'm like, you're not inventing, but now I realize. That's not what she's good at. I need to get somebody else that's going to invent. 

[00:14:35] Patrick Lencioni: How great is that? Cause what happens is then people will say things like, so I don't have.

Enablement and tenacity, and it's very easy for people to think that I or for me to think about myself that I'm lazy now. I work my ass off, but I'll go like, I guess I'm kind of lazy because I don't have an enablement and tenacity. It's like, well, I'm just not an implementer, but I'll work really hard in the things that I do or a person that doesn't have invention.

We can go. They're not very smart. And they're like, what do you mean? They're like, well, gosh, I come up with these ideas. Can't they come up with an idea? No, it's just a different genius. They're smart, but in the thing that they do. So it avoids judgmentalism. Now, let me tell you, if a person is really lazy, you know, I have a book called the ideal team player, and it's about humble, hungry, smart, the three values of a good team player.

There are people that aren't. They're hungry. They don't work hard. So there are people that are slackers and yeah, they deserve to be recognized as such, but that's not about their skillset. It's about maybe they're just not motivated. Maybe they never learned how to work hard. Maybe they don't really care that much.

I'm not trying to say that there aren't things that you should let somebody go from your organization for. There are, but if it's just that they're wired differently, man, that's a tragedy when we lose good people because they're just wired differently and we attribute it to something else. 

[00:15:51] Hala Taha: I totally agree.

And it's really hard to hire people and it wastes a lot of time. So if you could just plug people and switch roles and lateral moves, that's going to save a lot of money and time. 

[00:16:02] Patrick Lencioni: Yeah. I really think in terms of productivity, if you have four people and you have them in roles and you didn't know why, and you figure out they're working genius and you make adjustments, you're going to save two higher.

And there was a saying years ago, I remember when I first got out of school and they said, if you have five engineers working on a project and it's not getting done, get rid of two of them. And what they meant is sometimes it's just that there's too many. But I actually think when you tap into, if you have five engineers working on a team and you actually help them understand their geniuses, they're going to get the work of nine done.

[00:16:30] Hala Taha: Yeah. 

Yeah. I can't wait to implement this. 

[00:16:33] Patrick Lencioni: Would you please let me know how that goes? I can't wait to hear what you guys learned. It is so fun to get stories back from people who rebirthed an employee by helping them figure out their thing, 

[00:16:45] Hala Taha: of course, 

[00:16:46] Patrick Lencioni: or avoided hiring the wrong person or letting go of the wrong.

I love to hear those stories. 

[00:16:52] Hala Taha: Of course, I'd love to tell you about it. I'm very excited. In terms of how you roll it out to an organization, is it a different process? Are we still going and taking the assessment individually? Or are we signing up our organization so we can see all the results? 

[00:17:06] Patrick Lencioni: If you go on there, it's very clear.

I know that because people do it all the time. And I can also tell you, I don't know as the inventor of this. I'm amazed at I'll be at some place and I'll say, Hey, you should take the assessment and then I'll go, I have to find somebody that can get you on to do that. Cause I don't even know how to do it, but it's very simple when you go on it and everybody fills it out.

It's just one person signs them all up and they put it in the same account. 

[00:17:27] Hala Taha: Got it. Okay. So young and profiting. co slash work. You guys can take the assessment individually, or you can sign up your organization. We'll make sure of it. Okay. 

[00:17:35] Patrick Lencioni: And call us if you want, we're at tablegroup. com and you can find us on the internet and you can call us and we'll walk you through it.

[00:17:42] Hala Taha: Okay, perfect. So let's get into some more tactical stuff, because I know you're really good about having good meetings. We talked about Zoom, just some productivity, team management type of stuff. So you've written in the past that it's a mistake to think that A level talent doesn't need to be managed. So what do we need to know about how much to manage someone and especially maybe in the context of working geniuses?

[00:18:06] Patrick Lencioni: I love that you asked in terms of working genius, because I've been saying this for years, but working genius helps us understand how they might need to be managed because not everybody's the same, but one of the things I find in organizations is a lot of CEOs, one of the things they don't do is they don't manage their direct reports.

And what they do is they say, well, I'm a CEO now, and this person's on my leadership team, so I shouldn't have to manage them. They're an adult or. They think that managing is micromanaging. And so they say, well, I don't want to micromanage them. I trust them. But the truth of the matter is every person in the world benefits from management.

And that's why being a CEO is so dang hard. Because it is unmanaged. And a board does not manage a CEO. Oftentimes boards need to be kind of humored, and one of the hardest things about being the CEO of an organization, it's lonely and there really is no guidance. You have to seek out advice, but there's nobody that says, I own this and I will give you direction.

The buck stops with you when you're the CEO. So there's something naked about that role, and it's why it's a very lonely and hard job. But when leaders say, and I fall into this category too, I don't like to manage people by objectives and details and all these things. Because I'm an ID, I hire people and I go, Hey, um, I hired a guy recently who has ETs, all implementation, but I said to him, Hey, why don't you just figure out what your job scope should be?

And you tell me what success looks like. And you tell me what your job should look like. I want you to figure it out on your own. And he was like mortified because that's my ideal job, by the way. And he's like, I want measurables. I want structure. I want expectations set for me. And I realized I can't manage him the way I would want to be managed.

I have to manage him to make him the best that he can be. And too often CEOs abdicate responsibility. They don't delegate. And they don't, I say at least be a good macro manager, know what they're working on. Know if they're doing well, check in with them, provide what they need based on their working genius and take responsibility for being their manager.

And I don't care if you're running a 10 billion company and you're managing the CMO, or if you're an entrepreneur and you have four employees, everybody needs to be managed. It doesn't mean that there's a specific system for it. It doesn't mean you're checking in every day on their deliverables. It's less about efficiency and it's more about effectiveness.

And so even if you don't necessarily like doing it, do it and do it for them based on what they need. 

[00:20:36] Hala Taha: Yeah. Even just taking this assessment made me realize, even though I have employees that haven't taken it, I know what they are now and how I need to manage them. Yeah. It's just so clear. It's really clear.

[00:20:49] Patrick Lencioni: And you know what you're going to do with them? You're naturally going to go by their office and Brainstorm and inspire them. You'll do that. I don't have to tell you to do that, but what you might not do is go, okay, do you have enough information about whether you're succeeding or not? 

[00:21:06] Hala Taha: Exactly. The management, the enablement stuff, how can I be a better enablement?

It's chewing glass for me. I don't like it, but I have to do it. 

[00:21:15] Patrick Lencioni: You know, what's great, Holla, when you go to them and you go, Hey, you know me, I'm an IG, by the way, I want you to see this and they're going to go, of course you are. That's makes sense, but there's things you need that I don't do naturally. So just know though, I'm not saying that I don't want to do them.

Just know that it's not easy for me. And if you come to me and say, Hey, I need more clarity from you on something. I'm not going to take that as a complaint. I'm going to take that as a compliment that, you know, I'm not good at it and you need to provoke me to do it. And that'll give them permission to do it without going.

Um, Hala, are you going to get more specific with us? And you're going to go, not naturally I won't, but if you ask me to, I will. So they can coach you. Your employees will be your best management coaches when you give them the language and the permission to do that. 

[00:22:05] Hala Taha: So something that we agree upon is to have a successful meeting, it doesn't have to be short.

I've heard that and this is something that me and my business partner, Jason, disagree upon all the time where he just wants to have short, short meetings and I'm like, we had a short meeting, but what was accomplished? We don't know what to do. We need to talk about it. It's not about just having short meetings.

We need to know what to do and have clarity, right? So I'd love for you to just break down some of your best tips in terms of having good meetings and also the fact that a lot of people tuning in right now are having zoom meetings. Let's be honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most of the meetings are Zoom. So let's talk about that.

[00:22:43] Patrick Lencioni: And the hardest thing about Zoom meetings, Hala, is that first of all, we learned this at the beginning of COVID. I just saw this movie called Hot Fuzz. There's this where they go, this shit just got real. You know, it's like a cop movie and that was from Bad Boys or something like that. I remember when COVID started, when we were doing our third Zoom meeting and I finally provoked real conflict.

We said, I think this shit just got real because too often on Zoom, it's harder to go there because you're not in the same room. And after the meeting's over, you're not going to be able to recover. Walk over to the kitchen and talk to them about it. So sometimes we don't go deep and get messy during Zoom meetings the way we need to.

So that's the thing I would say, first of all, is when we're doing the stuff on Zoom, we've got to get to that place where we're being fully human. And it's harder when it's two dimensional and there's not follow up and we don't have incidental time. So we need to do that. But the other thing is I would love to know what your partner's working genius is, because the thing about a short meeting, it's efficient, but it's not necessarily effective.

And I'm a believer in effectiveness over efficiency. Okay. And so sometimes a meeting wanders, but it needed to, and sometimes it takes 45 minutes in a meeting before you finally realize, Oh my gosh, we were talking about the wrong thing. When a person's sitting in that meeting going, look, checking their watch and going, well, I have another meeting to go to, and I have real work to do.

Here's how to help a person understand that there's four different kinds of meetings that a leadership team has to have and you and your partner have to have there's four and you can't do them simultaneously when we do them simultaneously. It doesn't work. I call that meeting stew where we toss out every ingredient in the cupboard into one pot and stir it up.

It just tastes bad. And the four different kinds of meetings that need to be separated are One is what I call a check in, a daily check in, and that's five to 10 minutes. Like, what are you doing today? What are you doing today? Okay, great. That's great. Okay. Oh, I didn't know you were going to be doing that.

Tell Fred I said, hi. Oh, can you ask him about this thing? Okay. I can take that off my list. Totally administrative check in. Don't sit down just every day. This is the me saying to my wife, Hey, who's picking the kids up from school? What time are you coming home? Here's, I got this meeting today. Okay, great.

The second meeting is called your weekly tactical if you do it weekly, and this is the running the business meeting where you sit down and you go, okay, these are our goals. Here's how we're doing. Do we need to solve any near term problems? This one's green. This one's yellow. This one's red. Alan Mullally, who ran Ford, did it that way to green, yellow and red.

We do that our company to how are we doing? These are five big things we're working on. How are they going? What do we need to do? It's probably an hour, maybe 90 minutes. It's pretty tactical and it's focused on moving the ball forward. The problem is there's a third meeting and we usually combine it with the second meeting.

And we call this the strategic topical meeting. This is like, there's some big new initiative or idea or problem, and it's really interesting and it's really urgent, and so we try to talk about it in the same breath where we're going through our goals and we never give it enough time. This is the meeting where we need to go into a room and we're Clear up two hours and say we have a competitive threat or we have this new product idea or this new partnership like you talked to me before about there's new partnerships.

You're developing. Don't have that during your regular weekly meeting. Have a separate meeting. All we're going to talk about is that partnership and go in there. Roll up your sleeves. Grab some food, get a whiteboard and argue and debate and dream and do this. That's what people in business school call a case study.

It's the most fun you can ever have. And yet we kill that fun by having it in 10 minute increments in between going through our checklists. It robs our meetings. It makes the tactical meetings confusing. It makes the strategic meetings far too limited. And when the leaders of an organization do that, They really lose their way.

So when somebody says, let's have a short meeting, I say, yeah. Make your daily check in short. Hey, maybe make your weekly tactical fairly short, but never cut off a conversation that needs to be explored and work through it. It's messy. And that's the biggest problem I see in organizations. They combine their strategic conversations and their tactical ones in the same meeting, and it's never good for anybody.

The fourth kind of meeting, I think it's once a quarter, you should probably do it. And maybe it takes two hours, maybe it takes a half a day. And that's just the quarterly check in where you just get out of the office, you take a breath and you say. Is this working? That's probably a WI meeting where you just step back and go.

Is there anything we're not seeing what's going on in the market? How are we doing as a team behaviorally? You just need to do that every once in a while. Those four kinds of meetings. Most organizations try to have all four in one meeting and they call it their weekly meeting. And that's why people hate meetings.

[00:27:24] Hala Taha: I'm actually really proud of my company because we do all four. 

[00:27:28] Patrick Lencioni: You do? 

[00:27:28] Hala Taha: We do all four. So we call each other Scrappy Hustlers. That's our name. 

[00:27:33] Patrick Lencioni: I love it. 

[00:27:34] Hala Taha: And every morning we do a Hustler Huddle. I do it with my executive team, I do it with my sales and marketing team. 15 minutes. What are we grateful for?

What are we working on? Are there any blockers? How do you feel now? Every single morning, we do something called G90s, where we talk for 90 minutes every week, me and my executive team, about all of our problems called G90. Then we do a monthly strategic meeting to talk about any strategies. And then we do a quarterly planning, which is the ideation stuff.

[00:28:03] Patrick Lencioni: Wow. 

[00:28:03] Hala Taha: So I feel like we're really on track here. 

[00:28:06] Patrick Lencioni: You got it. 

That is crazy. Because you know that. People have different contexts when they go into those meetings, and you can't do them all together. Good for you. 

[00:28:15] Hala Taha: Yeah. No wonder we're doing so great. 

[00:28:17] Patrick Lencioni: Seriously. Seriously. Meetings are key. 

[00:28:20] Hala Taha: I had such a great conversation with you.

I loved learning about the working genius. I loved understanding how this is going to impact our teams. I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests. You can just think of this as not having to do with the topic necessarily, just whatever comes from your heart. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profitors can do today to become more profiting tomorrow?

[00:28:45] Patrick Lencioni: Wow. I want to give a thoughtful answer to that. I think that one of the things that people don't do when they're young is get very clear about who they are and what their personal values are and we're too opportunistic and kind of reacting to whatever's going on and actually sit down and write down, this is the person I want to be and this is what I want to do.

And it's so crazy. It's so simple, but they say, if you don't know where you're going, all roads lead there or no road is right. And so I just think people need to be a little clear about, yeah, this is what I'd kind of like to do and who I'd like to be that contextualizes everything else. So that's a very general thing, but it's so simple.

And most people are like, yeah, I haven't really done that. 

[00:29:25] Hala Taha: Yeah. So actually step back and think about who you want to be in the future. Your future you. What do you want to grow into? 

[00:29:32] Patrick Lencioni: Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:29:33] Hala Taha: And what would you say is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond business. 

[00:29:39] Patrick Lencioni: Two things.

It's healing, it's identifying the things that happened to me when I was young that I thought were my superpowers, but they were actually wounds because I was working out of those. And then every day I pray, I wake up and I pray. I'm Catholic Christian. I listened to some Bible readings and I pray. And that is all the difference between waking up and feeling like scattered and, and lost and feeling like, Oh yeah, yeah, everything's good.

[00:30:03] Hala Taha: Just to dig deep on that, just a bit, is that sort of a gratitude practice that you have? Like, what do you feel like that does to set the foundation for your day? And how can people mimic that? Well, I think it's everything. It's interesting that you ask that. I have this app. It's called Amen. It goes through the readings of the day, which is like seven minutes, eight minutes of the readings, Old Testament, maybe Psalms and the gospel.

[00:30:25] Patrick Lencioni: And then it asks you a series of questions. And I think in those questions, it kind of gets at the four areas of prayer, which is Gratitude, what you're grateful for, petition, what you want, what you need, praise, which is, God, you're good. This is great. And then sorrow. Hey, I want to be better and I'm sorry I did these things.

I think it touches on all four of those kinds of prayer. Gratitude is the thing I need to work on the most. I grew up, every time I accomplished something, I would go like, okay, what's next? And I never felt safe just going, Oh, that was wonderful. Thank you. That's great. So gratitude is a deficiency area for me.

And I learned that from John Gordon. I don't know if you know who John Gordon is. 

[00:31:02] Hala Taha: Yes, I had him on the show. Yep. 

[00:31:04] Patrick Lencioni: Oh, he's like one of my favorite human beings. One of, good dear friend. And the gratitude thing is so critical. 

[00:31:09] Hala Taha: Michael Jervis came on the show and he taught me this morning ritual where he says before he even gets out of the covers, the first thing he does is, what are three things I'm grateful for?

[00:31:19] Patrick Lencioni: Wow. Before you get out of the covers. So now every morning, before I even wake up, when I'm laying in my bed, before I get out of bed, I just say, what am I grateful for? And then I get up. And it just helps a little bit, you know, especially if I remember to do it, it's always a better day. 

[00:31:34] Hala Taha: That's great. I'll remember that.

[00:31:35] Patrick Lencioni: That's fantastic. 

[00:31:36] Hala Taha: Patrick, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? 

[00:31:41] Patrick Lencioni: My company is called the table group. So if you go to table group. com, you can find us there. The working genius stuff is at working genius. com. They can get to that through your site. You know, there's one thing I have that I've started recently.

I do a morning three minute. devotional for professionals who are followers of Jesus. But if you're not, if you're curious about Jesus, it's, you can do it too. Cause I love everyone, but it's a three minutes. It's called the three minute reset. Me and a guy named Chris Stefanik do it. And I found that a lot of people really like it.

And I just started doing this January 1st of this year. And it's every weekday. Cause a lot of people are like, I don't know what I want to do around my faith. And it's like, well, here's three minutes. Maybe you can just start with three minutes and it's combining stuff that I do in the work world with faith.

And so a lot of people really like that. It's grown. 

[00:32:24] Hala Taha: How do you join it? 

[00:32:25] Patrick Lencioni: You just go wherever podcasts are and type in the three minute reset in my name. 

[00:32:28] Hala Taha: Oh, it's a podcast that you can listen to every morning? 

[00:32:31] Patrick Lencioni: Yeah, it's essentially a podcast with a daily three minute thing. 

[00:32:34] Hala Taha: Oh, cool. We'll put the link in the show notes.

Again, guys, if you want to take the Working Genius Assessment, go to youngandprofiting. co slash work. We'll put that link in the show notes. I can't wait to hear what you guys think about that assessment. If it helped you, let us know, write us a review. Patrick, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

[00:32:52] Patrick Lencioni: It's been a blast. Thank you, Holla. 

[00:32:54] Hala Taha: Thank you for tuning in for this second part of my wonderful conversation with Patrick Lencioni. If you missed part one, you can find it right next to this episode in your Young and Profiting feed. It's definitely worth going back for. I really enjoyed learning more about how the different types of working genius can impact teams and organizations.

I cannot wait to implement some of these takeaways with my own crew. Every team is only as good as the sum of its individual pieces, and sometimes those individuals are just in the wrong places, often through no fault of their own. The best salesperson does not always make the best sales manager, and we shouldn't force them or incentivize them to fill a role that is wrong for them and wrong for the company.

Nor do you want to lose smart people just because they are not wired to do the job you have given them. A lot of young companies and startups suffer from lopsided teams. They may have plenty of inventors and galvanizers, but lack employees who can get things done or who can enable others to do the same.

Or they may have plenty of implementers, but few new ideas, and it's just as important to find the right mix of these skills as it is to find the right mix of subject expertise. Patrick recommended creating a detailed team map to help identify where the genius gaps are within your teams. This can help you reassign tasks and reshape groups and roles.

It can also inform your hiring decisions. The right person for the job might not be the one that you think based on conventional metrics. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting. If you listened, learned, and profited from this conversation, then why keep it all to yourself? Send it to a friend or colleague that you think could benefit from the same insights. And if you did enjoy this show and you learned something, Then why not drop us a five star review on Apple Podcasts? This is such a helpful way to show your support and also help us to reach more people and keep climbing up the charts.

If you prefer watching your podcasts as videos, you can find us on YouTube. Just look up Young and Profiting and you'll find all our episodes there. Looking to get in touch with me? You can find me on Instagram or on LinkedIn by searching my name, Halataha. Finally, a quick shout out my incredible production team and all the different types of working genius they possess.

You guys are the best. Before I sign off, I wanted to let you know that this is my AI voice. At Yap Media, we've been experimenting with AI to see just how far we can push it. Send me a DM on LinkedIn or Instagram, or send me an email to let me know what you think. This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.