Patrick Lencioni: Maximize Joy in Your Career by Learning Your Working Genius | E305

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0:01:13 The things you’re best at are the things that actually give you joy and energy that fill
0:01:14 you up.
0:01:18 But if you have a job where you’re called to do too many things you don’t like and you’re
0:01:21 not exercising your geniuses, that’s misery.
0:01:23 Let’s go over the six working geniuses.
0:01:24 What are they?
0:01:27 The first genius, it’s really important, it’s called the genius.
0:01:33 The second one is, after that comes, this is a really interesting one.
0:01:38 Too many people get fired from organizations where they’re good cultural fits, they’re
0:01:40 just in the wrong chair.
0:01:46 Are there certain working geniuses that make for better entrepreneurs than others?
0:01:47 Yes.
0:02:04 Yeah, fam, welcome back to the show.
0:02:08 I have to say, one of the most important things in life is to feel happy at work.
0:02:12 We spend so much time working and we need to make sure that we’re in jobs that bring
0:02:16 us joy, that bring us energy, and don’t suck the energy out of us.
0:02:22 Today, we’re going to be talking all about working geniuses and working frustrations.
0:02:25 If you’ve never heard of these phrases before, don’t worry about it because we have Patrick
0:02:31 Lenchoni, the inventor of these phrases, coming on the show today to break it down
0:02:32 for us.
0:02:35 Patrick Lenchoni is one of the most well-known business management authors.
0:02:40 He’s written over 12 best-selling business books, including his latest book called The
0:02:41 Six Working Geniuses.
0:02:45 We’re going to find out about all six working geniuses.
0:02:49 I’m sure as you guys are listening in, you’re going to be like, “Oh my god, that’s my working
0:02:50 genius.”
0:02:51 It’s pretty obvious once you listen.
0:02:56 If you want to find out for sure, you can go to youngandprofiting.co/work and take the
0:02:58 working genius assessment.
0:03:02 Patrick Lenchoni is an expert on team building, team efficiency.
0:03:08 He’s the CEO and founder of The Table Group, which is a consultancy that helps organizations
0:03:13 improve their operations, improve their company culture, as well as their team efficiencies.
0:03:16 Patrick is absolutely amazing.
0:03:17 I had such a great conversation with him.
0:03:21 We went for an hour and a half, so we’re actually splitting this episode into two parts.
0:03:24 Part one is going to be focused on the individual.
0:03:27 We really break down the definition of working geniuses.
0:03:33 We understand what competencies are, frustrations are, how we can deal with having to do the
0:03:38 things we don’t want to do at work, aka chew glass.
0:03:43 We talk about how these talents work together to put together a complete project.
0:03:48 We really focus on how, as individuals, we can leverage our working geniuses to elevate
0:03:51 our careers and be more happy at work.
0:03:54 Part two is really all about organizations and teams.
0:03:56 How is this relevant for teams?
0:03:58 How do we roll it out to organizations?
0:03:59 How do we identify gaps?
0:04:03 How do we improve our productivity, have better meetings, and so on?
0:04:04 I love this conversation.
0:04:05 It was so eye-opening.
0:04:09 I’m so excited to roll out working genius to my organization.
0:04:13 I took the assessment and I loved what I found out about myself.
0:04:18 It was really helpful for me to figure out where I really need to focus and outsource
0:04:21 and lean into the strengths that I have.
0:04:24 I think you guys are going to love this conversation as much as I did.
0:04:27 Without further ado, here’s part one with Patrick Lynchoni.
0:04:31 Patrick, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:04:32 It’s great to be here.
0:04:33 Thanks.
0:04:34 It will be fun.
0:04:35 I am so excited.
0:04:37 You are a legend in the management space.
0:04:41 You’ve been writing, speaking, and consulting on organizational health and team effectiveness
0:04:45 for 25 years now with the table group.
0:04:46 You’re a founder.
0:04:48 You’re an entrepreneur.
0:04:53 Even though you love your job, you love your industry, you’ve still been frustrated at
0:04:55 times at work.
0:05:00 I can relate here because I’m the CEO and founder of a company that I love called Yap
0:05:01 Media.
0:05:05 I’ve been living my dream as a podcaster, selling sponsorships and running people’s
0:05:09 social media, but even me, it’s like a roller coaster.
0:05:14 Even in the same day, I might be finding joy, and then at the same time, I’m frustrated.
0:05:18 I know that I love my job, but it’s still frustrating.
0:05:19 Let’s talk about you.
0:05:25 Take us back to this time where you were frustrating as the CEO and founder of your organization.
0:05:30 What were you feeling and what were some of the insights that you gleaned from this experience?
0:05:35 Well, Hala, it only lasted for about 20 years, and I didn’t understand it because I loved
0:05:36 the people I worked with.
0:05:39 I loved what I did, and I’d come to work excited.
0:05:40 I didn’t have the Sunday blues.
0:05:46 I liked my work, but then I would get there and then I’d be really happy in one moment
0:05:47 and then frustrated another.
0:05:49 This went on for a long time and I never got it.
0:05:53 Finally, one day, one of my colleagues said, “What’s going on with you when that happens?”
0:05:56 I said, “I don’t know, but I want to figure it out.”
0:05:58 I sat there for the next four hours, God willing.
0:05:59 It was amazing.
0:06:02 I don’t quite remember what happened, but I was right in at a whiteboard.
0:06:03 That’s what I do.
0:06:08 I like to come up with things, and I realized that there were six different kinds of work
0:06:10 that needed to get done in our company.
0:06:15 I really loved two of them, and every day I came to work excited to do those, and then
0:06:18 I’d get dragged into doing something else that I didn’t really like.
0:06:22 People thought, “Well, you have to do that because you’re the leader and the CEO.”
0:06:26 But as it turned out, I didn’t, but I was constantly getting sucked into that.
0:06:29 That’s when I came up with this model, but I wasn’t trying to come up with the model.
0:06:32 I was just trying to explain my own frustration.
0:06:36 We had one of our consultants saw it, and then he met with the CEO the next day.
0:06:39 The CEO was complaining about something, and he was frustrated, and he explained the model
0:06:44 to him, and the guy had tears in his eyes, and he was like, “Oh, wow, this is my thing.”
0:06:48 We realized there’s something universally applicable here, and we built an assessment
0:06:51 in the next three months, and released it.
0:06:56 Without a lot of fanfare or advertising, it took off, and there was something universal
0:06:57 about that.
0:06:59 It’s like a million people take this assessment.
0:07:04 It’s growing faster than anything I’ve ever done, and we are hearing from people how it’s
0:07:08 changing their lives and allowing them to do what they’re meant to do, what God made
0:07:11 them to do, rather than the things that they thought they were supposed to be doing that
0:07:13 weren’t good for them.
0:07:14 That’s the story.
0:07:15 It was by accident.
0:07:18 Most of the things I do are by accident, just being out in the field.
0:07:19 That’s what happened.
0:07:25 Patrick’s referring to the working genius assessment, so it’s called working genius.
0:07:31 Talk to us about everybody’s God-given talents, and why you believe that people are more fulfilled
0:07:36 and successful when they’re leaning into their God-given talents.
0:07:37 It’s interesting because I take all the assessments.
0:07:39 Over the years, I’ve taken Myers-Briggs and disc.
0:07:40 I like them all.
0:07:44 We use them in our practice in consulting the CEOs and their teams, but there was never
0:07:46 any that was really about what you did.
0:07:52 There were more personality or perspective, and this is about the actual tasks you like
0:07:53 to do.
0:07:56 What it comes down to is joy and energy.
0:07:58 What fills you with joy and energy?
0:08:03 Sometimes we can get good at things we don’t actually like, and I did that in my life because
0:08:07 when you need to achieve, whether you do that because of wounds or because you really want
0:08:12 to, you get good at things you don’t like, but the things you’re best at are the things
0:08:16 that actually give you joy and energy that fill you up.
0:08:20 The things that you can spend 12 hours doing in a day and go home and feel like, “What
0:08:21 a great day.
0:08:22 I feel energized.”
0:08:27 And the other things that I don’t like, I can do for three hours in a day and get really
0:08:29 tired and really frustrated.
0:08:31 So that’s what this is about.
0:08:36 It’s about how to identify the things that we were put here to enjoy.
0:08:39 We still have to do things that we don’t love sometimes, but if you have a job where
0:08:45 you’re called to do too many things you don’t like, and you’re not exercising your geniuses,
0:08:46 that’s misery.
0:08:50 I don’t believe God put us here to be miserable in our work.
0:08:56 How do you feel like the pandemic made all of this more exacerbated?
0:09:01 How did it make it worse in terms of us with our working geniuses and talents and having
0:09:04 to work together as teams?
0:09:05 I love flexibility at work.
0:09:10 I do love flexibility work, but I think people are meant to be together.
0:09:14 And yes, there are some jobs that you can do remotely sometimes, and I love that people
0:09:18 can stay home with their kids sometimes or work from the road and all those things.
0:09:24 But the fact that we went all in on remote work, I think really deprived people of the
0:09:29 range of interactions that they needed to build relationships and to derive the sense
0:09:32 of fulfillment that they need from work.
0:09:36 And there are certain places that are still operating as though that exists, and morale
0:09:39 and productivity have not recovered in those places.
0:09:44 I think we are meant to spend a good portion of our working time together.
0:09:47 Now, that doesn’t mean that there are some jobs that have to be remote.
0:09:48 That’s great.
0:09:52 I have learned how to have productive Zoom calls and do things remotely, but there is
0:09:57 still no complete substitute for doing what you love and doing it in a room with other
0:09:59 people that you care about.
0:10:00 I agree.
0:10:05 I have a fully remote team, and I think it’s hard for some folks, and especially in this
0:10:08 day and age, we’ve got to learn how to work together online.
0:10:13 And a lot of things that I took away from this assessment, I feel like I can implement
0:10:15 even though I have a remote team.
0:10:17 I’m super excited about that.
0:10:18 Absolutely.
0:10:24 And there are healthier teams that work remotely than teams that are together that are dysfunctional.
0:10:28 So really becoming a functional team, which is what my career has been about, is helping
0:10:29 teams get more functional.
0:10:32 That is more important than whether you’re remote or not.
0:10:38 And we learned how to do some really amazing things on Zoom, like engage in healthy conflict,
0:10:42 like really have deep creative conversations.
0:10:46 It’s harder to do remotely, but it can be done.
0:10:51 But all things being equal, I think that spending time with each other, it is an advantage if
0:10:52 you can make it work.
0:10:53 It is.
0:10:54 Okay.
0:10:56 So like all good entrepreneurs, you had a problem yourself.
0:11:00 You went about to solve that problem, and then you decided you were going to scale it
0:11:03 out and give your learnings to other people.
0:11:07 So you put out this book called The Six Types of Working Genius, and you have this working
0:11:08 genius assessment.
0:11:11 I took the assessment, so I can’t wait to go over my results.
0:11:15 But first, I want to understand these six working geniuses.
0:11:17 I want to understand more about them.
0:11:20 Can you define what a working genius is exactly?
0:11:21 Right.
0:11:24 And there’s six of them, so there’s six possibilities.
0:11:28 But only two are what we call our own working genius, the ones where we get joy and energy.
0:11:33 I like to say, if you’re pouring coffee in a cup, and it wear a yeti mug, and you screw
0:11:36 the lid on tight, your working genius will hold that energy all day.
0:11:40 There’s two others that are in the middle, which we would call your working competencies.
0:11:42 And I know yours, because I look to your thing.
0:11:44 And those are things we don’t hate doing them.
0:11:46 We can do them fairly well.
0:11:48 They’re like pouring coffee into a cup and putting a little plastic lid on it.
0:11:51 It’ll stay warm for a while, and so we could do that.
0:11:55 But then there’s these two that are called our working frustrations, which is like pouring
0:11:58 coffee into a cup that has a hole in the bottom.
0:12:01 And our energy and our joy are just drained by those.
0:12:05 There’s these six categories, which I’ll explain in a second.
0:12:10 And everyone has two that they love, two that are okay, and two that they really struggle
0:12:11 with.
0:12:15 And if we don’t know what those are, then the best chance we have at enjoying our work
0:12:18 and fulfilling our potential is kind of a crapshoot.
0:12:22 The first job I took out of college was the best job in America at the time, and it was
0:12:24 totally wrong for me.
0:12:29 And I did not understand why I struggled, why I wasn’t happy, and why those two years
0:12:31 went by like 10 years.
0:12:35 And it was because I look back now and I realize I was doing exactly the things I wasn’t meant
0:12:36 to do.
0:12:37 It’s so interesting.
0:12:41 When I was looking at my assessment, I felt, we’ll go into this later, I actually felt
0:12:49 like some of my competencies and frustrations I used to be better at when I wasn’t necessarily
0:12:52 an entrepreneur with all of these responsibilities.
0:12:56 So I actually felt like they changed over time.
0:12:57 Here’s what we found.
0:13:03 We think you’re born with these, but I felt the same way you did because I used to be really
0:13:07 good at things that I would have preferred not to do, but in order to be successful,
0:13:09 I had to make myself.
0:13:14 And when we talk about these things, we had a guy once come on and one of the geniuses
0:13:17 is called tenacity, which is the finishing of things, okay?
0:13:20 And that’s neither your nor my genius.
0:13:24 We like to start things, but the last stage of things and finishing things and grinding
0:13:26 toward the end isn’t our favorite thing.
0:13:28 And this guy said, “Hey, I’m a doctor.
0:13:29 I went to med school.
0:13:32 If I got through med school, this must be one of my geniuses because I did really well.”
0:13:36 And we asked him one question that, “Did you like it?
0:13:37 Did you enjoy that?”
0:13:38 He goes, “No, I hated it.
0:13:39 I couldn’t wait for it to be over.”
0:13:43 We said, “Yeah, there’s a difference between succeeding at something, even if it drains
0:13:45 you of your joy and energy.”
0:13:47 And right away, he goes, “Oh yeah, it’s definitely not my genius.”
0:13:50 So sometimes people have to say, “Yeah, I did that.
0:13:52 I did it because I had a goal in mind.
0:13:56 I want to do accomplish something, but it didn’t really feed me.
0:13:58 And I think the things that feed us were born with.
0:14:03 I remember as a kid, my geniuses, I didn’t get to exercise them, and it frustrated me,
0:14:06 and I didn’t even realize it until I became an adult and came up with this.
0:14:07 I love it.
0:14:12 I feel like my assessment described me to a T. Let’s go over the six working geniuses.
0:14:13 What are they?
0:14:17 So the first one, we’re going to start with our head up in the clouds.
0:14:22 We’re going to go from the highest altitude down to the most practical on the ground.
0:14:24 And it’s kind of how the flow of work happens.
0:14:29 So the first genius, you and I don’t have this genius, but it’s really important.
0:14:33 It’s called the Genius of Wonder, and it happens at 60,000 feet ahead in the clouds.
0:14:36 And this is a genius that most people don’t even think of as a genius.
0:14:39 In fact, they were probably told not to do it most of their life.
0:14:41 And it’s called the Genius of Wonder.
0:14:44 And people with the Genius of Wonder ponder things.
0:14:48 They can sit and think about things and ask questions.
0:14:51 Without an answer, they’re like, “Is there a better solution out there?
0:14:53 Are our customers happy?
0:14:56 Why are things like this?
0:14:57 What’s the point of all this?”
0:15:03 Where every new idea ultimately starts is somebody asks the question, “Why is it like
0:15:04 this?”
0:15:08 This model came about because one of my colleagues who had wonder said, “Why are you like that,
0:15:09 Pat?
0:15:13 I’m curious as to why you get frustrated and why you’re happy.”
0:15:18 And somebody asks the question, “My wife is a wonderer, and she is constantly asking
0:15:20 the big questions.”
0:15:23 And when you’re young and you do this, your teachers tell you to stop, and they’re like,
0:15:26 “Why aren’t you on board, and why are you still asking questions?”
0:15:31 This is a critical genius, and most people that have it have never really been understood
0:15:32 or rewarded for it.
0:15:35 This is probably the most mysterious of them all.
0:15:36 That’s the first one.
0:15:39 The second one is the person who comes along, and this is you and I share this genius.
0:15:41 And that’s the Genius of Invention.
0:15:43 When somebody asks the question, “Why are things like this?”
0:15:45 We go, “I don’t know, but I’m going to figure it out.”
0:15:50 And we get a whiteboard and a pen and no restriction, and we love to come up with new ideas and
0:15:52 solutions out of nothing.
0:15:57 And what I thought is, everybody liked that, and there are people that hate that.
0:16:00 When I asked them to do that at work in my office, they’re like, “I hate that.
0:16:01 I have none.”
0:16:05 That’s their frustration, and that’s one of the things we realize is that one man or
0:16:08 woman’s trash is another man or woman’s treasure.
0:16:12 The very things I love, other people are like, “Please don’t make me ever do that.”
0:16:17 So wonder starts at the question, invention comes up with that new idea, and those two
0:16:20 are what’s called ideation, the first two.
0:16:23 After that comes what we call discernment.
0:16:25 This is a really interesting one.
0:16:30 Discernment is people that have the Genius of Instinct and Intuition and Gut Feel, and
0:16:33 they look at something, even something they don’t know about, and they have this way of
0:16:36 thinking that they can kind of identify the right thing.
0:16:40 It’s like those people that you ask for advice about everything.
0:16:41 We have one in my office.
0:16:42 Her name is Tracy.
0:16:44 She has great discernment.
0:16:46 People are constantly saying, “Well, ask Tracy.
0:16:47 Should you refinance your house?
0:16:48 Ask Tracy.
0:16:50 Should we go to Europe on vacation this year?
0:16:51 Well, ask Tracy what she thinks.”
0:16:54 My wife will say, “Dude, does this look good for this thing I’m doing?”
0:16:56 She goes, “Ask Tracy.”
0:16:59 Tracy said when she was a little girl, all of her friends did that too.
0:17:04 She just has this amazing gut feel about things that everybody trusts.
0:17:06 It’s pattern recognition.
0:17:07 It’s not linear thinking.
0:17:10 It’s being able to look at something and go, “Yeah, that’s the right answer.”
0:17:12 She’s the editor of my books.
0:17:13 She never studied that.
0:17:17 When I write a chapter in a book and I send it to her, if she says, “This is a great
0:17:18 chapter,” I know it’s true.
0:17:22 If she goes, “This doesn’t make any sense to me,” I’m like, “I’m going to rewrite
0:17:24 it even if I disagree.”
0:17:25 Discernment is the third one.
0:17:27 The next one after that is your other genius.
0:17:30 It’s called galvanizing.
0:17:33 Galvanizing is people that get joy and energy out of getting up in front of people and inspiring
0:17:39 them and encouraging them and exhorting them and rallying the troops.
0:17:41 Some people love to do that.
0:17:43 As it turns out, I don’t.
0:17:47 I can come on a podcast and talk about it once, but I’m not good at keep pushing and
0:17:50 keep people going.
0:17:53 That’s what led to this model because every day I’d come to work and my staff would go
0:17:54 galvanize us.
0:17:55 They didn’t use those words.
0:17:56 They would galvanize us.
0:18:00 I was like, “Oh, gosh, I’m so tired of this.”
0:18:04 Yet there’s people like you and there was a guy in my office who go, “Oh, I’ll do that
0:18:05 every day.”
0:18:09 I made him my chief galvanizing officer and said, “You’re going to do that.”
0:18:12 He’s like, “Do I really have the authority to do that?”
0:18:13 I said, “No, no, no.
0:18:14 It’s a gift.
0:18:16 It’s a gift that you’re good at.”
0:18:18 His job satisfaction went way up.
0:18:22 So did mine and the productivity of our office changed overnight.
0:18:24 Galvanizing is really important.
0:18:26 The next two are what we call implementation.
0:18:29 The next one is called enablement.
0:18:32 I don’t have this one and neither do you, according to your report.
0:18:34 It’s a working frustration for us.
0:18:35 That means this.
0:18:37 It’s really important to understand this.
0:18:41 Enablement, there are people who wake up in the morning and say, “I just want people
0:18:42 to ask me for help.”
0:18:46 Now, you and I love to give people advice and get them excited, but we don’t necessarily
0:18:48 want to help people on the terms that they need.
0:18:52 If my wife says, “I need your help,” the first thing I do is like, “Whoa, wait, wait.
0:18:53 What kind of help?”
0:18:56 And if it’s the kind of help that I love to do, then I’m like, “Yes.”
0:18:59 But she says, “I just want you to do what I ask you to do.”
0:19:04 I actually kind of willed and I feel really guilty like I’m supposed to be a good person,
0:19:09 but there are people in the world and they are glue on teams and you’ll know people in
0:19:14 your organization that are like this who just love, they get joy and energy of just being
0:19:16 asked to help.
0:19:18 And they say, “Yes, they’re the first to volunteer.
0:19:19 Whatever you need, I’ll do it.”
0:19:21 “Yep, I’m on board.
0:19:22 Let’s get started.”
0:19:23 And we love them.
0:19:26 We need them, but we don’t all have that.
0:19:33 So enablement is the fifth genius and the last one is tenacity.
0:19:34 And that is, it’s one thing to want to help.
0:19:36 It’s another thing to want to finish.
0:19:42 People with tenacity love to make their numbers and drive closure and hit the goal.
0:19:48 And in fact, they’re not actually happy unless they’re completing things.
0:19:52 And I’m actually only happy if I’m starting things.
0:19:55 And then I move on to the next thing before it’s finished.
0:19:56 So that’s the sixth one.
0:19:59 It spells widget, which was kind of an accident.
0:20:05 It goes from wonder to invention to discernment to galvanizing to enablement to tenacity.
0:20:09 And those are the six types of working genius.
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0:23:41 Young Improfiters, I spent years slaving away in so many different jobs trying to prove myself,
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0:25:22 So cool and I really do feel like it really describes people accurately.
0:25:25 Every time you’re saying that, I’m like, “Oh, that fits Kate, that fits Jason.”
0:25:30 You start to think, “Oh, she’s got these two,” and it makes a lot of sense.
0:25:34 Let’s go on to my results selfishly.
0:25:40 I was invention and galvanizing, which totally makes sense because my whole life I’ve been
0:25:45 inventing things, starting businesses since I was four, I’m president of everything.
0:25:51 My whole life started so many charity organizations and different companies, blog sites, you name
0:25:52 it.
0:25:55 I just always have a team of 50 around me, no matter what I’m doing, even if I’m not
0:25:56 paying people.
0:25:57 It’s crazy.
0:26:01 I’m just really good at motivating people and thinking of new ideas my whole life.
0:26:02 It’s your genius.
0:26:03 It’s me.
0:26:06 And I feel like it’s very entrepreneurial.
0:26:14 So I did want to ask you, are there certain working geniuses that are more entrepreneurial
0:26:18 or make for better entrepreneurs than others?
0:26:22 Entrepreneurship requires every genius, but the people that start things, the ones that
0:26:29 get it going right away, that serial entrepreneur that really sparks the idea, your type is
0:26:30 perfect for that.
0:26:35 But now, without people with tenacity around you, and that’s what a genius of yours is
0:26:39 surrounding yourself with people that do things well that you don’t.
0:26:41 So entrepreneurship, you need people who finish things.
0:26:43 You need people that come alongside and help.
0:26:45 You need people that ask the questions.
0:26:49 But your thing at the heart of entrepreneurship, it’s like, I have an idea and I’m going to
0:26:51 get out there and I’m going to share it with people.
0:26:54 And I’m going to ask people for their help.
0:26:59 So I would say your type is about the tip of the spear on entrepreneurship in many ways.
0:27:04 But you need to surround yourself by people that do the things that aren’t your favorite.
0:27:08 So when you think about a startup company, for instance, let’s say five people get together
0:27:09 to start a company.
0:27:11 If they’re all your type, it’s going to fail.
0:27:12 Yeah.
0:27:13 Right?
0:27:16 Because they’re all going to want to do the same things.
0:27:19 And I’ve seen this in the Silicon Valley before because I’ve done a lot of work there.
0:27:21 I live in the Bay Area.
0:27:24 And there’s these companies that get together and everybody wants to be an entrepreneur and
0:27:29 nobody wants to be the one to, no, I want to just crank.
0:27:32 I want to take inspiration from you and then deliver on that.
0:27:39 And if you don’t have that diversity on your team, it’s not going to work totally.
0:27:40 It’s like a band.
0:27:44 If everybody wants to be the songwriter and the lead singer, it doesn’t work.
0:27:47 And the drummer has a different thing and the keyboards do a different thing.
0:27:51 And usually that corresponds to some working genius.
0:27:54 So it’s a really interesting thing how we all need them.
0:27:58 But the tip of the spear and entrepreneurship in IG is perfect.
0:27:59 I love that.
0:28:00 I love hearing that.
0:28:03 I think it’s a good fit to be an entrepreneur because it’s what I’m doing.
0:28:06 So I have working competencies.
0:28:09 These are different than frustrations, different than my working genius.
0:28:13 And these are things that I actually feel like I’m really good at, to be honest.
0:28:19 So my working competencies were tenacity and discernment, which especially tenacity.
0:28:24 I get shit done, sorry for my language for like, I get my stuff done and I love getting
0:28:26 stuff done.
0:28:30 So I was curious to understand, why is it only two working geniuses?
0:28:32 And what are we supposed to do with our competencies?
0:28:33 Are we supposed to try to make them strengths?
0:28:35 Are we supposed to just leave them alone?
0:28:36 How should we handle it?
0:28:40 Don’t try to make them stronger than they are because people do that too often.
0:28:43 When Michael Jordan got out of college, he spent his first two years in the pros.
0:28:46 He was really good at defense and dunking the ball and going to the hoop.
0:28:49 And people said, well, should we then make him become a great shooter?
0:28:54 And people said, no, no, no, make him continue to work on his strengths.
0:28:57 He will become a great shooter because he won’t feel like that defines him and he’ll
0:29:00 do that without pressing.
0:29:02 So you’re going to be good at those things.
0:29:06 And the fact that those are your competencies is really important because you are not allergic
0:29:11 to finishing things and you’re not allergic to evaluating things in discernment.
0:29:16 But the thing is, if I made you do finish things and you had no input into the innovation
0:29:21 around it and getting people excited and your job was just to crank, you’d realize that
0:29:26 that would exhaust you after a while.
0:29:27 Got it.
0:29:28 That makes a lot of sense.
0:29:33 So it’s something that you don’t mind doing, especially if it’s in service of the idea
0:29:35 you came up with and helping people rally around it.
0:29:39 But to do that in a vacuum would be painful for you.
0:29:40 That makes a lot, a lot of sense.
0:29:41 Okay.
0:29:44 So my working frustrations were enablement and wonder.
0:29:51 The enablement part was so eye-opening for me because as of now, I have a 60-person team
0:29:56 and I’m still hands on managing my sales and marketing team, but I’m also the CEO and founder
0:29:57 of the company.
0:30:02 So I’m the CEO/CMO sales leader of my company.
0:30:10 Now I find that as of now, today in 2024, I’m a different type of leader where I just
0:30:13 can’t handhold anyone anymore.
0:30:18 And anybody who’s not a rock star, who’s not moving as fast as me, I’m just sorry, you’re
0:30:19 slowing me down.
0:30:25 I’m pulling you in now because you’re getting it and this person’s off to the side.
0:30:26 But I wasn’t always like that.
0:30:32 I started with a team of interns and volunteers and I used to handhold everyone and teach everybody
0:30:34 everything and be very, very patient.
0:30:36 And now it’s just have different responsibility.
0:30:39 I just can’t be that person anymore.
0:30:43 So it made me realize that I need to get some sort of middle manager between some of these
0:30:49 employees and made me realize how valuable my business partner Kate is, who is super
0:30:53 patient and I know if she took this assessment, she would have enablement.
0:30:54 Exactly.
0:30:57 And that’s the thing about this assessment is that 10 minutes after getting the results
0:30:59 back, you go, “I got it.”
0:31:01 It makes sense and you know what to do.
0:31:06 We’ve seen companies reorganize and I don’t just mean the titles and reorganize how work
0:31:07 gets done.
0:31:11 They look at this and they go, “Oh my gosh, we’re not even tapping into that genius of
0:31:12 yours.”
0:31:13 And the people are like, “I know.
0:31:15 I’d be so much happier.”
0:31:17 And you’re looking at your people going, “They have enablement.
0:31:21 That is allowing me to do what I do best and I know that I have somebody else who’s going
0:31:25 to be helpful and listening and patient with everybody and all that.”
0:31:29 But if everybody had that, you wouldn’t get things done either.
0:31:32 The word diversity in this is so critical.
0:31:37 Now the other genius that’s a frustration for you is wonder, which is if people just
0:31:42 sit around and ask questions and ponder things and don’t have a bias for getting something
0:31:44 done, that’s probably frustrating to you.
0:31:48 I was thinking through this and I was like, “Man, I hope I’m just not this egotistical
0:31:50 founder because I’m like, “I think I have all these.”
0:31:52 With wonder, I’m just like, “I know what to do.
0:31:53 I don’t need to wonder about it.
0:31:55 I know how to push my business forward.
0:31:57 I don’t need to wonder about everything.”
0:32:00 Yeah, or five minutes of wonder.
0:32:01 That’s enough.
0:32:02 Here we go.
0:32:03 Exactly, exactly.
0:32:08 Well, I will tell you something to go a little level deeper, which is a new book I’m working
0:32:13 on something right now, and that is sometimes because of the way we’re raised, we have this
0:32:15 desire to achieve.
0:32:21 I had this growing up, and I was actually really good at the things I hated.
0:32:26 The first job I got out of college was a job organized around the very things I liked least.
0:32:31 But because I had this achievement mentality, it was like, “Then I am going to do it.”
0:32:35 I’ve come to realize now that I have wounds, that I didn’t even know were wounds.
0:32:37 I thought they were my superpowers.
0:32:42 You’re young, and you’re like, “I can power through anything,” and that doesn’t mean we’re
0:32:44 meant to.
0:32:49 As you understand, your genius is more, “It’ll be nice for you to be able to go.
0:32:51 I don’t have to be good at that.”
0:32:54 But for the longest time, when I was young, I was doing all the things I didn’t necessarily
0:32:57 like, and I said, “See, I’m pretty good at this.”
0:32:58 Yeah.
0:33:01 Sometimes we have to to get the experiences.
0:33:02 Absolutely.
0:33:03 Absolutely.
0:33:06 And then you’re going to be a parent, and you’ve got to do everything.
0:33:09 I can’t go, “Well, my kid’s diapers need to be changed.
0:33:12 I’m not a T. I don’t finish things, so I guess I’m not going to do that.”
0:33:13 No, no.
0:33:17 There are certain things in life, and in fact, even in any job, every CEO, every leader has
0:33:19 to do all of them a little bit.
0:33:24 But if they overindex on the ones that drain them of energy and they don’t give themselves
0:33:30 the experience of spending a lot of time in their genius, it’s really bad.
0:33:34 It’s really bad burnout, and really, I think a lot of addiction comes from that, a lot
0:33:39 of really difficult things, because we are meant to exercise the gifts we’ve been given.
0:33:40 Yeah.
0:33:42 And entrepreneurs are more prone to burnout.
0:33:48 25% of entrepreneurs are more have burnout, more prone to depression, addiction to your
0:33:49 point, anxiety, stress.
0:33:54 So we do need to manage our energy levels, which is what this assessment is all about.
0:33:55 Yes.
0:34:01 And we need to not feel guilty about not loving every part of what we’re supposed to do.
0:34:04 One of the things on our assessment, a team of five people, like if you’re having a law
0:34:07 entrepreneurial organization, all five of them can take it and they can look at it and they’re
0:34:10 going to go, “Oh, my gosh, you mean you like that?
0:34:12 Oh, you do like that.
0:34:13 Would you do that instead of me?”
0:34:18 And I could take this off your plate, and literally, this is more of a productivity tool.
0:34:19 We didn’t design it that way.
0:34:24 We thought it was just a personal understanding insight, but we’ve seen that when five people
0:34:29 that work together each understand one another’s geniuses and frustrations and competencies,
0:34:34 they adjust and everybody gets to do more of what they love, and the productivity and
0:34:37 success goes through the roof, and that happens like in an hour.
0:34:41 They look at this and go, “Holy Toledo, I know what we need to do.”
0:34:44 So let’s talk about how people can take this assessment.
0:34:47 Young and Profiters, I highly encourage you guys to check this out.
0:34:48 It takes 10 to 15 minutes.
0:34:52 You can go to youngandprofiting.co/work to take it.
0:34:53 It’s a 42-question survey.
0:34:55 I literally did it in 10 minutes.
0:35:00 You get your results right away, and like I said, it’s eye-opening.
0:35:03 As soon as I read the report, I was like, “This sounds exactly like me, and I know exactly
0:35:05 what I need to do.”
0:35:09 Can you talk to us about how do people utilize their results typically?
0:35:14 Well, first of all, if anybody took math, I didn’t remember how to do permutations and
0:35:15 combinations.
0:35:19 Because there’s six geniuses, it means there’s 15 pairings.
0:35:22 Your pairing is what’s called the evangelistic innovator.
0:35:24 You like to come up with new ideas and evangelize them.
0:35:27 You have energy for those, and everyone has a two-word descriptor, and these are the things
0:35:31 people look at and go, “Oh, my gosh, that’s exactly who I am.”
0:35:32 And what should you do with that?
0:35:35 The first thing you should do is you should share it with the people you work with and
0:35:37 the people you live with.
0:35:42 Because it’s going to help them avoid what we call the fundamental attribution error.
0:35:45 And the fundamental attribution error is when you do something that I find annoying, Hala,
0:35:48 I will attribute to your character.
0:35:51 But if I do something that causes people to think I’m annoying, I’ll attribute it to
0:35:52 my environment.
0:35:53 And this is where relationships break down.
0:35:56 I need to go, “Oh, you’re wired that way.
0:36:02 You’re constantly excited and exuberant about all these ideas, not because there’s something
0:36:03 wrong with you, because that’s who you are.”
0:36:06 Whereas some people can go, “Gosh, that’s so annoying.”
0:36:10 Well, we all do things that are wonderful and annoying, and it’s because of how we’re
0:36:11 wired.
0:36:14 And when we understand that about each other, we actually start to under—the prayer of
0:36:17 St. Francis is to seek to understand more than to be understood.
0:36:18 So we seek to understand one another.
0:36:22 The other thing you should do is talk to your manager about it, or talk to your colleagues
0:36:23 about it.
0:36:28 We had a guy who called us and said he was going in for his performance review, and he
0:36:30 knew it was going to be bad.
0:36:32 He had had a bad year.
0:36:35 And the night before, he took his working genius and he looked at the results and he
0:36:36 was like, “Oh, wow.”
0:36:37 He walked into the room.
0:36:39 He handed it to his boss and his boss’s boss.
0:36:40 I think they’re both there.
0:36:43 And he said, “Would you guys look at this before we go over this?”
0:36:46 And they looked at it and they were like, “Oh, my gosh, you’re totally in the wrong job.”
0:36:47 And he goes, “Yeah, I think so too.”
0:36:51 And they’re like, “You know, we have another job that you’d be great at.”
0:36:56 And he said, “I spent $25 on this darn assessment.
0:36:58 Showed it to my boss and I got promoted instead of fired.”
0:36:59 Oh, my God.
0:37:04 Too many people get fired from organizations where they’re good cultural fits.
0:37:06 They’re just in the wrong chair.
0:37:10 And it’s so hard for managers to know, like, “What’s wrong with this person?”
0:37:15 We had a CEO, Hala, who was going to fire his head of sales, this wonderful woman, who
0:37:17 was a good cultural fit.
0:37:21 And she had made her numbers and her staff loved her and the customers loved her.
0:37:22 She was fantastic.
0:37:26 But then the market changed, as they always do, and entrepreneurs know this better than
0:37:27 anyone.
0:37:30 And when the market changed, he said to her, “Hey, we need a whole new sales strategy.”
0:37:32 And she was dumbfounded.
0:37:33 She was stumped.
0:37:34 And he kept going back to her.
0:37:35 So did you come up with it?
0:37:36 And she goes, “No, I got nothing.”
0:37:39 And he goes, “I was about to let her go.”
0:37:43 And we did the working genius and I realized she had no invention at all.
0:37:45 She was all about implementation.
0:37:46 She had enablement.
0:37:47 Her staff loved her.
0:37:50 Her customers loved her because she was always responsible.
0:37:54 She was a tenacity, so she made her numbers, delivered on what they said.
0:37:56 But she didn’t have invention.
0:37:59 So they borrowed a guy from marketing to come work with her.
0:38:01 And in three hours, they came up with a new sales strategy.
0:38:04 He said, “I almost fired one of my best people.”
0:38:08 And leaders do this all the time because I couldn’t understand that she’s not great
0:38:09 at everything.
0:38:15 And that we can borrow skills from other people or work across divisions or change people’s
0:38:17 roles to fit their geniuses.
0:38:23 So I think this could be such a good way to avoid losing good people, over hiring when
0:38:27 we have people in our organizations that aren’t being fully tapped.
0:38:32 And so we’re finding that this is growing faster than anything, Hala, that I’ve ever
0:38:33 done.
0:38:37 And it’s having a greater impact on organizations and people in their lives than anything we’ve
0:38:38 ever worked on.
0:38:39 That’s crazy.
0:38:44 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
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0:42:49 It’s really, really cool.
0:42:50 I love taking it.
0:42:53 I’m going to have my whole team take the assessment.
0:42:58 So again, guys, if you guys want to take the assessment, go to youngandprofiting.co/work.
0:43:03 I’ll put the link in our show notes so you guys can get access to it.
0:43:09 And I want to talk about what we should do when we have to chew glass as entrepreneurs.
0:43:13 Here’s this famous quote from Seth Godin, Elon Musk, nobody knows who really came up
0:43:14 with this.
0:43:19 He said, “Running a startup is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss.”
0:43:24 And basically what Elon and Seth meant is that as an entrepreneur, you want to work
0:43:25 on all these new shiny things.
0:43:30 A lot of us are inventors, but you end up having to work on the problems of your business.
0:43:33 You have to chew glass, do the things you don’t want to do.
0:43:38 Like you said, entrepreneurs have to do this, and especially people young in their careers,
0:43:42 which I think there’s a lot of young people listening where they’re having to chew glass.
0:43:47 They can’t pick and choose what they can work on yet because they haven’t built that foundation.
0:43:55 So how can we manage our energy levels and suck up and do our frustrations at work or
0:43:57 working frustrations?
0:44:02 So much of working genius is about alleviating guilt and judgment.
0:44:07 So when you have to chew glass, what’s worse than having to chew glass is feeling like
0:44:10 there’s something wrong with you for not liking it.
0:44:14 When you have to do something and you go, “Oh crap, I have to go do a performance for you
0:44:20 or do enablement or do tenacity for us, enablement would be a good one,” instead of saying, “What’s
0:44:21 wrong with me?
0:44:24 I guess I’m a fraud or I should like this.”
0:44:28 It’s good to go, “Hey, this isn’t the thing I love, but I know I have to do it.
0:44:31 I’m going to go in there and do it, and I’m not going to feel bad about myself for not
0:44:32 loving it.”
0:44:34 Like in our office here, my son works with me.
0:44:36 He doesn’t like tenacity.
0:44:39 And so he’ll go into an office and go, “Hey, I’m going into the T-cave, you guys.
0:44:41 I got three hours of tenacity work to do.
0:44:43 I’m going to roll up my sleeves and do it.
0:44:46 I’m probably going to be kind of grumpy, and when I come out, I’ll probably be exhausted.”
0:44:48 And it’s his way of saying, “It’s important.
0:44:51 I’m going to do it well, but I don’t like it.”
0:44:55 And when you know that you’re allowed to say that, it’s like, “Yeah, I can do stuff
0:44:58 that I don’t like,” but if people are like, “What’s wrong with you?
0:45:00 You’re supposed to like doing the accounting.”
0:45:05 If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re supposed to love every part of your job.
0:45:08 But when you can go, “No, I actually hate this, but it’s necessary, I’m going to go
0:45:09 push through it.”
0:45:11 And if you don’t do it perfectly, you should go, “Yeah, I’m probably never going to do
0:45:12 it perfectly.
0:45:14 Some people actually love this stuff.”
0:45:17 So I really think it’s taking that guilt.
0:45:20 So when we’re chewing the glass, we can go, “Man, I can’t wait till this is done, so
0:45:22 I can go back and do the stuff I love.”
0:45:26 I could also imagine that it will help us just become aware that, “Hey, this is probably
0:45:32 something I’m going to procrastinate because I hate doing it, and let me put some boundaries
0:45:33 on myself.
0:45:36 Let me do like a Pomodero technique and time myself to do it.
0:45:37 Let me gamify this.
0:45:39 Let me do something to get it done.”
0:45:40 Exactly.
0:45:42 And we don’t need to do those things with the stuff we love.
0:45:43 Exactly.
0:45:46 And in fact, when we do those things with the stuff we love, it’s kind of a bummer because
0:45:48 we’re like, “Oh, no, don’t limit this.
0:45:49 Let me just enjoy my work.”
0:45:52 So I love the way you said it.
0:45:55 Find ways to get through it without making yourself feel like there’s something wrong
0:45:57 with you for not loving it.
0:46:00 So how do personality traits interact with working geniuses?
0:46:03 How is it different than personality traits?
0:46:05 This is a great question.
0:46:07 We’re really working on this right now.
0:46:11 We like Myers-Briggs, Strengths Finder, and all those other things.
0:46:12 Strengths Finder is interesting.
0:46:13 There’s so many of them.
0:46:14 It’s hard to remember.
0:46:18 But your personality as the noun is what you bring.
0:46:19 We use Myers-Briggs a lot.
0:46:22 My Myers-Briggs type doesn’t say what I like to do.
0:46:28 It says what my preferences are about how I think and how I just approach the world.
0:46:29 Working genius is what you do.
0:46:31 It’s the verb that goes with the noun.
0:46:36 And what’s interesting is, I know people that have my same Myers-Briggs type, my same personality,
0:46:42 like we’re extroverted and we’re idealists and we like to keep our options open, but
0:46:44 they have a completely different working genius.
0:46:49 They take that personality and then they actually get crap done and they like details around
0:46:50 that.
0:46:56 Whereas I am an ENFP, but I like to invent and discern things.
0:47:00 And so what we’ve realized is, so often we look at a person’s personality type and we
0:47:03 think that tells us what kind of job they should have.
0:47:05 And it doesn’t, not at all.
0:47:11 It tells you what generally motivates them in life, but not what that translates to in
0:47:15 terms of the role and what you do every day.
0:47:18 Because when we used to use Myers-Briggs, we were like, “So should I be in marketing
0:47:19 if I’m an ENFP?”
0:47:22 And we’re like, “Well, first of all, what do you mean by being in marketing?
0:47:24 And secondly, what do you love to do?”
0:47:29 And so it’s a very different and the combination of the two is great, but the thing that’s
0:47:33 really lacking out there is people don’t know the tasks that they love.
0:47:36 So I’m an evangelistic innovator.
0:47:41 What are you and what are some of the common pairings out there that people should be aware
0:47:42 of?
0:47:47 I’m an ID, which means I like innovating and discerning, which means I’m what’s called
0:47:49 a discriminating ideator.
0:47:50 Discriminating means this.
0:47:53 When I write, I’m an author, I’ve written a lot of books.
0:47:59 My first draft is usually pretty good, because while I’m innovating, while I’m writing, I’m
0:48:03 actually editing myself too, because that doesn’t make sense.
0:48:04 That doesn’t make sense.
0:48:07 I have so many good friends that are your type, and I love working with them.
0:48:10 They have a hundred ideas.
0:48:13 They’re constantly come up to them and they’ll check in with me and go, “Hey, can you discern
0:48:14 this for me?”
0:48:18 And then the discernment part, what you have in your competency is what says, “Hey, those
0:48:20 are the three that you should pursue.
0:48:23 Those other seven are okay, or these two wouldn’t work.”
0:48:26 To check in with a discerner and go, “Check me on this.
0:48:27 Does this sound right?”
0:48:29 And they’ll go, “Those are the three that you should pursue with abandon.”
0:48:32 So I am pretty good at figuring things out quickly.
0:48:38 But what I don’t do is, I don’t do what you do, which is stick with evangelizing it.
0:48:40 I need people around me that love to do that.
0:48:43 And when they’ll look at my idea and they’ll go, “That’s a great idea.”
0:48:44 I’m going to go out and tell the world about it.
0:48:46 I’m like, “Thank you.”
0:48:49 And I’m going to tell them again and again and again.
0:48:54 So I’m what’s called the discriminating ideator, which is more about the judgment than the
0:48:55 action.
0:48:56 Interesting.
0:49:01 And what are some of the other pairings that you have in this assessment?
0:49:05 If you’re a WI, which my wife is and some close friends of mine are, which are the first
0:49:09 two, which is all ideator, they’re called the creative dreamer.
0:49:11 And they’re just like, “You know what would be cool?
0:49:13 I have this idea.”
0:49:16 And you’re like, “Yeah, but we got to go tell the world about this.”
0:49:18 They’re like, “Oh, I don’t know.”
0:49:19 And they change their mind a lot.
0:49:23 They just love to stay up there at 60,000 feet, where you’re galvanizing as closer to
0:49:25 landing the plane.
0:49:28 And then on the other end of the scale, there’s the E and the T that are the implementers.
0:49:30 And that’s the loyal finisher.
0:49:33 The ET is the loyal finisher.
0:49:38 They love other people to set the direction, other people to get things organized.
0:49:41 And then they’re like, “I will do what you asked me to do and I won’t stop until it’s
0:49:42 done.”
0:49:48 And let me tell you, I love WIs and I loved ETs, but in the same meeting, it can be really
0:49:55 frustrating because if I’m having a brainstorming meeting, the WI is so happy.
0:49:57 And the ET is like, “I got work to do.
0:49:59 Can we just get through this?”
0:50:01 Or you’re brainstorming and they’re like, “Well, that’ll never work because the budget
0:50:02 doesn’t.”
0:50:03 And you’re like, “No, no, no.
0:50:04 You don’t have to implement it yet.”
0:50:08 Or if you go to an implementation meeting and the WI is there and you’re like the day
0:50:11 before the launch and the people are like, “Okay, this is what we need to get done.”
0:50:14 And the WI says, “Hey, I have an idea.
0:50:15 Maybe we should…”
0:50:16 And you’re like, “No, no, no.
0:50:17 This is not the time for new ideas.
0:50:19 We have to actually do this.”
0:50:24 So one of the things we say is when you’re in a meeting, identify what kind of conversation
0:50:25 you’re having.
0:50:30 This isn’t a GT meeting, which is we’re going to get stuff done, or this is a WD meeting
0:50:33 where we’re going to actually just throw things against the wall and evaluate them so that
0:50:38 people can go, “Oh, okay, I’m not very good at this, so I’ll sit back and be patient.”
0:50:42 Otherwise, people come to meetings and the ET wants to drive things to closure.
0:50:48 The WI wants to brainstorm and everybody’s pissed off because we didn’t really know what
0:50:51 kind of discussion we were having and they were just bringing their best selves to the
0:50:52 table.
0:50:53 Totally makes sense.
0:50:54 And I love that.
0:50:58 I love the fact that this assessment allows you to know more about your coworkers so that
0:51:01 you can’t be proactive and be like, “Okay, I’ve got two people that are going to be
0:51:05 opposites in this meeting and I don’t want to just spiral out of control, so let me just
0:51:09 set some boundaries before we even get started.”
0:51:13 You know what I love about this, Hala, is that you can also have conversations that
0:51:17 seemed dangerous or even offensive before.
0:51:21 You’re in a meeting and somebody will go, “You know, I wonder if we should rethink this.”
0:51:24 And somebody will go, “That’s your W, huh?
0:51:25 That’s not a criticism.”
0:51:26 It’s like, “Oh, this is your W coming out.”
0:51:27 And they’re like, “Yeah.”
0:51:30 And they go, “You know, I don’t think that we’re in a W place right now.
0:51:32 I think we should do that another time.”
0:51:33 And it’s not offensive.
0:51:36 They’re like, “Oh, okay, we’re actually meeting them where they’re at.”
0:51:40 And there’s another meeting where you’ll turn to somebody and go, “Hey, we need your W.
0:51:42 Are we doing the right thing?”
0:51:47 So it’s so great to be able to have those conversations or sometimes somebody’s being
0:51:50 too E and they’re too much trying to please people.
0:51:53 And you’re like, “Hey, you’re managing this person.
0:51:54 They’re not meeting their numbers.
0:51:55 We’ve had a problem.
0:51:59 You’re really patient, but maybe you’re being too accommodating.”
0:52:02 And that’s probably your enablement.
0:52:05 And so rather than saying there’s something wrong with you, it’s like you’re naturally
0:52:06 inclined to this.
0:52:09 We usually love that, but maybe it’s not appropriate here.
0:52:11 And people receive that really well.
0:52:14 They’re like, “Hey, you’re just recognizing me for who I am.”
0:52:15 Yeah.
0:52:20 I could imagine that that would lead to a lot more employee satisfaction and retention.
0:52:22 People just being happier at work.
0:52:23 Absolutely.
0:52:26 And usually in an organization, there’s a place for everybody if you know what they
0:52:27 are.
0:52:31 And if you have a small organization and there’s only a few people there, you’re an entrepreneur
0:52:34 and somebody’s geniuses don’t line up with what you need, instead of rejecting them and
0:52:36 making them feel like a bad person.
0:52:41 What you say is, “Hey, you know, you really should use these skills, and we don’t have
0:52:44 a role for you here to do that, but you’re meant to use them.
0:52:47 So we’re not saying you’re not a good person.
0:52:51 We’re just going to help you find a place where you can be who you are, as opposed to
0:52:54 trying to justify it by saying, “Well, you didn’t deliver.
0:52:55 Like there’s something wrong with you.”
0:53:00 I will tell you, Hala, that first job I had for two years, which was right out of college,
0:53:02 and it was the number one job in America.
0:53:05 Somebody wrote a book that you’re the best places to work in America for college grads.
0:53:07 And this was listed as number one.
0:53:08 And I got the job.
0:53:10 I don’t know how.
0:53:13 And it was all wrong for me.
0:53:14 I didn’t know that.
0:53:16 I just thought I failed.
0:53:23 And 35 years later, I’m figuring all this stuff out, and I’m like, “Oh my, I didn’t fail.
0:53:26 I just took the wrong job.”
0:53:29 And probably had they known what my working…
0:53:30 It’s funny.
0:53:31 I don’t know if you know who Meg Whitman is.
0:53:32 Of course.
0:53:33 I worked at Hewlett Packard for five years.
0:53:34 Oh, okay.
0:53:37 Well, I worked with Meg in my first job at Bain and Company, right?
0:53:41 I really appreciated her because she pulled me aside after two years at Bain.
0:53:46 And she said, “Pat, you would be a good partner here, because that’s what I ended up doing.”
0:53:50 She goes, “But this analyst job that we hired you for, this isn’t for you.”
0:53:51 And I was like, “No, it’s not.
0:53:52 I hate it.”
0:53:56 But she said, “You’ll be a good partner one day, but this kind of work right here.”
0:54:01 And the problem sometimes in companies is we make somebody prove themselves in one kind
0:54:05 of work in order to get promoted into another kind of work when they were meant to just
0:54:06 do that one.
0:54:09 The best salesperson isn’t necessarily the best sales manager.
0:54:13 But Meg, even back then, said to me, “You’re going to do really well someday, but this
0:54:15 kind of job right here is not good for you.”
0:54:20 And honestly, as I’m thinking about my employees, I can already tell who’s in the right job
0:54:22 and who’s not.
0:54:23 Yes.
0:54:30 I need this so and so and so to take the assessment because I know in my gut that they’re not in
0:54:37 the right job because they’re great people, very smart, but not doing rock star work.
0:54:40 And when they get seen that way and you can say to them, “Hey, there’s nothing wrong
0:54:41 with you.
0:54:46 We just have you in the wrong role and you’re meant to work in the right role.
0:54:48 That’s so liberating.”
0:54:52 Something that helped me put this all together was really thinking about the working geniuses
0:54:56 as the recipe to actually complete a project.
0:54:58 And you have these three stages of work.
0:55:03 So I’d love for you to explain how all of these work together to actually complete a
0:55:07 single project because we need all of them to do so.
0:55:08 Yes.
0:55:13 So early stages in an organization, the W and the I are really at play.
0:55:18 And the D2 and the G a little bit, but that’s the ideation phase.
0:55:22 We talked to these guys at Nike a few years ago, and they talked about how they had people
0:55:25 that do product ideas, ideation.
0:55:26 So they come up with some idea.
0:55:30 We can put gel in a shoe or whatever they come up with their ideas.
0:55:32 And that’s called ideation and that’s early on.
0:55:34 But then somebody needs to take that idea.
0:55:37 The middle two are called activation.
0:55:42 And the discernment and the galvanizing is evaluating whether the idea is good and working
0:55:44 with the innovator to tweak it.
0:55:49 And then when it’s ready to go, galvanizing people and getting them on board.
0:55:53 And at Nike, they were talking about how they went from ideation, they skipped the middle
0:55:58 stage for a while, and then there were people in implementation, the E and the T. That’s
0:56:00 the later stage of work where you’re actually just getting it done.
0:56:05 The product’s been set, the plans are there, now we just have to execute.
0:56:11 And if you go straight from ideation to implementation, which is what they were doing, the people
0:56:14 in ideation are like, why don’t those people implement our ideas better?
0:56:17 And the people in implementation are, why don’t they send us better ideas?
0:56:22 Because nobody has tweaked them and rallied people around what needed to be done.
0:56:26 So the three stages go from ideation to activation to implementation.
0:56:30 Now, of course, you’re doing a little bit of each at every step.
0:56:35 It’s never completely linear, but when you move out of the ideation phase, it’s really
0:56:39 important that people realize that and they focus their efforts.
0:56:41 And there’s some people that have a harder time with that.
0:56:45 And so when you can talk to them about that and go, hey, listen, we have three weeks until
0:56:49 this launches, we really have to stop going back and questioning everything.
0:56:53 Or, hey, we’re at the early phase here and I know you want to implement things and you
0:56:55 want a timeline, but we’re not there yet.
0:56:59 So come to the meeting, but sit on your hands if you have to while we’re brainstorming this,
0:57:03 because we’re not ready to start putting the detailed plans in place.
0:57:07 Is this something that we should actually think through before our project?
0:57:11 Like who’s going to be responsible for each of these three phases?
0:57:14 How are we going to put this in a project plan?
0:57:17 Or is it just like a natural thing that happens?
0:57:21 I think the answer is somewhere in between and probably closer to yes, we should do what
0:57:24 you said originally, but it’s never going to be perfect that way.
0:57:28 But I do think we should go like, hey, we’re at the early stages of this.
0:57:32 We have to have a WID meeting where we’re going to get together, wonder, invent and discern.
0:57:34 That’s all we’re going to do.
0:57:37 So you’re probably best at leading that meeting.
0:57:42 For the next week, why don’t you realize that that’s what you’re going to help us do.
0:57:45 And if there’s other people that struggle with that, let’s be aware of that.
0:57:50 And it’s interesting because you have I, which is an ideation, but you have G, which is an
0:57:53 activation, which leads to implementation.
0:57:56 For you, this is an interesting thing, Hala.
0:57:58 I say this a lot.
0:58:03 I think that there are times when you’re innovating, you’re ideating, and you have to let people
0:58:07 know that you’re not galvanizing because you could probably go to people go, oh, this would
0:58:08 be a cool idea.
0:58:12 And the implementers are like, okay, you want us to start right now and you got to go,
0:58:13 no, no, no, no, no, I’m just ideating.
0:58:15 Yeah, this is so true.
0:58:21 So I often say to people, I’m not gene right now, I’m eyeing because otherwise they want
0:58:24 to go out and implement something and you’re like, oh, no, I’m just throwing it against
0:58:30 the wall for your discernment rather than galvanizing you for your enablement.
0:58:31 Does that make sense?
0:58:32 Totally makes sense.
0:58:35 And there’s other times when you’re like, okay, we should do this and people like, well,
0:58:36 I’m not really sure.
0:58:37 Oh, no, I’m not ideating right now.
0:58:38 I’m galvanizing you.
0:58:40 I need you to act.
0:58:43 We’ve already discerned this.
0:58:47 So it’s just the language and knowing what stage of the conversation you’re in or the
0:58:49 project you’re in or the work that you’re in.
0:58:54 And a lot of entrepreneurial companies are really comfortable with the ideation and then
0:58:56 they get frustrated when it comes to implementation.
0:59:01 That’s why even the most innovative young company in the world needs enablement and
0:59:02 tenacity.
0:59:10 All right, young and profitors, that was the first part of my conversation with Patrick
0:59:11 Lenchoni.
0:59:17 I’m so excited by this idea of working geniuses and it makes total sense when you think about
0:59:18 it.
0:59:22 We each possess a different bucket of skills and abilities and you’re going to be more
0:59:28 fulfilled and successful when you lean into, rather than away from, your true talents.
0:59:33 Sometimes we can get awfully good at things that we don’t actually like and we may be
0:59:37 able to get by doing those things, but we could be accomplishing so much more if we
0:59:41 spent that time doing things that actually bring us joy and energy.
0:59:46 And if you want to find out what activities bring you the most joy and energy and what
0:59:52 you’re working geniuses are, you can go to youngandprofiting.co/work and you can take
0:59:53 the assessment yourself.
0:59:59 It’s just $25 and when I took the assessment, I found out so much that I already knew deep
1:00:04 down inside, but it helped me describe it and verbalize it so that I could share that
1:00:07 information with my team.
1:00:13 And it totally described exactly what I like to do for work and it helps me understand
1:00:18 what areas I should lean into and what areas I should continue to outsource.
1:00:22 I’ve been doing it naturally, but it’s so good to get validation that I’ve been on
1:00:24 the right track.
1:00:28 Again if you want to learn how to use working geniuses for teams, check out part two next
1:00:31 week and thanks so much for listening to this episode.
1:00:35 If you listened and learned and profited from it, then why not share young and profiting
1:00:36 with a friend or a colleague?
1:00:41 Perhaps they would enjoy figuring out what type of working genius they possess as well.
1:00:45 And if you did enjoy the show and you learned something, then please take a couple minutes
1:00:49 to drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.
1:00:53 If you prefer to watch our videos, you can find us on YouTube, just look up young and
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1:01:00 If you want to reach out to me on social media, you can find me on Instagram @yappwithhalla
1:01:03 or LinkedIn by searching my name, it’s Halla Taha.
1:01:07 And of course, I’ve got to thank my amazing production team, thank you guys for all your
1:01:10 hard work, I’m so grateful for you all.
1:01:14 This is your host, Halla Taha, aka The Podcast Princess, signing off.
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