What are your working geniuses?

I have listened to The Six Types of Working Genius podcast for awhile, and I love the way Patrick Lencioni offers really easy to understand ways to identify your own gifts, and take advantage of the gifts of those you work with in order to create a strong team. Can you imagine if we all knew how to elevate and celebrate the best parts of ourselves and others to maximize success? It goes along with that saying, “do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Lencioni wrote the book, The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team. Because of his book, I was able to further discover what Lencioni defines as three key parts to exploring who we are: our working geniuses, our working competency and our working frustrations.

I was pleased to discover my working geniuses are enablement and tenacity. Enablement means you are good at and enjoy, providing others with encouragement and assistance for projects and ideas. Tenacity means you enjoy pushing projects and tasks through to completion to ensure that the desired results are achieved. These are parts of myself I know well, and to have it confirmed was important.

Same goes for my two types of working competency – galvanizing and discernment. Galvanizing means you are capable of and don’t mind rallying people and inspiring them to take action around a project, task or idea. Discernment means you are capable of and don’t mind using your intuition and instincts to evaluate and assess ideas or plans.

My two types of working frustration are wonder and invention. When wonder is a working frustration, it means you aren’t naturally gifted at and or derive energy and joy from pondering the possibility of greater potential and opportunity in a given situation. Similarly, when invention is a working frustration, it means you aren’t naturally gifted at and/or derive energy and joy from creating original and novel ideas and solutions. While I love helping my clients with their creative ideas, and I am as excited as they are when they see big potential in their dreams, my strengths lie in helping them break down the actionable ways in which they can achieve those goals.

I think it’s important to continually take assessments to be sure you’re on the right path with your work. For example, if I had a client ask me to help them create a large-scale visibility campaign, I’d know exactly who to direct them to on my team! Someone who not only specializes in those things (with credentials to prove it), but who LOVES doing just that. I know it would make her so happy to do something like that; whereas, I would be first in line to help her take each piece apart and create a strategy for it.

This is how to create and nurture an effective team. One where everyone plays to their strengths and finds joy in the process!

Have you read the book? What are your working geniuses?