What is Your Working Genius?
When it comes to work, we all have gifts. Natural, God-given talents that give us energy and allow us to contribute to the success of organizations and teams. We are meant to use those gifts, and it is frustrating, sometimes tragic, when we can't. Of course, if we don't know our gifts, we can't be sure that we are using them.
Now, in addition to our gifts, we all have limitations—natural areas of deficiency that drain us of our energy and frustrate our ability to contribute to work. Though we can’t always avoid those areas, we are meant to minimize the time we have to spend on those tasks, though again, if we don’t know what those deficiencies are, we can’t minimize them.
The Patrick Lencioni’s Six Types of Working Genius is a model and an assessment tool that allows anyone—CEOs, teachers, factory supervisors, college students—to identify their gifts and limitations so they can maximize their satisfaction and success in any kind of work they do.
The Six Geniuses Defined.
Assessments may be used for leadership development, behavioral style and thought processes, to include:
THE GENIUS OF WONDER
The natural gift of pondering the possibility of greater potential and opportunity in a given situation.THE GENIUS OF INVENTION
The natural gift of creating original and novel ideas and solutions.THE GENIUS OF DISCERNMENT
The natural gift of intuitively and instinctively evaluating ideas and situations.THE GENIUS OF GALVANIZING
The natural gift of rallying, inspiring and organizing others to take action.THE GENIUS OF ENABLEMENT
The natural gift of providing encouragement and assistance for an idea or project.THE GENIUS OF TENACITY
The natural gift of pushing projects or tasks to completion to achieve results.
As it turns out, those six types of genius—Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement and Tenacity—make up the six required activities for any work endeavor. Whether you’re engaged in running a company, a department, a project, or even a family, all six are necessary ingredients for success. And no one person can embody them all, which is why teamwork is so important.
And among those six types, everyone has two that we call areas of genius, where we get our joy and energy and have natural ability. We have two that we call areas of frustration, where we get drained of joy and energy and have little natural ability. And then there are two in the middle, areas where we might have some ability, but is not a source of energy and satisfaction.
Imagine if every company, every organization, every team knew the areas of genius, competency and frustration of their people and organized them for success. And imagine if every parent knew those areas of genius for their spouse and children. It’s not an exaggeration to say that there would be more joy and less misery in society. But that has to happen one person at a time. And that person might as well be you.
DO YOU WANT TO FIND OUT WHAT YOUR AREAS OF GENIUS ARE?
