Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - The Productivity Framework That Eliminates Burnout and Maximizes Output | Productivity | Presented by Working Genius

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Now on Spotify Video! Many leaders think burnout is solved by better time management, when the real issue is role alignment. When people spend most of their day doing work that drains their energy, productivity stalls, and teamwork suffers. In this episode, presented by Working Genius, Hala Taha and Patrick Lencioni break down the Working Genius framework, showing how individuals can identify the type of work that fuels them, rather than exhausts them. They also reveal team-building strategies for matching people to their natural strengths, reducing friction, improving synergy, and driving long-term success. In this episode, Hala and Patrick will discuss: (00:00) Introduction and Warm-Up (13:55) The Burnout Barometer Activity (21:15) The Problem With Modern Work (31:16) The Birth of the Working Genius Framework (43:50) The Six Types of Working Genius (01:02:49) Hala and Pat’s Working Genius Results (01:14:32) Understanding Your Working Genius Results (01:25:37) Building Work Around Your Productivity Strengths (01:41:18) Leveraging Working Genius for Team Building (01:52:54) Common Friction Areas in Workplace Dynamics (02:10:57) Q&A Section Working Genius is a productivity and teamwork model created by Patrick Lencioni to address the root cause of workplace burnout and frustration. It has helped millions worldwide gain clarity, boost productivity, and build more effective teams by understanding their natural work strengths. Take the Working Genius assessment and get 20% off with code PROFITING at workinggenius.com.  Sponsored By: Working Genius: Take the Working Genius assessment and get 20% off with code PROFITING at workinggenius.com. Resources Mentioned: Working Genius Webinar Live Presentation:  Patrick's Book, The Six Types of Working Genius: bit.ly/T6TOWG  Patrick's Book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: bit.ly/-TFDOAT  Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals  Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new  Disclaimer: This episode is a paid partnership with Working Genius. Sponsored content helps support our podcast and continue bringing valuable insights to our audience. Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Work-Life Balance, Work Life Balance, Motivation, Manifestation, Time Management, Life Balance, Goal Setting, Goals, Resolutions

Hello, young and profitors. Have you ever wondered why some tasks absolutely drain you while others let you up? While you procrastinate on certain projects or finish your workday feeling frustrated and unfulfilled, even if you love your job and your coworkers, you just don't feel well? Well, here's the truth. Burnout isn't always about doing too much. A lot of the time, it's about doing the wrong kind of work for how you're naturally wired. And that's why I'm so pumped about today's interactive webinar.

I recently partnered with working genius and assessment tool created by Patrick Lensione to help you identify the type of work that gives you energy and the type of work that drains you. Patrick is the author of the five dysfunctions of a team, the founder of the table group, and one of the most respected voices in leadership and organizational health. In this webinar, we're diving deep into the six types of working genius to explore how to use this framework to increase confidence, boost productivity, and find more fulfillment at work. You'll go from drain to driven after hearing the insights that we share today. promise. It is a super engaging webinar and I highly recommend it. Now, this is a webinar where I

presented a fancy slide deck with it. So if you want to follow along the presentation and the demo, I put the relevant links down in the show notes. You can check it out on YouTube. You can check it out on LinkedIn live. And I actually recommend that you take the assessment before you actually listen to this episode or watch it on YouTube. You can go to working genius.com, use code profiting for 20% off. The assessment takes 10 minutes. It's 40 questions. It only costs 20 bucks with the code. I highly recommend that you invest. in that so that you can follow along the webinar and really unpack your results with me and Pat. This webinar was co-hosted by Pat, which is awesome. All right, young improfitors, who's ready

to uncover their working genius? Let's get right into it. Hello, hello. Welcome everybody. Welcome to the Drain to Driven webinar on Working Genius. Me and Pat are super, super excited. Pat, do you want to just say a couple words and introduce yourself? It's great to be here. I can't, I can't wait to get started. This is so much fun. So first, thanks first. A lot of you guys probably know me, but my name's Hala. I'm the host of Young Improfiting.

It's a Top 100 podcast. I'm also the CEO of Yap Media. We're an award-winning social media agency and podcast agency. We are the number one LinkedIn marketing agency. And then I'm also the founder and CEO of the YAPMedia Podcast Network, which is over 40 business and self-improvement podcasts where I grow and monetize their shows. So folks like Jenna Coucher and Lori Harder and Neil Patel and Russell Brunson,

are in my podcast network and I help them get sponsorships. I'm also one of the biggest influencers on LinkedIn. So really happy to be here, happy to be with Pat and to break down the working genius framework. First of all, I want to say shout out to Pat and the Working Genius Group and Table group because they're the ones that are making this webinar possible. You guys are able to attend this 90-minute plus webinar for free because Working Genius is sponsoring this presentation. So really appreciate that. If you guys don't know about working genius, it is the assessment that everyone's talking about in the business world. It's not a personality test. It actually evaluates the way that you work so you can work better as an individual and with your teams. And it helps you understand what kind

of work drains you, what kind of work gives you energy, where you should spend the most time, how to better collaborate with your team. And the framework has so far helped millions of people gain clarity and improve how they work. So super excited to introduce the working genius framework with you all. Are you guys pumped? Let me know in the chat if you guys are pumped to get started. One of the things I love about working genius is that it's so accessible. You know, other assessments are like hundreds of dollars to do. Pat has made it super accessible for everybody. So thank you for that, Pat. We were told people said, you should charge more for this. And we said, we want everyone to know it. We really did say it's the mission before money

here. We want people to know who they are. And we're glad. Glad we did because there's young people that are doing it and families that are doing it and people who wouldn't otherwise. Yeah, I mean, 20 bucks to find out. This has been like life changing for me and my team. And I'm not just saying that. We did this two years ago. And it literally saved my relationship with my business partner. We almost split up as business partners until we realized that we were budding heads because of our strengths. And it's like we actually are super complimentary to each other. And once we understood that, everything changed. So again, guys, if you haven't taken the assessment yet, I want you to take 10 minutes to go do that. Say BRB, if you are ready to, if you're going to go do that, so I know who's, you know, going to be back in 10 minutes and who's going to be staying. And there's, you know, almost 300 of you guys already in the chat. So if you guys haven't yet engaged in the chat and let me know if you're going to take the assessment now or if you're done, just please do that. So we have like an analysis of who's actually done it or not, okay?

All right. So we are going to get started with our warm up for everybody who already took the assessment. So shout out to you guys for being prepared. Now, do you guys ever get the Sunday scariest? Do you ever stay up at night on Sundays because you're just so stressed? Or are you dreading Mondays on Sundays? We called them the Sunday blues when I was in right when I got out of college. We were like, oh, no. And I started getting them at one point in my career on Saturday night. That means it was really bad. It was so bad. All right. So it's like 50-50. Some of you guys say no. Some of you guys say yes.

In general, what stresses you most about Mondays or the week? So if you said yes or even if you don't get the Sunday scaries necessarily, what stresses you most about Mondays or the week? What, you know, what is stressing you out, if anything? Sometimes you can't wait for, okay, some people really loving their job. That's great. prioritizing, never getting ahead, unexpected crisis, working day and night, dysfunctional workplace, toxic workplace. Okay.

Somebody said they're unemployed and they're fearing, they want to get a job. And this can be so helpful in that because when you know yourself, it's so much easier to go to somebody and say, here's how I can help you. It's so true. I love talking about that. I'm sure in job interviews, it's so great if you know exactly what your strengths are. And you can actually say, no, I shouldn't take this job. I would be the wrong person for you. But do you have anything for this? And often that's the thing that helps you find that job. Have you guys ever had a job where the

joy faded and you didn't know why? We're like initially you really like the job and then eventually you were like, this is just not for me. Oh, we got a lot of yeses for this one. That's so interesting. And I think you're going to find out why because sometimes you do work that you think you like because you're good at, and everybody tells you that you're good at it. So they keep giving you more of that work, but it turns out that kind of work might not be the best way that you work or the type of work that gives you the most joy. And one person said there, the culture changed. And yet that's a big thing, too, which is separate than this. My company, one of the things we focus on more than anything is helping companies build healthy organizations because you've got to be a culture fit,

but then you ought to be a fit for your job, too. And sometimes it's that second one that's the bigger problem. Okay. What kind of work energize? you, when you think about your week and like what kind of work gives you energy during the week? For me, stuff like this gives me stuff. I like feel like I could run through a wall right now and I'm doing these kind of things. Puzzles, rallying the team, speaking, data, tables, growth, collaborating, presenting. You know what's amazing about this, Hala? is some of these answers, another person would go,

oh, that's my least favorite thing. We'd like to talk about one person's trash as another person's treasure. And the very thing that some people are excited about, other people are like, oh, and I have to do that, it kills me. So true. And even the same task, like I was thinking about, you know, I don't like data and like really repetitive things.

But if I'm using a spreadsheet to invent something, I actually love it. Yes. So it's just so interesting. Different activity. Same thing, kind of different activity or different purpose. Okay, and what kind of work drains you during the week? What is the kind of work that you're like, oh, I just can't do?

For me, it's like anything admin related. Like if you ask me to like fill out a form, it will take me two weeks, giving bad news, having new diversity, repetitive tasks, writing reports. Reading directions and following rules for me. Cresches me. Toxic meeting, status reports programming. Well, guys, I know what it feels like to be capable, ambitious, successful even, and still feel drained by my work, even though I literally am working my dream job. So I've been there before. And before Working Genius, I felt like I had to be good at everything.

And I felt like if I wasn't good at everything, that I was a failure. And it was also confusing to me because things that I was really enjoying and good at when I first started my company no longer seemed to be things that I wanted to work on. and that gave me joy. And so I was in a very confusing place before I met Pat about two years ago. He first came on my podcast and I discovered Working Genius about two years ago. And I was feeling burned out and drained and having a lot of conflict with my leadership team, which I'll explain in more detail later. And it was not until Working Genius that everything really changed.

So now that I understand my working genius, I understand what kind of activities really give me joy, where I need to spend the most time in my workday. I feel more productive, more passionate, and most importantly, the company is doing better, my team is doing better, my leadership team and I get along much better, and I owe it all to working genius. So super excited to be able to help you guys understand how you work best as well. And we are going to get started with a little warm up in a bit called Burnout Barometer. But before you do that, we've got a special guest. We've got Patrick Lencioni on the chat here.

in the flesh, which is like a really big deal. I've actually never done a webinar co-hosted with somebody else like this. So I'm just so pumped to have an expert like Pat. And when I told like my entrepreneurship friends that Pat was joining me on this webinar, they're like, holla, that's a big deal. Like I've read every single one of his books. He's one of the most legendary business authors in the world. And I'm just so thankful that he's taken the time to be with us today.

He's a best selling author. He's the founder of Cable Group. He's a creator of the working genius model, and he's one of the most influential business thought leaders in the world. So Pat, welcome to today's presentation. Thank you for being here. I'm so excited to be here. And I don't think I've ever been on a podcast with someone who knew the material like you do. This is going to be so much fun.

I love it. Okay. So in terms of the agenda today, it's probably going to end up being two hours, guys. Like, we're trying for 90 minutes. I always go over. It's probably going to be closer to two hours. hours with the Q&A. So we've got the burnout barometer activity. We've got the problem with modern work. We're going to break down what everybody usually thinks the problem is, but what the

problem truly is. Pat's going to give us a deep dive in the working genius model. We're going to talk about how we can put your genius to work. We're going to evaluate your results and do some activities with them. And then we're going to talk about team dynamics, which is honestly my favorite part of the webinar. It's really cool to understand how you can use this to work better with your team and be a better teammate and reduce friction and it's super eye-opening. So I'm very excited for that part. And then we have Q&A for anybody who's staying later to ask any questions that they have for me and Pat. If you guys have questions, you can always drop it in the chat. Me and Pat will try to answer them throughout the presentation. And then anything we don't get to,

my team will surface at the end for Q&A. So we are going to play burnout barometer while other folks are taking their assessment right now. And by the way, guys, if you haven't taken your assessment. This is really your last chance. So Jaden and Aman will drop that link in the chat. so you'll be ready for the workshop. You could just say BRB if you've got to go do that and turn us on mute while you go do that, okay? So here's how you play. I'm going to reveal a symptom of burnout that a lot of people have a common symptom of burnout. Then we will rate that 0 to 7, 0 meaning you don't feel it during the week ever,

seven meaning you feel that symptom daily. And then we're going to tally up each score to determine our level of burnout. Okay? So that's how we're going to play. So again, you want to keep track of your answers so that you can tally up everything at the end and assess how burned out you might be. Okay, first one, brain fog. And you can also type the number in the chat so everybody knows where you're at. So brain fog, rate this symptom zero to seven, zero meaning you're clear and focused all week.

Seven, meaning you're mentally foggy every day. We've got a five, a two, a two. All right, we're going to go to the next one. All right, exhaustion, rate this symptom. from zero to seven, zero, you're always full of energy every single day. Seven, you feel drained and tired every day. And I see that somebody's raising their hand. We're going to do Q&A at the end. So if you have a question, drop it in the chat. We'll save it for you later. Okay. Slow decision making rate the symptom from zero to seven. Zero didn't happen any time this week. Seven,

you had slow decision making every day this week. Iridability. Zero, your calm and study seven you're on the edge or easily irritated all right we're going to go to the next one procrastination rate the symptom from zero to seven zero you stayed on track you got your whole checklist done every single day seven you put things off every single day what's your range i see a bunch of you guys like saying like in my old role this and my new role this let's do it for current like how are you feeling right now low motivation zero you felt driven and energized all week, seven, you struggle to get going every day. All right, so we're going to do a score reveal.

So this is the part where you tally all your scores up. So I'm going to give you guys to, I'm going to give you guys a moment to tally it up. All right. We got a 22 on 11. And I'm going to go over what each one of these means. So if you've got a zero to 10, it means you're in a pretty good place. You're locked into your genius. Now, that doesn't mean that there's room to improve or not room to improve because your genius

might be somebody else's frustration. So you need to learn how to work better and be a better teammate. So even if you're feeling great yourself, you might need to improve the way that you actually interact with your team. Absolutely. And when you do that, it actually helps you too. It's so fun to see like, you mean if I do this differently with you, that'll help you. and this really is a one plus one equals five kind of situation.

But we have to understand each other in order to do that. So it's really fun to watch people come to that realization. Okay, drain zones. So you've got some mild misalignment. Okay, so if you've got an 11 to 20, you're in the drain zone. There's definitely room for improvement in terms of understanding the way that you work, reducing the amount of time that you spend in, you know, activities that drain you. and so there's some room for improvement in this zone.

So type drained in the chat if that's you. And if anybody's feeling guilty, feel good that you're recognizing this because we are going to talk about some very practical things you can do to change this and to let others help you as well as you help others. I mean, once a team sits down and looks at everything,

suddenly people are like, man, I could help you. Can you help me with this? It's really, it's a relief. So if you're feeling like, oh, man, I scored lower than I wanted, that can change quickly. Then we've got 21 to 30. That's the frustrated zone. So this is where you're clearly getting close to burnout.

You've got way too much frustration, not enough flow. If you're frustrated, let me know in the chat. I've got a bunch of frustrated. Frustrated. All right. And then lastly, if you've got a 31 to 42, you're in the burnout zone. So most of your week is outside of your genius. if you're burned out, type burned out in the chat.

Okay. Well, good news for you guys. We're going to help you get in your genius zone. All right. So are you guys ready to get to genius level? Let me know in the chat. Are you guys ready to get to genius level? All right.

It looks like everybody's ready. Let's take this to the next level. All right. So, guys, we are about to get into the meat and potatoes of this webinar. So over the next 75 minutes, you guys are going to get a clear picture of what's been draining your energy. You're going to discover how the working genius framework will reveal your natural strengths. You're going to walk away with a plan that sets you up to do the most meaningful work in 2026. And you're going to understand how to optimize your team dynamics and

fill genius gaps to shape your success. So super excited to really break this down. We're going to be very interactive. We're going to have quizzes. We're going to make this fun. You're going to know the material like the back of your hand by the time we're done with us. So very excited to teach it to you. And in terms of the agenda, we already went through the burnout barometer and now we're going to get into the problem with modern work. Then we're going to get into a workshop with Pat where he's going to talk about individually how you can use working genius. We'll go through a workshop to assess your results and do some activities so you guys really can understand how to put this into practice for 2026. And then we're going to talk team dynamics and friction patterns and go into Q&A. Okay.

So we're going to get started here. We're going to talk about the problem with modern work. Okay, so here's an interesting stat for you guys. 66% of employees are reporting burnout right now, and it actually hits younger workers the hardest. So if you guys are Gen Z or millennial, let me know in the chat. Are you Gen Z or millennial? And then let me know, were you in the frustrated zone or the burnout zone? It would be really interesting to see.

Okay, so Gen Z, 81% of Gen Z feels burned out. 83% of millennials feel burned out compared to all employees. Okay, so we've got a lot of millennial burned out, Gen Z. Let me know, are you guys burned out if you're Gen Z? How are you feeling? I'm going to tell you why this is happening later on, but first I want to introduce this stat to you guys. All right, so we've got a bunch of millennials and Gen Z.

Some of you guys are burned out, it looks like, and drained and frustrated. Okay, so let's talk about the true root of burnout. So a lot of people think burnout is about the amount of work you're doing, right? Burnout is because of long hours. Burnout is because you're not getting enough rest. Burnout is because you've got constant stress, too much responsibility, too much on your plate, or you lost motivation, right? This is what we blame traditionally on burnout. But it turns out, after working genius, I learned that burnout is actually from spending time in work that drains your energy, from not spending time on work that gives you energy for being relied on work that

exhausts you even so work that you might be really good at, but it actually exhausts you so they just keep giving you that same kind of work even though it actually drains you. And just generally a mismatch between your role in your career and your natural wiring. That is the root cause of burnout. And then all this other stuff like stress and, you know, low motivation and all those other symptoms that we talked about previously, that is because you haven't addressed the root cause. Anything to add here, Pat? No, it's just so insightful because all of us feel burnout sometimes. We'll talk to a friend and they say, well, you need to go golfing more or take more time off.

And then you think, but I think that's just going to postpone it. I'm going to have to go back to it. And the root cause has to be addressed. And the funny thing is there are people in the world who are doing the right things for 12 hours a day and they're so not burned out. And there are other people who have jobs and they spend five hours a day there and they go home burned out. So it's not what we thought it was. That doesn't mean we don't need rest. It doesn't mean we don't need to address some of those things.

But most of it comes from these root causes and we're not addressing them. Yeah. And I think one of the things that you can like test this, it's like even if you slept for two days, would it go away? Yeah. It wouldn't go away. No matter how much sleep or rest you get, the problem doesn't go away. That's why you know that's not the actual root cause. And in fact, you don't sleep very well because you're like, oh, no, the problem is still there.

People that are glad to go to work because they know when they're there, they're going to get fed. And it doesn't mean it's perfect. They sleep better because they're like, oh, wow, when I wake up, I get to go to work and do more stuff that feeds me. People that know that it's, you know, when you have the Sunday scaries, you don't sleep as well. And so it just compounds it. we have to address the root cause. So burnout, guys, it's not about overwork. It's actually about misalignment of work, right?

That is the crux of everything that we're teaching today. And so a lot of people spend time and work that drains a majority of their time and works that drains them. So according to Gallup, only about 23% of employees are engaged at work, meaning everybody else, about 80% of people are not engaged at work. And workers are spending most of their time in work that doesn't. energize them. And we're going to go back to this stat, 66% of employees report burnout, where Gen Z and millennials are getting hit the hardest. And guys, the reason is, is that younger workers have less control over the work that they do. Now, I'm like advanced in my career. I'm CEO of my company. I've got full control of what I work on at this point. But when I was younger,

working in corporate, I had no control over what I worked on for 10 years. Right. And so because you're younger and you're in your entry level stage of your career, you've got a little bit less control of what you can work on. But we're going to help you today to figure out how you can actually still get joy from work and change the way that you work and put more time in your genius zones so that you can actually feel less burnt out. So even if you're in a job where you don't have control over your work, this is going to help you. Pat, do you have anything to say? There was this guy that was a young guy and he was getting ready to to do his performance review the next day, and it had been a bad year. He didn't, he wasn't

happy, he wasn't doing very well. And he knew it was going to be a bad conversation. The night before he took his working genius, he got his report, he read it. He was like, wow, he goes to his performance review with his boss and his boss's boss and says, before we talk about this, can you guys look at this? This is, this is what I'm good at, what I'm not good at. Literally, they looked at it and they said, well, it's no wonder you're doing so poorly. This is the wrong job for you. And they said, we have another job in another part of the organization that would be perfect for you this. And he said, literally, he said he got promoted rather than demoted or fired because he just showed them what he was all about. And they figured out how to use him better.

It's crazy. Even we don't think our manager, once our manager understands our working genius, usually they're like, I want to put you in a job where you can do the best for me and for the company and for yourself. So it's one of those things, it's like, this can be the very thing that gets you what you need. Anyway. Yeah. And I know I have a lot of entrepreneur listeners and fans. And for me, when I first did the assessment, I was really focused on me as an individual. And this time around, I was really focused on my team.

And I did my team map for the first time. And it also helped me realize, like, oh, shoot, this person is in the wrong role. And I could move them here or swap these two people. And it's like really helping me think through, like, how to, I'm. actually restructure my team because everybody fits culture-wise and it wants to do a good job. And so I just need to kind of put people in their right place. I talk to CEOs all the time, large companies, small companies. I love working with small companies.

And sometimes they say I was about to let somebody go because they couldn't do this one thing. And I didn't understand why. And I liked them. They were a cultural fit. But I thought, well, I guess they can't do it. I'm going to have to swap them out. They did the working genius. And they said, oh, wait a second.

I have them in the wrong world. or they just don't have a skill in that area. I'll borrow somebody else to do this. And they prevented themselves from losing a good employee because they just didn't understand what they were really, really good at. It's crazy. Think about how much money and energy that saves an organization when you save good people rather than judging them and dismissing them for the wrong reason.

Totally. And even like making sure you get the, so one of the things that I discovered, we'll get into this later is like some gaps that we have. There's, I'm the only. person in my entire company that took the assessment so far that has galvanizing as a genius. I'm the only person. I'm the only one pushing everybody forward. So I was like, okay, let's start using this as, you know, an assessment before we actually hire to see if we can get more, you know, people in that have some of these gaps, right? And we're going to play a game called

Guess the Gap later, which I'm looking forward to. Okay, so let's talk about existing tools. So you guys have probably heard of these tools. Myers-Briggs. strengths finder. So first of all, these are personality tests, right? They're not really addressing how you work. They're great. They're great to have the tool in your toolbox, but it's not actually going to help you figure out how you work well with others. And working genius specifically targets that point, right? So working genius is the first tool focused specifically on how you work. It assesses the work that gives you the work that gives you the most, that you'll add the most value to the tasks that drain you the fastest, how you should structure your week, and how to build

complementary team. So working genius is not a personality test. It actually is focused on the way you work. So very unique in that case. And you know, Hala, I love all these different tools. We've used them for years in my own company. And my wife introduced me to the Myers-Briggs before I even started my company. And so I love them all. But we could never figure out what does that exactly mean for my job and what I'm doing today. And even at home for what activities I thrive in. And so we'll talk about this a little later about how I came up with this, but there was just nothing out there that explained the tasks. And like, I'm an ENFP and I love Myers-Briggs. But it's like, so what does that mean about the role I should play in my organization? And it wasn't until five years ago

when we figured this out by accident that we were able to answer that question. And we're actually going to talk about the birth of working genius. So I want to just make sure everybody has done with the assessment. Some of you guys may have joined a little later. So if you're done, type done in the chat. This is the last time I'm going to remind you. So some of you guys have you been here since 11, you might be like, listen, stop asking. But this is the last time I'm going to ask, let me know if you're done in the chat.

Okay, great. It seems like everybody's done. All right. If you know you're working genius, you don't have to reveal it yet, drop a nerd emoji in the chat. If you know your working geniuses, drop a nerd emoji in the chat. All right, you guys know your working geniuses. Great. Excellent.

That's great. All right. So we are going to get started with our live workshop with none other than Patrick Lensione. Patrick is the best-selling author. He's the founder of Table Group. He's one of the biggest business influencers in the world. And we're going to learn how he started working genius. Take it away, Pat.

All right. Well, everything I do is by accident. What I mean by that is I never set down to actually have a career in this field or every book I write and everything we come up with is because we're working on something with clients or with ourselves. And so for me, I've had my company for 28 years now, which I can't believe. But I'm a Gen Xer. I'm not a boomer, just so you know.

And so, but I felt like I loved my company. I love what we do working with organizations and with people on the human side of business. And I love the colleagues I had. And yet I would come to work, never with the Sunday blues, but halfway through the day I'd find myself getting grumpy, I called it. And I was frustrated that, like, why in a company where I love the people I work with and the subject matter is interesting, why do I get so grumpy?

And one day, five years ago, a little over five years ago, it was right after COVID and we were doing most of our work on Zoom. And I was doing this session where I was actually like a webinar for Catholic priests teaching them how to be better managers and leaders. And it was so fun. You know, I love these kinds of things. And then I had to have a Zoom call with a bunch of staff members of mine and tell them that they needed to do a better job. certain areas. And I was like, oh, no, I hate this. And I get really grumpy. And then I had a meeting about a podcast and I was very excited. And Amy, my coworker, turned to me and she said, Pat, why are you like that? And I said, what do you mean? And she goes, why do you get grumpy like this? And it goes from like

20 minutes here, 20 minutes there, 20. And I thought, am I manic or something? Is there something wrong with me? But I said to myself, I don't know the answer, Amy. Thank you for asking, but I want to figure this out. So I literally sat down. I had a blank whiteboard with a blank whiteboard with some pens, which is my favorite thing in the world. And I said, okay, what is going on? And I thought about why do I get grumpy there and not there? And in the course of that thinking conversation with myself and with some colleagues, I was like, I think that there's actually three different kinds of work.

And then I realized, wait a second. No, there's not three. Each of those three has two. there's two and there's six kinds of work that need to get done in any organization any project at home at work i was constantly doing one that i didn't like i was constantly doing one that i didn't like and so i um i was like that's it every time i could ask to do that i get frustrated and so i said to myself i went back and i wrote this on the board and i said these are the six kinds of work and we get frustrated and we have to do certain kinds.

And I realized galvanizing was something I didn't want to do every day. So I went home and I just, I didn't think this was going to be a model. We just literally wrote it on the whiteboard. One of our consultants saw it the next day he was with a client and he said, hey, I think that the client looked at it and started, had tears in his eyes and he goes, this is why I'm so frustrated right now. And the client, and the consultant said, hey, there's something. into this. We took it home. We were working on it there. We're working out with my team just in terms of

applying it to our own environment. And we were like, there's something very universal here. And so we decided, let's try to put together an assessment that people could use to figure out their own. And I wrote a book called The Five Disfunctions of a Team, which is my big best-selling book. And one of my colleagues, Cody, came back when he saw this model and he said, this is going to be bigger than the Five Disfunctions. And it's turning out to be true because everybody, we show it to says, oh my gosh, had I known this a year ago or two years ago or last week, this would have changed how I went about things. And so it's so exciting. My company, the table group, we are, we are not only benefiting from it in terms of sharing it with the

world, but we're using it ourselves. And one of the first things I did, I realized that I don't like galvanizing. Your genius is what I call one of my working competencies. I'm okay at it. But every day I was coming to work. And instead of doing my geniuses, they were going like, galvanize us. Because I thought I was the only one. And I thought, well, if I'm the CEO, I should be the galvanizer. And then I realized, wait a second, this guy, Cody loves galvanizing. I should have him be my chief galvanizing officer.

And he said, but I haven't been here long enough. I'm not old enough. And I said, no, no, no, it's not a reward. It's a gift. It's your genius. And he goes, I would love it if you let me do that. And I said, I would love it if you made it possible for me not to do it all the time, which doesn't mean I don't have to galvanize sometimes.

But when I thought it was all up to me, I was constantly doing the thing that frustrated me. And I'm now have him doing that. I do what I do. One plus one is five. It's crazy. So that's one of the ways we reorganized. The other way we reorganized is we just looked at everybody in the company. We said, what are your geniuses?

what are your frustrations and then what are your things in the middle? And we reorged, not in like a big formal reorg kind of way, just how do you do go about your job every day? What's your responsibilities? Maybe you could share some of those with this person. Maybe they could take on some of these. Everybody was happier. It was such a win-win. But it wasn't until we understood how to describe the things that we love to do. Now when we work on a project, we look at everything from like what part of the work are we in right now and we're going to go through the six types of working genius and that'll make more sense but you can actually go to meetings and say hey what which letters are we using in the working genius at this meeting and which are we not using

so somebody can go and go oh okay I'll put my letters aside for right now because that's not what we're working on and just having that language and that understanding changes everything it changes is everything. Yeah. Can you talk to us about the applications of the model? Yes. The first application is personal. This all starts with saying, oh my gosh, I never really understood who I am and what I'm meant to do because we're not meant to be everything. We're not. And so what we like to say is the best thing you can get out of this is knowing yourself first, not your team, not your company, first yourself. You got to, you know, they say you got to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you save anybody else. Then, though, the great thing is that we can avoid feeling guilty and judging others.

And this is the thing that's so interesting. We go through life feeling guilty for not being good at things that we weren't meant to be good at. And we go through life judging other people because they're not good at something that we find easy and think, well, they're lazy or they're not smart. And this cycle of guilt and judgment is such a driver of dissatisfaction in life. You know, Teddy Roosevelt once said comparison is the thief of joy. And when we define ourselves by what other people are good at and think we have to be as good as everybody else or that they have to be just as good as us, it breaks down relationships. When we can celebrate what we're good at and celebrate what we suck at,

there's something wonderful about saying, oh my gosh, you guys, I did this test. And it clarified for me that I'm terrible at this. And the funny thing is your friends and your colleagues will go, we knew that. But you never felt comfortable actually announcing it. And now you can say, I'm not guilty for that. I really don't like doing that. And then people can have very frank conversations, even humorous conversations about things that about mistakes you make and the things you're not good at. Now, once you know that,

so great to then say, okay, what does this now? How can this apply to all of us? And your first team is your home. It's great when you can apply it at home. But when you go to work, you think, okay, we need to hire somebody. And we know we need to hire somebody that fits our core values. That's number one. But how do we know they're going to like this job and be good at it? well you have to first define the job based on which working geniuses would make a successful thing and then find people that might fit that okay and then you get this amazing shared language where people are saying okay we need to hire somebody to run marketing but what we need is somebody who's really good at discernment and tenacity they got another right thing to do and then drive for closure that's very

different than saying we need a head of marketing it's somebody who can come up with a great idea and come up with something out of the blue. They're not going to implement it, but they're going to come up with a new idea. Well, those are two totally different people. And yet we hire generically, bring them into our organization, and wonder why we get frustrated with them.

We never really clarified what we wanted and whether they were a fit for that. And then, as I said before, we can go to our meetings and we can have discussions and people can go to literally say, are we wondering right now, are we doing tenacity. Do you want my discernment or do you want my enablement right now? And it's so

funny because it's like, oh my gosh, I say to my people all the time, I'll throw out an idea and I'll say, I'm not galvanizing you. I'm just inventing here. I'm just coming up with another idea. I'm not asking you to go do it. I'm asking you to give me your advice. And half the time people are running off to implement something. And I'm like, no, I don't even know if it's a good idea. Yeah. My team definitely knows that. There's certain people that have been with me for a while, like Kate and Jaden. At this point, when I give an idea, they're like, yeah, we know you're just spitting out an idea. We're not going to really listen to you about it. And they can say, oh, you're inventing right now, right? And you can go, no, I'm actually galvanizing. I'm really telling you to go

it. They go, oh, but usually you're not. Yeah. And then in relationships and marriage, man, And my wife and I, when she read this book, and she was involved in the development of it, but when she finally sat down and read the final book, we were on an airplane and I said, what do you think? And she had tears in her eyes. And she said, I think it's wonderful. And I'm so pissed off. Because she realized that she had been working outside of her genius for so many years.

And we just didn't have the language for that. And she felt guilty. Early, we have four boys. early in our family, my wife is a WI, by the way. We'll talk about that later. She's a creative dreamer. It's called literally the creative dreamer. Doing the bills, getting kids on, putting a schedule together, sticking with anything.

We were just talking about this yesterday, how frustrated it is for her. And I remember early in our marriage, I said, Laura, you should outsource some of that because that's not your thing. But I didn't know why. And she said, no, no, no, no, no. The other women I know that are young moms, they can do it. They like it. They're good at it. So I, there's something wrong with me for not liking it.

And it was 20 years later that she read the book and she said, oh, crap. Why did I compare myself to them? I'm not them. And so, so that's one of the things in our relationship. Most of my wife and my arguments at home were always about gaps we had. And we were like, why don't you do that? Why don't you do that? Now we can laugh about it and go, we both hate that.

Now we have to try our best. but we're never going to hold each other accountable for being awesome at things that we naturally kind of suck at. Okay, so that was awesome, Pat. I'm so thankful that you started the Working Genius Model. And guys, if you're just joining, Pat is overcoming a cold. So Pat, if at any moment you're like, Hala, I need a break, take over. I know this material like the back of my hand too. So we're going to go over the six types of working genius.

I've got three glasses of tea here, so. Perfect. Working through them. So this is the individual portion of the webinar. So we're going to go over the six types of working genius. Then after that, we're going to make sure we understand the material with a quiz. And then we're going to go through a little activity, making sure that we're able to leverage this model in 2026. So let's start off with the first one, Wonder.

Yeah, Wonder is an amazing genius because most people who have it never thought it was a genius. In fact, they were criticized for it usually. Because people with Wonder, they're the people that, just ponder things. Then they look around their environment and they notice things and they ask questions. They literally say,

I wonder if there's a better way to do this for our customers. I wonder if we shouldn't change the way we go about this. I wonder why we do it that way. Have we always done it that way? Should we think about another way? They're not necessarily coming up with a solution,

but they're asking the big question. And it's so important to have them on a team because they're the ones that raised the issue. This whole model came about because Amy said, she's a wonderer. She said,

why are you like that? She was just curious. Other people might have been like, whatever. She was like, no, I'm curious as to why you're like that. And that identifies something that somebody goes,

I think that's a question worth answering, which leads us to the next genius. And the reason why these are gears, and that was my wife, Laura's idea, is because they all speak to one another. They drive one another because the wonderer says, why are you like that? Or there should be a better way to do this. And I have the genius of invention.

So do you. And we love it when somebody comes up with a problem. And we get to take a stab at it. And even if there's not a lot of context, it's like, oh, let me take a crack at this. I wake up every morning wanting to invent things. Even when it's annoying, that's how you know it's a genius because you do it. And somebody says, I don't need your invention. They're like, I know, but I like to invent.

So I love to sit down and come up with an answer. Now, people will often say, well, the real geniuses, the inventors, it's not. All of these are geniuses. Without the person who wonders, the inventor has not a problem to solve. So I love to invent things coming out of nothing. But here's the deal. Not everything we invent is good, you know? And that's why we need discerners, the people with discernment, this is one of those

genius is. It's really hard to explain, although we know when people have it. These are people that have great instinct and intuition. They're good at like multivariable analysis. They see pattern. They have pattern recognition. And when you ask them a question, even if they don't know a lot about it inherently, they usually have a really good judgment. And I like to use the example from this woman named Tracy who works in our organization. I've known Tracy for years. She's a co-founder of the organization. Tracy said when she was a kid, her girlfriends would always say to her, ask Tracy, she'll know the right answer. Work, no matter what I'm thinking about.

My wife and I'll be like, should we refinance our house? Where should we go on vacation this year? What kind of furniture do you think we need in this room? We'll say, ask Tracy. Not because she's an expert, Tracy just has this ability to look at things and go, I don't think that's going to work. You know, Tracy studied HR, I think, in college. It's been years.

She edits my books. You know why? Because she can read a chapter of one of my books and go, that didn't work or that character doesn't make sense because most of my books are fiction. And she didn't study that. She just has great judgment. And I trust her inherently with just about every decision we make as a company. Now, once you discern something and you go, okay, somebody asked a question,

We got a good invention. Somebody discerned it. Now you need somebody who's going to get people excited. This is not one of my geniuses. It's one of yours. And these are people that wake up every morning and say, please let me rally the troops. I don't mind interrupting people, pushing people,

exhorting people. I love to inspire people, even if they don't want me to, and I know it's good for them, I will do it anyway. The world needs these people. but you know there's a lot of people who hate doing that. And like you said, when you're in an organization, you're the only one, people will be like, why are you pushing so much? It's like, because that's my job.

And we need that. We need that. So galvanizing is one of those gifts. And I'll tell you, when people don't have it, they know it. But when somebody galvanizes, then we need somebody with the next genius. Another misunderstood one. It's called enablement. And we really looked for a good word for enablement.

But because we thought people think of enablement as like, I'm going to enable you to use drugs or alcohol or do something bad. Enabling people to do good things is a wonderful gift. These are the people that love to come up alongside somebody and say, I will help. I will do that. I need a volunteer. And they're like,

please let me do it. They get joy and energy out of being useful and seeing other people's ideas take off. Every organization needs them. they're extremely valuable. But here's the deal. A lot of people with enablement are actually apologetic about it. They're like, well, I'm just nice

or I'm just malleable. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. This is a gift. And, okay, I am a Christian man. And I like to help people, holla, but I don't have the gift of enablement. Same. So when somebody comes to me and says,

we want you to help us, it's not my natural inclination to say, yes, unless it aligns with my genes with my geniuses. People with enablement will say, of course I will help you. I get joy and energy and I've just seeing you come alive and getting things done. So tell me what you need to do and I will be there. Every organization needs these people, Hala, when you don't have them, the glue is missing. The last genius, though, is tenacity. These are not just people that want to help. These are people that actually get joy and energy from finishing things. I call them freaks because I

I cannot relate to them at all. And I love them. I love them because they're like, no, you don't understand. If you don't tell me what finishing looks like and you don't give me the opportunity to do it and to do it well and to push it through to the end, I will not be happy. I, on the other hand, as an author or an inventor of things, I get halfway through and I'm ready to move on to the next thing. And people with tenacity are the ones that say, no, we will not stop until we've hit our goal. And I love them. I need them around me, and I would have never been able to write books, come up with ideas,

or have a company if I didn't have people that had a heck of a lot more tenacity than I do. Now, what if, I know that everybody has two of these, right, two of their main geniuses. What if you feel like you're good at all of these things? And how did you laser in on everybody having two geniuses? It's so funny because when we started this, we just talked to, we just, put it out there to people and we measured and and it really came down to this you can be good at all of them it doesn't mean you get joy and energy we had a guy that said hey it says here i don't have tenacity this this can't be right we said why he goes i got through med school i finished med school have you

been in med school it's really hard and we're like oh okay did you did you like it he goes no i hated it i couldn't wait for be over i'd never do it again we're like exactly i'm going to tell you something to holla and this gets into childhood wounds and things like that We can get very good at things we don't like because we feel like we have to. We're afraid to fail. We have to succeed. We have to drive. And that's dangerous because then people ask us to keep doing it.

I was really good at enablement and tenacity as a child, even though I hated it. Because I thought my ability to earn the approval of others, parents, teachers, everybody, was to do exactly what they wanted the way they wanted. And it wasn't until I got older that I thought, this is not how I'm wired. And I don't want to keep working in my areas of frustration to please people. So yes, some people can say I'm good at all of them, but everybody says there's two that they really get joy and energy out of. And I love to explain this using the coffee cup model. And that is, imagine that you had one of those Yeti mugs and you poured coffee into it, right? And you screwed the lid on tight. That's your working genius.

going to hold that energy all day long. You're going to burn yourself five hours later when you drink that because it just feeds you. It holds its own energy. You're working competency, which are your two middle ones, are this cup like this where you put a little plastic lid on it and it'll keep the coffee warm for a while. Your working frustration is pouring coffee in a cup like this and it has a hole in the bottom and it just drains right out. Now, some people are pretty good at like filling that hole with their finger and making themselves do something they hate. But that's not a good thing to do in life. And that's a recipe for burnout. Even among successful people, there are people in the world doing something. I'm a successful lawyer, but I'm miserable. And it's probably why I drink or do drugs or

do other destructive things because I did this because my grandfather was a lawyer and my dad was a lawyer and I will not fail. But I don't like it. It doesn't feed me. It's not the kind of work. And it wouldn't be just law. It would be the kind of law, for instance. you know what I'm saying? It's when we take a job because we think we're supposed to be doing that. So two, two and two, it's really important to understand this. Everybody has to do some work in their frustrations. Nobody gets off without that. But how great is it when you go, I have to go fill out my expense reports or I have to finish this thing and I hate it, but I'm going to go do it. And everybody's like, that's okay. And they're going to go like, and it probably won't be perfect, but I'm going to try my best.

that's okay because then we have grace. But when we go into those things and think, what's wrong with me? I should be good at this just like they are. And then people criticize us for not being as good at those things. That's a recipe for depression, burnout, self-attack, and all those different things. And we'll talk about the three zones of work.

Yes. These are the first three things that we can. Oh, we talked about those, the working genius, the working competency. Please understand this. The difference between not having something and you're working genius and your working competency is great. Because some people will say, well, I'm good. These are my first two.

But my third or fourth is this. So I'm pretty good at that too. A genius. When you can joy and energy out of something and you really allow yourself to dive into it, you can be so great at it. Most people who are really, really great at something have found that genius and they allow themselves to do it. So don't try to talk.

yourself into it. Find the one that's you and embrace that. And they all matter. And when it comes to working frustrations, do not allow yourself to spend too, too, too much time in that. My wife was doing work in her working frustration for years. And she couldn't, she didn't outsource it. She felt guilty for it. And it really, I think she had, I think she had working genius PTSD when she figured this out. because for so long she was trying to convince herself that she was supposed to be good at things that she wasn't. So those are the three different kinds. Yes.

Okay, so I feel like we covered that material pretty thoroughly. Now we're going to play a game called Name That Genius to make sure that you guys absorb the material. This gives us an opportunity if we see a bunch of wrong answers to kind of make sure we clarify whatever anybody is confused about. So we're going to get ready to create you guys now. Let me stop right there and say this. Yeah.

Hala has a genius of invention. That's important in her organization. I've never worked with anybody who came up with stuff like this. And it totally makes sense. I love that you're doing this. So I can't wait to show my team all of this. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

And I hope we get to do this a bunch of times. Like this is so much fun for me. And I feel like I just, and I love this. So, okay, let's play Name That Genius. Okay. So this person has a knack for sensing when somebody needs support and stepping in within the exact type of help that moves things forward. So this person can tell when somebody needs support and steps in with the type of help that moves things forward. Is it W, I, D, G, or E let us know in the chat.

So I see a lot of E's and I see a lot of D's. See a lot of E's and a lot of D's and some T's. Okay, well, the answer is enablement. So if you guys said discernment, that is more about making sure you're working on the right idea, using your gut and intuition, where enablement is more about supporting, helping, assisting. And so hopefully that makes it a little bit more clear. Pat, anything to add? Yeah, you know what I think they might have said D?

Because it's definitely E, but the word exact. the D would be the one that goes, oh, I've discerned that this is really what you need. But 95% of this is definitely the E. But just in case those people that have D were saying that, they're like, but the exact type of help that moves things forward. That makes a lot of sense. And the combination of D and E is exactly that. But E it is.

If you want to get advanced, it's an ED. That's a great question. Okay. So present this person with a question. an unclear or incomplete problem and they'll immediately start shaping new solutions from scratch. Is it W-I-D-G-E-R-T? All right, you guys got it. Smart group, smart bunch. Invention. Most of you guys got this one. Good job. All right. This person often spots missing questions or blind spots before the rest of the team even realizes that they exist. Okay, we got a bunch

of Ds, a bunch of Ws, Ds and Ws. Okay, well, we can kind of clear that up for you guys. So wonder. Wonder is really about asking the big questions, trying to understand the blind spots, and discernment. I mean, this is a great question in itself. Yeah. Pat, can you just break down?

What is the difference truly between wonder and discernment? Well, the way you described this whole thing, I, I was like, this is wonder. And then people that are WDs do this particularly well. And that's why the, you know, one thing we didn't say, is the combination of your two geniuses are really what matters. Because a WT is very different than a W.E or a WD. Now, you've nailed it that this is W.

But a WD is like they spot that missing thing. and sometimes we call them the contemplative counselor because they just look at things and they go, whoa, whoa, what about this? So I think, yeah, and I see people saying WD here. This is definitely W, but the D pairing fits this perfectly. So I'm not surprised that people said D. The W, though, will come up with that question

even before people know what we're talking about. And it's not really about the solution or the decision, right? Isn't it kind of about like throwing it up on the wall at this at the wonder stage is it about this because discernment's more about like kind of making the decision right yes and that's why you're right this is w that you know it's funny the wd my son matt's a wd he works with me i'll say i'll throw up an idea out and he'll go his wd will make him go well that's not going to work and i'll say how do you know and he goes i don't know i don't have any eye but that one isn't going to work but i think you're exactly right holla this is w mostly it's just the right question

The W-D almost always asks the right question. But this is W, for sure. But the W-Ds are going to be like, I do that too. This person naturally becomes the point of orientation when a group is unsure about what to do next. W-I-D-G-E- or T. G, all right. You guys got it. It's galvanizing.

The person is rallying the troops. I noticed one person put tea there, and if you're like, if it's the day before something's finished, that might be the tea that goes, just finish. But generally it's the galvanizer who says, come on, you guys, come on, we got to figure this out together. Let's go. They can listen to a half-formed idea and instantly sense whether it has potential or needs to be redirected. This one, everybody's going to nail. Yeah.

We made that super clear. here. Great job, everybody. It is D-discernment. Okay, six, they naturally want to lock things in. Open loops don't feel secure to them. All right. The answer is TENacity. Great. So everyone really knows a material. We're all super clear. We're all speaking the same language, which is one of the most powerful things about this model to begin with is that we all just are speaking the same language. So now when we say wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing, enablement, tenacity, you guys know exactly what we're talking about. And Hala, I want to say something else, too. I love assessments. All assessments are ultimately qualitative, not quantitative. They're quantitative to get you,

but you got to read your results because you might have filled it out with, well, this is a way I think I should be or this is what I have done. And so when you fill it out, you look at your results and you go, which of these really make sense. And you know, like Myers-Briggs is 75% accurate, which means one of the letters could be wrong. This one we think is much better than that, but even still people look at it and go, wait a second. And you show it to your heart, husband, your wife, your friend, your, your colleagues. And sometimes they'll help you go, do you really think? And they'll go, oh, no, you're totally right. It's you, you come to the conclusion of, yeah, this is my reality. So even if the results are a little bit off, I think it's really important to

ask yourself what is true. Okay. So let's take my working genius results and kind of like analyze them and break it down. And this is not really for me, guys, this is more for you. So feel free to ask questions, and we're going to make, it's more about so you guys just really understand how this all works. So the first one, first working genius, my two working geniuses are invention and galvanizing. Let's stop right there. Yeah. Because you are the evangelizing innovator. In other words, what it means is like, not only do you love to come up with new ideas, you love to get other people excited about those ideas.

You are the, oh my gosh, I came up with an idea. let's do this, you guys, let's get going, which is such a, and I love IGs. One of the things I found about IGs, though, is that when you first meet an IG in Hala, you'll have to, we haven't talked about this, it's almost impossible to think they're genuine. Most people go like, you can't be this excited about this because they really are more so than almost anybody else. And so people think, wow, you're so, like, amped up about things. And they're like, no, I really get excited about a new idea that I think can help people that can do this.

And I want to go out and tell the whole world about it. They cannot not share that new idea. Does that make sense? Yeah. And this is something for me where, like, I feel like I can put offers out in my sleep. I can start, like, every company that I started, it was like, I started my network when I was sick with COVID for a week and, like, started my network because I had a lot of time. And, like, you know, like, I just, like can start things and they just happen, like, instantly. That is definitely my superpower.

Creating businesses is like the least scary thing to me. And other people would hear that and go, what are you talking about? Yeah. I could never want to do that. And the bad thing is when they do that and they think, oh, mine are easy, hers are hard. She's more important than I am. It's like, no, the ones that other people are good at are for you and I can be really hard. And like back to like being an entry level worker or whatever, I remember, so I worked at Hewlett-Packard for like five.

years. And a lot of the stuff that I had to do was like tenacity and, you know, enablement. And that was like because I was like a lower level employee. But I got involved in like employee resource groups and I was president of the young employee network and launching the company picnic and creating all these programs. And so I was still like my innovation galvanizing, which was helping me in other ways and getting me noticed at work, but actually wasn't using my, you know, true working geniuses in my role. But I felt fulfilled, even though I wasn't working on, I was like in my competency frustration zones from my actual day job. That's wild. Hey, who was the CEO at HP when you were there?

Meg Whitman. You know, she was my partner on my first job out of college. Oh, wow. She is a big part of how I got into this, just in some of my experiences, my first two years at Bain & Company. So that's, I just, that's funny. I love that company. Yeah. My working competencies are tenacity and discernment. So I can actually get things done, and I do have really good gut instincts. Right. Now, and again, this is where we say, but if your job was about those two things mostly,

eventually even that would burn you out. Yeah. Like, I don't want to be into, especially as a leader of a 60-person company, it's like, I can't always be tenacity. That would totally dream me out. There's too much going on. Well, and if you were,

if that were one of your things, then you would have other people doing, I mean, I've had CEOs of every type, every type. But the question is, could they allow other people to fill in their gaps? Or did they feel like they had to do it all? So in your case, you know, delegating some tenacity is fine with you. But you don't easily, eventually, if things aren't getting done, you're going to be like,

I need to understand why this isn't getting done. Yeah, things always get over the finish line no matter what. Right. And discernment, it's really good that that's in your competency. It's just really good for you to understand. And there are actually people. Being an IG, your biggest thing is if you have a person with really good discernment, it can save you so much time and effort by just going, hey, I have this great idea.

I'm about to go out and tell people about it. What do you think right now? And then go, adjust this, adjust this, adjust this. It'll be perfect. You go, oh, thank God. You just saved me from driving a car in the wrong direction for a while. And importing that discernment for you early on as an IG is critical. And we're going to talk one of the stories I'm going to share later is how this really

improved my relationship with my working team, my leadership team, just kind of understanding all of our strengths and understanding my gaps, specifically, which, speaking of that, I've got two working frustrations. One is enablement and one is wonder. The enablement one is so interesting because when I first started at Yap, when I first started my podcast, I actually had a team of volunteers. I had 20 people who worked for free for me for two years. That is the power of galvanizing, right? I had 20 people who literally worked for free for me for two. years. And as soon as we became a company and I had different teams and things got bigger and clients, suddenly I had to spend a lot more time with my clients and things like that, that the team

enablement really started to drain me and I would get frustrated and snappy and like just not my true self. Like my true self is like bubbly and happy, but I like to move things forward. So if you slow me down, I might, you know, get a little grumpy. So enablement is something, and I know it's one of your frustrations, Pat. This is one that like gave me a lot of shame. and guilt because I'm the leader. How can I not be good at enablement? And you feel bad for getting frustrated and getting snappy. And the answer to that is understanding that it's not your thing and understanding that

everybody else can understand that too. And then you can feel like, okay, I'm not a bad person here. How do I, and you can sit down with your team and go, how do I make sure that I am giving people the grace they need and the time they need to buy into these things? and other people on your team will say, oh, I like doing that. And, you know, it's funny that people with enablement will say, we'll give you some grace on that.

And that makes all the difference in the world. But when you don't have a name for it, you just feel like, I'm a grumpy, mean person. And you're not. It's just you're an IG. And when things get stressful, our patience for like, and look at W.E.

Like, I have a question. and I need you to spend some time with me. And you're like, hey, on a good day, I would love to do that, but right now. And so a lot of it has to do with just awareness and grace and having other people on your team that can fill in those gaps for you. And wonder is something interesting, and it really clicked for me because whenever, when anyone ever asked me, like, where do you see yourself in 10 years?

I always would be like, I don't know. I don't care. like I'm focused on now. Like I'm building a company and, you know, I'm trying to hit 10 million. Like, you know, like that's, and for me, it's like, I don't want to think about 10 years from now. I don't care. And I've got other people on my team that, like, are visioning for 10 years. So it's just that was for me eye opening.

Like, no wonder I hate that question. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Yes. It's so funny. And when you talk about the wonder thing is like, can we just go off and dream for a while? It's like, oh, yeah, we could do that for 15 minutes. I'm like, no. I think we need to go.

for a walk in the woods for three weeks and ponder these things. And, you know, there's, there's places and times for all these things. But, but when you look at this, the answer isn't, okay, I need to be all these things. The answer is, do I have people around me who are, who will do those things and understand who I am? And what we can do is we can reject people, fire people, lose people, not because they don't belong, but because they had a working genius that we just didn't quite understand. Okay. So, I'm the evangelizing innovator. That is my unique pairing.

We're going to uncover everyone's unique pairing in a bit. And so I like to be excitable, convincing, combined curiosity with confidence, and I've got infectious enthusiasm. So I feel like that describes me pretty well. You know something else how I want to say about that is? Yeah. If one of your ideas doesn't work out, you're like, that's okay. We've got others.

Yep. And people be like, oh, no, we don't want to say that this might not work. It's like, no, that's fine. Yeah, I get shot down all the time because people know me. Like, I've been working with the same people for five years, so they'll just be like, no, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay. It doesn't offend me if we don't use my idea.

And there are other types that might get offended by that. So it's just different things. Okay, so let's go over Pat. So we've got invention and discernment. Yeah, I love to come up with new ideas. And when I'm doing it, I'm constantly evaluating them. Like, when I write my books, like my first, draft is so much closer than, and this was when I was in school and I was in college and everything

else, my first draft is often really close to the final version because while I'm coming up with new ideas, I'm also evaluating to discerning those. And that can be annoying because people don't understand how I got there, but in my own mind, I'm just doing that. So I like to come up with new ideas and mine are right next to each other. So they happen almost, you know, without noticing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Then you've got galvanizing and wonder as your competencies. And notice this. Galvanizing is my third.

But when I was asked to do it every day all the time, it burned me out. So even your third can burn you out if you're not getting to do the first two enough. That's the point here. It's like those first two are so important. If you're not getting fed in those areas, even one of the competencies can drive you crazy. Yeah. And like for for mine, since I'm galvanizing, right, is one of my, like my top strengths. If I'm in a launch period, I've got a lot of tenacity because I'm excited because I'm getting to launch, right?

Exactly. Exactly. Enablement and tenacity is your frustrations. Yeah. So the last two, if I were an enablement and tenacity person, you'll have some people on here that are ETs. They're called the loyal finisher. So that's the definite. I'm not disloyal, but like, I don't like to volunteer for things and I don't like to finish things.

I like to have the freedom to come up with the next new idea. And sometimes when work is in a situation where we're just getting it done, I'm the one going, hey, I have another idea and people need to go. No, this is not the time for new ideas. Come to the meeting. We're going to give you a task and we need you to do that. And I need to be able to go, okay, I can do that for right now. Now, guys, I want to just note that we're at 1224.

So I think we're going to go over. And so clear your calendar if you can. Make sure that you've got the time. We are going to take as long as we want to to get this material out. The whole point is to educate you guys. So if you guys got a hard stop, that's all good. This is going to be recorded. But I would clear your calendar till, you know, two Eastern or one CT wherever you are.

because we're definitely going to be going over, like I had mentioned. My webinars always go over because I care about just educating people, not necessarily staying on time. So Pat is an ID, a discriminating ideator. He's creative, intuitive, confident. He uses his instinct to solve real problems. Okay. Now we're going to go over your results.

Okay? So make sure you guys pull up your assessment reports. You guys all should have gotten a report. We're going to unlock your results. This is going to be an interactive workshop activity. And then after this, we're going to go over Team Dynamics, which is my favorite part of the webinar. So you guys are really going to want to stay tuned for that is the most eye-opening part. Okay.

So unlocking results, make sure you pull up your assessment. If you've got your assessment handy, just type yes in the chat. Let me just make sure everybody is prepared. Jaden says yes. All right. So firstly, drop your two geniuses in the chat. Let's see the energy mix in the room. We've got a WD and E.T.

W-I-G-D. All right. Drop your energy in the chat. Every imaginable kind. I love the combos. Ooh, there was a W, a T-W on there. That's a very interesting one. T-W.

T-W. They're the furthest apart. So their head is up in the clouds, wondering, and their feet are on the ground implementing. And it can be really stressful because they're like, it's like we call it they have, when you're in an airplane, like altitude sickness. They go from the highest to the lowest.

Okay. What kind of work feels almost too easy for you, the kind that people thank you for, but you don't feel like you worked? Me. It's a great question. The kind of work that feels too easy. Like I said, me is like launching things.

Like I just love to launch things. Giving people advice about like, I have a problem and I don't know what to do. They ask me. Like I could sit all day. People could walk into my office and say, I need a new idea for my career or for my business. And I'm like, oh, this is just playtime. Even me creating this webinar.

To me, it's like fun. Like my team tries to do it for me. And I'm like, no, I'm going to do it all. Start over. Start from scratch. Do it my way. Okay. What do people constantly come to you for even when it's not in your job description?

So let's reflect on your genius. So even if it's not your job, what are people always coming to you for? ideas, advice, help. So I'm assuming if you're asking, if you're asked for advice, you might be enablement. Okay, now that you guys see your two geniuses, what finally clicked about how you work? Like, this explains why always, whatever it is. Like, what clicked for you after this report and getting this report and understanding your genius is? For me, it was like, no wonder I keep, I always start things. Why you get stuff? Yeah, and people will be like, we have a lot going on, Hala. Why do you need another thing? You're like,

because that's what I do. Somebody said, no wonder, I wonder. Yes. Realized on results oriented. This is my favorite thing to see the ahas. Mm-hmm. I love when people go,

oh my gosh. Holly, you know how you said before? Like, so when people come and ask me for advice, I don't have enablement, but they're coming to me for the very thing I love to do for them. Mm-hmm. Or like a nurse in a hospital,

the bell can ring, I'm just going to go help that guy. I don't know what he needs. And that's different. I love it when people ask me for the things I'm good at. When my wife says, I need your help this weekend, I cringe unless it's something that I love to do. We got a lot of fire emojis. Okay, so next we're going to move on to competencies.

Drop your two competencies in the chat. This is where you're capable, but not energized. You might actually be really good at it, but it will drain you over time. So you can get it done, but if you do too much of it, it will actually drain you. All right. Got a lot of different results here. Okay, what is that one task that you always get handed to you because you're good at, but you would not actually choose to do it?

So I need to see an actual, I guess it's delayed. But what is one task? Okay, presenting. We've got some needs to presenting, helping the team, completing things, analysis, documentation. Ooh, documentation. I just got a shudder. That word just sends me into panic. Surveyed.

Well, lots of documentation writing copy decks. Detail-oriented tasks. Writing a policy, solving problems. I think mine would be like the enablement piece, like having to like step in and support when I, you know, feel like I've got other priorities. Yeah. Okay.

So do you guys think being reliable in these areas might be costing you, energy. I'm going to move on to frustrations. Drop your two frustrations in the chat. It amazes me that they're not similar. I know. So many, we're all so different. And even after doing this, I think, are there really people that love the things I don't like? And the answer is absolutely. And it's so crazy because I just saw Critty. Critty is one of my rock star sales leaders on my team. She's been with me for five years. She is probably, like, no offense to everybody, but I love Crudy so much. She's one of my favorite employees. And her frustrations are my geniuses, but we work together so well. And it's probably because

we are opposites in that way. And see, she, and you could either go, gosh, I don't, like, imagine a person that's really detailed oriented, a person who is a big idea oriented, W-I-E-T, they could either go, she's so anal, oh, she's so flaky. Or they could go, I love how reliable she is. I love how creative she is. The difference between those responses, is the difference between a horrible working environment and a fantastic one. I think Curtis says total opposites. Okay, what type of work drains you fast

even when you're trying your best? I was always curious, you know, what are the geniuses that are the best at sales, Pat? Well, it depends on what kind of sales it is. I was in a class with a bunch of students at Auburn University, where my son goes, and the kid said, I just got a new job, but he's graduating.

and he had no G. He was a W.E. And I said, what kind of sales? He goes, cold call sales. And I said, oh, young man, I'm afraid you're going to hate that. He goes, I already hated it. I haven't even started because he doesn't want to go interrupt people and force them to do something that they don't want to do.

And that's what cold call sales is. Now, relationship sales is different. You know, it depends on what kind of sales. But if you don't have galvanizing and you're in a job where you're trying to convince people to do things that they're not already inclined to do, probably not going to love it. No wonder. I'm so good at sales.

Oh, my gosh, yes. What guilt or shame will you release right now related to your frustration? So for me, the shame that I released was like, okay, like, I don't have to be good at everything. I don't have to be good at enablement, even though I lead 60 people. Everybody knows I love them. It's nothing personal. It's just that is not my natural strength.

So that was a guilt and shame I released. Pat, what did you release in terms of guilt and shame? I think that was it, too. although it's really hard for me because I've lived my life that way. But I say yes to people way too much. My staff does not let me sell anymore because I go and I give things away. Because I'm like, oh, I should just help them. And they're like, Pat, they don't expect it.

We don't need that. So I think realizing that I don't have to always please everybody is probably one. Now, I love to love on people. But sometimes you do it out of guilt. Okay, type release if you're ready to stop judging yourself. for this thing, if you're ready to stop judging yourself for the things that you're not naturally good at. Praise God, that's awesome. This is really, you've done a great job on this.

Thank you. So let's talk about the first signs of when you're in your frustration zone, okay? So for some people, it comes mentally, like you start getting brain fog, you feel indecision. For some people, it's emotional. This is me. Like, I get irritated. I'll snap. I'll have dread, resentment.

but for the most part, like, I just get snappy if I'm in my frustration zone. And then for others, it's behavioral. You procrastinate. You shut down. You avoid. You don't respond. You ghost people. Right.

So think about it. When you have those, you mentioned those tasks in your competency, in your frustration that you feel like drains you. What do you feel like? Is it the procrastination? Is it the brain fog? Is it the irritability? What comes up for you first, typically?

Some get all three. Some get avoidance, procrastination. Cool. So now that you. know what comes up for you first, that is your trigger to pay closer attention. This is the thing that you need to figure out how to change. Okay? This is your first sign that you're starting draining work and you need to pay closer attention to when this happens. And you might want to write it down so you can know, okay, this is a task that drains me. This is a task that drains me.

And start to take an inventory. Because for competency and frustration work, you don't actually need to completely eliminate it. And if you're an entry level employee, if you are, you know, somebody who's just starting their career, even if you're an entrepreneur, sometimes you've got to chew glass, right? You've got to do things you don't want to do even as an entrepreneur. Even me, I do things I don't want to do every day. You actually need to try to just change how it shows up. And there's multiple ways that you can do this. Okay. So there's containing it. So this is really about something that you can't pass off to anybody else. You can't delegate it. You can't stop doing it. So you contain it. So you can limit how long you do it. You can gamify it.

You can time yourself to do it. You can do it in certain hours of the day. You can contain it to one day a week, right? So you can contain it and kind of think about, like, how can you do this in a way where, like, you know you got to do it, but you can structure it in a way that it's not going to be so painful for you. Okay? Next, you can share it. So this is if you're in some sort of a management role or if you're able to talk to your

manager and ask to redistribute or partner with somebody else, do it as a team and share your work. I allow my team to share work however they want. People team up all the time and I don't care. Totally. Yeah. So you can share it. You can redistribute it.

And then you can also redesign the process. So this is like, let's say you absolutely have to do it. Can you simplify it? Can you automate it? Does it actually need to get done? Is it actually moving the needle? Right. So how can you redesign it so that it costs you less energy, less time?

Okay. So those are the three ways that you can basically manage that work without actually completely eliminating it. So think about your most one or two draining tasks. What is the best solution for you right now? Are you going to contain it, share it, or redesign it? Jaden's going to share it. Maria's going to share it. Contain it. Okay, so let's talk about putting your genius to work. Before we go, that, what is your unique pairing? Let us know in the chat. What is your unique pairing? This is huge. We find that this is where people go like, oh, wow, that totally nailed it for me. And it was so interesting. I think one of my favorite things is that we're going to talk about this later, but I had my whole team. When I first started the Working Genius two years ago, I just had my leadership team did it. And this time around, I had my whole team do it. And it was so eye-opening. And it was just so fun, especially for like the employees I'm closest with to like, oh, yeah, you are. You know, I just saw Jade.

and just had like, uh, idea, creative dreamer. And it's like, yeah, you are creative dreamer. And that's why you're so great at your job, you know. And when you're working with them, you look at them and you see those letters and you go, oh, I think I know better how to interact with them and why this job will inspire them and why I might have to say, hey, I need you to do something outside of your genius. I really appreciate it if you could do that versus just going, do this. And it also was eye-opening in terms of like, I was like, oops, this person might be in the wrong role. And that's why we're having some frustrations, you know. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about building your work around your genius. So first of all, I want to make

something clear. You want to lean into the work that gives you energy. You don't need to completely erase the task. But the key thing is you actually want to add more genius time in your schedule. Yes. Okay? That's the key. It's not just about getting rid of the stuff that you don't like, because sometimes you can't do that. It's about adding more genius time in your schedule. And sometimes if I go back to my HP example, I was running like organizing. within the org that were really fulfilling to me and really helping me stay motivated and energetic and happy at work because I was subconsciously filling my genius gaps that I had at work essentially.

It seemed like you had something to say. No, no, no. I'm just leaning back and listening to this. It's so true. It's like, don't stop eating your vegetables. Add another slice of pizza. Exactly. You know.

Exactly. So more genius time is more joy, better output. but less burnout. This can be a side hustle. This can be start becoming a creator online and doing something like that. It doesn't even have to be at work, right? It can be something you do with your family to give you more genius time. So let's talk about firstly, we're going to talk about how to add more genius time next, but I want, this is more of like an activity I want you guys to think about. Finish the sentence. This Q1, I will protect my energy by, this is like, what are you going to do to actually limit the draining tasks? What are you going to do?

do. So some of the examples here, batching, you're going to batch this task on Fridays, you're going to ask for support, you're going to say no to owning things by default. You're going to move genius tasks to your peak energy hours. Like maybe you, you know, maybe you feel the best in the morning, so you're going to reserve that for your genius time. Or you're going to partner with somebody who's got a complimentary genius, right? So for example, Kate is my business partner. She's enablement and tenacity. I partner with her on everything. It makes everything better. It is so true. The complementarity. And then you appreciate them and they're like, this is so great to be appreciated.

And they appreciate you. It's fantastic to partner up. Mm-hmm. Okay. This key one, I'll increase my genius time by. And here's some examples that you can spend Wednesdays for invention and problem solving. I actually have a rule.

No meeting Wednesdays. It is only there for me to invent and problem solve. Letting my manager know about my geniuses and asking for work in those areas. designating weekly genius hours and treating them as non-negotiable. So what will you do to increase your genius time? This is something you can do even if nothing else changes. Look, somebody signed up to be a volunteer. That's such a great idea.

Go ahead, Pat. I was thinking the other day, I'm going to try to block off Wednesdays, and you wrote that, and I just wrote it down. And I was thinking about nothing on my schedule, but it's really to fill the schedule with the things that feed me, as opposed to just not having free time. Mm-hmm. And my whole team knows.

there's no meetings on Wednesday for me. The other thing is a lot of times, like, not everybody is an entrepreneur, right? Some people are, even as an entrepreneur, there's obligations that I have and people that hold me accountable, right? So you never really have complete control over everything. So what is one conversation that you're going to make this week to realign your work towards your genius? Something that I did literally yesterday in a coffee shop with my business partner, Jason, was look at our reports together and think about how we're going to do work together. from now on. And that's the thing.

So much of this is just sharing it with people and they solve, they'll look at it and go, oh, you know, we should do differently. The great thing if you're the CEO of a company and everyone in your organization knows their geniuses, they will figure out how to raise productivity. Yeah.

It will happen because they're going to go, oh my gosh, we could do this so much better if we just used everyone's strengths better. And so when you said, what are you going to do? The first thing is go share your report with the people you work and live with. see what happened.

So Russell says he's going to help his team identify their genius. Oh. What is one conversation you guys are going to have this week? Let us know in the chat. Somebody asked a question, Pat. He said, how do you apply this as a solopreneur? Oh, it's great. A solopreneur, it means when you think about vendors or partners or the work you do,

think about this, know who you are. Don't hire a vendor who wants to come in and do the things you're already great at. hire people that do the things you don't. And sometimes we do that. They're like, oh, I like them. They're a lot like me. I should partner with them. It's like, no, they're going to want to do the very work you love the most.

Solopreneurs, if they get dragged into doing work they hate, it's misery. So think about how you can know yourself and then bring in others to help you. And that can be someone on the outside. And you know what? These days, even if you're a solopreneur, a lot of the times you're working with international resources like VAs and things like that. So it's like how can you supplement with, you know, international resources and VAs is what I think of. It's so funny too. AI is a whole different subject, but nobody knows exactly what it is because it's so many different things.

But use tools like that to fill in your gaps. Don't use those tools to do the things that you're already good at. Okay. So each working genius is powerful and each one needs small adjustments to work well with others. So Pat, this is something I came up with myself. So I'm curious to see what your thoughts are, if you have any additions. I can't wait. Something that I was thinking about is like, well, how do you actually work better at these things?

So wonder. So wonder what frustrates others with wonder is that sometimes wonder can slow things down. This is actually my frustration and this is what me and my business partner, Jason, used to butt heads on or, you know, hopefully won't butt heads on anymore. So to be a better teammate, you should be asking. your why questions before execution starts and not during. You should write your questions down so they don't derail meetings and don't question direction unless you have the relevant expertise to do so. The reason why I listed that last one, Pat, was because I saw that a lot of my younger employees have wonder, and I feel that that could be dangerous if they're not actually

the expert in the area. So what's your thoughts on that? Okay. So here's what I would, I love all that. And I think that the bow I would put around all of it is when you're wondering, I love the idea of anticipate objections, contextualize it and say, hey, by the way, you know, I'm a wonder. So I'm about to say something. And I'm just asking the question, if they shift their, their mindset into, oh, you're about to wonder, they're going to be less annoyed if it's something like kind of out there. So just say, hey, I realize I'm a wonderer, so here's what I'm doing. So follow all that advice.

But whenever you're doing it, my wife said to me once, we had just bought a house. And we literally signed the papers. And she said, maybe we should have bought a house in a different state. And I said, Laura, I just, she was, I'm just wondering. And I was like, okay, next time say, hey, I'm just wondering. I know this is way out there because I was like finishing the task. And she was like throwing an idea out there that was so impractical. And as long as she says, hey,

I'm just wondering here, so don't freak out. So I think that actually letting people know I'm a wanderer, I'm about to ask a wondering question, I realize it might be out of the blue. It allows people to kind of adjust so they don't go, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah. And that goes pretty like similarly to invention as well. So what frustrates others with invention, and I'm sure the closest people that work with me gets so annoyed with me on too many ideas without a clear path forward.

Like I'll always be like, let's do this, let's do that. So to be a better teammate, and this one is for myself, is capture my ideas immediately so they don't interrupt focus later. Because sometimes it will distract me because I'm like, oh, I want to do this. And like I'll literally go start launching it, even though I'm like, like, I was doing this presentation. Then I had an idea for a LinkedIn post and like derailed me for two hours, right? So capture ideas and then do them at a designated time. Separate ideation from execution meetings, like decide it when you're in a meeting. Like this is the, you know, execution, tenacity enablement mode.

That's great. That's great. Label your ideas as sketches, not solutions. So, like, if you're – sometimes I'm throwing things out there and, like, it's totally half-baked. Let everybody know, like, this is a half-baked thing. And because I'm in a position of authority, sometimes people would just run with it, even though, like, I was just kind of, you know, throwing spaghetti at the wall, you know?

So it's like not people know it's just a sketch. And then pair with somebody who enjoys refining and not actually doing the inventing. Yes. An inventor working with a discerner is a beautiful thing. Yeah. So find that discernment. Those WI at the beginning there, one of the things is we let people know is because that's that creative person, just letting people know that's what you're doing.

And sometimes use those. We call it, my wife came up with this idea, the lowercase letter of W&I. Like sometimes you're implementing and you can say, oh, I have. an idea or I'm wondering about something, but I'm contextualizing it within the thing we're actually working on, not I'm blowing it all up something new. Or I have a new idea, but it's a new idea about how we could actually implement this in the next two days as opposed to a new idea that's going to blow everything up. Yeah. And sometimes I'll give a new idea that will create a whole other role and like somebody will do something for like months. And then I'm like, why are we doing this?

It's not working, you know? So discernment is something I need. So what frustrates others with discernment is that feedback can feel vague or subjective. So people are like, hmm, I just don't think that's right, but give no like why or, you know, so say your judgment clearly. Don't just imply it. Separate your intuition, your gut from your data. So like if something is like the numbers show this versus this is what my gut feels, make sure people know that. Share judgment as perspective unless you own the decision and raise concerns early, not after a decision is made. Although I think pivoting is good if it's really wrong, right? You don't want to just people to just keep going down the wrong path.

Any thoughts on discernment? Yeah, and that last one, you can say, hey, I would have said this earlier had I thought about it, but something just occurred to me. But don't be that one that goes, well, I knew it was going to work. And it's like, well, that's your fault for not speaking up. Exactly. These are really good. These are really good.

Okay, galvanizing. So high energy without clear follow-through. So this is really something that I need to find. focus on. So pause to confirm commitment before pushing urgency. So sometimes I give people assignments and don't even think about it. So I need to like pause and be like, do I really want my team to work on this? Coordinate daily short sinks to rally the team. This is something that I did naturally that is like changed the game for me. Oh. The best organizations have like, and some do it like they have a daily chicken. Just it could be five minutes. Yeah. I implemented something called deal deal.

because I have a network where I get a podcast or sponsorships. And it's my whole team for 30 minutes. And everyone's just bringing me the deals and letting me solve problems and any blockers. And it's just like it's a rally. Everybody inspire it. Part of it is like inspiring. Like what are we excited about this week? Like, and it just sets the morning off right.

I love it. They love it. And that is like perfectly helps me like do my galvanizing job in the way that I need to do. So anybody who's a galvanizer, I highly recommend a short daily sink. And then end a meeting with who owns what? Because that's a lot of times. The weakness of galvanizers is not actually executing the idea. Enablement.

What frustrates others is support turns to taking over. So sometimes you solve the wrong problems. So in order to be a better teammate, you want to remove obstacles but not necessarily own the work. Resist fixing things that actually are not blocking progress. support teammates without hiding performance issues and escalate blockers instead of absorbing them. So, Pat, the reason why I wrote this is because when I was thinking about so much of my team is enablement, and when I was thinking about those folks, they're rock stars.

And sometimes I think they hide performance issues from other teammates where a manager like me, I don't know who's doing what and who's struggling and because they're just masking everything. Yeah, and it's because they're like, well, I'll just do it. I'll just help. I'll just, I'll fix that by going a little harder. And then that's not good for the organization. And it burns them out. And so I think it's true. They should raise issues. They don't love to do that sometimes. And yet, quietly absorbing them, they take, they know this because they'll say, oh, my gosh, I do that all the time. And it comes at their expense. So it's great to say, yes, I'll help.

It's okay also to go, I don't think this is working because I think we need to address some things. Yeah, exactly. Okay, lastly, tenacity, what frustrates others? This one was hard. I was like, I don't know, who doesn't like somebody who gets things done, right? So the pace feels relentless. So one thing that I think people with tenacity do, as I was reflecting on this, is that they might settle for suboptimal decisions just to get things done.

They definitely, that can happen, absolutely. I also think something that they can do to improve collaboration is to highlight wins, instead of always just like trying to drive, drive, drive, that can burn people out. And even highlighting the winds that happen along the way, you know, during the journey. Because sometimes I can go, it's not finished yet. It's not finished yet. But it's like, hey, it's the second quarter. We just had a good quarter.

Can we just go, that was a good quarter. But the fourth quarter, it's not over. So sometimes it can destroy the joy of the process because it's just the finish. Yep. And then push hard on what truly matters, like ensure you're working on priorers. Some people with tenacity might just keep working, working, working, and it's not even the priorities. So just step back, make sure you're actually aligned with the priorities. Yeah. And again, it depends on what their other letter is. Some of these are more problematic for

people depending on what the other letter is. But this is all ridiculously impressive and wonderful. This is so much fun. Okay, awesome. So we're going to talk about leveraging working genius for your teams. And I'm just going to give you guys a little bit of background in terms of how I used working genius for myself. So for as long as I can remember, I was a natural leader. So literally president of everything, president of my alumni organization, president of the young employee network, started this, a blog with 50 female bloggers. Then I started this company with volunteers turned into a company of 60 people now. So I've always been a natural leader. And I launched Young Improfiting podcast in 2018. And at first I loved every minute of it.

You know, we were a small team, volunteer team. I would teach everybody, everything. had a video edit, audio edit, post on social. I loved it. I'd have all hands meetings with the whole team every week. Everything just felt great. I literally designed my dream career. But as we grew, I was getting really drained. Managing people specifically really started to drain me. I would get snappy with folks. And even though we were growing and making money and I was paying everybody now, I just wasn't happy and I just felt like things were really off. Okay? So I, I, did what every entrepreneur did. And even before I knew about working genius, I solved the problem. So I hired Kate and Jason, who are my executives, and things seemed to be working. And the team was happy. And we were,

you know, we were growing and everything. But I was budding heads with my leadership team. Even though I respected them and admired them and loved them, I was budding heads with them all the time. Okay. And then two years ago, I actually interviewed Pat on my podcast. and I discovered the working genius framework. And as soon as I learned about the six types, I immediately knew like, oh my God, this, even before I knew, they took the assessment, Kate and Jason, I knew exactly what their lead, you know, genius was

and why we were budding heads. And I was like, they have to take the genius framework. This is going to solve everything. And for the first time ever, we understood how we worked. We took personality tests in the past, but it didn't help us to actually work better together. So we understood how we worked, not just who we were. And so this is how it basically helped us.

So our working genius says, I'm invention and galvanizing. Jason is our C-O-O. He's wonder and invention. Kate is our CXO. She's enablement and tenacity. So I think we work beautifully together, okay? In terms of how they create value, I create ideas, I rally. Jason ensures resolving the right problems.

And Kate supports people and drives execution. Our past friction used to be that I used to be impatient. We're too slow. We're too slow with decisions. I also really wanted to go invent. And Jason wanted me to focus on priorities. Jason wanted more clarity. Jason wanted more vision.

I wanted to just take action and do the opportunity that I saw in front of me. And Kate, we were pressuring Kate to innovate. She leads our social agency and I'm like, why aren't we innovating? Why aren't we innovating? Pressure Kate to innovate. But that wasn't her strength when she was doing such a good job managing the biggest, like, we've got 40 people on the social side, and she was doing an incredible job managing and leading those 40 people, but we are pressuring her to innovate when that wasn't

her strength. So now that we all know our working genius, we all can play in our lane. And actually, this was such a great refresh. Even though we took it two years ago, it was kind of like re-energized us, like, oh my God, we need to like really align the whole company to this. And so my aligned role is really supporting vision, creating offers, driving momentum, rallying the team. Jason is now all about clarifying priorities, designing the solution, having the vision, really ensuring that, like, you know, we're on a track and we're align each priorities. And Kate is all about building culture, stability, and follow through, making sure that everybody's having a good time while we build this ship, right? So this is how our leadership team now works together. You know what's interesting

about that, the titles become less important. Because, and Cody and our team always says this, because Jason is the C-O-O. But really, what does he do? He ensures for solving the right problems. He wanted more clarity, but he clarifies priorities and design solutions. You could call that a variety of different. Some companies have a C-O, and it's really a chief administrative officer, or it could be, you know what I mean?

And the title becomes less important is the person and the role. Mm-hmm. And some people mention you guys are missing discernment, but all three of us have discernment as a competency. So we still have it. But to your point, maybe we need somebody who's stronger in that on our executive team. And when we're hiring the future, we're going to have people take assessments so that we can fill those gaps. Absolutely. So once we did that, we literally doubled in revenue the year that we discovered Working Genius. So there's a lot of factors in that, but I think Working Genius totally added. to that success. You know, over the years, we've worked with companies and we help them with organizational health and things like this. Of course, it's never just that. What it is, it's allowing you to use all the good things you already do and have.

So, yes, it matters. It's not everything, but it totally frees you up to use the talent you have. So that's great. Okay, so let's uncover how you can leverage working genius for your teams as well. And now Pat is going to go over some of the working team dynamics that we need to be aware of. So let's start with how working genius builds stronger teams. Yeah. I mean, again, it starts with understanding each other.

And we've talked about some of this before, so I'll go quickly through this. When you look at, and I think you're going to show a version of this, when you look at your team map, you'll see where there's a gap. Like, oh, my gosh, we have nobody in that area. Or we have one person from our whole team who does that and they're getting crushed because of that. So looking at the team map immediately, people go, oh, no wonder that failed or no wonder we love this. So, and when you, and when this has reduced friction overload and burnout, it's totally true. That friction, it's like the lubricant between how the machine works. When people understand one other and put them in the right roles, things get so much smoother.

And that leads to all these other things. So let's keep going. Yeah, let's talk about, first of all, let's talk about the natural workflow of projects. So I'm just going to build this so that you can talk to us about how a project works. Okay? So let's start off with wonder. Yeah, so somebody asks the question, why do we do this? Is there a better way? Maybe that we should do some this. This happens at 50,000 feet, by the way. We come down to like 45,000 feet. Hey, I have an idea.

Maybe we should do this. We're getting it closer to the ground. And somebody says, wait a second, let's really talk about this. Here's kind of how I'm seeing this. Let's work on this. Let's do that ID loop a little bit more. Okay, I think we're ready to go. Let's get people excited. Let's make sure that we're getting people excited about this before we go to the last phase, which is we need to get volunteers and people that are willing to do it and figure out who's going to do what. And then let's make sure that we can actually finish and we can drive it through to tenacity to conclusion. So it goes from 50,000 feet down to five feet, gradually landing the plane, if you will. So there's three stages of any project.

There's ideation, there's activation, and there's implementation. Yeah, we talked to somebody at Nike years ago who said that they realized they had a problem because they were good at ideation. They had people come with these wacky, crazy product ideas, and they'd throw them over the wall and say to the people, make them and sell them. And they realized, oh, my gosh, we're not doing any of the discernment and galvanizing. We're not taking the time to kind of give people feedback about those ideas. And then to kind of rally people around what we were going to implement. It was just like, okay, that's your job to go do it. And the implementation people are saying, why don't they give us better ideas?

And the ideation people were like, why don't they do what we asked them? And they said they were really missing activation. If you guys were paying attention, what is the most, Common gap in organizations. What is the most common gap that people struggle with? Is it the ideation, activation, or implementation stage? And I think it does vary based on organization, but there's one that I think that people don't get. It's activation, guys.

It's activation. It's that. I gave me the answer. I'm sorry. No, that's okay. That's okay. It's all about reinforcing anyway. I just want you guys to learn it.

So you don't need more talent. You really just need the. right mix, right? You don't necessarily need more talent. You need the right mix. So let's talk about genius gaps that hurt team. So missing wonder means there's no clear vision, missing invention, no new solutions, missing discernment, weak decision making, missing galvanizing, no momentum, missing enablement, no lift, no support, missing tenacity. Work does not get finished. Okay. So let's play a game called Guess the Gap. These are such good reinforcing tools because it seems simple, but applying it like this is really good.

Yeah, I feel like it just makes you actually really know the material so that you can all speak the same language, right? That's the goal. So let's talk about guessing the gap. All right, we've got tons of ideas, but nothing ever gets finished. What is the gap here? We've got tons of ideas, but nothing ever gets finished. finished is the clue here. Right.

Okay, a lot of you guys got it. Some of you guys did it. It's tenacity. Tenacity wants to close the loop. They want to get things done. They want to move on to the next thing, get things done. Execute. They're the executors of your team.

Yeah, and Van, you'll put implementation. Yeah, that's the second part of implementation. That's exactly right. We jump into action too fast and often regret it. What is the gap here? What is missing from the team? We jump into action too fast and often regret it. It is discernment. So that is all about good decision making, right, Pat? Yeah,

discernment is we drive the car really fast, but it went right off a cliff and somebody was in the back seat going, hey, excuse me, I'm not sure this is the right road. We agree on ideas, but nobody takes charge and gets people moving. Yep, you guys got that one. Galvanizing. Like I just discovered, I'm the only galvanizer in my whole organization. We got to change that. People do great work, but independently. There's no support, no collaboration. Yeah, I love that because support and collaboration, it's the glue in the organization. It's enablement. You guys are right. Great job. Ideas take off quickly, but nothing gets completed. What is the gap here? Ideas take off quickly, but nothing gets completed. It's a trick one. Senacity. We did it already, but I was making sure you guys

paying attention. Exactly. Okay, we're busy all the time, but nothing really changes. We're busy all the time, but nothing really changes. Oh, this is so interesting. Nobody's getting it right or one person got it right. It is wonder. Wonder is all about the vision and, you know, actually steering the ship. Would you agree, Pat?

Yeah, because it takes that person to go, should we really do this anymore and be like, how can you ask that question? This is what we do. And it's like, yeah, but should we? we be doing it? Mm-hmm. And nothing, and you say nothing big ever change. It's like we haven't stepped back and asked the big question.

Mm-hmm. An invention, you might be inventing things, but nothing's really changing because you're not inventing the right things. Right. We keep trying the same old solutions and nothing feels innovative. All right. You guys are too smart for this one. It's invention.

That was a giveaway. Okay. So let's talk about common friction areas. This one's really interesting. So responsive. versus disruptive geniuses. We're going to have them guess which one is responsive to start off with. So, Pat, explain to us what a responsive genius is.

Responsive geniuses are the ones that they tend to wait for other people to initiate or they respond to what's going on in the environment. And if both of their geniuses are in the responsive category, they're probably not going to make change happen until it's provoked from someplace else. Okay. They're going to be more supportive and responsive and waiting for somebody else to say, let's do this. Disruptive genius is, oh, so let's guess, yeah, let's guess which three of these, oh, and you mixed them up to make it harder. I love it. Which of these do you think are more responsive? Is it TDWG? Which ones are responsive? Nobody quite got it yet. So the answer is discernment, wonder, and enablement.

Yeah, let me explain that too. Wonder responds to, they just looking out the window and going, what's going on here? Or what's going on in the company? Gosh, I'm sitting in this meeting. I'm noticing that things are moving forward. Discernment is responding to the new idea. The inventor gives them that idea. And enablement is responding to the galvanizer who says, let's do it.

And they're like, yes, I will help. That doesn't mean that these people don't get lots of crap done. It doesn't mean that they're not. But it's like they're generally not going to initiate. the change. Now, you have two geniuses when you're in your type. So oftentimes, like, I am a D, I'm an ID, discernment is responsive. And now I guess we'll get to the next one now. I don't want to give way the answer. Well, no, it's okay. This one, I let them have the answer. Yes. So disruptive geniuses. And people will say, like, how is tenacity disruptive? They're like, I don't care

what the problem is. We're going to push through it. So they're disrupting, like, there's a, there's a challenge. I'm going to, we're going to destroy it. Galvanizers, of course, are disruptive. They're like, close your laptop, change your opinions. Here's what we're doing right now. Stop what you're working on. And invention says the world needs something new, and I'm going to propose that.

So all of these are necessary. Yeah. And something I realized for myself is my top three are disruptive. Yes. Isn't that awesome to know? It's awesome. But it got me in trouble when I was in corporate because everybody loved me and I'd always get promoted.

But then I'd always be, they'd always be. like, well, people say you don't get along with others or like, you know, you're too pushy or whatever it was. So it's just interesting to reflect on that. And to think about that you were like, oh, no, what's wrong with me? I'm a woman. Is that because I'm a woman? I have to be nicer. It's like, no, your top three geniuses are by definition disruptive. And that's not, there's no problem in that. That's not a character flaw. It's just something to understand. And now you can say to people, hey, I have a disruptive. I'm going to generally push to do that. and there's certain roles where that's great.

And then when people realize that, they're like, oh, you're not doing that because you're not listening. You just really help organizations get unstuck. And we need that. Somebody else can be a WD, right? And they're going to say, I'm probably not going to come ring the bells and grab people by the collar and shake them and say,

we need to change this. So I probably don't want to be in a role where I have to sound the alarm. And it's so we can staff them in different ways. and it's such a great thing. So these are just to kind of like put it together, guys. Responsive is on top. Disruptive is on the bottom.

Like we mentioned, these things really flow into each other. This is like the way that you do a project, W-I-D-G-E-T. That's how you complete a project. Responsive is on top. Disruptive is on the bottom of the model. So think about this. What do you think people value most in the workplace? Do you think it's responsive or disruptive geniuses?

Like when you think of like the people that are always getting shoutouts and people who are always getting promoted and their accolades, do you feel like they're responsive or disruptive? Who do you think is most valuable in the workplace? Okay. Well, the answer is that they're both valuable. So people might think that disruptive is the most valuable, but they're actually both very valuable. Pat, can you tell us why? Well, yeah, and people might have been saying which ones get noticed more. Yeah, I might have phrased a question.

Not that great. Yeah. But there are certain. kinds of organizations where if you're disruptive, you get hit down. Like if you're in a non-profit or a church sometimes, it's like, oh, you're you're disrupting things. So the answer is they're both completely, if you have all of one and not the other, you're in trouble. And they're both critical. Now, it depends on who the leader is too sometimes. So if the leader is self-aware and goes, wow, I'm disruptive. I need to really call out those people that are responsive. That might

happen. Sometimes though we only call out people that we recognize. So the idea here, is, let's notice everything and realize that we need it all. Especially if you're in a managerial position or you own your company, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs are probably tuning in. It's like they're both valuable. You need all of these for a functioning team. Okay, so let's go over the geniuses known to butt heads. Okay, so inventor and tenacity, right?

So new ideas versus finishing the work. Inventors want to explore. Tenacity wants the closed loops. I definitely see this all the time with my team when I give ideas. where people are like pushing back in terms of not wanting to close the loops. Wonder and galvanizing. This was what me and Jason were budding heads at. Turns out so many people hate galvanizing in my organization.

So it's the asking questions versus pushing action. And then discernment and enablement. So honest feedback versus harmony. Sometimes discernment is about giving, you know, gut truth, honest feedback. And enablement just wants harmony and support. You know what I, what's interesting about this? people that have these combinations will tell you they have like I have I'm surrounded by people with discernment and enablement. I really love that combination. It's very this, this, the insights,

insightful collaborator. But what they say is when I, like if somebody goes to them and says, I need your help, they struggle with, should I just say yes or should I give them advice? And they said, do you want my D or my E first? Totally. And there's people there are IT's inventor tenacity. And it's like, if I blow the budget but come up with a new idea, is that okay? or, you know, which of these should I pay attention to? So even within us, we have this, this tension. I didn't even think about that, that, like, you could be an inventor with tenacity. Oh, yeah.

Wonder Galvanizers, Wonder Galvanizers are hilarious because they're like, let's do it. And then they're like, but maybe we shouldn't. And I said, the Wonder Galvanizer is a guy who goes, get out there, Pat, you can beat up the bully. Go, go, go, go. And then as you go out there, he goes, but he might kill you. What? Too late. So this is something that you teased before.

Talk to us about the elevation of geniuses. And then we can also talk about why jumping from one to the next can be disruptive. Yeah, because the idea is we, and my wife is a WI, she's a creative dreamer. She lives up there at that level. So most of her work for 20 years was down at the, at the ET level, you know, landing the plane. And that can be really hard. Now, if you have two geniuses at different levels, like the WT, every WT I talk to says, I sit there and I'm like, am I working on the right thing? Oh my gosh, I have a deadline. I have to get it done. And it's so hard for

them. And what I tell them is do them separately. When you do T activities, say I'm teeing. I'm not to, I'm going to postpone my W right now. And when you do W activities, do it separately. Don't worry about the budget. Let yourself W. But now those of us that have them pretty close to each other like me, ID, they tend to go kind of together, but it's still pretty high up there in the clouds. And then I love this like jumping from one to another. And this was really eye opening for me because like I can even think about like that deal desk meeting that I was telling you guys about before where it's like that daily check in. Everyone's like bringing me problems. And then suddenly I'll be like, well, why don't we invent this? And like we're talking about a deal that

needs to get done. And I like tangent of let's like invent this new thing and start this new progress report for everyone or whatever. And it's like I'm jumping around. We're at tenacity level. We're supposed to be at 5,000 feet or even 10,000 at enablement. And then I'm jumping to 30,000 feet talking about invention. And for people who have tenacity, they're probably like, oh my God, this is so disorganized or we're so jumpy. And it can cause a lot of tension, right? Yeah, it's great to go into meetings and say, hey, what is this meeting about? It's a GET meeting. And then if you you did do that, Hala, you could go, hey, you guys, I know this isn't I thing. So let me just throw it out there. We can table it. But I was just thinking this. I just wanted to get it out there.

Now let's get back to the meeting. Exactly. So it's just like, you know, you can, you can let people know. Or I can write it down and then like bring it up in our strategy meeting instead. It's hard to do. If you have more self-control than I do. Because it's a little idea comes, you've got to put it out there. Yeah. So let's talk about the four working conversations. Pat, can you break this down for us? Brainstorming. first. Yeah, you know, and this is that WID meeting where you get into a room and you go, hey, we're going to just throw some ideas against the wall. We're going to wonder, wondering is great. We're going to say, hey, what about this? And somebody's going to go,

yeah, I think so. But we're not going to do is we're not going to analyze it versus the budget versus deadlines and all that. Because brainstorming by definition is not about talking about its practicality. If we're not clear that we're having a WID meeting, we can really frustrate people. And some people hate brainstorming sessions. They still have to go. You can't go. Well, you're an E.T. Like in your case, it's like you can't say, oh, yeah, we're going to have this brainstorming meeting, but Kate doesn't have to go.

No, no, she needs to be there and watch the sausage being made. She just needs to realize, oh, this isn't that fun for me. And so that's one of the work here. Brainstorming is. Yeah, and if you have tenacity, you've got to, you know, try not to get into execution mode when everyone's just trying to ideate. Right. Decision making.

This is like, okay. We're not here to wonder anymore. We're here to figure out, I think this is the right idea based on the around the information, the ideation. And can we galvanize this? Is this galvanizable? But D starts that process. Like, what is our gut telling us?

What are we going to do? So it's the D between the I and the G that works. And why is the wonder not involved in this at this point? Because it's past that stage, right? Yeah. Now, that's not say a person with wonder doesn't go to that meeting. It's just like, we've probably spent our time in the brainstorm meeting going, what about this, what about this?

Maybe we shouldn't do this. Maybe we shouldn't do this. Now we're moving toward, okay, of all those things, what should we do next? And it rarely happens in the same meeting. It rarely happens in the same meeting. This is my favorite launch. Yes, and we start with the G. Now, the G, though, is between the E and the D.

That's what's so interesting about these things. and they're galvanizing people, but they're with the goal of to try to really inspire the enablers and to present enough of the information from discernment to help people understand why we made the decision. And then lastly, we've got status review. Which is really getting it done and like, okay, where do we stand? It's about finishing.

Now the G goes first because they're usually the one that's doing it, but it all has to end up with T. So you might even put T, the front, it's G and T, because it's getting to that place. But usually it's the G person. There's people with G, though, that don't have, like, you're, you're an IG. Now, imagine a person who's a GT. Now, they live for the status review meeting, right? And you're like, yeah, I'd rather have a G meeting where we're talking about galvanizing around the idea, not necessarily around the task. So one of the things that we did at Yap is we, we,

started a we we leveraged the working genius team map so you can actually have a team map that is created out of doing this assessment with your team and so it allows better understanding it highlights team gaps it reveals opportunities for reorganization and so i thought it would be fun for my network team which is the smaller team in my business i've got a social agency and a network it's out to be fun to like pull it up and just analyze it for a little bit as we as we close out this session which by the way guys if you've had an awesome time, if you've learned so much, let us know in the chat. I feel like it's been really fun. Let us know if you've been having a great time. But I've been wanting to kind of just go over this with you, Pat. So this is actually the real

results from my network team. And, you know, we've got a lot of people who are in wonder. We've got a lot of people in enablements. We've got a lot of people who are frustrated by galvanizing and wonder. So one of the biggest gaps overall that I first realized is that it just feels like not a lot of people aren't galvanizing. So Rahul actually leads my finance team, and there's just one other person on that team, so there's not much he can galvanize. So it's like, other than that, I'm the only galvanizer. So to me, that seemed like a gap. But is that a problem? Like, do you need a lot of galvanizers? You know, it really depends. And it depends on the kind of company and the organization it is. You know, you have a pencil

factory, you might not, because things are pretty straightforward. You're not doing a lot. It's like sticking to the plan. But if you're doing new things that need to kind of, question the status quo, you might. The main thing is people need to realize that's something we need you to do. And if they're burning you out in other areas and we're losing your galvanizing, that's a really bad thing. So that's the first thing I noticed there. There's not a lot of that on this team. This is not terrible in terms of like there's not like massive gaps. You've got at least three people doing everything else, which I think is good. The enablement, one means you have a lot of people that are willing to help.

A lot of people willing. Yeah, we've got a good, like, everybody loves to help each other at my company. But one of the things that worried me was like, do I have too many people in Wonder? Like, I just feel, should it just be me and my leaders that are good at Wonder? Or, like, how does a person with Wonder who's not necessarily a leader in the company leverage that skill? I think that it depends on what their other letter is. You know what I mean?

And if all of those people were W-I's and there wasn't enough creative work to keep five W-I's busy being creative dreamers, that might be a problem. But so it depends. And, you know, you can look at this, like when I look at this, like Amelia is a W-E. So that's, that's, so you, she's got E combined with her W. You know, like I look at E-Sra, who's an E-T. And I think, how many other E-Ts do you have, do any other E-T's? Kate and Usra are E.T. So these are the kind of people that are the loyal finishers.

They might very well say, oh, yeah, if it's going to get done, it's going to end up with us. And we will say yes, and we will always try to do it. But they could get burned out. And a lot of people who are ETs, they don't tell you they're going to get burned out until they get sick. So I would look at Eustra and Kate and go, okay, let's not crush them. Yeah. Great. So that's one thing I would say. As far as the frustrations go, you have a lot of, not only do you not, you only have two galvanizers, but you have a ton of people who just don't want to. So that's another. Well, they don't because they're glad you do it. But.

Yeah. That was so interesting to me that people are frustrated by the galvanizing. It's just so interesting to see. Like it's really eye-opening. And I highly recommend that everybody, um, take their team map. And this has been an awesome session. We are way over time. So I'm going to wrap it up for you guys. So I just want to recap what we learned today. You learned why burnout is misalignment, not over work. We really went deep on the six working geniuses.

You uncovered your personal geniuses, your competencies, your frustrations. You learned how to leverage them for more joy and fulfillment. We did activities where you guys know exactly where you're going to do in Q1 and 2026 to make the most out of this workshop. And you understand the real reasons why teams get stuck and frustrated. So now's your chance to bring working genius to your team. You did it for yourself. Some of you guys might be here with your team, which is awesome. We've already done that work. But now is your chance to bring this to your team.

And the awesome part is they can do this and then watch the session on YouTube or listen to it on my podcast and actually take them through this entire activity so they know this just as well as you do. So you can actually give this to your team, have them take this assessment and do this workshop virtually, just like they would, like any sort of pre-recorded training video. So this is going to be up on YouTube. It's going to be up on my podcast. And using it for your teams, we talked all about why this is beneficial. People do what they're naturally good at.

Things move forward instead of getting stuck. And it's just more fun. You guys collaborate better, get along better. Who doesn't want to have fun at work? And working genius makes work more fun. So if you guys want to do this, you get 20% off the assessment. again, it's just $20 per assessment. It's a no-brainer.

You can use the code profiting teams. We'll type that in the chat and you guys can distribute that to your teams and it's valid until December 24th. So it's a great thing to have everybody do before the holidays. And then maybe they watch the, you know, video in the new year and you guys put it all together. So if you guys want to do this with your team, you can do it with the discount, 25% off, using code profiting teams.

Okay. So now we're going to do a very quick Q&A. If anybody has, we still got a lot of people on the call. So shout out to you guys for sticking on. If you guys have Q&A, Pat, if you're down, I'm down to stay on. I'm totally down. This is my favorite thing. Yeah.

So if you guys have Q&A, let's, we can, Jaden and Aman. I don't know how you want to handle this, but you guys are going to be leading the, if you're going to bring your people up to unmute themselves or if you guys want to type in the chat. If you guys have questions for me and Pat, now's your chance. And I'll stop sharing so you guys can see us nice and big on the screen. All my teacups are empty, so I think we're getting close there. Awesome. We can start with some of the questions that we have collected from the audience.

And then if anyone types in that question, we can jump into the audience. And we can also bring people up if someone wants to talk. So, yeah, first question, we got this via email. And this was a question for Pat. someone was asking looking at work from a Catholic Christian viewpoint as work is something that we are made to do and enjoy. However, we might not all enjoy our work and do it to put food on the table. Taking into consideration the joy of suffering and lessons God might be trying to teach us

and suffering and work. So my question is, at what point you are suffering to grow? in the work that we do or is it bad work that we need to move on? Wow. That's a tough question. And a deep one. Did you get that, Pat? I don't know. I didn't know. Okay, you got it. I love it. Suffering is part of life. And one of the problems in life when people think that all suffering is bad, it means we avoid it and we usually create more suffering. Suffering is redemptive. But I think that if we're in a job that's making us suffer every day and we don't need to be, that hurts other people, hurts our families, it hurts us, it hurts the people around us and the people we work with. So I don't think God

meant us to hate work. Now, some people are out there. They have to work in a coal mine because they live in a place. That's all you can do to put food on the table. And God bless them. I think, though, that God gives us gifts and we're supposed to use them. So the extent to which we can figure out how to use them to help others, that's a good thing. So I'm not a theologian, but I do know that suffering is good and redemptive at times. But I don't think we need to bring on a lot of extra suffering onto ourselves. I think there's plenty of that in the world. So I would say pursuing work that gives you energy and joy for the good of others is a very good thing. Jaden and Aman, is it possible to have people raised our hands so that we can hear their voice?

Yes, they can be fun for the podcast. And we can allow them to talk. Yes. Okay, cool. So if you guys want to start raising your hands, we'll bring you up. All right. So let's start off with Hugh. And make sure you guys unmute. Don't slow us down here. Let's start with Hugh. Or can I unmute them? Hey, Hugh. Hi, can you hear me okay? Yes.

Cool, thank you. Thank you very much for this. It's been really interesting. I'm curious as to whether or not you feel that the working genius can change over time. Do you think someone might be different at one point in their career and maybe either through choosing to work on something that they might find joy in it? or do you think it's something that's quite fixed? I think it's fixed. I think you're born with it.

Everybody we've talked to said they can recognize early in their life when they knew it. Many people were never encouraged to do things that they have geniuses in when they're young. And we've not found people that say, gosh, I used to love that kind. Now, you could say I used to love playing the guitar and I don't anymore. That's different. But the kind of work of the six, usually those two are the things that you've, I mean, when I was a kid, I yearned to be inventive and discerned. and I just never could.

So I just did the only things I was allowed to do. So I thank Hugh, we feel pretty confident that the answer is you're born this way. Now, though, you can learn to be really good at things, even if it doesn't give you joy and energy, which is good and bad depending on why you do it. Thank you. Thank you, Hugh. Thank you. All right.

Let's go to Joel. Yeah, my question is, operational more than anything else. I am curious as to whether you guys have or currently or planning to provide a capability to integrate to PMO type solutions like Confluence and Gira so that you can actually, as you're forming up dynamically forming up pods or teams

to do delivery operations, that you can see how those teams align from a genius. perspective, right? Yeah. This is a practical implementation of the tools or this. Otherwise, to me, it's all theoretical. It's a nice to have a three-ring binder on the shelf. It's not able to be implemented in an enterprise to make it actionable. Well, you know, it's interesting, when you say PMO, you're talking about project management,

right? Yeah. Yeah. And so this is my working genius and my, I think that the most important thing you can do in an organization to make this stick is for people to walk around and know who they are. And so when you sit down for a project, you go, okay, we got six months going on here. I think everybody should come and say, here's my profile. I don't know that it has to be systematized. Sometimes it can be. I'm the wrong guy to do that because I've never been that way. But I find that in organizations where, put it to put it this way, if you had a hundred people in an organization and everybody knew their working genius and every time they sat down at a table

to start a project, they put them out there. you'd probably be able to organize that, Joel, in a way that leverage those strengths. Yes, there's value in systematization, but I think sometimes when we over-systematize things, we kind of lose the art of it versus the science. So that's just my opinion. I'm probably biased based on how I am and that I suck at systemization. Put that word on a chart there, and I would be like, oh, no, don't make me do that job. But maybe Joel, you're going to be the guy to figure it out.

As far as systemically implementing something like this, it's fine if you're looking at small teams and you're all in the same office suite and you all know, you'll know each other and you go to drink beer after work and all that. Everybody kind of knows each other's strength. I'm dealing with enterprise global teams and people in, you know, people in Eastern Europe, people in India, people in India, you know, all over the place. and being able to have a solution where, you know, we send them through, have them take the analysis, take their results, and be able to, you know, push them into a solution like Gira or Confluence, you know, or Monday or any of the solutions that are out there, has a really big utility to enterprise program management offices that are looking at the big picture. That's what I'm trying to get at.

I totally get that. You know what I would say, Joel, is a couple of things. First of all, you're right, to the extent that you can do that. I think that the main thing is so, and I don't know, I wouldn't know how to do that. Well, the AI, you can do it in an afternoon. I could take your solution in an afternoon. I could plug it into Jira easily. Right. So one of the things I would say is this, Joel. I think it's best, I believe in a thing called subsidiarity, which is push the solution locally into each company. So I think you would be better at designing that for you, because what I would say is, so you can go and two or three people from your organization can get certified. We have this certification program. It takes four hours a day,

two days online, and you'll know working genius cold. Then you can figure out how to implement that in the systems that you use. Or maybe we need to talk to the companies like Jira and all of those and say, how would you do that? I would rather do that. I believe in letting the people who benefit from it figure that out because they know their needs better than me trying to force one way of doing that. So I've got a team of 60 people. Now it's not, you know, thousands and thousands of people, but I'm going to take it at a high level during all hands. Like everybody, a lot of people already took it and are on this webinar. I'm going to take it a high level during all hands and, like, announce it and make everybody take the assessment. And then each manager is going to do

activities with their team. And we're going to basically design the activities for what we think we need and using a lot of like what we've created in this workshop. So a lot of this, people can basically listen to this and kind of evaluate. their results and you've got this tool as well to use with your team. Also, there's a, tool out there called Leader, L-E-A-D-R, and we're working with them, and they're embedding this in what they do. It's kind of a team management software program that helps people realize, what are our priorities, how we're getting work done, and working genius is a big part of that. Well, the integration that right now you've got 95% of it there. I mean, I can take your PDF

output, your reports that you generate, and I can, and have my AI consume them and then import them in directly into Jira and make them part of the project profile for the team, for each team member. So I can take the test results basically and systematically apply them into the program management office solutioning. So we have those results. And as long as the results don't change, that's a one-off thing. You do it once and it's done for all the team members.

So this may not actually be a problem with you guys even need to worry about. Right. Like me can apply it. Like you've made me think that through now. So I appreciate that. I'm a believer in putting things out there and letting people use it. We've always been that. People are always like, is it okay if we're using your stuff?

And we're like, that's why we put it out there. So, all right, Joel, thanks for that. That's very helpful. Sure. Thank you. All right. Osman, it looks like you are the last question. What's up, Osmond?

Hey, how, Pat. Hello. Love your show, Pat. You know, I went through this exercise in my executive MBA, great structure. Just going through it again. and just rethinking about I'm working with a kind of a youth program idea. You mentioned earlier that these characteristics, these strengths kind of are resonating at an earlier age.

What age do you say, you know, this would be useful? Are we talking 9 to 10, 15 to 20, you know, 20? Where do you feel like this really would be able to help? identify in like a youth group? That's a great question. We think that as a parent or a youth group leader, you can be thinking about these things. Teachers should be thinking about this student who sits in class and stares out the window and then comes up with this great question.

Like, oh, maybe they're a W. Ws are not recognized in school when they're young. So teachers can do that. We actually put together an assessment for youth for teenagers. That doesn't use corporate examples, but it talks about when you're with your friends or you're doing a group project at school and things like that. So there's a student version of this that's available. But assessments can be hard when they're kids because kids don't know exactly how to answer those.

But parents can certainly look at their kids like I have and said, I've never thought about this before. But if he's doing this this way or she's doing it this way, maybe she's that. And you look at the combinations and you can have different expectations of people based on what they are. Most kids are told to be ETs. Do what we tell you and get it, do it perfectly. And so what we do is we over-engineer ETs and the W-Is and Ds often get overlooked. So I would say, though, there's a student assessment for teenagers.

And I would say for parents, if they understand it, they should be talking to their kids about it. Like, hey, what about this stuff? It's a great question, Osmond. Yeah, great question. Oh, thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, it looks like that is about all the questions in terms of, oh, we've got one more for Cole.

We'll do one last one with Cole. and then we're going to sign off. So Cole, what's your question? Yeah, hi, guys. Honestly, I think you and I have talked on LinkedIn a few times. I've reached out about some things before and actually just resigned from my current work

that I was doing where I was an application scientist for a company that makes analytical instruments. And I'm literally at the point now where I was looking at my report. I'm the GD with IW. And what's funny is that we can, I continue to get what really helped,

like how we decide to resign was the fact that I don't do well under micromanagement. Right. So someone's always really pressure you to do something that I don't feel as valuable to the end result or to a specific client or to the end goal of the year. You know, working on things that are not matched or aligned with. the end goal of the quarter to meet a sales number. So that's what's going on.

But my question toward Hala is, is more so because you mentioned you're the only galvanizer on your team. So my question to you is, have you considered the fact that the results of that are because the people on your team are inspired by you as a leader? And they follow you. So by adding more galvanizers, would that potentially cause some misalignment

that we're rallying, around multiple galvanizers instead of one vision that you've created. Hmm. I personally feel like as a leader, I would like more people, so long as the vision is clear and the KPIs are clear, I would want more people to be supporting me because it makes me always feel like the bad guy sometimes because I'm like, why are we doing this?

Let's push for this. Let's push for that. And I also inspire and I'm very nice to everybody as well. but when things aren't getting done, I'm the one pushing everyone, and people might think like, oh, my God, Hall is so like, you know, pushy, or when really it's like nobody else is doing it, so I might have to like step in even when I'm not leading that project to push it along.

Pat, what are your thoughts on that? Same thing. If there's alignment and the person fits culturally and they understand what we're doing, they don't know who the leader is, galvanizing can come from all different kind of places, as long as they're galvanizing in alignment with what we're doing. And most galvanizers are totally capable of doing that. galvanizing doesn't mean they have to, you know, do it all their own way.

It just means they like getting people motivated. Right. So would it be, would it potentially be more of the type of galvanizer, like a GD or even someone more like a GW kind of, like a certain type of galvanizer maybe? I don't think it's so much that. I think it's more about a person's willingness to submit to, to understand. I'm part of an organization. She has a vision.

I'm part of that. I support that vision and I can galvanize in alignment with that. And I have to say, I've implemented things because maybe I'm the only galvanizer in my company that, like, forces everybody to galvanize. Like, for example, I've got in every single team meeting that we do, we open it up with, what is your one word? How are you feeling today?

Today. And then also, like, who do you appreciate or recognize? And, like, what is the one thing you're going to do today, like, differently to make an impact? And, like, we open up every single meeting that way where, like, everyone's, like, loving on each other and pushing each other. And even when I'm not in those meetings, that's happening. And so, like, I'm galvanizing even when I'm not there because I've, like, insured that there's some process to galvanize everybody.

Go ahead, Pat. Yeah, and I want to say, Cole, I want to honor something you said, though. The other letter does matter. Probably if she brings a G into the organization, it might be nice to have a GT who's galvanizing people toward getting things done because that's not what she does. So that other letter does matter. What matters most, though, is that they're in alignment and that they're willing to be a good team player. Yeah.

Awesome. Well, I don't know about you guys, but this was one of the most fun webinars that I've ever done. I just think it was so amazing. Pat, thank you so much for allowing this to happen. You've done such an incredible job as a co-host. We didn't practice, guys. We just did this together. I'm so impressed. I wish every college class I ever took was as good as this. Can you imagine? This is fantastic. So thank you guys so much. Again, if you guys want to take it with your teams, we'll circulate some emails so you guys have that code accessible. I'm sure this one will be. be the last time we do a workshop like this. So thank you guys so much for your time. If you guys enjoyed this, make sure that you tell everybody about it, take the working genius assessment with you with your teams. It's life-changing. And Pat, again, thank you so much for all your time and wisdom. God bless you, Hollande, everybody else. Thanks, guys. Bye, guys. Have a great day.