The most dangerous position for any organization is one where everyone looks alike and thinks alike. God made each of us unique, and we were put on this earth with certain gifts and talents. He designed each of us to have a unique gifting that covers the unique weakness inherent in each of us. We’re meant to live in fellowship with one another, and help one another.
There is a book called Working Genius by Patrick M. Lencioni that has changed the way I look at organizations and teambuilding. Or rather, it shone a light on something I knew, but hadn’t applied to business.
I highly suggest you check it out for yourself—their website has a lot of fantastic information and the book is not only full of great content, it’s fun to read. For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to give you an overview. The premise of Working Genius is that there are six basic components to any kind of work, whether it be paid work, volunteer work, or just the daily work of life (bills, school, kids, etc.).
The theory says that each person has two of those six components that are their “genius,” which is that place where everything flows so easily for you that it seems effortless, and not only that, it excites you and energizes you.
Then you have two components that are your “competency,” meaning, these are areas that don’t especially frustrate you, but also don’t really excite you.
The last are the two that are your “frustration.” That one is fairly self-explanatory. These two areas are those components that absolutely drain you when you have to do them. For example, one of my areas of frustration is Tenacity. That’s the component of any project where you’re going for the finish line. You’re pushing the project and the people working on it to make sure it’s done. I’m not naturally good at that, but my wife Lora is. That’s one of her areas of genius. If I have to be the one to push a project to completion on a regular basis, I’m going to be tired and drained and cranky. She’ll be excited and energized.
What’s really been freeing about this process is getting to know who I am. It goes back to self-awareness. I know that I’m a person who sees all kinds of solutions to challenges, so I partner with people who can ask questions like: “how does this play out?” or “what are the consequences to your solutions?”
Then, I’m able to take the creative thing that we’ve used to solve that problem, and rally others around it. My gift is to help others see something. But if I don’t have someone come and build processes and see it to the finish, I’m off to the next best idea.
My team used to say that when I went to Vistage (one of my CEO peer groups) I’d come back with the flavor of the month, and that would last until the next time I went. Nothing took hold or gained traction in the way it could have if I’d recognized the WHOs that I needed to have come alongside me who had the genius of Enablement or Tenacity, or the ones who were already there who were not enabled to do what they were gifted to do.
Oftentimes in our organizations, we are worried about the position or title that someone holds. We insist that the new-hire “pay their dues” by doing specific tasks, not considering that might be an area of frustration for them. On the flipside, the new-hire who is doing those same tasks, but working in their genius is “rewarded” by being promoted to something “better” that may be their area of frustration.
Imagine you’ve just promoted someone. They’re the best salesperson your company has ever had, because they know how to effectively communicate your company’s value to the customer. Because of that skill, and their enthusiasm for their job, you’ve promoted them to sales manager so they can expand that success to the rest of the team. To your utter confusion, your team member fails spectacularly as a manager.
Why? Because there is a different working genius required for that job. They are two different skill sets. It’s an entirely different group of people they have to serve in a different way. Just because your team member is good at communicating value to the customer and making sales, doesn’t mean they’ll be good at managing a team of other salespeople. You would be better off asking that salesperson to conduct some training sessions to share what they’re doing to get so many sales.
The most helpful thing we can do for our team members is to help them understand who they are, where their areas of genius lie, and then empower them to live and work in that area of genius, while partnering them with people whose genius is their area of frustration. When we balance teams in that way, we're setting them up for success.
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