The 6 Types of Working Genius

Patrick Lencioni 's 6 types of working genius are listed below

The Genius of Wonder (W)?– People with this genius can’t help but question whether things could be better in the world around them. They are troubled whenever they see unmet potential, and they are constantly curious and on the lookout for the need to change something.

The Genius of Invention (I)?– This type of genius is all about creativity. People who have it love to generate new ideas and solutions to problems and are even comfortable coming up with something out of nothing.

The Genius of Discernment (D)?– People with this type of genius have a natural ability when it comes to evaluating or assessing a given idea or situation and providing guidance. They have good instincts, gut feel and judgment about the subtleties of making decisions that integrate logic, common sense and human needs.

The Genius of Galvanizing (G)?– This type of genius is about bringing energy and movement to an idea or decision. People who have it like to initiate activity by rallying people to act and inspiring them to get involved.

The Genius of Enablement (E)?– People with this type of genius are quick to respond to the needs of others by offering their cooperation and assistance with a project, program or effort. They naturally provide the human assistance that is required in any endeavour and not on their own terms.

The Genius of Tenacity (T)?– This type is about ensuring that a given project, program or effort is taken to completion and achieves the desired result. People who have this genius push for required standards of excellence and live to see the impact of their work.

Patrick Lencioni explained how there are things in teams that are sometimes missing. For example, Patrick Lencioni worked with a team when COVID hit who needed a new sales strategy, the existing sales strategy wouldn’t work in a pandemic environment, and they couldn’t execute a new one to succeed. They ran the working genius assessment, and the sales manager was an E for enablement and a T for tenacity. They were awesome at executing but couldn’t be creative or invent new ideas. They had no Wonder or Invention capability in their sales team.

Patrick Lencioni discussed other examples where teams were missing one of the six types of working genius on their team and how that created great frustration throughout in both the team and the results the team were creating. Then by adding a person who had that working genius, who loved doing that type of work, they could get real results from the team.

So think about your team and consider whether there might be something that you’re missing using this model. Are you missing creativity, ideation – new ideas? Are you missing activation, discernment of ideas to only let the good ones through or maybe you’re missing the galvanising of ideas? Or finally, are you missing the execution side? The implementation happens through the enablement and tenacity working genius.

It’s a fascinating model. I’ve used the test twice, and I feel that the results were pretty accurate. I’m looking forward to running the test with teams that I work with to help identify the working geniuses that are missing and how we could consider hiring someone who could complement the overall team with their own working genius.