Right Seats: Working Genius
Model:
The Working Genius is based on the belief that everyone has natural talents and gifts that can be used in all parts of life, with strong applicability to work. There are six types of genius:
The Genius of Wonder: the natural gift of pondering the possibility of greater potential and opportunity in a given situation.
The Genius of Invention: the natural gift of creating original and novel ideas and solutions.
The Genius of Discernment: the natural gift of intuitively and instinctively evaluating ideas and situations.
The Genius of Galvanizing: the natural gift of rallying, inspiring and organizing others to act.
The Genius of Enablement: the natural gift of providing encouragement and assistance for an idea or project.
The Genius of Tenacity: the natural gift of pushing projects or tasks to completion to achieve results.
Two of the six types come naturally to you, you are good at them, and they give you energy and joy; these are your areas of Working Genius. Two of them are neither natural nor energizing for you, and most likely, you aren’t good at doing them; these are your areas of Working Frustration. The remaining two types fall in-between; you can do them fairly well, but you don’t derive joy or energy from them. These are your areas of Working Competency. Each type of genius receives or gives something to adjacent types, creating a workflow leading from Ideation to Activation to Implementation).
- When team members better understand their own and coworkers’ areas of Genius, Competency and Frustration, they are more capable of:
- Understanding why they have been successful or unsuccessful in past endeavors together.
- Avoiding making unfair and inaccurate judgments about one another’s motivation.
- Alleviating their own guilt about struggles they’ve had in work.
- Making adjustments to roles and responsibilities to tap into one another’s gifts (right seats).
- Getting more done in less time
Workshop
Description: Experiential workshop describes the model, and how to effectively use it to transform the team. Leaders leave with action plans to realign their work to leverage their geniuses. Requires team members to complete a short (15 min) on-line assessment (a $25 value) prior to the workshop
Length: four hours
Materials: presentation handouts, individual Genius report for each team member, a team map, Patrick Lencioni’s Six Types of Working Genius book (a $16 value), and tools and templates for everyday use.