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Coaching for Leaders
610R: How to Help Team Members Find the Right Work, with Patrick Lencioni
00:39:05
Patrick Lencioni: The 6 Types of Working Genius Patrick Lencioni is founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to protecting human dignity in the world of work, personal development, and faith.
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- [00:01]
Dave Stachowiak
Hi, it's Dave Stahoviak. I'm taking a studio break for the next two weeks. So I'm bringing you today a conversation that originally aired a couple of years ago. If you didn't hear it when it aired, it's an important one for you to hear. And if you did hear it, it's a very critical conversation to revisit. Patrick Lencioni has been leading the conversation for many years on a bunch of aspects of leadership, especially in relation to teams. His book the Five Dysfunctions of a Team has has influenced so many of us in how we lead teams effectively. And it's his more recent book on the six types of working genius that has had me referencing this conversation to our members and listeners for the last few years. And if you ever read the Jim Collins book Good to Great, you know the analogy of getting the right people on the bus in your organization. The hard part, though, is in addition to getting the right people on the bus, figuring out where they should sit, are they in the right seats? In this conversation, Pat and I look at that question in detail and how we can do a better job as leaders of making sure not only do we have the right people, but are they doing the right kind of work? This is a rebroadcast of Coaching for Leaders episode 610, produced by Innovate, Learning, maximizing human potential. Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders and I'm your host, Dave Stochowiak. Leaders aren't born, they're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations. So much of leadership is about not our own effectiveness, but how we can enable and support our teams and Venus effective as possible. Productive, of course too, but also how do we help our teams to find joy and joy in the work that we're doing each day today. I'm so glad to welcome back to the show an expert who has done so much for so many of us on helping us to support excellence in our organizations and our teams and also helping people to find the work that they love. I'm so glad to welcome back to the show Patrick Lencioni. He's the founder and president of the Table Group, a firm dedicated to protecting human dignity in the world of work, personal development and faith. For the past 25 years, Pat and his team have been providing organizations with ideas, products and services that improve teamwork, clarity and employee engagement. He's also the co founder of the amazing Parish Organization. Pat's passion for organizations and teams is reflected in his writing, speaking, executive consulting, and most recently, his three podcasts, at the Table with Patrick Lencioni, the Working Genius Podcast, and the Simple Reminder. Pat is the author of 12 bestselling books with over 7 million copies sold. After 20 years in print, his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, remains a weekly fixture on national bestseller lists. He's been featured in numerous publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, USA Today, Inc. Magazine, and Chief Executive Magazine. He is the author of the six types of Working Genius, A Better way to understand your gifts, your frustrations, and your team. Pat, what a pleasure to have you back.
- [03:25]
Patrick Lencioni
It is great to be here. Truly. This is so fun. We are kids in a candy store, aren't we?
- [03:30]
Dave Stachowiak
Dave, I Every time I read one of your books, I just have so much delight in taking in the story and the fable that you always present and then also the practical pieces that we can put into practice right away. And what's really fun about having read this book is, I think, even more so than any of your others, you talk about you and your team in this book. And when I think about you, Pat, I think about like, well, you got it all figured out, right? You've been doing this work for a long time. I know objectively that's not true, of course, but that's sort of my. My general first thought. And so this passage that you write in the book struck me. I'm quoting you. I had been struggling off and on for years with my own job dissatisfaction, which puzzled me because I had started my company with good friends, I loved the field I worked in, and I was genuinely fond of my colleagues. Still, I found myself unexplainably exhausted and exasperated on a semi regular basis. How did that happen?
- [04:30]
Patrick Lencioni
That's how this whole book came about, because I didn't know how that happened. And one day my colleague Amy said, why are you like that? What is going on with you? And she was really curious. And I said, I don't know. How could this be? And over the course of the next four hours, I had a whiteboard and a pen and I was just thinking about it and talking to people about it, and I started realizing, and I really kind of don't remember, Dave, what happened during those four hours. And this is how I know God gave me this idea because it just came through me like, wait a second, there's different kinds of work and I don't like all of them and I'm doing the wrong ones too much. And, and there was one in particular that I was having to do every day kind of against my will. And when I finally realized that, that was crushing me and it was preventing me from doing the two of the others that I loved, it all came together. So it was totally by accident. I didn't plan to come up with a new diagnostic tool or a model at all. And I wasn't sitting there thinking, I have to write a book. I was literally desperate to understand how I could be struggling when everything around me seemed to be right. And so I think that's how most of my books come about. By accident and searching for answers to things that even I'm struggling with.
- [05:47]
Dave Stachowiak
That's why I think it ends up being so practical for the rest of us, too. What is it that was crushing you?
- [05:53]
Patrick Lencioni
So I. I look like a person that's good at what's called galvanizing, which is one of the six types of working genius, right?
- [06:00]
Dave Stachowiak
Yeah.
- [06:00]
Patrick Lencioni
And. And I was doing it every day. I'd come to work, and I wanted to invent and discern and invention and discernment, what I love. That's how I go about things, and those are my working genius. Well, nobody else in the company liked to galvanize, which means to push and to remind and to exhort people. And I like the inspiring part of that. But I kind of like to do it once or every once in a while. But there's a need to galvanize people every day. Okay, remember, people, this is what we need to be doing. Hey, where are we on that? And there are people in the world that love doing that, and I'm not one of them. But because I was better at it than the other people I worked with, they got used to just saying, you do it. And I had no language to say, I don't want to do that. And I thought, well, I'm the CEO. I'm supposed to do that. Well, just because you're a CEO doesn't mean you're good at everything. And it's okay to involve other people in things that they love to do that you don't. So I literally found a guy in my organization who had the genius of galvanizing. He was pretty young. And I said, you should be the chief galvanizing officer. And he said, what do you mean? I'm young? I haven't earned the right to do that yet. It was like, no, no, no. This isn't about earning that. It's a gift. You're good at it. You're better than I am. If you do that, you're going to love your work more. And if I don't have to do it, I'm going to love my work more. I'll do a little bit of galvanizing because I have to. I can't always do what I love. But let's actually get you in the right seat on the bus and put me on the right seat on the bus, and things change drastically. Our productivity, Dave, went up so fast when we slid him into his genius and me into mine. And that's something we've seen happen with so many teams that have used the working genius model.
- [07:47]
Dave Stachowiak
I think about the work of Jim Collins and his invitation, all of us, of get the right people on the bus. Right. And you and I have talked about that before with the ideal team player, hungry, humble, and smart. Right. And the having the right people in the right culture. And yet how often it does happen that we end up in the right place, but we're not in the right seat on the bus. And I think for a lot of us, it's hard to then figure out, okay, like, I know this person is a great fit. I know that they're the kind of person that aligns with our values and the culture and organization, and yet something's not right. And I think what's really fascinating for me about this model is so many of the traditional assessments, strengths finder, mbti, enneagram, so valuable and. And, like, really good for, like, understanding core personality preferences, how I show up but don't often think about, like, the actual work that's being done then and the stages of work. And I think that's what's really interesting with this model is, like, this is a really intentional look at, okay, we've got the right person, but where do they show up? And what kind of work are they actually doing? And what comes out of this is three big stages of work that are really true for almost every team. And that might be a good starting point for us of just, like, illustrating what that looks like and what those stages are. Could you walk us through that?
- [09:10]
Patrick Lencioni
Sure. And the first stage, which is the first two geniuses, is ideation. And ideation is the stage of, like, okay, let's come up with new ideas. But it starts by asking the question, like, is there a better way? Somebody with the genius of wonder says, is this the right way? Amy said to me that day, why are you like that? And that's ideation actually starts with the big question, not with the idea. And then invention answers that goes, oh, that's a great question. Let me Come up with something to answer it. So that's the first stage of work, ideation. And I generally like that stage of work. One of my geniuses in that stage of work. But there are people that have no geniuses in that stage of work, and that's okay. But if they're put into a job where they're asked to do that, suddenly they feel like, I must be a fraud or a failure. Why am I struggling? It's like, that's not your seat on the bus. The second stage of work is the one that we realize was missing in so many organizations. In other words, people didn't understand that this was even a stage. In fact, before I say the second stage, Dave, I'll go to the third stage, which is implementation, which is the last one, right? That's getting things done. We. We talked to a guy from Nike in the early days of developing this, and he said, oh, my gosh. When he looked at the stages, he said, we go from ideation to implementation, and things often don't work. Because he was like an innovator there. And he goes, we take an idea and throw it over the wall and tell people, go make that product and sell it. And what they were doing is skipping over the middle stage, which is called activation, because activation is after the ideation. People come up with some crazy idea, throw it against the wall, the activators go, let's evaluate that. Let's tweak it. Let's go back to the inventors and give them some feedback. And then let's. Once we decide, now we think it's ready, let's get people excited about it before we have them go implement. Because if they're not really on board, let's pitch it to them and let's exhort them. Let's galvanize them around this. Well, if you do that, then by the time you get to implementation, the chances of success are very high. But like the guy at Nike said, we were just lobbing new ideas over the wall, and the implementers were like, well, this isn't ready to implement. And the ideators are like, you guys don't know how to implement. And they. There's. There was the missing step in the middle. And so that was a huge realization for us, was that that part of work in many organizations was not recognized as. As a stage of work at all.
- [11:38]
Dave Stachowiak
Right? And that comes down to the types. There's two types under each of these three stages of work. Six types. There's also. There's working genius, but working competency and there's working frustration. Tell me about that distinction.
- [11:52]
Patrick Lencioni
Well, I love describing this because there's. So there's six kinds of work that have to get done on any project or anything, and each of us only has two that we love. So by definition, we are going to. I like to look at it like a cup of coffee. If you were to take a coffee pot that was hot and pour coffee into, like, a yeti mug and screw on the lid, it would hold its energy, its heat, for hours and hours and hours. You can go back eight hours later and it's still hot. Yeah, that's crazy. That's like our. I can do something. I can do a task for, like, eight hours and still be on fire if I'm doing something that is completely in my. My genius. So that's what our working genius is. Those are two. But then there's this thing called your working competency, which is it's like pouring coffee into a cup and putting a lid on it. It'll hold it for a few hours, it'll stay warm, but eventually it's going to grow cold. That's. That's something. I can do that for a while. That's. There's a few tasks that. It doesn't crush me to do that. I'm pretty good at that. As long as I know I'm not going to have to do it all the time, I can deal with that, and I can probably do it pretty well. That's called a working competency. But then there's the last two are your working frustration. This is the. The coffee that gets poured into a cup that has a hole in the bottom of it. I mean, the energy, the heat, the substance drains out so fast. And each of us has two areas that if we're asked to do, to spend very much time in those at all, we're going to get burnt out fast. Now, that doesn't mean everybody has to do things they don't love sometimes, but. And if you know what those are, you can kind of grin and bear it. One of our colleagues here, Matt, says, hey, I got to go do some tenacity work. I don't like tenacity. I'm going to go in the conference room for an hour, and I'm going to just plow through it. And he comes out and goes, oh, I'm about to die, but I got it done. And we're laughing. We applaud. If you know what your working frustrations are. You can grin and bear it when you have to do it, but if you go to work and a big part of your job is your frustrations, and you don't even know that, you're going to get burned out, you're going to feel guilty, you're going to feel lazy, and other people might just say you don't have very strong willpower, or you don't have a good work ethic, or you're not. You don't care enough about what we're doing. Those are all completely the wrong diagnosis, and it makes a person feel terrible. Whereas if they realize, oh, I'm not meant to love this kind of work, I either need to go to my manager and change jobs or go to my team and say, hey, can we reorganize this, because I have so much more to give. And so that's the benefit. And so we all need to know not only what our working geniuses are, but what our working frustrations and competencies are. And it's so enlightening and so relieving to finally understand that. We've had so many people call and say, I felt guilty for 20 years, and for the first time I have a true sense of who I am. And the lack of guilt and judgment that when we diminish that in our organizations, the joy and productivity and relief that comes with that, that is probably the single greatest benefit from all this, is to get rid of that in the workplace and set us free to do what we're meant to be.
- [14:59]
Dave Stachowiak
Oh, yeah. And my senses, this isn't universally true, of course, but my sense is, like, we're better at that when it comes to, like, individual interactions, personality kind of things. We were talking about earlier, like, some of the other assessments, like, on an individual level and, like, how I show up personally in the workplace, we're not as good at that when it comes to, like, the actual work being done of, like, what is the seat that I'm actually sitting in? And that leads me to, like, the line I highlighted more than any other in the book is this one. The type of work that a person does turns out to be much more important in regard to burnout than. Than the volume of work.
- [15:35]
Patrick Lencioni
That's huge, right? Yeah, it is so huge. It's like telling somebody that's burning out at work your only problem is that you need to take a break. And what's interesting is we do that. And, like, there have been people in life that have been burnt out in their job, so they cut their schedule back by a few hours, but they're still doing the same job, just less and there's other people that have changed their jobs and worked more hours, but doing something that feeds them and their burnout goes away and their joy and their productivity goes up. And so solving for the wrong problem is not only not going to lead to a benefit, but it's going to make a person feel crazy, like, what's wrong with me? And that's why some people retire and they think, oh, I've hated that job for years, now I'm going to go do nothing. And there's not joy there. God doesn't mean us to not do things. He wants us to do the things that we're best at. And so by, by learning that, it changes the entire burnout conversation. But I can tell you, five years ago, I would not have understood that in the same way. And Myers Briggs didn't explain that to me and, and, and StrengthsFinder didn't explain that to me because I thought, I love those tools. But nothing got down to the daily tasks of what I was doing right? And that's what this is about. It's like when you come to work, what are the daily tasks that will send you home at the end of the day with joy and energy and which are the ones that are going to send you home feeling defeated and frustrated. This pastor wrote in and said, I felt like I was a horrible pastor. I've been exposed as being the fraud that I am. And I said, why? He said, because I couldn't write a homily or a sermon. I did. I was terrible at it. And every week it would be a struggle. And every week I'd go, I should have never been a pastor. And then he goes, I took working genius and I realized I don't have wonder or invention. I don't, I can't go outside and walk through the forest and, and see the, ask the questions and get the ideas. And some people do that naturally. And he, and I said, so what are you? And he told me his working genius. And I said, so you're probably like a great counselor, right? You love to be with people in their need and you love to. And he goes yeah. And I said that's just as much of being a pastor. You just aren't good at coming up with new ideas. So all you have to do is go find somebody that is and have a two hour talk once a week with them and let them do what they're good at and you be good at what you're good at. And he said, now I know I am a pastor. It's just, I'M not the same as the next one down the street. And so many people have been left to feel bad about themselves because they just didn't understand how God wired them. And that's what I love about this model.
- [18:22]
Dave Stachowiak
This is where this gets really powerful, though, isn't it? It's like the relationships with others and teams. You know, I think about that analogy with the coffee cup and, like, the working frustration is the hole in the bottom of the cup and the coffee's continually draining. And how I think all of us have. We all have those moments in our jobs and our work, and some of us have had that in our careers and our roles for a long time. And I think what's so interesting to me about this model, in addition to everything you said, is, like, this started with you and your team. What did you find out about your genius and your frustration? And then what did that result in as far as how your team approached how they do work?
- [18:57]
Patrick Lencioni
So what I found out that I was an I and a D, just like you.
- [19:01]
Dave Stachowiak
We're.
- [19:01]
Patrick Lencioni
We're brothers from another mother. We always have these deep conversations every time we talk, and I think it's because we're so similar. And so what I realized was I don't have enablement and tenacity. Those are my working frustrations. So I love to help people, but not necessarily on their terms. And so when people come to me for help, I naturally try to come up with a new idea for them or try to evaluate what they're doing. And when I am just asked to help, just like, hey, just pitch in and do this for hours, I'm not very good at it. And then when it comes to finishing things, I'm not very good at it. So we looked at the team around me, and we said, oh, my gosh, this is why Tracy is your editor, because she has discernment with you, but she also has more tenacity than I do, and she can actually make me finish a book when I want to give. I want to move on to the next one after I'm halfway through. So we realized that filled that gap. Then we needed to fill the lack of G that I had. We needed to appreciate the W. And then we had other people on the team that were not doing things they loved, and we needed to put them in different positions. So we essentially to call it a reorg. It's much more fundamental than that. We just realigned how we actually go about getting things done so that everybody was living more in their genius. Now some of Us still had to do things in our area of frustration and competency, but at least we could celebrate that and avoid them feeling terrible about it. So that's kind of what happened for me. And I stopped galvanizing all the time and it was beautiful. Yeah.
- [20:38]
Dave Stachowiak
And even if you do choose to do something, incompetency or frustration, you can name it and you know it when you're doing it and asking someone in your team to do it. And that's just that awareness is huge. And there's an element here too of elevation and how these different types show up as far as altitude of the work. And as I'm sure people wouldn't be surprised by, you know, on the ideation side, that's the big picture, right? Like 30,000 foot view. And then you get all the way to the other side on tenacity and it's, it's really into the weeds on finishing something. Right. And one of the things I'm curious about is like, how does that or does it map to role? Because I think a lot of times we think of like CEO, they're on the big picture thinking, right? And if I'm a administrative assistant, I'm on the like operational things. Does that match to role or can you be a CEO and have tenacity as you're working genius, and is there a way that that works with the team?
- [21:36]
Patrick Lencioni
Yeah, it's a great question. And the truth is anybody can be a great CEO if they know who they are, they know what they're great at, they know what they can do when they need to, and they know what they're terrible at and then they build a team around them to fill in those gaps. I was just with one of the best companies in the world. I'm honored to work with this one company, one of the best companies in the world. And they have a fantastic CEO and we did working genius. And he's an et, so he's great at enablement and tenacity. And he said, you guys, you all know it. I'm an implementer, that's my bias. But I do, I can do some of these things and these things I don't like. And we looked at the team around and he's like, and that's why I rely on you for this. I trust you on this. I need this from you. And other people were like, but we know that you're not going to let the trains go off the tracks because he's a tenacity guy and we know that. And he is really attentive to the needs of his team. So anybody can lean into whatever their types are as long as they know what their limitations are. When we took Strengths Finder, I used to go, I want Weakness Finder because I want to know the things I shouldn't be doing. And too many CEOs think I need to be all things to all people and that's going to crush them. So, yeah, anybody can do that. So let's just say you have an administrative assistant who's a WI. My wife is a WI. Her head is in the 50,000 and 40,000 foot level in the clouds, wondering, asking questions and inventing, coming up with new ideas. Now, first of all, if my wife were an administrative assistant, that would probably not be a great role. Unless. Unless I needed somebody to help me up in the clouds and figure things out. What I probably do is if I had an administrative assistant like that, I'd say I need to adjust the way I utilize you to allow you to work in that level. Now, if I knew for certain that I needed somebody because I'm an ID to be tenacious and enabling, then I could turn to my administrative assistant, say, you have so many great gifts. Let's find you a job that allows you to flourish. But I am not rejecting who you are. You're not a bad person, you're not a bad employee, you're not a bad member of this company. I have you in the wrong role and there is no way you could be happy that allows her or him to have dignity and realize that I'm loving them into something they love. But you know what happens, Dave? In so many companies, we just fire that person and they feel rejected. And I literally now want to celebrate who they are. And I can let somebody go in celebration and dignity and they can say thank you for moving me into another job. And sometimes they can even say, thank you for helping me realize that working here in this small company where there's not enough jobs for me is not going to make me happy. It literally allows us to move people on in a way that makes them feel better about their future rather than worse. But until I had this language, I didn't know how to do that.
- [24:37]
Dave Stachowiak
Yeah, and none of this is easy, but for me, like, this is way easier to think about and to make changes than getting the right person on the bus in the first place. Like the ideal team player that you and I have talked about before, hungry, humble and smart. That to me, like, that's hard, like really doing the due diligence to find, like, that person, they line up well. They're part of the culture. But once you've done that and you have the right person and they're the right person for the organization, this is a lot easier. This is a lot more tactical of like, okay, how do I look at, like, the kind of work that this person is doing? And if there's not a fit, there's not a fit. But if there is an opportunity for them to do the work that really is part of their genius, like. Like, that shift is so much easier than trying to go find that person in, in the first place.
- [25:25]
Patrick Lencioni
I totally agree. And there's a lot of ways to skin a cat. And so if a person has a job and, like, I'm in marketing, well, we don't even know what does that mean. But if I said, you're in charge of marketing, and then I looked at their working genius, they could go, oh, I'm gonna go about this to this way and this way and this way, because this is who I am. It'd be like, wow, you're gonna be great at that. You're going to do better for the company. That's going to be better for our customers. Yeah, go about your job in the way that suits your geniuses, as opposed to, I'm your manager. I'm going to tell you how to do marketing independent of how you like to work. And CEOs don't care how people work as long as they get things done and they succeed. So knowing what their working genius is is a great place to start. Now, sometimes there's a fundamental mismatch, and we need an accountant who is like, and you just can't do that. Well, that's probably. You're going to set them free in their career. But for many people, they can adjust the way they go about their jobs to suit their genius. So that's a wonderful thing. The other thing, though, we like to say, Dave, is when you're hiring people, maybe it would be good to say, here's a few letters that would probably be helpful in that job. And when we interview people, let's have a conversation with them about whether those behaviors is attractive to them or not. Because, like I said, we're hiring an office manager at my company. There's gonna have to be some tenacity there.
- [26:50]
Dave Stachowiak
Yeah.
- [26:51]
Patrick Lencioni
Because they have to stay on top of details that I'm terrible at and that everybody else is. So when we talk to them, we'll probably say, hey, if tenacity is one of your geniuses, or at least one of your high competencies, it'll probably, you can make this work. But if a person came and interviewed and we, and they said, oh yeah, just like you, Pat, I hate tenacity. I'm doing them a horrible disservice by hiring them and putting them on a job where they're going to feel bad about themselves in three months.
- [27:18]
Dave Stachowiak
Yeah, yeah, indeed. Well, and this is like a good lead into like practically how to approach this. So someone listening to this, leading a team who's got the sense as I think most team leaders do that like, okay, we're maybe okay on some things but like, I don't, I don't know if we're lined up the right way. I don't know if we have the right people in the right seats necessarily. We have people who are dealing with burnout and not being connected. Well, reading the book, obviously a starting point, but what's next? Like how would you approach that with a leader and saying, how do you start to put this into practice and make this real and start to think about some of these things tactically?
- [27:55]
Patrick Lencioni
Well, and I love the book, don't get me wrong. And, and the fiction in the book, I, I, people like this one, there's a lot of twists and turns and it's, it's, it's told from the first person. I think it's interesting, it's kind of funny and it really brings it to life in a messy way, both in his home life and in his job as leading a company and even like volunteering at church. So there's all kinds of ways to apply this. But I would say the first thing, you do not have to read the book first. There's a going and having your team take the assessment. And by the way, unlike the Myers Briggs where sometimes you're like, I feel bad about that one. Usually people look at their results and they go, oh, this is such a relief because I, this is too totally who I am. And then having that conversation on a team and looking at the team map, I think within an hour you can take the test, look at your results, discuss them and look at the map. And right away there's going to be some low hanging fruit, Dave. People are going to go, oh my gosh, this explains why that last project failed. This explains why we did so great on this. This explains why every Thursday you're in a bad mood. This explains why you've been asking us to let you do this. The relief and the clarity just streams out. And so I think that you can actually go for the short term benefit of that and then go deeper afterward. And it's not irresponsible. Sometimes in life, you know, it's like if you're doing counseling, you need to start slow. I actually think pick the low hanging fruit right away. And so I would say go to workinggenius.com and just fill this thing out. We priced it low. It's hard to price things because if I were pricing it for junior high school school students, I would have priced it lower. But if I were pricing it for a corporate audience alone, we could have charged more. And people said, you should have charged more. But it's $25 to learn about yourself. And that's if you have a team of eight people that's you, you'll look at this and go, oh my gosh, for $200, we just gave our each other the most overwhelming insights into why we work well together at times and why we don't and how we can make quick changes.
- [29:46]
Dave Stachowiak
Yeah, it's one of the many things I love about this. It's so accessible and inexpensive for organizations to do. And I suspect that a lot of folks who take a team through this will have the experience you did where you look at the team map and there's a lot of people in like one or two or three places. And then there's gaps. Right. So, yeah, the gaps show up. How do you approach the gaps?
- [30:09]
Patrick Lencioni
That's a great question. So there's maybe there's others in the organization or even people outside of the organization, a contractor or consultant or a person we know that would say, hey, if you wanted me to do that for you a few hours a month or a couple hours a week, that would be fun for me. And I would take that off your plate. So sometimes it's about borrowing resources from another department or from a contractor or from somebody else. And then sometimes it's, yeah, we really do need to bring in a new person. But it's usually not that. It's usually not that. And it doesn't take long for people to figure out what they need to do. We had this one client who really, really early on in this, literally, like in the first few months of this coming out, they, they were going to fire their head of sales because she didn't know how to come up with a new sales strategy. And then they did this and they realized she had been so successful because of her geniuses. She didn't have wonder or invention. None of the people on her team did. They found a guy in marketing and said, hey, you're inventive. And he goes, yeah, would you come to our off sites once a quarter and help us redo our strategy? He goes, that would be a blast. That would be my favorite part of my job. And then the CEO said I was going to fire this woman and all I. The only problem was she didn't have WI and all she had to do was borrow it. So that's the kind of stuff that people are doing. And it's, it's actually really clear. It doesn't require a lot of consulting or analysis or anything else you've said to me.
- [31:35]
Dave Stachowiak
And I think you write it in the book too. Like, this is for you and what you've seen in the conversations over the last couple years, like, on a practical level, even more impactful, helpful than five dysfunctions of a team, which I can see that, like, in the context of everything you're doing with this and just thinking about where different people show up in the seats, like, it's really transformative in a way that. And very accessible.
- [32:00]
Patrick Lencioni
Yes. And quick to benefit. You know what I mean? Like, speed to realization is very high. We. Dave realized that if I'm building a team, the first thing I have to do is get the right people on the bus, thanks to Jim Collins. And we think that humble, hungry, smart, the ideal team player. Use that to get a team member, then do this. Where do I need them? Then comes the five dysfunctions, which is like, now that I have the right people on the bus and in the right seats, now we can like, make this bus go. But this step here is a very quick one. The wins are very accessible and easy. And to me, it, it takes away so many of the. The potential obstacles to the five dysfunction to overcoming the five dysfunctions. So that's kind of the order. But boy, when we came up with this model by accident, Cody turned to me and said, pat, this is bigger than the five dysfunctions. And I was like, really? And already it's growing faster than anything we've ever done. So thank God for that.
- [32:57]
Dave Stachowiak
WorkingGenius.com is the place to start. Pat, I always appreciate the books, the stories, and how practical you make it. So it's a great place to begin. And thinking about how the team you already have, how do you really find the right seats for folks? Thank you so much for your work. I so appreciate it.
- [33:16]
Patrick Lencioni
Hey, Dave, you are one of the most insightful, thoughtful and, and like, additive interviewers. Like, when I'm on here, I'm like, oh, this is so fun. I feel like We're. We're co. Exploring this, so I just appreciate you having me on. And, And. And we are a lot alike, and I think you're just terrific at what you do, so I appreciate that.
- [33:38]
Dave Stachowiak
Well, the feeling's mutual. I don't know how many yearbooks I've read, but it's a pretty big stack. And you know what, what fun for me to have spent all those years reading Five dysfunctions and the ideal team player, and then to be talking about this with you and thinking about, like, just my own work. And you and I were talking that I've built my work and my business around my strengths and the geniuses that I have in these areas. And I'm also really conscious of many people don't have the privilege to do that because they're not the owner of their business. And I think that that's, for me, the power of this and the importance of this conversation is that many of us don't recognize as leaders how much a small change like this and a tactical change can really bring so much joy into people's work and their lives. That leaders have so much ability to influence this in big ways that to us, might not always seem like a big deal, but to each person on the team can make a huge difference in how they show up and burn out. And so, like, what a. What a privilege to get to talk about this. So thanks a ton.
- [34:49]
Patrick Lencioni
Absolutely. And knowing your story and your career, it's great for me to be able to say in a confirming, affirming way is you have. You are doing what you were meant to do.
- [35:00]
Dave Stachowiak
Yeah.
- [35:00]
Patrick Lencioni
You know, you're good at it because these are gifts that you've been given. And it's so good. You can rest assured that you are not wasting your talent. Because even when people are good at things, they're like, I don't know, is there something else I should be doing? It's like, I don't know. But what you're doing now, you have. Your working geniuses are on full fire. And I think, please feel good about that.
- [35:22]
Dave Stachowiak
Yeah. And same with you. And now I don't ever have that Monday morning feeling anymore where I'm like, oh, gosh, you know, going to. You know, there are days, of course, for all of us that we struggle with things, but now it's like, how do we. How do we help everyone else to find that in the ways you and I have in our work and what a great avenue this is to do that. Patrick Lencioni is the author of the Six Types of working genius. A better way to understand your gifts, your frustrations and your team. Pat, always a pleasure.
- [35:50]
Patrick Lencioni
Thanks buddy. God bless.
- [35:58]
Dave Stachowiak
If this conversation was helpful to you, Two invitations for you today. The first one, if you haven't already, is to set up your free membership@coaching4leaders.com it's going to give you access to the entire library of episodes I've aired since 2011, searchable by topics you can find what's most relevant to you right now, whether that is team leadership, management, managing up, negotiating your next step in your career. All of that is at coaching4leaders.com under the free membership Get Inside There. It will give you access to that plus more of the free benefits inside the second invitation I have for you is if you happen to be at an inflection point right now. Maybe you are handling a big new initiative for your organization, or you are putting together a team for the first time, or maybe you're inheriting a team from somebody else. Or perhaps you've just gotten a promotion. If you have, congratulations. Or maybe you've moved into a new organization. Oftentimes when we get to these inflection points in our careers, we discover, as I have many times, what worked yesterday doesn't work today. And that's why at those inflection points, I bring together leaders inside of our Coaching for Leaders Academy. It is a opportunity to work personally with me, several other leaders in a group coaching environment to support each other. You know, often when we get together with other leaders inside of our organization or just inside of an industry group, we end up talking shop a lot. But we don't end up talking about the critical leadership skills that transcend industries and the critical people skills that are so important for all of us regardless of discipline or industry or organization. And that is why it's one of the many reasons I bring together leaders from across disciplines, from across industries for profit, nonprofit government to really be able to help us focus specifically on the human skills that will help us to lead better and to provide the support in a safe and confidential environment to do that. If that may be helpful to you right now, our next applications for the Coaching for Leaders Academy will be opening in early September. And if you'd to like like to get a invitation to apply Once our applications are available, go over to coaching4leaders.com academy. On that page you'll see a bit of details about the Academy. You'll also see the opportunity to request an invitation. Just hit that button, enter your information and I'll make sure that you get an invitation when we open up our applications next in early September. Coaching for Leaders is edited by Andrew Kroger. Production support is provided by Sierra Priest. Thanks as always for listening. I'll be back on July 21st with the next new episode, and I hope you have a great week. Take care.