← Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
Discover Your Working Genius and Beat Career Burnout | Patrick Lencioni | E147
01:07:17
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- [00:00]
Patrick Lencioni
This is the six different things that are required in any kind of work. Whether you're starting a company, launching a product, planning a family vacation, rebuilding your home, any work, any project involves six different activities.
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Ilana Golan
Patrick Lencioni is a pioneer of the organizational health movement. He's also the creator of the six Types of Working genius.
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Patrick Lencioni
All of our kids took this ridiculous assessments and said you should be a garbage man or an astronaut. And it was like what? When people in their marriage, in their teams understand what they are and they're not, they celebrate other people's geniuses that aren't their own. There was something about working genius that was explaining the nitty gritty of day to day work in a way that I had never understood before.
- [00:46]
Ilana Golan
In companies, there's constantly hard moments, but the initial one is really, really hard because there's a lot of unknown. What is it like for you that journey?
- [00:54]
Patrick Lencioni
Oh, okay. I'll tell you. I wish I had understood.
- [01:00]
Ilana Golan
Welcome to the Leap Academy with Ilana Golan show. I'm so glad you're here. In the Leap Academy podcast, I get to speak to the biggest leaders of our time about their career, how they got where they are today, the challenges, the failures, and countless lessons. So lean in. This episode is going to be amazing. I'm on a mission to help millions reinvent their career and leap into their full potential land their dream roles, fast track to leadership, jump to entrepreneurship, or build portfolio careers. This is what we do in our Leap Academy programs for individuals and teams. And with this podcast we can give this career blueprint for free to tens of millions. So please help my mission by sharing this with every single person you know because this show has the power to change countless of lives. Diocese. Okay, so let's dive in. Today's guest has spent 25 years figuring out why some teams soar while others stumble. Patrick Lencioni is a pioneer of the organizational health movement, founder of the Table Group, the author of 13 bestselling books with over 8 million copies sold, including the legendary The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He's also the creator of the six Types of Working genius, which I just found and it is so cool. So I can't wait for you to hear more about it. So great to welcome you, Pat.
- [02:36]
Patrick Lencioni
It's great to be here, Ilana. I'm really glad this is going to be fun. Just the prep talk we just had. We know there's a lot to talk about here.
- [02:42]
Ilana Golan
There's going to be a lot to talk about and I'm excited about it. But I want to take you first back in time as a kid or when we grew up. What shaped you? What are some experiences that you remember that shaped you to the person that you are today?
- [02:58]
Patrick Lencioni
Well, in terms of the work I do, I remember when I was a kid, my dad, God rest his soul, and him and my mom didn't go to college. He had just two jobs in his life. But he'd come home from work and he would be frustrated by something called management. And I didn't know what that meant. I just said, my dad should not be frustrated. He's been gone for like nine and a half hours. He should come home happy. And I remember just thinking, what is that all about? And what's this work thing? What's the deal with work? And I remember thinking, I think I'm supposed to work one day. I'd kind of like to figure out why this isn't so fun. And I remember him saying to me, when I was a kid, if it were fun, they wouldn't call it work. And I thought, oh, no. Then I got my first jobs in school, and then I went to college, and we were on the poorer side of things. The very first job I had was like an odd job. I was at the barber shop when I was 12. And he said, hey, kid, you want to make $20 this Saturday? And I said, sure. So he drove us out to the oil fields outside of Bakersfield, California, where I lived, and we would sit in a foxhole, and then they'd blow a horn, and we'd have to get up and prop up these metal pigs and other animals at a shooting gallery. And then they'd blow a horn and we'd have to dive back in the foxhole and people would shoot at these targets. And I remember thinking, I think I'm going to go to college. Then I was a busboy at age 13, and I worked in a bar, which was illegal, but I didn't know that. And then I was a bank teller. Really simple things. And I had no idea that there was a corporate world out there. I lived in a pretty rural, ish place and went to college. First generation. I studied really hard because my purpose in life is to get a job, make enough money to make my dad proud.
- [04:40]
Ilana Golan
And what did you study?
- [04:42]
Patrick Lencioni
I studied economics with a minor in Spanish because I studied abroad. But what's funny is my dad sent me to college and said, study economics, accounting and computers. That's where all the jobs are going to be. Well, he didn't know about DISC and Myers Briggs and certainly working genius, because I didn't know none of those were really up my alley. I was a creative person, but he was very much into safety and hard work. So I barely held on to economics. Studied Spanish, took psychology classes, writing classes. I was really a liberal arts kid who wanted to be a writer.
- [05:19]
Ilana Golan
Wow.
- [05:19]
Patrick Lencioni
But I was like, nah. My dad spent money for me to go to college, I better get a good job.
- [05:24]
Ilana Golan
And you wrote some screenplays or something in college? No. What was it? Tell me more.
- [05:30]
Patrick Lencioni
I took a screenwriting class in college my senior year and was totally hooked. And I wrote five screenplays in the next five or six years, and Ron Howard's company read one of them. And I went to a conference and some directors took an interest in some, but I realized I'm going to have to go move to Hollywood and work at a Starbucks and pitch these damn things for the next 20 years. And I was like, okay, this can be a hobby. And what's crazy is, years later when somebody suggested I write a book about this theory I came up with, I decided to write fiction. And all of my books except for one, one's not fiction. Read like a screenplay. I write lots of dialogue, lots of quick moving parts. So all of that screenwriting I did really factored into my books. They like it because they're short, there are stories, and you keep going because you want to find out what's going to happen. So it really paid off for me. I had no idea. Thank God for that, though.
- [06:28]
Ilana Golan
Well, we'll talk about it, because I think storytelling does come back as a theme for you in the various places, and we're definitely seeing that theme throughout. But at some point you got into Bain. Is that right after college? I guess.
- [06:42]
Patrick Lencioni
Yeah, right after college I got a job at Bain, which was this ridiculously hard place to get a job in. In fact, the year I applied, somebody wrote a book about the best places to work in America for college students, and that was number one. And somehow they must had a really flawed interviewing process. They offered me a job because I had no background that suggested that I would do well there. And now that I realize what my working genius type is, it was exactly the wrong job for me, but it paid well. And everybody said it was good. And they said, you're set for life. And so I went there, and for two years I grinded Ilana. It was so hard for me because it was knowing what I know now about the working genius.
- [07:27]
Ilana Golan
All the details that we hate, both of us.
- [07:31]
Patrick Lencioni
Exactly. You know what's funny? So that was my first job. If you know who Meg Whitman is, she was the partner at Bain and on my case team, and I was the junior member there. She was a partner. When I left, she said, pat, you would be a really good partner here someday, but this job, being an associate consultant is not for you. And she was exactly right. Because I loved, like, the whole, like, trying to figure out what was really going on with the client and figuring out, like, what should we be focused on? But then the execution and the details were just misery for me.
- [08:06]
Ilana Golan
Isn't it amazing that we're not learning that and we'll dive more into that in college? But I chose the wrong path every single time. Like, I did the engineering, I did the project management. I cared about the big fluff, things like the trends, the competition. But then the details of prioritization, that is like suicide for me. I don't know why we're not learning that this is so important. So I can't wait to keep diving in. So from Bain, you kind of understand that the details is not really for you, but you still don't know how to capture that yet, right? So tell me after that, what's going on? You're going to Oracle.
- [08:44]
Patrick Lencioni
And, you know, my dad gave me the best career advice, even though he had no experience with it. He taught me how to interview. He just said, make sure when you interview that they know you really want the job. And even though I took the wrong second job when I left Bain, he said, it's going to put you in a position to work at a company where you're going to learn about everything else going on there, and maybe you'll be able to do something different. So I went to this little company called Oracle. I had never heard of it. I think they had 2 or 3,000 employees at the time. And they offered me a job, and I turned it down. And the guys that were interviewing me said, hey, Larry Ellison is going to call you tomorrow night. And I said, I don't know who Larry Ellison is, but he shouldn't, because I'm not going to take this job. Well, they talked me into it, and Larry Ellison didn't call me. But I eventually took the job because they kind of told me it was something other than it was. So I go there, and for six months, it's misery. But while I'm there, I was in the internal audit department. Ilana, can you imagine you and I being in the. But they said, no, we want creativity. We want this. But they didn't. But I heard A guy give a speech, the second in command at Oracle. He said, I want to make this organization, he was running most of the organization, the best company in terms of employee engagement and satisfaction. And I was like, ooh, I like that. And I went to him and. And I actually pitched him. I wrote a fictitious article in the Wall Street Journal, I pitched him the job, and I created a whole job. And I said, this is what, you should hire me to do this. And he did.
- [10:16]
Ilana Golan
Wait, wait, wait, wait. So stop, stop, stop. This is super interesting. So what age are you at this point?
- [10:22]
Patrick Lencioni
24. 3.
- [10:26]
Ilana Golan
Wow, so you're 24. You hear somebody that is clearly a few steps above you or a lot of steps above you. Right. How do you take an idea and actually not afraid to go pitch it? How do you even get a chance to pitch it? Tell me a little bit, because I think this is really important for our audience. Our audience, sometimes they have the ideas, but they don't have the guts to go chase it and do what you just did.
- [10:51]
Patrick Lencioni
By the grace of God, it worked out. I remember that day, it was a Friday afternoon and we had our Christmas party in San Francisco and I had to leave and I couldn't tell my boss why because I was driving back down to headquarters down in Redwood Shores. You know where that is. And I'll tell you, I had to pee so bad and traffic was so bad, I thought I was going to have to pull over and go to the bathroom on the median. And I was like, I'm going to wet my pants or get arrested and never get to meet with this high ranking guy. I get there, I run to the rest of you, I run upstairs, I sit down with him and I'm like, okay, here's what you should do. I had never met him before, but I talked my way into having this 15 minute meeting. I'm presenting all this stuff to him. In walks one of the other executives who doesn't even like this guy. And he's the executive that I work in his organization. And he looks at me and goes, hey, Pat, how are you? And I was like, oh, crap. These people who don't like each other are. I'm pitching to leave one guy's department to go to the other guy's. And he recognizes me and knows that I'm here. And I thought, this is going to be terrible. Well, the guy hires me, so I start doing that job. He got fired and then it got crazy. And I spent two and a half years there and the company was growing like crazy. I Learned so much. The Oracle culture is not easy, and there were a lot of things about it I didn't particularly appreciate. But I learned so much by seeing some things that I thought were kind of dysfunctional or certainly not a good fit for me. Then I took another job at a competitor called Sybase, who was a better fit for me, and I spent five years there. And I became the vice president of organizational communication. And basically doing this. And then it's a kind of an interesting story. I interviewed with Steve Jobs at Pixar.
- [12:41]
Ilana Golan
I know. I heard that. I have to hear this story. And by the way, I live right across from his garage. We are living right across from it. So Steve Jobs. How does that even happen?
- [12:51]
Patrick Lencioni
A headhunter called me and said, pixar is looking for a head of hr. And this was when he was running Pixar. And I said, yeah, I'll interview. Because, you know, I'd been there for five years, and back then, five years at one company meant there was something wrong. So I interviewed with him and great story. He came to get me in the interview room and he said, hey, are you Pat? And I said, yeah. And he goes, hey, as it turns out, I only have five minutes, so come into my office, we'll talk for five minutes and then we'll figure out your next step. But I got another meeting. I'm sorry. So I went in, I met with him, and we spent an hour. I found out later that he did that with everybody he interviewed, because after five minutes, if he thought they were boring, he didn't want to have to talk to him. Then I did another interview and another interview. They offered me the job. And I decided, I don't think I want to be the head of HR because HR was so policy oriented and they didn't want that. But I knew I'd be doing benefits and comp and all that kind of stuff. And I thought working for Steve might be kind of a little too close to the sun, if you know what I mean. And so I turned them down. And the headhunter called back and said, you don't turn Steve Jobs down for a job. He said, he's going to come pick you up and take you to lunch tomorrow. Well, that next day, the CEO of Apple quit or got fired, and they rehired Steve Jobs to take over Apple.
- [14:08]
Ilana Golan
Wow.
- [14:09]
Patrick Lencioni
And I fell off his radar. And I thought that was interesting. Then I got a job offer from another company in the Silicon Valley, and I was considering it and I was talking to my wife about it, and we Were like, what am I doing? I had this great department where I work. I said, I want to someday have my own firm. So we launched the table group 27 and a half years ago with no money. And my dad, God rest his soul, again, he said, hey, dude, you have benefits and you're a vice president. You should stay there.
- [14:34]
Ilana Golan
I want to hear more about that story. That is fascinating. So two questions from your story. First of all, what do you think resonated with Steve Jobs in your story? And then I want to go a lot deeper into that decision of I am not going to continue climbing up. I'm going to create my own. So take me for a second to that conversation with Steve Jobs, because I think that, first of all, the ability to move people's minds and to. For them to say, yes, there's a gift there that is going on. What was it, Pat? Do you know?
- [15:05]
Patrick Lencioni
You know what's interesting, the thing I remember about talking to him about Pixar, he said, pat, stories are how people grow and they shape society. And he goes, what we're doing here at Pixar, it's not about the animation that's important, it's the stories. And he said, this stuff is gonna shape people's lives. And what's crazy is I was a screenwriter, so I got that too. I had a great time talking to him about that. And, you know, I knew that I was meant to come up with new ideas around work. And I remember, like, going back and thinking, I want to change the world of work. And I don't think being the head of HR at a big company is the way to do it.
- [15:40]
Ilana Golan
We need to pause for a super brief break. And while we do, take a moment and share this episode with every single person who may be inspired by this, because this information can truly change your life and theirs. Now, I want to check in with you. Yes, you. Are you driven, but maybe feeling stuck in your career or a fraction of who you know you could be, do you secretly feel you should have been further along in your income, influence or impact? Do you ever wonder how to create not just a paycheck, but the life you want with a paycheck? The thought leadership, the legacy, the freedom. Because that was me. And that's exactly why I created the Leap Academy program, which already changed the thousands of careers and lives. Look, getting intentional and strategic with your career is now more important than ever. The skills for success have changed. Aq, adaptability, reinventing and leaping are today the most important skills for the future of work. Building Portfolio careers, multiple streams of income and ventures are no longer a nice to have. It's a must have. But no one is teaching this except for us in Leap Academy. So if you want more from your career in Life, go to leapacademy.com training. Check out this completely free training about ways to fast track your career and you'll even be able to book a completely free strategy call with my team. That's leapacademy.com training. So why do you decide to start your own and how do you go about the decision and not in the fear and what if this doesn't work and the money and like take me a little bit to that decision because the audience that is listening, they're right now in this. What should I do next? Should I leap? Should I not leave? Should I reinvent myself? Should I go for it? And I think that fear is numbing sometimes.
- [17:34]
Patrick Lencioni
My advice to people like that is first pray, what do you want me to do? God? And then it's interesting though because like my dad was a very practical man and there was parts of that that actually served me really well because I didn't want to work at a Starbucks and write screenplays for the rest of my life because that wasn't conducive to the kind of world I wanted to be in. But I also, you know, what it comes down to when it gets down to working genius is like I was meant to come up with new ideas and evaluate them and help other people understand them. And it really fast forward to the working genius because now I realize why I had to do what I did. And working with five colleagues in a startup that was doing consulting and new ideas around work fed me so much more than working at a big company where I was the head of this and I had to have lots of meetings about policy and stuff. And so people said, but don't you want to IPO and don't you want to have a big title? And and I remember thinking, no, I enjoy the day to day of this. And that's the thing every job comes down to, are you going to love the day today? And people will say to me now and I love this, this fits in with Leap Academy so well. People will say, give me advice, I want to do what you're doing now. And the advice is always, hey, every step of the way. We loved that step. And if that were the last step, we could have done that for the rest of our careers. So don't do something so that it leads to the next thing. And the Next thing. And then finally you'll be happy. You'll never be good at it and you'll never get there.
- [19:05]
Ilana Golan
So powerful.
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Patrick Lencioni
Yeah. When we started that little consulting firm, we said, hey, if we can just work with people we love, make enough money to pay the bills and enjoy the day to day, this is enough.
- [19:16]
Ilana Golan
And something that I heard you say in another interview or whatever it was, it was somewhere around different CEO temptation. And I think this is really a core also to the epoch. Different people are motivated by different things. It's part of what you do right now. Right. Different people are motivated by different things. Success looks different to different people. And sometimes it's fear of regret, sometimes it's the income, sometimes it's the legacy, sometimes it's the thought leadership, sometimes it's a family. So how did you see it? And I know you gonna have a better way to articulate it, but I'm really curious what you've seen.
- [19:52]
Patrick Lencioni
I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who said, comparison is the thief of joy. And when we look around and go, well, that person does this, that person does this. I should be like them. I should be like them. You might find yourself like my job at Bain, like, technically successful but not happy and no peace. And you can't sustain that for very long. So what I finally realized is I needed to do the things that I'm a big believer in. The one of the worst things in life is the Sunday blues, which is, oh, no, I have to go to work tomorrow. And I don't care how much money you make or how sexy or well known your job is, if on Sundays you're like, oh, tomorrow will be fine, I'm looking forward to seeing everybody I work with and doing what I get to do. That is its own reward. And that is one of the most important things. Start there. What are you going to do that you're going to go, I'm looking forward to tomorrow. And. And if that means you have a company that cuts grass and that you have two crews and you're doing that and you love to be there, you are so blessed. But if you're going and you're the vice president of marketing for a bank and you're on Wall street and you get to be on cnbc, but you don't like doing it, you are not blessed. You are stuck. And I'm just so all about that. I mean, I love what you guys do at Leap Academy. I think that the world of education, professional education and higher education does such a poor job of preparing people for
- [21:17]
Ilana Golan
Real life and to actually enjoy life. It's not just a paycheck, like you said, because I had it all, except for the fact that I was not happy. You know, I had it all, which
- [21:29]
Patrick Lencioni
is the very definition of not having it. Right.
- [21:33]
Ilana Golan
Like, theoretically, I should be happy. Why am I not happy? Why do I feel so stuck? Stuck. And, like, this is the end of my career in life. So I hear you a thousand percent. At some point, you basically cut any stability. And entrepreneurship is hard. One of the things that I don't want it to sound like, oh, super easy. Everybody should be an entrepreneur. There's a magic wand. Get rich quick. No, there's going to be, like, a lot of hard moments. More than you would want, but you decide to do this. Tell me a little bit about the beginning. Because I feel like in companies, there's two really hard moments. There's constantly hard moments, but the initial one is really, really hard because there's a lot of unknown. And then once you have a team, there's another really hard, because now you're responsible for a lot of people, a lot of lives, a lot of families. So at least for me, but take me there, Pat. What is it like for you, that journey?
- [22:29]
Patrick Lencioni
You know, what I think was actually critical was my wife. We had been married for a few years, and we had just decided we wanted to have children. And I literally started the company. Two weeks later, we found out we were pregnant. Two months later, we were having twins. Then we bought a house. And then I had my first book published. I broke every rule about all the stressful things. I didn't do it on purpose, but my wife wrote a check to the company. I think it was for $25,000 then, to buy furniture for our little office and to set up the phones. And she would say, you'll do well. I know you. I trust you. I believe in you. You're gonna do well. And knowing that somebody else had actually more confidence in me than I had in myself was really important. Had she been like, I don't like this, I don't know, I probably would have pressed too hard and done unnatural things in the early days. Cause you kind of gotta lean into it and trust.
- [23:24]
Ilana Golan
I think what you said right now is so critical. And I don't know if I thought about it in the way you just put it together. I think sometimes we need to steal, to some extent, other people's confidence in us in order to shine. And I think there's an element, first of all, that a jar can't Read its own label. And I think we're really, really hard on ourselves, just in a general sense, but also sometimes loaning that confidence to continue is so, so, so critical. To some extent, that's probably what we do in LEAP for people. But I don't know if I put it in those words until you said it.
- [24:02]
Patrick Lencioni
You just reminded me of something, and that is I love to give people my confidence in them. I hire people generally who are probably a little bit lack confidence at times, but I see good things in them because I hire people all the time and give them more responsibility than they signed up for because I'm like, you can do this. Like, I don't think I can. Like, I know you can. And that is the way I manage. What I don't like to do is hire people and have to tell them, hey, I don't think you should be doing that. I don't think you're very good at that. The kind of people that are good at borrowing confidence from others are also the kind of people that love to lend confidence to others.
- [24:36]
Ilana Golan
That's a good point.
- [24:37]
Patrick Lencioni
And it's so joyful to see people shine that didn't think they could.
- [24:41]
Ilana Golan
Okay, so you grow this business, and again, initially, you need to bring the clients. And apparently you signed up to a lot because you also have kids now and a book. I'm still struggling to write my first book. Like, you're amazing. Okay, so you're doing all these things. First of all, how did the first book come about? And then I would love to hear why you think the five dysfunctions of team became so successful.
- [25:06]
Patrick Lencioni
It's really interesting because I loved writing more than I loved. I wanted to be an author. What I mean by that is I like the process. And you know how they say you have to study something for 10,000 hours to be great at it? Well, since I was a kid, I had been writing. And so I didn't say I want to be an author because I want people to know that I was an author, and I want to have my book on a bookshelf. I actually love writing, and there's something about that. Like, I want to play in the NFL. It's like, no, no, no, no. Do you love practicing and playing? Because that's what it requires. So somebody said, you should write a book about this theory you came up with. And I sat down and I said, I'm gonna write fiction, because I like to write fiction, and I'll enjoy it. And then when it got done and we started the company, I Said, let's just take it to Kinko's and have copies made and we'll hand it out to our clients. And somebody accidentally told somebody about it and a publisher saw it and said, we'd like to publish it. So really the most important thing is I loved the process and I loved bringing these new ideas to life. The formal part of it wasn't that interesting to me. So when people say, I want to be an author, I'm going to say, well, just love the writing process and the coming up with stuff and then it'll take care of itself. But the first book sold more than people thought it would, but it wasn't like, crazy.
- [26:22]
Ilana Golan
And which one is the first book? For those who don't know you?
- [26:25]
Patrick Lencioni
It's called the Five Temptations of a CEO and it's the most allegorical. When people read, it's the most like, fableish. And then I wasn't going to write another one and they said, yeah, you should write another one. And so I wrote the one which was really a fable about what we did in our business. And readers were reading it and saying the first book. And they said, this applies to teams. We think too. So that's when I wrote the five dysfunctions of a team based on my work with CEOs and teams. And that one took off, but not right out of the gate. None of my books take off right out of the gate. It's usually word of mouth and they slowly build over time.
- [26:58]
Ilana Golan
How do you see a book, speaking of now versus when the first ones came about? Because there's a ton of marketing, there's a ton of people's like, it's really hard to rise above the noise now. Especially when I think some people will just create a really quick, AI based book. And it's really easy to self publish and like, it's just hard to rise above the noise. And we're inundated with a ton of information. How do you see the difference?
- [27:25]
Patrick Lencioni
I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'm not that excited about books going forward. No, I love books, but I think that in the last, even 10 years, forget in my lifetime, in the last 10 years, people's attention spans have gotten so short and we can curse that because it's bad. And I get that. And I don't think it's necessarily good, but it is what it is. And the way to reach people today is different. And I'm working on a new project. I'm gonna write a book. It better be Short, and it better grab people right out of it. And one of the reasons I wrote fiction, even when I started, was because. And I said, I just don't want somebody to buy my book and never get to the end. To think that I'm going to write like the last five chapters and no one will ever read them.
- [28:08]
Ilana Golan
Nobody's going to read them. That's a bummer. Yeah.
- [28:11]
Patrick Lencioni
So I said, I'm going to write fiction so that the end of every chapter makes them go, ooh, what's going to happen next? And then they get to the end and they're like, oh, now I get it. And then I put in the 20 pages in the back that explains what it was really about. So even then I had a short attention span. I probably had adhd. That was before they really diagnosed people with it. And so I think even then I was like, ooh, I don't want people to be bored. And now I think about, if you can write a book in 30 pages, do it, call it a book. People aren't gonna be like, I'll pay $24. Cause it's 300 pages. I actually think they'll pay more for something that's shorter because they can read it and hand it off and say, read this. I was talking to this guy the other day who does YouTube videos and Instagram. He said, yeah, I'm gonna write a book and it's going to be pretty long. And. And I said, hey, listen, you have millions of people that are learning from you on Instagram. That's the new tool for teaching. And I'm not young and I learn a crapload on YouTube shorts and Instagram, then I go deeper and then I might pick up the book. But I said, don't sell off the simplicity of reaching people for the sophistication that sophisticated people will go, that book that nobody read was really great. This was a 23 year old kid and he wrote down, simplicity, simplicity.
- [29:32]
Ilana Golan
So eventually you work with CEOs, you write the books. How do you start finding the six types of working genius? How did that morph and how did that come about?
- [29:42]
Patrick Lencioni
All of my books come about by accident, or I should say, by experience. I never sit down and go, the world needs another model. And I talked to Jim Collins years ago and I really love Jim's books. I said to him, when I first met him at a conference, I said, hey, Jim, I don't do research like you, because, you know, he goes off into the mountains with his cat and sits there and does, you know, Like, I'm gonna. He's a research guy. And I said, I go work with CEOs and teams and I notice things and I explore them, and then I write about them. And he said, it's totally valid, Pat. Field research is real. Face validity is real. And I was so thankful to him that he validated that. Cause it would have been easy for him to go, oh, no, no. It's the way I do it, is the only way. And so I'm a field researcher, and then I write in a way that brings it to life. And the best thing that people can say is what you said to me about working genius. You said something that sounded like a criticism, and it wasn't at all. You said, like, it was pathetic how
- [30:38]
Ilana Golan
accurate it was exactly. And maybe I'll share that story. So I was actually. And I share that a little bit with you. I was with Russell Branson. He has click funnels. And we meet a few times a year, and each person talks about what helped them in the business. And there's a guy, Tom Sylvester, and he comes up and he literally shares how you basically completely change the way he works with his team. And I was like, what is this thing? Something genius. Working genius. What the heck is that? And I'm looking at this, and this assessment is really short. It's like 10 minutes, something that I can dig my teeth into, right? It's not like hours of things, which I don't have time. But I was like, okay, I'll give it a shot. Especially when you hear about it from someone that you respect. And initially, first of all, it was really interesting. My first instinct, I was actually, like, insulted, because I was like, how can you say that? I don't have this and this? And we'll talk about what this is. And then once I read more about myself and then I saw where my team is, I was like, oh, my God, this made so much sense that it was actually, like, scary. It was like, that's why I invent all these things. And then my team is scrambling to figure it out. But then I have these. Go to people that are doing all the details, and it's like everything is just falls into place when you see it. So let's dive into what this is, because I think it was just so fun for me to find this.
- [32:12]
Patrick Lencioni
And your interaction with it was exactly what we like to hear, because people read it and go, wait, this is so simple. How can this be? Wait a second. This tells me why. Oh, no wonder I struggle in this. No wonder I'M good in this. Oh, my gosh. I need other people. And it's so funny, because I wrote the book the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I mean, gosh, how long ago was that? 23 years ago.
- [32:30]
Ilana Golan
Yeah.
- [32:31]
Patrick Lencioni
And this explains why teams need each other, because nobody has everything. So here's how I came to write this book. It was right after Covid, and we were in the office doing most of our work on Zoom, and it was, like, actually five months into Covid in California, that meant we were just barely into it. Other places were moving on, but, you know, so I'm on Zoom one day, and I'm on in a meeting, and I'm so excited. I'm actually teaching management and leadership to a bunch of Catholic priests on a Zoom screen. And I'm, like, having so much fun. I'm Catholic. I'm helping them with that. And then I go to the next meeting where I actually give negative feedback to some people on the staff about something they didn't do. I don't like that at all. I'm trying to get them to work harder. And then I go to the next meeting where we're talking about coming up with a new idea for a podcast. And I'm totally excited. And the woman next to me, Amy, says, why are you like that? And I said, what do you mean? And she says, why do you go from excited to frustrated to excited so readily? And I'd been doing this for 20 years, and I remember thinking, gosh, I hope I don't have, like. What do you call it when you have ups and downs?
- [33:36]
Ilana Golan
No, like, manual, depressing, whatever. I don't know how you call it.
- [33:39]
Patrick Lencioni
Yeah. And I said, I don't know, Amy, but I want to figure it out. And so I got a whiteboard and a pen just to solve my own problem. And I was like, what kind of work am I doing? Why do I get frustrated? Oh, wait, there's that kind of work. Oh, there's also that kind of work. And I came up with six circles on a whiteboard. It started with three, and then we divided them because we realized, oh, no, those are really two things. And we were like, this is the six different things that are required in any kind of work. Whether you're starting a company, launching a product, planning a family vacation, rebuilding your home. Any work, any project at all involves six different activities. And I said, I'm constantly doing this one here, and I hate it. And I love these two here. And because I'm doing that one all the time, I'm really resentful because I don't get to do these. And I thought I had just explained myself. Well, one of our consultants that evening saw the model on the whiteboard. We showed it to him. The next day he went, met with a CEO who was really frustrated. He goes, let me show you something. He showed. It's crazy. The next day, the guy had tears in his eyes. He was like, oh, that's why I'm so frustrated. And then my wife and I and my family, we were at home doing all this stuff and we said, this is universal. We built an assessment around it, launched it five months later, and people were like, this is changing everything. It took 10 minutes to take the assessment and people were saying, oh my gosh, I'm looking at my marriage differently. I totally am understanding why I shouldn't have let that person go. And people were like, I was gonna fire somebody on my team. And then we did the working genius. And I realized, she just doesn't have the right genius for that job. I can use her in a different way. It was changing people's way. And I loved Myers Briggs, Ilana. I love disc. I used all the tools. But there was something about working genius that was explaining the nitty gritty of day to day work in a way that I had never understood before. So that's kind of how it came about. And that was five years ago. And we're getting close to 2 million people that have taken this. And it's so darn much fun. And we barely marketed it, by the way. Getting back to marketing, I'm a terrible marketer. We're finally starting to market it and people are responding.
- [35:47]
Ilana Golan
So that's incredible. And by the way, I think the best type of marketing is when somebody else is talking about you. Because then we were all sold. We were all like, what the heck is this working genius?
- [35:57]
Patrick Lencioni
Ilana, people like you, if you believe it works, you're not going to tell your people at Leap Academy that it doesn't. They trust you. So going to people that are trusted sources of information is the best way for people to go, okay, I'll give it a shot. And then. Word of mouth is. Most of our books, they succeed because of word of mouth.
- [36:16]
Ilana Golan
We need to pause for a super brief break. And while we do, take a moment and share this episode with every single person who may be inspired by this, because this information can truly change your life and theirs. Now, every cool opportunity you will ever find is most likely from a hidden market. It's the people who think about you when you're not in the room and bring the right opportunities to you. This means that the people you hang out with truly matter. That's why we created our flagship live event in San Jose, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's February 26 to 28 and it's the number one conference for reinvention, leadership and careers in the United States. It has speakers like the former president of Starbucks and many other leaders, including yours truly, myself, and I'd love to personally welcome you, give you a hug, and hear what you think about the podcast. We'll have many networking opportunities, photo opportunities, and we already know every single person after this event will go supersonic on their reputation and career. So grab your tickets quickly because this event always sells out. So go to leapacademy.com leapcon or you can search on Google Leapcon 2026. It's L, E, A P C O N. Don't miss out where the most impactful leaders hang out in February. So go to leapacademy.com leapcon I will see you there. I want to talk about this for a second, Pat, because I didn't know about you guys. We started with disc, and I think for both of these, DISC and the working genius, I actually wish they were taught in school because like I said, I think this could have eliminated a lot of the different type of jobs that I was going towards, which I had absolutely no shot at because I hate the details, I'm not detail oriented. I don't like the minutiae. Like, it was never my thing. And on the other hand, maybe if I would have understood the working genius better and where I fit in, maybe I would have delegated better or hired smarter and all of the things. So how do you see all the different assessment? And what would you say to somebody? Again, you can't all do only assessment, but what would you say to somebody? And how do we bring it to college? But yeah, let's start with, let's talk
- [38:43]
Patrick Lencioni
about the college one first. Because after we came out with this, we realized, oh my gosh, career centers in schools should be doing this. We also realized people in high school, all of our kids, took this ridiculous assessment and said, you should be a garbage man or an astronaut. And it was like, what? So we developed a student edition.
- [39:02]
Ilana Golan
Oh, really? I didn't know that.
- [39:04]
Patrick Lencioni
So instead of the question saying, if you're in a meeting at work and somebody does this, it's like, if you have a group project in your class, do you tend to do this or this or this. And so people that are in high school, even into college, are benefiting from the student assessment. It's the same one worded in a way that the younger people can respond to. I'll tell you, I've gone to colleges, some colleges, and I think the best colleges, the ones that are actually about actually helping them do something meaningful in their lives rather than ridiculous, overly academic, just stuff alone, I think those are the ones that are gravitating toward this, and we're finding a lot more schools are using it. But I actually did a session. I have a son at Auburn University in Alabama and another son that went there. And I went and gave a lecture to a class of seniors getting ready to graduate. So I give them the code for the working genius. They do it right there on their phones. Ten minutes later, they all get their stuff, and I'm going, okay, let's talk, everybody. What is your working genius? And one kid said, I'm an ew, and I'll explain what that means later. And I said, so, do you have a job lined up? And he goes, yeah, it's cold. Call sales, door to door. And I said, oh, I'm sorry, I think you're going to hate that. He goes, I already hate it, and I haven't started. And I said, here's the deal. Because you can hear parents saying, hey, sometimes you have to do things that are hard. Yes. You don't get the perfect job. Always. You have to work hard. Every job has stuff that you don't love. But if you take a job that the activity that's primary to that job is exactly what you hate. That's a recipe for failure, frustration, and loss of confidence. And I said, son, do not do that job. Because his personality profile, what it hates the most is making people do things that they don't want to do. And that's exactly what that job entails. Now, a kid sitting right next to him is like, you know, one man's trash is another man's treasure. He's like, I would love that job. We need to actually start our career job searches and our staffing in our companies with, who are you? How did God make you? And what gives you joy and energy? Let me put you in a job that fully taps into that. And convincing people to take a job that they're gonna hate is just setting them back.
- [41:15]
Ilana Golan
And I do believe in third. Third. Third. So I think kind of what you alluded to, like, third of what you're gonna do is always gonna be boring. A third is Gonna be yuck. But a third should be incredible. And that incredible is like where the happiness, the fulfillment, the joy. Right. But if you don't even have that, this is gonna be the wrong choice. Right. It's just not gonna happen.
- [41:38]
Patrick Lencioni
Exactly. And when we talk about working genius, that third that you said is your genius, where you get joy and energy. You can do that work for 12 hours sometimes and have energy still. You're like, I've gone home. And my wife said, well, you're. You got a lot of energy. I said, I just spent 10 hours ideating invention and discernment. I could do that all day when I was a bank teller. And sometimes in my current job, if I'm doing the things I'm terrible at, that's not good. So the way we like to explain it is your working genius is like a yet mug that you pour coffee into and screw the lid on it can stay hot all day. You're going to burn yourself on that if you open it up five hours later and drink out of it. The middle two, your working competency, we call it, are the two geniuses that they don't really feed you, but you can do it for a while. It's not horrible. That's like pouring coffee into a cup like this and putting a lid on it. Your working frustrations, the bottom two are pouring coffee into a cup that has a hole in the bottom. It leaks through. It drains you of joy and energy. If you don't know what your working geniuses, competencies and frustrations are, how in the world can you go to a job interview and promote yourself and know when to go, oh, no, this wouldn't be good for me or for you. We think this is one of the best tools for companies and employees to match up to ensure that both sides will be happy.
- [42:56]
Ilana Golan
And that's why I love about this, because I think, again, we're in Leap Academy. We're totally focused on how people will reinvent themselves, leap their career. What is their zone of genius, what are the areas where it makes sense? So a lot of it is really interesting. And then I'm looking at some of my really long meetings with, like, clients or whatever. We have this big event, I think I told you, like, in San Jose, and it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be three full days and lots of speakers and lots of clients and lots of people that are coming to get inspired and get content. And, you know, and I get so alive just even thinking about it. It's packed days like you're tired at the end. But it's almost like, yes. When do you manage energy versus time? Right. When you manage the energy. It's incredible what you can go through.
- [43:44]
Patrick Lencioni
And your working genius type, Ilana, because I know what it is, I have it right here in front of me. Explains why you do what you do and why you've been great at it. I think it'd be fun to go through it.
- [43:55]
Ilana Golan
Yeah, let's go through it. Explain it first. And then.
- [43:58]
Patrick Lencioni
Should I explain the six types?
- [43:59]
Ilana Golan
Yeah, let's explain the six types. Go for it.
- [44:02]
Patrick Lencioni
So let me try to do this quickly. And what's good is people can grasp this quickly. And these six things I'm going to do kind of in order. My wife came up with the idea that these are gears because each one kind of provokes the next one. And I'm going to start with the first one. That essentially is the highest elevation in terms of head in the clouds. And we'll go all the way down to landing the plane on the Runway. Okay. The first genius is called the genius of wonder. You nor I have this as a primary genius. People with the genius of wonder have a God given gift and they've had it since they were a child. My wife has it and three of my four sons have it. They ponder things, they ask questions, they're up in their head. They can sit and literally wonder and ponder for hours. And kids that do this, people think, you're not focused, there's something wrong with you. In class, they're like, just stick to what I'm doing. But they really do live up in their heads and they're misunderstood. And here's the thing about work. Every new project, big or small, starts with wonder. Somebody says, you know, this doesn't work anymore. Higher education is just broken. I think our customers, I don't think they're that happy. Amy with working genius asked the question. I'm curious, why are you like that? She just asked the question. And every new idea, somebody asks the question. So that's wonder. The next genius coming out of the clouds a little bit is called invention. And that's where somebody hears that big question and goes, I'm going to come up with an idea. And you have this one and I have this one. It's like, ooh, ooh, let me take a shot at that. I'll solve that problem. And here's the deal. I wake up every morning wanting to do that. I stand in the shower inventing. I can't help it. That's when you know It's a genius. I do it because it gives me joy and energy. And you know something, Elana? Sometimes it's not what the world wants from us in that moment, but we do it anyway. And it's okay to know that, you know, my wife can say, hey, I don't need your invention right now. Thank you. And I can go, oh, okay. This is not invention time. Just know, though, I'm always up for
- [46:15]
Ilana Golan
invention, but by the way, this can also be. I think for me, this was a really hard moment because I could not figure out, like, I was literally inventing, like, a. A decade ago. I was inventing probably a new startup every goddamn day. At some point, my husband was like, can you just, like, stop? What is up with you? And I think that was really hard. Like, how do I find my clarity? How do I find what's next? How do I. Like, that was a big seed for Leap Academy, because I was like, you can't just all invent. Like, at some point, you need to figure out which direction you want to go to.
- [46:52]
Patrick Lencioni
Yes. But what's great is when we can start with Grace and go, honey, you do that because that's how you're wired. And rather than going, can you stop doing that? My wife has w. She's actually a wi. Her geniuses are the first two. She lives in the clouds and just under the clouds. And now she'll say to me something, and I'll be like. And she goes, I'm just wondering. And I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, context. You're a wanderer. I love that about you. She calls it out, and I can recontextualize what she's doing. I have some marriage stories. There are people that have said their marriage got saved because they both did this, and they figured out, I'll get to that in a second. So the next one after invention comes discernment. And this is a really interesting one. That's the genius that some people have of looking at a problem. They're looking at different variables, and they have intuition and instinct, and they see patterns that evolve, and they can go, I think this is the best idea right here that you just came up with. And I don't think this one's such a good idea. And they're usually right, and they can't quite prove it on a spreadsheet, but their gut, because of the way they think, they have this ability to discern and arrive at the right answer. And a woman on my team named Tracy has incredible discernment. She's the person that people go ask Tracy, my wife. I'll say, should we refinance our house? We'll say, let's ask Tracy. Tracy's not an expert on this. She just has good feeling. Hey, do you want to. We want to go to Greece on vacation. Should we go to Greece? We asked Tracy. You guys should definitely not go to Greece. You're all white skinned. You're going to get sunburned. It's really far away. You only have eight days. You know, she just knows how to pull the right variables together.
- [48:29]
Ilana Golan
That's Amanda for me. Yes. We all need somebody that will do that.
- [48:33]
Patrick Lencioni
Exactly. Tracy said when she was a little girl, all of her friends would go, ask Tracy. She'll know. It's a gift. It's a gift. It's a genius. Okay. Discernment is key. The next genius is called galvanizing. You have it, I don't. It's the reason I started this, Ilana, because I'm not a galvanizer, naturally. And I was coming to work every day and I thought, well, I'm the CEO, I'm supposed to galvanize. And everybody else said, well, you're the leader, you should galvanize. And we just make this assumption that the CEO should be good at everything. And like, everything. And it was crushing me. I'd come to work really excited about I&D, and they'd go, galvanized. How would be Gene? And Gene? And I'd get frustrated and they'd go, why are you so frustrated? And I'd be like, I don't know. Now I know why. I was burnt out on G and I found somebody in my organization that loved Gene. It's a gift. And oh, by the way, galvanizing are people that love to rally the troops, push things, sell things, inspire, convince.
- [49:31]
Ilana Golan
That's definitely me.
- [49:33]
Patrick Lencioni
And it's a gift you have. Not every CEO has that. Does that mean I can never do it? No. There's sometimes the CEO has to galvanize. But if I'm the default galvanizer around everything, it's going to crush me. Where you are like, hey, if somebody needs galvanizing in the organization, let me know because I'll do it. And so you're an inventor and a galvanizer. New ideas and getting the world to listen to them, you're built for that. And as long as you have somebody around you who can provide a little discernment and go, hey, you have 10
- [50:07]
Ilana Golan
ideas, actually execute the details and.
- [50:11]
Patrick Lencioni
And you can go and say, here's 10 ideas. And the discerner will go, those four ideas are life changing. Those are great. Those two need some more work. Those four, you should just put those away because that's not a great idea. And you can go, thank you. And that doesn't make you less than. Everybody needs somebody to fill in their gaps. The last two geniuses are enablement. You know, when you galvanize, somebody has to go, I get it, I'm going to help. I'm in. It's a genius. There are people that God gave the natural desire to come alongside and say, I want to help. I volunteer, I will do what's needed. It's not because they're just nice. They have the genius, the joy and energy out of coming alongside and saying, I'm going to enable you to accomplish this. It's a genius. If an organization doesn't have it, things don't. They're the glue. They're those people that go, ilana, I love your ideas and I love your passion. I will do it. I'm in. You know what I'm talking about, right?
- [51:10]
Ilana Golan
Yeah, for sure.
- [51:12]
Patrick Lencioni
The last genius is the genius of tenacity, which is beyond enablement. They like to finish things. I have none of this, Ilana, neither do you. And by the way, what's valued in life when you're young, why did you study engineering and tech? You know, because people are telling us, finish things, do this. Life says, that's what success is. That the thing is, not all of us have that genius. And for most of my life I pretended I did and I did it pretty well and I was miserable.
- [51:41]
Ilana Golan
I think this is what you said is key here, because I think my instinct was. When I was taking this again, I was almost insulted. Right? How can you say that I don't have wonder. How can you say that? I don't have the big picture. How can you say I don't have tenacity? I did whatever, an ironman, whatever. So here I have it. But you're right, that is not my zone of genius. And I don't want to be in a constant tenacity, discernment, enable. Right. Like. But that's why I need a team. And I think that's just so smart to let go of the shame of not having that as a zone of genius and understanding that nobody has everything. And it's really about how do you create ripples. And an incredible team.
- [52:24]
Patrick Lencioni
Yes. And shame and guilt are the two things that we think. That and judgment that by doing working genius, you stop shaming yourself and feeling Guilty. Like, oh, I'm not great at that. In fact, you go, oh, I suck at that. And I can tell the world I
- [52:40]
Ilana Golan
have a reason why I suck at this. Here is the reason.
- [52:43]
Patrick Lencioni
And you know what's funny? But you must have tenacity, pat. You've written 13 books. And I'm like, oh, if I didn't have people around me that had more tenacity than me, I would have never finished any of them because I get bored and want to move on to the next thing. And so there's people with tenacity, Pat. We have a book deal or you have a deadline. I'm going to help you do this. I need somebody to bring that to me. And you know what they say to me is, I'm so glad you come up with new ideas, because that's just not their thing. And so tenacity. There are people that wake up every morning and say, I can't wait to finish things. I love to get things across the finish line. I love. They get joy and energy.
- [53:18]
Ilana Golan
The empty inbox. The empty inbox. They have to have this. Like. I'm like, how do you have an empty inbox? Do you want to see what mine looks like?
- [53:27]
Patrick Lencioni
My wife picks up my phone, she's the same, and says, do you know how many messages you have in here? I'm like, no, I don't, and I
- [53:38]
Ilana Golan
don't want to know.
- [53:39]
Patrick Lencioni
I have no idea.
- [53:40]
Ilana Golan
Helping me.
- [53:41]
Patrick Lencioni
And that's the thing. When people in their marriage, in their family, in their teams, understand what they are and they're not, they celebrate other people's geniuses that aren't their own. But when they're insecure, somebody could say to me, I could work with somebody who has enablement and tenacity. And I have I and D. So I'm way up here, and they're down here getting stuff done. And they could go, why are you so flaky, Pat? And I could say, why are you so anal? And now they go, oh, I'm glad I don't have to come up with ideas up there and that I get to do what I do. And I'm like, oh, I'm glad I don't have to actually implement things, because you're great at that. And that's not a criticism. It's. I'm actually celebrating that they're better than me at things, because we need that. Let me tell you the marriage story. And it's interesting because it was a guy that was an ig, just like you, and he wrote to Us, right after Working Genius came out, like, five years ago. And he said, for years, I wondered in my marriage, I thought my wife didn't like me. And he goes, I'm serious. It sounds funny, but I really thought she was against me. She was rooting against me. So on our anniversary, we took Working Genius, and I realized I'm an ig, which means I come up with ideas and I get really excited. And she is a wd, which means she's really up there in her brain and she discerns things. And I would say, I'm gonna start a business, and it's gonna be like this. And her natural inclination was to give him her discernment about what would work and what wouldn't. So she was kind of. But, honey, you have to think of this, and you have to think of this. And he's like, she's raining on my parade. And she goes, no, I'm loving you by making sure you don't drive off a cliff. And because of that, he went from thinking, she is trying to frustrate me. She doesn't believe in me, to, oh, my gosh, she's filling in my gap for me. And it was not against me. It was so for me. And I just didn't understand it. Crazy.
- [55:34]
Ilana Golan
This is so good. I'm totally taking it with my husband. We're so opposites that I can't even, like, wait to see what comes up. Yeah, he's definitely a wonder, but I don't know what else isn't that great.
- [55:48]
Patrick Lencioni
And here's the thing, though. We do frustrate each other sometimes, because, like, my wife will say, hey, Pat, I need your help this weekend. And I'm like, oh, no. And I'll say, what do you need? She goes, I need you to help me clean out the garage. And I'm like, can I design the new garage? And she goes, nope, I don't want your invention. And then I'll go to my discernment and go, do you really think it's the right use of our time? I mean, is it really that important? She goes, I don't need your discernment. I need your tenacity. I'm gonna hand you a box, and you're gonna put it away. And she knows that it's something I don't like. She knows it's at great cost to me, and I still have to do it sometimes, but at least she can appreciate it because it's totally against my grain. Now when she comes to me and says, hey, I need a New idea from me. She's like, this is a party for you. I'm throwing you a bone. I need some help with this. And I'm like, lay it on me. So. And think about kids. Oh. Understanding my kids. Working geniuses changes the way I parent.
- [56:47]
Ilana Golan
Really?
- [56:48]
Patrick Lencioni
Oh. Oh.
- [56:49]
Ilana Golan
We're totally doing it this weekend. Let's go. Let's do it as a family. I think that's going to be so fun, actually.
- [56:55]
Patrick Lencioni
It takes 12 minutes and we priced it so low. Ilana. I have a business. I consult the CEOs. And when we came up with this, people were like, you should price this for the enterprise and it'll cost. And people. And we were like, no. We want every human being to take it. We want young people to take it. We want families to do it. We want every worker of every kind to take it. So it doesn't cost very much.
- [57:16]
Ilana Golan
So where did they find it? Where did they find it?
- [57:18]
Patrick Lencioni
Pat, you go to workinggenius.com workinggenius.com, two GS in the middle. And there's the student version there. There's the adult version there. Professional version takes 12 minutes. You can make a team map that shows your whole team.
- [57:34]
Ilana Golan
Yeah, we did that. I love it. It's so cool.
- [57:36]
Patrick Lencioni
And you can see where there's gaps and where you have a lot of confluence.
- [57:40]
Ilana Golan
Too many. Yeah.
- [57:42]
Patrick Lencioni
Yeah. So workinggenius.com it's easy and fast.
- [57:46]
Ilana Golan
Amazing. Pat, this is so, so great. Maybe just share one thing. Like, if you kind of would have met Pat from a few decades ago, what do you wish you knew? And it might be related to this, but overall, like, about business, life, career,
- [58:05]
Patrick Lencioni
I wish I had understood that things happen to us in childhood that we need to go back and kind of reprocess, and that doing so doesn't mean there's something. It means that everybody has that I recently discovered in my life, that there were certain. And it relates to what we're talking about. Ilana. Because I grew up trying to earn the approval of my parents, because it felt kind of conditional, like I had to perform for it, and then I had to perform for my teachers and my coaches and my bosses and everybody else. And I was realizing I was trying to please people, and I was actually working really hard to try to be things that I wasn't, because I felt like I had to be what everybody wanted from me. And until I went back and explored some of those things and said, oh, I didn't get this as a kid. So that's why I Felt the need to be something I wasn't. I wish I had understood that 20 years ago, but I learned it five years ago. And this past year, I've grown more and I have more peace. And I'm just glad, thankful to God that I understand that now. So if I could have gone back and when I talk to young people, I'm like, listen, even my own kids, I probably parented you in a way that left a few scars. Go back and heal them now. It's okay.
- [59:12]
Ilana Golan
Is there a specific story that comes up for you when you think about that?
- [59:15]
Patrick Lencioni
Well, for me, it's actually my whole life I kept thinking, if I just do more, I will finally feel like I'm enough. Most of the CEOs I work with are the same way. And they will look back and they'll say, oh, yeah, since I was kind of didn't get the conditional love I needed as a kid, and they used it as a superpower. And that's why they go so hard. And that's why they launch one company and it goes public. And then they go, I'm going to do another one. And now I'm going to do another one. And sometimes they're like, yeah, I keep waiting for when it's going to feel like I don't have to do anymore. And when you confront that and come to terms with the fact that you don't have to perform to feel good, then you do it out of joy and love, not out of fear. And fear. Failure is not a good reason to live.
- [60:01]
Ilana Golan
Oh, that's so beautiful, Pat. So how do we heal those scars just for people that are hearing and they're right now, what you just said really resonates with them.
- [60:11]
Patrick Lencioni
This is the new program I'm working on right now, which is to help leaders assess themselves around this stuff. There's so many books out there about this. I would just go and say, and this sounds too much, but go do a Google search of childhood trauma. Everybody thinks childhood trauma means you had to have been raped or beaten or abandoned on the side of a road or something terrible like that. Those are terrible things. But there's actually childhood trauma that happens that seems mild, but if we never deal with it, it stays and sticks. And it doesn't always leave us under an underpass on the highway, eating out of a garbage can. Sometimes it leads to us accomplishing a lot of things, but just never feeling like it's quite right. So childhood trauma, and don't think you're, like, being too needy. There's A difference between needy and hungry. And we need to go back and kind of satisfy the hunger we have to be accepted.
- [61:04]
Ilana Golan
And I do believe that you can heal yourself, and you can talk about things usually from the scars, not the wounds. So a lot of the things when they're open and bleeding, you can't really talk about them. You can talk about them when they scarred up a little bit.
- [61:17]
Patrick Lencioni
I have done more spiritual direction and counseling recently in my life, and it's been so helpful. And, you know, one of the things that's interesting, Ilana, is that God made us so that when our tissue breaks or a bone breaks and we heal, the scar tissue is actually stronger than the skin that had never been broken. You know, they'd say, scar tissue is stronger. We are meant to heal, and when we heal, we're better than we were. So we can. Instead of cursing like, oh, yeah, that bad thing happened, it's like, oh, I'm going to heal from it and be better than ever.
- [61:46]
Ilana Golan
This is so good, Pat. Thank you. This was so fun and informative and amazing, and I can't wait, actually, to do the working genius with my family. That's going to be really fun weekend.
- [61:57]
Patrick Lencioni
I don't even know how long we've been talking. It feels like 15 minutes, but it's been longer than that, I'm guessing.
- [62:03]
Ilana Golan
Thank you so much for being on the show, Pat.
- [62:05]
Patrick Lencioni
Thanks for having me. God bless.
- [62:09]
Ilana Golan
Hey, I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And now it's time to go and look at the reviews on our podcast. So I'm looking at the Apple podcast right now, and we have a review for Make Unplugged. Oh, my God, if you did not listen to this episode, it was so good. So go check out Mick Unplugged. Just incredible, incredible episode. Like, I was almost crying there. He actually gave us a review on our podcast. So he basically says, leap for leaders. Ilana's context is so amazing. This podcast brings it. If you're a leader or entrepreneur, this is the podcast for you. Every episode hits. There's insights, wisdom, and strategy in every episode. Oh, my God. Make Unplugged approved. Thank you so much. This is so fun. And now I'm going to remember every single week. We are going into our YouTube channel, and we're looking for questions that you're putting in the comments. And I'm picking a question, and I want to answer it right now. And our next question is from Mike, and Mike is asking about portfolio, career. He's like, so what kind of portfolio can you build for yourself? So first of all, February 26 to 28, you have to be in Leapcon. I want to make sure that you're there because this is what we going to focus on. You're going to all become a portfolio executive, kind of the CEO of your own portfolio. You're going to see how to create portfolios. So first of all, what is portfolio career? Portfolio career is multiple streams of income or ventures. Sometimes you do it for money, sometimes you do it for reputation, sometimes you do it because it helps bridge a pivot. And these are basically the three types of portfolios. So one is again, revenue generating, that can be a side hustle, that could be a side business, that could be advisory board seats, coaching, consulting, and I can go on and on. So these are the revenue generating portfolios. You can have a reputation portfolio, meaning if you want to be seen as, for example, you're a director, you want to be seen as CEO, you start mentoring in startup accelerators, you might volunteer to boards of nonprofits, et cetera, et cetera. So you position yourself as somebody that works with CEOs all the time and moves the needle on companies. And once you're able to do that, it's actually incredible to see how you're perceived and you get the opportunities according to how you're perceived. If you're perceived as somebody that works with CEOs, you're going to do better and you get better chance. So we see a lot of people that are moving 1, 2, 3 titles up, and it's all because of that reputation portfolio. Now, the last one is the pivot portfolio, meaning I'm working in one industry and I want to pivot to another industry, or I'm working in a W2 role and I want to start a business. So every time you want to pivot, the best time to do it is to start creating that pivot portfolio, meaning you're going to volunteer, you're going to create a side hustle, you're going to mentor people, you're going to coach them on over coffee, but you're going to start creating a portfolio of opportunities and evidence that you know what you're doing so that you can leave faster and higher. So I know this is super fast, but I hope you're gonna see it in leapcon to actually dive three days into building your own portfolio. I can't wait to see you there. Have a beautiful rest of the week. And I want to see more questions coming so that we can answer every single one of them. See you soon. Remember this episode is not just for you and me. You never know whose life you're meant to change by sharing this episode with them. And if you love today's episode, please click the subscribe or Download button for this show and give it a five star review. This really means the world. Join me in helping tens of millions of individuals reinvent their career and leap into their full potential. Look, getting intentional and strategic with your career is now more important than ever. The skills for success have changed. Aq, adaptability, reinventing and leaping are today the most important skills for the future of work. Building portfolio careers, multiple streams of income and ventures are no longer a nice to have. It's a must have. But no one is teaching this except for us in Leap Academy. So if you want more from your career in Life, go to leapacademy.com
- [66:34]
Patrick Lencioni
check
- [66:34]
Ilana Golan
out our completely free training about ways to fast track your career. You'll even be able to book a completely free career strategy call with my team. So go to leapacademy.com training.