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- [00:00]
A
If you have a working frustration, don't try to get good at it. Don't go to a class on it. Don't double down on it. It drains you. Instead, go to other people, beg them to help you. Because when you beg them to help you, you're actually affirming them in their party. And one of the reasons why we don't is because we think, well, why should I ask them to do this if I hate it? They don't hate it. That's why. Find somebody who doesn't hate it and say, I would love for you to do this for me with a smile on yourself. Go ask people to help you. Welcome to the Working Genius podcast, where we discuss anything and everything associated with the six types of working genius and how it impacts your work and your life. Cody and I are co hosting. I'm saying that, Cody, we're co hosts.
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B
You got a demotion.
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A
I got demoted. You got promoted. That's all right. Or maybe I'm going to promote us both to hosts.
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B
Yeah, no code sounds great.
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A
So what's the topic today?
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B
Ask for help.
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A
Yes. And we think maybe by the end of this, we'll have a. A different title, a little bit more on that. Ask for Help doesn't sound very interesting, but it's really important, and it all has to do with our working frustrations. And, Cody, I remember when we first started, we were like, we just want to call this weakness finder, because our strength finder, which is like, there's 58 different things to find, and it's all interesting. I'm a wooer. I don't remember all the others, but we're always like, tell me the things I suck at. I want to know what my weaknesses are. Because there's relief in knowing your weaknesses, and it's very liberating.
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B
Yeah, it's interesting. Like, you know, we're how many hundreds of episodes into this podcast and you'd think, like, are there still edges of the brownie with this, like, really practical applications of this? And, you know, if we, you know, one of the. I didn't say this to you beforehand, but I might even consider saying, beg for help. You know, like, that might be the. That might be the. The actual better title. I think that we. We do this thing, and I did this for years and years and years before Working Genius, where when work is frustrating to you and draining and miserable, you automatically assume that everybody else experiences it the same way just to put
- [02:02]
A
something on this before you go further. So the question here is, why don't we beg people to help us in the things that we're not good at or that drains us of joy and energy. I didn't get to that part about what this is, so I love where you're going with this, Cody. Keep going.
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B
Well, we can answer that question too. I think that's really great place to spark. So to start. Because I think it's. It's definitely a vulnerability thing. Right. It's gotta be. It's. It feels like a little bit exposing to do that.
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A
Well, it is, but I think you. The reason why I interrupted is because what. And I do that. I'm sorry, but what you said earlier, I thought was really important, and that is that we assume that if it. If it drains us enjoying energy, that it's work that nobody else likes.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So to ask somebody else to do it for us is like I'm pawning off the crap work on you.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But it's like we like to say in a different way, one person's crap work is another person's party.
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B
Yeah. And so you change that.
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A
Yes. That's why I jumped into that, is because I actually think one of the reasons why. Because what I say to people is, if you have a working frustration, don't try to get good at it. Don't go to a class on it. Don't double down on it. It drains you. Instead, go to other people. And I like what you said. Beg them to help you. Because when you beg them to help you, you're actually affirming them in their party and you're acknowledging that you're not meant to be great at that. And I think one of the reasons why people. Because I talk to people all the time in my family and at work, and I'm like, you hate doing that? And I go, oh, yeah, why don't you get somebody else to do that for you? Like, oh, I don't know. And that's this. What this is about. Like, beg for. Beg with a smile on yourself. Go ask people to help you. And one of the reasons why we don't is because we think, well, why should I ask them to do this if I hate it? They don't hate it. That's why. Find somebody who doesn't hate it and say, I would love for you to do this for me.
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B
Yeah. The idea that it gives somebody else joy and energy to do work that is really draining for you is hard for us to. To really comprehend. Right. Like, we're. We. We think. I mean, we do this almost every week. Pat, where I. I think we're almost out of podcast topics. And that's because I don't have invention. And you have invention. And you're like, I can't wait to go home and think about this and come up with some new ideas. If I somehow felt like it was my responsibility to do that without giving you the not only permission, but kind of begging you to be like, pat, can you please come up with some? Because I am out.
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A
And, you know, whenever people do that, I'm like, oh, good, good, good. This is what if I can't sleep tonight, I'm going to lay in bed and do this. All of the podcasts that we're recording today, and this one came to me in the shower this morning and my wife walks through and I'm like, hey, Laura. And we start talking about something and I'm like, oh, yeah, we need to talk about that. Because one of things. And I even said to her, I said, hey, Laura, people need to ask for help on things that they are terrible at. And she goes, don't say that they're terrible at it. I said, what do you mean? She goes, well, they're not necessarily terrible at it. I'm like, you mean they can be okay at it even if they hate it? And she goes, yeah. I said, okay, ask for people to help you in things where you're terribly unsuited to do it. Well, yeah, because she says, nobody wants to hear that they're terrible at something, even if they hate doing it, if that's their responsibility. But the point is, because I say to Laura all the time, get somebody to do that for you because you hate it. And I think she's like, well, who else would want to do this? It's like so many people. So many people.
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B
You know, Pat, Like, I think so. That's one. One reason to not do it is because you assume that it's going to be miserable for the other person. You know, it's funny, whenever we teach people the five dysfunctions and we start with trust, you use a similar phrase almost every time when we talk about vulnerability based trust. And two of the phrases that you use when you're describing what it sounds like to have vulnerability with someone is, you're better at this than me or I need help. Both of those things are what working genius helps you put handles around is like, hey, I can look across the table on my team and look at somebody with a genius that I don't have. Or look at my own frustrations and say, hey, you're actually better at this than me. You enjoy it more. I need help. So. So there is like a vulnerability component to this too, I think that, you know, so much of we've been sort of conditioned to think, well, don't share your weaknesses because then, you know, people will exploit those. And what we're saying is like, man, actually you should exploit your weaknesses. You should be begging people and saying, this should be the thing that you're like putting on the, you know, above your desk behind you is like, I need help with tasks that are related to these geniuses. That would be great.
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A
Absolutely. You know, Cody, I'm going to mention something to people. We're working on something right now which is a one sheet summary of every combination. We're building this thing that you could print, it's a PDF and put it in your office, on your, in your cube, or on your fridge or wherever else at home so that people can look at it and go, oh, that's you. And it's like, here's what I'm best at. Here's what I'm not best at. Here's what I'm called. Here's what I, what I like you to do. Here's what would help me. We need to broadcast that to other people. People will actually come by and go, hey, do you want me to help you with this stuff? And would you? You know, I think about. You have that friend, Jamie Winship, who talks about connection and separation. Like the world, we're connected in the world or we're separated. Those are the two ways of thinking about the world.
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B
Yep.
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A
And when we're connected, we're actually meant to allow people to fill in our gaps and we can fill in theirs. And I think about, like, if you in the old days when you lived in a neighborhood and you really knew your neighbors and you loved them, you know, there was a time in America where the culture was such that that was kind of your thing.
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B
Yep.
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A
You would literally go, hey, Bob, I can't fix my toilet. You're great at this. Hey, Pat, I can't write this letter to this lawyer I need to write to. Can you write that letter? Hey, Fred, you love mowing your lawn and you seem like you, and can you just roll your mower over here and help me with mine? That's actually how a connected body works. And instead we live in a world now where everybody lives in their house and they're all doing about 70% of the things they don't like. And they're depriving their neighbor of doing some of the more than what they don't. Like, we're meant to do this. So when we are invulnerable or we assume that somebody doesn't want to help us because we think that work is not good, we're actually separating ourselves from
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B
others, and we're not giving each other a chance to thrive like, to the party. We're not offering a party to somebody else. You know, it's funny, Pat, I was thinking about this. If you thought of this in terms of expertise. So that's how most people think about work. Right. Like, so let's say you had a friend in your neighborhood who runs a business, and all he did is come over to you and say, man, I'm just having so many problems with my team. But he never asked you. Like, so, you know, we think about. This is like, that is one of your favorite things to talk about leadership and to talk about teamwork. We can think of it in terms of expertise, but we almost never think of it in terms of working genius.
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A
Oh, this is so true. It's not just that we're not getting the help. We're not actually giving them the gift, and we're making them feel like they're not valuable. I have a friend who is involved in business, and I've. Since I've known him, he has been. Never asked me for advice, and many of his businesses have struggled, and he never goes, hey, what do you think of this? Never, ever, ever, ever. It's actually kind of painful for me to be around him because it's like, I. I wonder, like, I would like to help you. It's what people who I don't even know ask me to help them.
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B
Yep.
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A
I would gladly help you. In fact, it would make me feel good, like, you were recognizing that I had skills because he has skills that I don't have. I don't pretend to be good at the things he is. He never lets me do what I do for him.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And it. It affects our friendship because it's like, it's kind of painful.
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B
Yeah. I mean, it. He's. He's literally preventing you from doing something that you enjoy.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I like that lens because I think, you know, there are people that, like, hey, if you were in technology or if you ran a restaurant, you might actually go tap into somebody's expertise, like, oh, I'm open a restaurant. I'd love to know what you know about restaurants. Like, we sometimes do that. We very rarely think of it in terms of working genius. And the idea of just saying, like, I'm really bad at tenacity. Would you help me with. With being able, like, even if you have tips or tricks on how you get things over the finish line, or would you help me get my stuff over the finish line? Somebody would be like, that is such a gift.
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A
You know something, Cody? I was thinking about this. So this is true in any relationship. It's true in the workplace. It's true in our neighborhood. It's true in our church communities. It's true in our families and our marriages. And we're going to do a marriage webinar, by the way, on June 18th. We were just having a meeting about it the other day, by the way. We're going to have you and Lindsay on your wife and me and Laura and then another couple.
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B
She's thrilled to find this out. I can't wait to tell.
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A
Yes. Hopefully she'll hear this on this podcast and say, why didn't you tell me we're going to talk about working genius and marriage? Because I've had so many people come up and say, I'll give a talk at a conference, and they'll come up and say, I think you just saved my marriage. I've totally misunderstood my husband for years. Another guy said, I thought my wife hated me, and now I know she loves me. I just didn't understand she was just using her genius. And here's the thing. When we in our marriage don't understand our spouse and ask them, beg them to help us in the areas where we're not good, that's a form of love. To actually say to them, I. I'm going to honor your skills and ask you to do something that I'm not good at. It's like, one, it's a great way to connect and bond.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And two things happen. Either you don't know what they're good at and what you're. But. Or you feel like I shouldn't ask them, or I don't want to be vulnerable and admit I'm not good at that. I mean, my wife is actually better than I am at things that I'm supposed to be better at, you know, like as a guy. And. And I just go, hey, you're great at that. She can fix things that I can't fix.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And, yes, it feels emasculating, but it's just my working genius. You know what I mean? And. And so it's. It's interesting how we rob ourselves of connection and appreciation and bonding because we're afraid to beg for help.
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B
Yeah. You know, I don't know if I've. It's probably been a while since I told this on. On the Working Genius podcast, but when I first married Lindsay, I just kind of, you know, we, We. We have these. We fall into these roles without thinking through the lens of working genius. Or sometimes these roles are sort of imposed into marriages. And one of them for me was pay the credit card bills. That was my. My job. And here. So I have no tenacity. I'm bad at organizing. I have very few systems. So what would happen is I would get to day two or three hours after the credit card was due, you know, and then literally, probably a dozen times, I would call the credit card company and get them to reverse the charges and then get the bill paid, which they always did. Probably a dozen times. I would. But my wife, who has tenacity, is like, why don't you just pay it on time? Like, that would be great. I'm not skilled in that way. But, but. But then she was like, do you just want me to handle that part of our family finances? And it was a gift. And what was. What was weird was I was stressing her out the whole time, so she would spend a week thinking, like, is he going to do that? Is he not going to do that? Caused some, like, anxiety to her when the reality is she could just do it. It's not even hard for her to, you know, to remember to do that on the right date. And for me, it was like I was using my galvanizing and my discernment to call the company. I go, I know that they will reverse these charges. I can galvanize them into reversing the charges when we should have just been using tenacity, my wife's tenacity the whole time, to not have to go through that whole thing.
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A
Yeah, that's so good that the podcast we do on marriage. We're going to be talking about so many stories like that, so many arguments, stresses. There are marriages that have probably hopefully never, never fell apart. But because people really didn't understand, we have different geniuses. And I don't need to feel ashamed. I don't need to blame. I don't need to. And Laura and I have so many stories. And, you know, I like to say I wish I'd invented working genius or discovered working genius 30 years ago, but it's like the best time to plant a Tree is either 20 years ago or yesterday. So I'm grateful to God that we had it five years ago. And it's explained so much in marriage. And what it's taught is. And for guys, I'll use a stereotype here. We don't like to ask for help. You know, the stereotype is that guys don't ask for directions. Yeah, I asked for directions. And. Yeah, and it's funny. Laura and I will go to a restaurant and she orders steak, and I'll get soup and salad sometimes. And it's like, those are, like, stereotype things which don't matter. But sometimes we don't ask each other for help or say, because I'm not supposed to. I'm the husband or I'm the wife. And it's like, no, it's your working genius, man.
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B
Yeah. And it goes back to the connection part. Like we've said many times, part of the. Part of the beauty of working genius is it tells us that we need each other. We were designed to need each other. Other people, a community. Because you. Even if. Even in the context of your marriage, if we were just using that, you're. The maximum amount of geniuses you can have is four, if you spread them out, you know, which is not even true of most marriages. And it's actually a beautiful thing to go. Okay, so if I start with the baseline of, like, we are connected. We're designed to need each other, well, then. Then I'm more apt or more willing to go to somebody else and beg for their help and say, hey, I was not wired or designed to do this, but I know you were. Can you help me?
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A
The fear of asking somebody to do crap work, that's the. That's the first one. It's not crap work. It's a party. The next one is vulnerability. Just admitting that I'm not good at that. The next one is kind of shame. I know I'm not good at that, and I know it's related to vulnerability, but it's almost like. But. But then what does that say about me?
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B
Yeah, you feel exposed.
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A
Are there any other reasons that people don't beg for help? Those are the biggies, I think.
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B
Those are the big ones. All of it is sort of encapsulated into those three primary reasons. But there is. Yeah, there's like an exposure that feels. We're not used to it. We're told not to, even in. In our corporate jobs. Like, you know, the. The. The joke around an interview where they say, what are your weaknesses? And you're supposed to say, my weaknesses are that I. I work too hard. You know, like, we're. We're taught to not even say everything yeah. We're conditioned to not say what our weaknesses are and ask other people for help. And that's such a bad way to live your life.
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A
You know, it's so funny. I was thinking about this recently. It's like. And maybe I'll throw this into this podcast instead of making a different one, but it's like, we should ask ourselves, what could somebody accuse us of? That should be an insult. But it's not, because we know who we are. Like, if somebody said. If I was listening to somebody talk about me, and they said that, Pat. Tell me about Pat. And somebody looked around like, he's not around here. You should know he's kind of flaky. If I heard it, I'd go, yes, I'm definitely kind of flaky. Sometimes I forget to finish things. You got to remind me, like, that's not an insult, because it's true.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And if there's anything that somebody could criticize you about that is true, but you would take it as an insult. That's a sign that you're feeling shame about something that you shouldn't.
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B
Yeah, that's good.
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A
And it's not an excuse. It's not like, yeah, I'm flaky, so forget. I know I struggle with that. I try to be good at it. I'm never going to be great at it, but that's part of the makeup of who I am. You know, I'm going to. Now that I'm thinking about this, Cody, I just want to tell people June 18th is going to be fantastic, because we decided that the impact that working genius is having on marriages is huge. And this is the kind of thing to invite somebody to come to and to have your spouse come. We're going to do a. We're going to do it live, like, in studio, and we're going to be talking in real world, examples and all that. And then we're going to do a replay that evening so that people can go home and go, I listen to this podcast. I want to listen to it with you, to your spouse. Even if people don't know working genius, I would say the people that listen to this podcast, you. You are. You're in it. But this is a great way to reach out to others and give them a gift, because they will be. And it's. It's going to be free. So we're not trying to get you to buy anything. So just so everybody knows, June 18th, we're going to be letting everybody know. Write it on your calendar. You're going to be getting more information about it. And do tell your friends to mark it on their calendar. Here's the last thing I would say when it comes to marriage. Go through your working genius with your spouse. So, Cody, you and Lindsay have both have D, but you have dg, she has dt.
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B
Correct.
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A
What is the thing? Which of the geniuses is the furthest away from both of you? Like that you. Neither of you really have as. As a genius, it's going to be either W, I, or E. Yeah, I think it's.
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B
I think it's W. If I think. Yeah, it's W for both of us.
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A
Let's get on with it. Let's make a decision.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
So, you know, it's a. It's a great thing to go to people and say, hey, can we just. Can we just step back and can you just come with. Come up, come out to dinner with us and ask us questions, Just challenge us around big picture, what we're thinking? Because we're. We're pretty much about getting things done, but maybe we're missing some of the big things.
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B
Yep.
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A
And Laura and I, it's tea, man. It's just tea. We got no tenacity between us. It's frightening. Frightening. And that's a tough one because we. It's like, well, how do we ask them? And we. What we need to do is just go, can you look at the way we do things and tell us what you'd like to do with us and help us with? So every. Every. Every marriage can look at the ones they're lacking the most and say, let's. That's what we should go. Beg somebody to help us with.
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B
Yep. I love it.
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A
All right. That's it. That's it. Messy podcast, but a fun one. Beg for help. It matters. It'll change your life. All right, Cody. Thanks, buddy.
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B
Yeah, you too. Thanks, Pat.
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A
We'll talk to everybody next time on Working Genius, and we'll see you on June 18th. God bless you.