C (3:13)

Well, it was really interesting when you started this. You used the word controversial, and I thought it's actually a really good word because it's not controversial in terms of the model. And if you read the Six Types of Working Genius book, there's not a big controversy about discernment. But if you've worked on a team, you have probably experienced some of this tension that you feel in the room. That is, how do you tell. It might look like this. How do you tell somebody that doesn't have discernment that. That they don't have discernment? And how do you manage that conversation with somebody when they realize that they don't and they have to lean on the discernment of others because it's probably the one that most people want that they don't have? I would venture to say discernment and tenacity are probably the two geniuses that if you don't have, you often wish that you had. And you're right, Pat. It's some, because discernment means so many other things in our vocabulary in our life. But there's a moment where you're with a team or you're with a colleague, and there's a real moment of maybe humility to be able to face that and say, oh, that's something that I'm not particularly gifted at. And I maybe was just rambling there for a little bit. But I feel the controversy, I feel the tension in the room around discernment more than any other genius.

A (4:29)

Yeah. And, you know, it's funny, I found that people that don't have discernment as a genius, which again, most people don't. If you look at the math. When. When they just go, oh, yeah, I don't have that one. So I'd like to ask you for your discernment. What happens is, one, it takes attention out of it, and secondly, they actually get better at being discerning because they're not feeling the pressure to prove it. Does that make sense?

B (4:49)

Yeah. You know, Pat, I was thinking this is why it's so important for us to think of working genius as a team tool as well. Because, like, our goal is that that genius is represented when we start thinking of it as any one individual. And you can do this in your family life or, you know, your work context. If you think about it just as individuals, you're like, well, I want to have all the geniuses, you know, but we only get two of them. And so the. On teams, I do find it the. The phenomenon you're talking about sort of this dilemma. I do see this play out regularly where it does feel like people are. It's not. Not even envy, but. But resistant to say, I don't have that, or, I can't participate in that. In that part of the. The work process.

A (5:33)

Yeah. You know, I love Cody that Beau mentioned that people sometimes have this with tenacity, too. I talked to a guy recently who said that he stayed in a job for more than 10 years to prove people wrong, who said he wasn't going to make it, and it was a job that required a lot of tenacity and he didn't have any. And sometimes we can, like, but with tenacity, you can try to just gut it out. It's not good for you. But discernment is a little different because it's kind of an internal process, so it's hard to force it.

B (6:01)

Right.

A (6:02)

It's just a different kind of animal. I think of all the geniuses, too, it might be the hardest one to actually understand because things like integrative thinking and pattern recognition are really hard to manufacture.

B (6:17)

And not only is it hard to manufacture, Pat, on the other hand, it's also hard to observe or explain. So when somebody's like, so we're evaluating an idea and you're using discernment, like, I don't think that'll work. And. And they say, well, tell me why. It's like when you were in high school and you got the right answer to the math problem, but they said, show your work, and you're like, I don't know how to show my work on this. I just know that that's the answer. Sometimes it can be so hard to describe to people, to articulate the discernment. And it's so hard to observe. And like you said, it is also hard to manufacture. It's not something you can just, oh, here's the process by which we go through discerning an idea. So just follow this process. It's very internal judgment.

A (7:03)

Yeah. Karen just sent me a great note and it just says people often misunderstand that expertise is not the same thing as discernment. Because there can be a person who's a great expert in a subject and they go, wow, they have great discernment. They might say, no, I've just studied this. I have a lot of data and information and I'm really intelligent. Whereas a person with discernment might see something uniquely even without expertise. It's just a different kind of thing. And so I think that's one of the things. Expertise is not the same as discernment. And expertise is really important.

C (7:35)

So we talk about these as both geniuses that you have. Everybody has two geniuses, two competencies and two frustrations. But this is also how work gets done and we encourage people to do the work in order. So I was just thinking about how discernment might be the stage of work that people are the least likely to want to out opt out of. If you're having a wonder and invention meeting, somebody who doesn't have wonder and invention is often happy to say, you guys go ahead and do that and tell me what ideas you come up with. And the same thing for enablement and tenacity to say, oh, we're to that part of the work. I don't have that. I'm happy for somebody else to do that. But Cody, you've used this phrase before, that discernment is collective. And I've experienced people like to be part of the discernment process, even if they don't have the genius of discernment.

A (8:20)

And.

C (8:20)

And maybe this is some of the tension that we feel around discernment is discerners crave trust. I want to give trust to discerners. But even though discernment's my third, I like being in the conversation to understand and see the discernment happening live. And so a team may accidentally get themselves in trouble if they were to box people out of the discernment process. You're probably more likely to grow, actually, the discernment of your company and the collaboration of your team when you let people experience and watch it happen. And that's one of the amazing things I get to experience. Of working with great discerners is they don't say, okay, now we're going to have a discernment meeting and go into a room and tell you what we came up with. It's live, it's active, it's collaborative, it's iterative. And when that happens, I think people are more likely to be open handed about the reality that they don't have the genius of discernment.

A (9:16)

Yeah. And when you box people out, it can feel like you're weaponizing it. And the other thing is, plenty of people without discernment have come up with great ideas and had great insights. It's not that they can't ever do that. The real message to me is if they don't recognize that it doesn't come as naturally to them, they're probably going to force it and probably even dampen their ability to discern more than more than it already is. But heck, I want everybody in that room. And oftentimes a person without discernment might say, hey, I don't know if this is right to you. I'll let you guys check it with your gut. But what about this? Or this doesn't seem right to me. So it's not that they can't do it, it just doesn't come as naturally.

B (9:59)

And I think, Pat, you didn't intentionally do this in terms of you writing books around teamwork and all of those things with each of the models in mind. But discernment is also the place where on teams, where that ideological conflict comes in. Right. In the five dysfunctions, where we're, we're trying to, we should argue about the, the right idea, the best version of this product or the, you know, this where we're refining the decisions that we're making. And I do think there is something to be said, you know, Bo, when you said that I often will talk about discernment being additive or collective, that it does require that the team has trust and that they're willing to say, oh, I was wrong about that. Because it's not that all discerners independently always arrive at the exact same conclusion. It's that if you have trust and you really are truly in the discernment process, I very frequently found myself saying, hey, Tracy, here's how I've thought about this. What do you think? And when she presents a new way to think about it, discernment actually should move you in the direction of the right answer. When it's not about your own status or it being your own idea or your own discernment. So oftentimes it's actually fun to get challenged in the discernment process because the goal is the best possible solution. And so it often adds itself together and kind of compiles to what is the best solution when people engage that way.

A (11:21)

That's a great point.

C (11:23)

So good, Cody. And what I experience in those rooms when there is high trust is whether you have the genius of discernment or not. Part of what you're bringing to the table is information. And in my experience, discerners do really well when they have all the information. Now, that doesn't mean they need all of the data and the plot charts and the Excel spreadsheets, but if you're sitting on attack, if you have a piece of information that the discerner doesn't have, you will be more likely to bring that in a trusting relationship, you'll be more likely to bring that up when you know, okay, I'm going to bring something up that I maybe don't feel comfortable saying, but it's a tack that I'm sitting on or it's a, it's a piece of information that I have. And when you bring that to the table and everybody benefits. And Cody, I've experienced this so many times. Is discerners then are open handed to say, it's not about advocating for my idea, it's for helping to make sure that we make the best idea.

A (12:14)

Yeah. Yes. You know, I didn't realize what you just said, Cody, about how discernment and conflict have so much overlap in terms of. That's where good, healthy conflict occurs. You know, one of the things I think about is what discerners crave more than anything is trust. What they hate is when people say prove it. I mean, I've worked with people before who every time I discern something that said, well, I'm not going to buy into that unless you prove it to me, unless you give me a linear expert. And it drives me crazy because I crave their trust. And what I mean by that is I crave that they know that I might have an insight that others don't readily or easily understand. Not that they just say, I trust you. Just make a decision and I'm going to trust you. It's not that kind of trust. It's you're pro, you might be seeing something that I don't understand. And when you're a discerner and somebody trusts that and leans into that and wants to know more about that, that is something we crave. And when we don't get that? We get crushed.

B (13:13)

You know, pat, more than 10 years ago I worked at a startup company. I've mentioned it a couple times on this podcast in the men's fashion industry. Which is weird because if this were a video podcast, you'd know I don't have the expertise to be in that industry.

C (13:28)

Those who can't do te.

B (13:31)

The one thing I've as I look back though, I didn't have this language around me having discernment as a genius or we didn't have that in the context of the four person team that was running this organization. But I remember suggesting a new product for that company and the two founders who are very like, where we're from, big data companies said, well, what's the data that we should do that? How many customers have reached out asking for that? And I was like, we're a one year old startup company. There is no data, there is no way for me to prove this. Like, I can't go. There is no like Salesforce Report I can run to show you that this is a good idea. And so they ended up not making that product. And then two years later, as we're expanding the product line, we ended up making that product and it was a very popular product. And I look back at that and I go like, oh, I didn't know how to show my work. I didn't know how to explain it. There wasn't like 100, you know, customers that said they'd buy X amount of those things. So it is interesting. Like in that moment it was almost like the. Exactly. What we're describing is like I had a, I had a gift I was trying to give to our team and they wanted to use their own expertise or their own like experience to try to prove that discernment that like they didn't have discernment looking back, you know.

A (14:50)

Right.

B (14:51)

And so I think that happens so often on teams that you throw that out there and if you aren't aware of it being a gift that people are trying to give, you can undermine it in that way.

A (15:01)

Yeah. You know, it's so funny. We talk about, when we talk about Myers Briggs, we talk about if you have an introvert on your team, ask them questions. Cause they probably have ideas that they're not sharing because they don't fight to share them. And they process internally if you have a discerner on your team and that's why it's so important for people to know this. And they say this doesn't seem right to me or I have this idea lean in a little bit more to what they're saying because even if you don't get it or if they don't have the data, there's probably something leading them to that that you want to pay attention to. Right. And so, and that's why this is just so hard, because it feels like it's such a mystery when somebody has this, this, this genius. Yeah.

C (15:39)

Cody, it reminds me of an episode we did recently of how do you collaborate or activate the geniuses around you? And so if we're resistant to people's discernment, we're never going to invite it or activate it. But Cody, I love you just talked about it's a gift to give. And when we see our geniuses, that way of this is a gift that I have to give to my team and to the people around me. It's not a trump card that I'm wanting to play.

A (16:01)

Right.

C (16:02)

It's not me saying, no, I know. Right. And you don't. Then when we know that and let me speak to everybody as a fellow person that doesn't have discernment to say part of my role is to activate the genius of discernment of the people around me. It's to be able to ask, hey, what's in your gut? And what do you think about this? I'm not just saying, hey, you decide. I don't really want to decide. No, it's saying, I want to be able to hear and know what's in your gut. I want to slow us down, to be able to respond to all of the different options. And when we do that, here's the crazy thing. The discerner is not the one who's going to get the credit. We're not going to look back and go, oh, the discernment knew everything. The team actually gets the credit because we made better decisions and we were able to galvanize then the right things.

B (16:44)

You know, Pat, and I'll just go back to why so much of this is predicated on the fact that teams have trust. Because you, you actually use this phrase when you describe vulnerable, vulnerability based trust. One of the phrases we use is, hey, you're better at, at this than me. Can you help me? And I think on a team where you have that level of trust, when we're talking about someone being willing to say, I don't have discernment, can you what do you think of this idea? Or help me refine it or make it better, it's really predicated on the fact that you have vulnerability based Trust enough to say, I don't have that gift and you do and it's going to benefit the team if we tap into it. Can you, can you help with this?

A (17:26)

Yeah, that's great. Karen just sent a great question and that is some people feel less than or even dumb when they don't have discernment, which is terrible. I mean, that's a self criticism. We want to say, please do not do that. This is just one of six geniuses and they're all equally important. But if you do have that sense of less than, what advice would we have for them? And I think my advice would be, you know, realize that everybody. There's a lot of grass is always greener. You know, I know I have no tea at all. And I used to try to prove that I had tea and now I can say to people with tenacity, I love that you have more of that than I do. Please help me in those places where I need to have it and thank you for doing it better than I do it. And I think that for people in this particular, when we're talking about discernment, if you don't have it, just be so joyful about the, you know, so clear that you don't and that's okay and don't feel less than. I think sometimes we can critique ourselves and it really prevents us from celebrating when other people have something more than we do. And Bo, you're fantastic at. You're an ignorant. So you come up with great ideas and your inclination is to want to get people excited about those. And you'll stop and go, hey, before I galvanize this, can you guys give me some discernment? Make sure I'm galvanizing the right thing. Jackie on our team is a GT and she does not have discernment. And she goes, hey, here's what I think we should do. But then again, I don't have discernment, so maybe you guys should run it by your discernment meter and tell me if I'm doing this right, because I'm going to go out and kick butt and get this done. So why don't you guys help me with that? When she does that, it allows us to be good at what we're good at and celebrate what she's good at. And that is the essence of teamwork, I think. All right, this was great. This is really good. So thanks for being part of this and listening to this. This is one of those important things I think we can take back to work. Love on people that have discernment love on people that don't appreciate both sides. And that's what the Working Genius is all about. Thanks for joining us. Hey, this is my first podcast doing from Tennessee, so I'm in my office. If it sounds a little different, we're in our office in Franklin, just south of Nashville. We're just setting up here. So if it sounds a little different, it's because it is. And we're going through our own little transition here. But we appreciate you listening to us, and we'll talk to you next time on the Working Genius podcast. God bless.