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Well, hello, I am your host, Teresa Flood of the Upside podcast and we're here to help you get unstuck in your life and your business by always provoking meaningful change from the inside out. And today's episode we are going to talk about what is your genius and maybe you're a very self deprecating person. You say I don't have any genius? Yes, yes, you do have a genius. This model that I want to introduce to you today, or maybe remind you of if you've heard about it before, is called the working genius. And it was developed by one of my favorite authors, Patrick Lencioni. You may know him from the book, for instance, five Dysfunctions of a Team. It's a great book, go get it, read it. Especially if you're leading a team of any kind. But he and his team developed this model about the flow of work and about really studying human behavior and where somebody derives energy from in their productivity and in their work. And this is not a personality assessment. So if you are familiar, for instance with the DISC or Myers Briggs, this is something completely different. This would go along with that. This is really a productivity tool, not a personality tool. But what I love about it is that it is simple and easy to use. You can take what you learned today and immediately implement it into your just your business business, your even your family, how you deal with your relationships at home. Understanding the genius of your own children is incredibly helpful. But the whole goal of this is to create more fulfillment in your work and less frustration. And if you are anything like me, you have had times in your life maybe where much of your work has been frustrating. And if that is you today, you may get some great insight into why the majority of your day you spend frustrated. And it's probably not just the people around you very well could be the kind of work that you're doing or you just want to have more fulfillment. And so that's really what the working genius is all about. So I'm going to introduce the concept to you today of what the working genius is and then we'll do a second podcast right after this one and we'll talk about how this really shows up in a team and how you're able to use this to really enhance your team's productivity. So working genius, it is six everything. Every project, if you will, all work has six phases to it and every one of you have two of those phases that would be considered your genius, meaning you are naturally good at it. You get energy and fulfillment, it fills your energy tank when you get to be involved in this phase of work, it is a natural fit for you. And then you have two of these phases that are just a beat down, frustrating, drain your energy, wear you out, uh, you end the day with a headache if you have to spend too much time in this phase. And then you have two phases, or what we call confidences, meaning you can do them, they're not the worst for you, but if you do them for too long or too extended, or you're only working in your competencies and not your frustration or not your geniuses, you're not going to be as fulfilled as you could be. So the first phase, and this does really, it's linear, meaning it's starts with the genius of wonder. And that is the natural gift of pondering the possibility of greater potential. These are the people that are always saying, well, what about what if? Why do we do it that way? They're constantly thinking about how do we get better, what could be done differently. They are pensive right there, sometimes a lot of times in their own heads about it. They don't always speak up and share and. But the wanderer has the gift of really seeing opportunity in any kind of given situation. The second genius is the genius of invention. This is the natural gift of creating original and novel ideas. The inventor is somebody who loves a dry erase board. So when the wanderer says, well, how could we double our sales in a year? The inventor goes, I love that question. Let's get a whiteboard out and let's start mapping it. Um, they love to come up with ideas. They love to invent things. They always are. They may walk into your office, I have an idea. I have an idea. I was thinking about this and I have an idea. Um, this, the third genius is the genius of discernment. And this is the natural gift of being intuitive and instinctive in the way that you evaluate ideas. So the discerner is not necessarily the one that's coming up with the idea. The discerner is the one who hears the inventor come up with this idea. And, and they love to make tweaks. They have a natural inclination to what's going to work and what's not going to work or what may need to be different or need to be tweaked. They are wise intuitively on these things. So they're great with the whiteboard, but they don't want to just look at the whiteboard and put, put something up there. They want to look at the ideas on the whiteboard and figure out how to make them better. The next. The next phase is the genius of galvanizing. And this is the natural gift of rallying the troops. The galvanizer is the one who inspires everybody. They say, that is a great idea. This is what the team is doing. This is where we're going to do, what we're going to do or where we're going to go. And they. They are galvanizing everybody else to get into action. They're inspiring everybody to move forward, to take the steps, to. To adopt the process. Right? They love to get people excited and get them on the bus. The fifth is the genius of enablement. And this is the person who hears the galvanizer and says, I'm going to help you do that. Meaning they love to be responsive to that great idea risk. They respond to that motivator and they say, what do you need? I'm going to help you do that. I have a gift of galvanizing. If you know me, you know that I. I do. I love to get people excited and on the bus. That's partly what I do in this podcast, right? It's a galvanizing. I get to fuel my energy with this. But I'm really blessed to have people in my world who are enablers, meaning they hear what I'm talking about and what I'm doing. And Rick Davis, who produces this podcast, is a great example of enabler. He says, yep, I'm going to help you do that. I'm going to get it across the finish line and make it happen. Um, and then the six is the gift of tenacity, and this really is the person that gets it across the finish line. So the enabler is the one that responds and gets into action. But the person with tenacity, and it could be the same as your enabler, but the person with tenacity, they are not going to quit until the job gets done. Meaning when everybody else on the team is already off to a different project, they're wanting something new. That person with tenacity is like, we are not stopping until everything we said we were going to do is across the finish line and completed. They're all about achieving the result. Okay, so you have the gift of wonder. That's the person that asks, why. Ask the question. I think this is probably the one of the most misunderstood geniuses. People don't realize it's a genius. If you have it, you may not realize that those questions you're asking are actually a much needed part of the flow of work and the process. You have the genius of invention, you have the genius of discernment. That's your intuitive evaluator. Then you have your galvanizer that's getting people on the bus. You have your enabler that's coming along to help. And then you have your tenacity that's going to get it across the finish line. So the way I would describe your genius and your frustration would be like different methods of holding your coffee. If you are like me, I drink coffee all, all day long. And if you were to take your coffee and you have it in a, just a mug, right, Just a regular coffee mug, that would be like your, your, your competent geniuses. Meaning it's going to stay hot for a little while, right? But it's not going to stay hot very long. Your geniuses are like having your coffee in a yeti or a steam Stanley or something that's actually going to hold that heat in there. You're going to have that for a long time, right? Your frustrations are like a coffee cup, a styrofoam cup with a hole on the bottom, right? It's just, you're just draining. It's just draining. It's just draining. No energy, frustrating, what have you. So when we can spend the majority of our time in a workday or in a project or in a process doing the things that keep our energy or keep our coffee hot the longest, we're going to be more fulfilled and less frustrated. And if we can spend the least amount of our times in the phases of work that are going to be frustrating to us, well, I think that's pretty self explanatory. That's better, right? So here I would ask you to ask yourself three questions. Really look at your typical workday and ask when do you feel the most energized? What are the things that you're doing that you feel the most energy around? And then you can flip that and say, what are the times that when I'm doing this I am just feeling incredibly frustrated or tired. So my geniuses are discernment and galvanizing. So it's that middle phase of work. I, I'll never forget. It was about five or six years ago. We were having these meetings within our organization and we called them break the model meetings. And it was literally a, a whiteboard that was blank with no ideas up there. And we were really reinventing some of the ways that, that we were going to look at our, our real estate brokerage and tools and value proposition and all of that. And I remember leaving the first couple of those meetings, because it was very much a wonder and invention meeting. And I would leave with a literal headache. Now, Tommy, my husband, was in those meetings too, and he was like, jacked up. He was so excited. It was like he left the meetings on the way home, he's still talking about it. And I am, like, literally rubbing my head because I'm exhausted. That is a great example of how our geniuses either cause fulfillment or frustration. Which tasks lead you feeling fulfilled and accomplished? When do you feel just the best about what you're doing? And then the other question you can ask is, when do you lose track of time? What are the activities that you're doing that you look up at the clock and go, oh, my goodness, I didn't realize an hour had already passed or I didn't realize it was already so late in the day. And then what are those activities that you look at the clock, you're like, how is it only 11 o' clock right now? And that can be a way for you to really jump in and kind of look at what those geniuses are. So I'm going to give you three action items that you can take this. And hopefully it's maybe just my. My intention today is to provoke a little bit of curiosity around the working genius. You can go to workinggenius.com to take the assessment. And it is a short, simple assessment, and it will tell you what your geniuses are, what your frustrations are, and then what your competencies are. So I would encourage you to do that. Workinggenius.com and then secondly, tune into the podcast episode next week where we talk about how to use this within your team or your organization. And then also, I am so passionate about this model. I have actually gotten my working genius certification. And so if you go to teresaflood.com if you have interest in bringing me in to do a team map or consultation or workshop with your team on the working genius, I would love to facilitate that for you. So thank you for listening today to the Upside podcast. And we believe that when you invest into your personal growth every day, it will yield great, great returns for you. So thank you for tuning in. I'm your host, Teresa Flood. Go make it a great day.