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In this episode of the IT Leaders podcast, we delve into the art of team optimization with our guest experts Craig and Terry, seasoned leaders with a rich history in IT and organizational development. They share their journey from being competitors to collaborators, co-founding and leading innovative companies, and their passion for building well-rounded, high-performing teams.
Craig, who co-founded Conoco’s Microsoft ERP and CRM division, reflects on their transformative approach to leadership. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the whole person in career development, advocating for balancing personal and professional growth to achieve optimal team performance. Terry, with his extensive experience in team building and leadership development, highlights the significance of aligning individual strengths with team roles to prevent burnout and enhance productivity.
A key focus of this episode is the Working Genius assessment, a tool that has revolutionized their approach to team dynamics. Craig and Terry discuss how this assessment helps identify six distinct types of working geniuses—Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity—and how these traits contribute to a team’s success. They share real-world examples of how recognizing and leveraging these geniuses can lead to more cohesive, efficient, and motivated teams.
Listeners will gain insights into the practical application of the Working Genius model, including how to foster better communication, manage cognitive dissonance, and ensure that team members are operating in their sweet spots. The discussion also covers strategies for addressing common leadership challenges, such as motivating diverse team members, managing introverts, and dealing with toxic high performers.
By the end of the episode, technology leaders and managers will have a deeper understanding of how to use the Working Genius assessment to enhance their team’s performance and create a more harmonious work environment. Craig and Terry’s experiences and actionable advice will inspire listeners to rethink their leadership strategies and invest in the holistic development of their teams.
Key Takeaways:
1. Whole Person Management: The importance of addressing both personal and professional aspects of team members’ lives.
2. Working Genius Assessment: An introduction to the six working geniuses and how they impact team dynamics.
3. Optimal Team Performance: Strategies for aligning individual strengths with team roles to prevent burnout and enhance productivity.
4. Leadership Challenges: Practical solutions for motivating diverse team members, managing introverts, and handling toxic high performers.
5. Self-Awareness and Team Awareness: Enhancing leadership effectiveness through self-awareness and understanding of team dynamics.
Tune in to discover how you can optimize your team’s performance by understanding and leveraging their unique working geniuses.
Creators & Guests
What is IT Leaders?
The purpose of the IT Leaders Council is to bring together IT Directors and Managers for leadership training, educational content from guest speakers, and peer discussions in a vendor-free, collaborative environment. IT Leaders Councils are currently offered in Indianapolis, IN and Columbus, OH, with more cities coming soon!
00;00;00;02 - 00;00;21;10
Unknown
I think it's pretty cool talking to other people, building sites that are spreading, and that's a lot of what I do with BCI, will help take it to theaters and help them become CIO, or build up teams to be more rounded. That's where Terry helps out quite a bit. But just from an interaction standpoint, Terry and I, we used to be competitors in an area.
00;00;21;12 - 00;00;42;27
Unknown
I started co-founded a company called Conoco at a Microsoft ERP, CRM division and IT division and a, dead agile shop for integration and customizations material, and, micro integrations now all with us. We're no longer doing that. We found our leadership. And, building people are kind of more of our passions in a fun run.
00;00;43;00 - 00;01;02;02
Unknown
But what we found was Comic-Con 1996, and Terry found yours. And so we're in the same area. Kind of before internet, you know, which is kind of a genius, right? But, it's it's pretty cool. So we saw a lot of changes happen, you know, and, you know, obviously AI right now is changing our world a little bit.
00;01;02;02 - 00;01;27;02
Unknown
But the one thing that we're seeing a lot of is the whole person management. So when I go into a company and we talk about, you know, whole person career development, getting career maps together, so they keep growing where you have to pay attention to the personal side and the professional side. It used to be that you can only I could, you know, I had all kinds of different minds in my company, in accounting behind New York Systems.
00;01;27;02 - 00;01;46;21
Unknown
You had a developer that when I was in the closet, you had the, you know, you had the IT guys that just went, you know, just fixed stuff and beach and things. Right. And it's all good. But getting them in their sweet spot. So they're they're optimized person. They're optimized team. And development of. And so that's kind of what we're doing nowadays.
00;01;46;21 - 00;02;18;16
Unknown
And and I used to have quite a bit to do go through this working genius. Because you have the personality assessments which after I sold my company, my wife and I got like went certified because we like mentoring people. I said, boy, we to get certified to by God, you know, and it's pretty it's pretty unique. But when you get that person in the sweet spot from a personality standpoint like Myers-Briggs 16 personalities, that's how people see the world out in the field and how they make decisions and then a working genius is how people like you work.
00;02;18;23 - 00;02;39;22
Unknown
So you think about it. If you get the person being self-aware and then you get the person in their sweet spot to work where they're not going to burn out, they're not going to get frustrated. It's really cool to see. And in what I do now, a lot as a fractional CEO is look at the team. You know, sometimes you're just the see, you know, where you can take these assessments.
00;02;39;22 - 00;02;56;14
Unknown
And they're great people who match the core values. They get it. They want to have a capacity to do things. There's no wrong see. And when you get people in that sweet spot, you see it as like magic. And I know, you know, I think we just want to be it people. But you got to manage that person too.
00;02;56;14 - 00;03;22;03
Unknown
And when you don't pay attention to the personal side, you get this cognitive dissonance, which is they get frustrated that they don't know why and that that can lead up to a bunch of other things, mental issues. But really what you want to do is just making sure you manage the whole thing. So what Terry and I would like to go through most victory at this point though we'll share some examples is how is working genius assessment really works and it has a sticky back.
00;03;22;05 - 00;03;49;14
Unknown
You know there's there's millions of assessments out there. Colors Myers-Briggs personality test. This one has a sticky factor. I've seen it really get adopted. You know versus two assessment. Go away for a month and forget about this. One stage is by and higher based on skills and letters now. So skills I need a half done person to do power BI.
00;03;49;16 - 00;04;05;06
Unknown
But what are their what's their, working genius? Their letters. So you marry those two up and you got a whole different team. You got a whole different, company starting to break. So that's pretty neat to see. So if you do want to start walking through it. Yeah. You know, I'd love to. And, Craig, thanks for kicking us off.
00;04;05;06 - 00;04;24;13
Unknown
You know, myself, as Craig mentioned, I've been involved in for for many, many years. And I'll just say this, I made the mistake of really thinking that was all about me at the beginning, you know, investing in myself and certifications. I even took that into the rest of the team where I would invest and make sure, hey, we have enough keys and we have all these different certifications.
00;04;24;16 - 00;04;43;04
Unknown
What I realized is that when we started to invest in each other, when it came to how do we work better together, leadership in some of those other areas, our organization quadrupled in size in just a couple of years. And so one of the things that I would love to share, and the number one, when I say I'd love to share, I would love to have this be a discussion where we can all talk.
00;04;43;04 - 00;05;01;29
Unknown
So there is there's some slides that we're going to go through. If we get through all of those, great. If we don't, we've got some active discussions and things going on. I think that's even better. So, as we talk through this, I'll highlight a little bit about working genius, how I've seen it help organizations, and then we can just take some questions as well as we go through.
00;05;01;29 - 00;05;26;05
Unknown
Okay. So one of the things that I would love to do, kind of as we talk about collaboration, I'd love to get some some thoughts from each one of you. What are some of the greatest challenges as a leader where we're all leaders here? and I'll define leadership, as influence. So if we have influence or leader, so does anyone want to share kind of what they think?
00;05;26;05 - 00;05;51;27
Unknown
One of the greatest challenges just for them as being a leader. For me, being a team manager at 32 years old and having employees that are more than me, one of my biggest challenges is mentoring people that are already in their career and then also meeting director level, but only focusing on work and not focusing on their personal life because things definitely like lean and cross that line sometimes, and it's like trying to help, but I can only help so much less.
00;05;51;28 - 00;06;12;25
Unknown
Yes. So that whole dynamic is very interesting. Yeah. What one cool thing that you might want consider if you have older people working at your book manager, there's a cool book called wisdom. That work is about reverse mentoring, where you get digital, intelligence and, emotional intelligence start teaming people up together. So you got five generations in the workforce.
00;06;12;25 - 00;06;41;17
Unknown
Now we getting people to cross with with their strengths. Really, really cool. So you got you got to get it on the table. So this is what we're intentionally doing. And boy is it it takes off pretty well. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that I've seen in that scenario too is especially dealing some of the older generation, let's say they've got, you know, years of experience and wisdom is if there's an area you're mentoring, look at times and you can get into a question rather than saying, I think we should do this, poses the question, what would happen if we did this?
00;06;41;18 - 00;07;21;28
Unknown
Or what's your thought about this? And ultimately, what it does is it sometimes can lower that barrier where they start to, to just become more invested in what it is that, that you're ultimately hoping that they will do. So. Any other challenges or thoughts to figure out? Yeah, I was just going to say, I think it's pretty common right now when it kind of, piggybacks off of what was just said is just in motivating people in general because they're they have various different motivations to take this stage, whether it's things different from generational standpoints of where they're in their career or where they are in their professional career, personal life or family and things
00;07;21;28 - 00;07;42;01
Unknown
of that nature. We all have these various different things, and I think one of the things that we kind of look our leaders to do is to be able to motivate, lead us no matter where we're at. Yes, right. Globally or I guess, keeping a sweet spot for your passions. Yes. Right there. So knowing yourself, I think the best gift you can give anybody is to get somewhere.
00;07;42;01 - 00;08;00;12
Unknown
It's the second step for it. Regulation. Yeah. So now that you have these strengths what do you do with it. Absolutely. You know, Clifford, I'll say one thing that I think once we go through a little bit with Working Genius, where I think that can also help, is that when I think of motivation, it's almost as if I've got something that I want you to do, and I want you to get excited about that.
00;08;00;15 - 00;08;17;05
Unknown
I think with Working Genius, what we can learn is once we understand more about individuals, their sweet spot where they get joy, fulfillment becomes more inspiration, which is a pull. I'm pulling something from you because I know this is your strength and allowing you to kind of jump in and get get excited about that. So, good, good, good.
00;08;17;10 - 00;08;41;04
Unknown
Any other, I'd say just dealing with staff sometimes and mentoring them. in I.T world we have, extreme introverts in the departments and trying to grow them in the decisions that may be leadership and trying to foster that growth. And yeah, for sure still recognize the personality types for sure. Other shells. Yeah some unique. Do you do assessments today.
00;08;41;06 - 00;09;03;11
Unknown
Yeah. We we've done some Myers-Briggs before. Yeah. And so and you have seen just the very extreme, you know, the conversion and. Yeah. And all that. Yeah. That 160 personalities is the modern life. Great. It's free. It's five minutes, but the scene goes back to, like, trying to better have to do it and reflect and say, oh, this is how you're wired and let's work around that.
00;09;03;11 - 00;09;19;24
Unknown
Is working with that? Yes, it's neat to see and it's just part of what we have to do now. Yeah. Even in our own internal meetings, you know, even just getting people to sit at the table like like Claire in our department, we were to the point where we put out the loops and the the table and whatnot.
00;09;19;27 - 00;09;39;21
Unknown
That's $5 just to get in our internal staff meetings, people to actually sit at the table. I think COVID's kind of given people, you know, the ability to kind of sit on the outskirts of the room and just bring people together is is difficult. There you go, there you go. Yeah. You get one thing that help that a little bit.
00;09;39;21 - 00;10;14;04
Unknown
And part of it is the introvert thing. But many of the issues I deal with every day is communications. And I think we, we sell communications short where there's just an assumption made for my team sometimes that I call them that four weeks ago. And it's like, that's not enough. we, we worked very well together at Indiana Tech, but that that work involves communication to be sure that people always know what the status is and why it's taken so long, or why we're doing it this way and trying to build that communication skill into the team.
00;10;14;05 - 00;10;35;15
Unknown
It's hard. Yeah. Okay. How many of why you know, because, you know, people can get behind it. Why are in a process that they know the why a lot more? It seems like you get tired of seeing the why right? There was one statistic. You have to tell everybody seven times before they remember it. Now it's up to, you know, how serious it is that I.
00;10;35;15 - 00;10;53;23
Unknown
Yeah. So it's kind of it is neat, but, it's just something to get the why and and you can see that motivation, but we forget back like I told you, what's right and expected for not right. Yeah. No, no for sure. Well I'll say this in the companies that I work with, communication will come up in the top three almost every single time, sometimes 1 or 2.
00;10;53;29 - 00;11;25;23
Unknown
So it's spot on, spot on for sure. Yes. I would add, toxic high performers, and teams, people who get everything done who often choose not to delegate but leave a trail of destruction behind them. Yeah, yeah. Team members. Yeah, I see, I see there used to be like, the top sales person, you know, and that people didn't want to get rid of that person because they're the revenue generator, you know, and they wanted to confidentiality.
00;11;25;27 - 00;11;56;18
Unknown
That's her copy. Right. But but, I see people driving into that storm a lot harder now and saying you're you're affecting her environment too much because culture is so important. Protect now. And, but you're right. And keeping those that people just will that won't fix itself. Yeah, I've certainly made that mistake myself. You know, there had been a time in the past where we had a, you know, network engineer, architect kid, I mean, brilliant and talented and, unfortunately kept that person too long.
00;11;56;20 - 00;12;12;18
Unknown
Heard our culture and the thought was, well, we can can't afford to lose them because what happens to our network, what happens to our environment? They know so much, ultimately, when we step through that, what I learned is that the rest of the team rallied around what we needed to came together, and I wish I'd have done it six months sooner.
00;12;12;24 - 00;12;40;01
Unknown
So great points. Like, I'll tell you, for me, one of the greatest challenges that I have is leading myself. And so it's sometimes easy for us to tell others what they should do or what what we think they should do. For me, it's sometimes harder to lead myself, and that kind of comes right. You talk a little bit about self-awareness and we'll talk about that, the working genius, but the importance of understanding ourselves.
00;12;40;04 - 00;13;00;24
Unknown
And so, you know, we talk a little bit about become good at leading yourself. and that looks different for many of us. so, Craig, when we think about leading ourselves, what would be one thing for you, maybe yourself, that that you would strive to call the assessments aspect, you know, your your own assessment and how you're wired.
00;13;00;24 - 00;13;16;18
Unknown
Like me, I'm a builder, I like to start things and I like to end up with somebody else. Finish. If you're not in it, you just put that on the table. I was like, I need people to finish things. And I like climbing mountains. I like to start things. And so being making sure everybody just you're just born is done.
00;13;16;18 - 00;13;33;05
Unknown
Even more things like, this is me, this is you. How do we work together? Yeah. So I think it's just making sure you're not just passing the buck and you're being honest. Yeah. So. Yeah. And I think the more ability kind of comes down to the third point being secure in your own leadership. So once we understand here's the things that I'm good at.
00;13;33;05 - 00;13;51;03
Unknown
Here's my strengths okay. Being secure to know that these are things that I want to do more of. And also when it comes to weaknesses, not trying to hide those. So in other words, I know these are my challenges are weaknesses. We know where everyone else's are in our team. And again, being secure with that and again knowing and working within your strengths.
00;13;51;03 - 00;14;09;16
Unknown
I think there's been a theory, matter of fact, even in schools, many of the schools right now, the thought is we want to try to get pretty good at everything. And if there's certain areas that you're not so good, let's focus on those. Well, research has shown us, especially in business, focusing on your strengths is where we should be.
00;14;09;18 - 00;14;32;02
Unknown
Because if we think about it, no one really wants to pay for average. you know, I think about, we have all the talent we want. I think about Michael Jordan, you know, back in the 90s, arguably one of the world's greatest basketball players. Besides that, he wants to take and go into baseball when he still had the same amount of work ethic and the same amount of other gifts.
00;14;32;04 - 00;14;52;07
Unknown
But he wasn't as gifted in baseball, came back to basketball. And of course, we know what happened as well. So I think that's something that, again, we're focusing on just knowing what our strengths are and working within those strengths, and understanding that we're going to have challenges. We all do. But how can we bring others into to kind of make those?
00;14;52;09 - 00;15;08;03
Unknown
And when we think about others and we talked a little bit about team, what are some of the greatest challenges that we could see for teams or teams that you guys have worked with? Any thoughts there?
00;15;08;05 - 00;15;29;08
Unknown
I know that we are expecting our teams to perform right. And how do you get the optimal performance out of the team without breaking them? Obviously. but you know, and still keep everybody, you know, so, you know, satisfied. So I think that's one of the challenges that we have. And obviously, I go back to what Jeff said.
00;15;29;08 - 00;15;47;21
Unknown
You know, that communication is important in there, too. Yeah. You know, I think even probably what I should have said is even let's define what a team is, because I think a lot of times team is just this word that's used. But really the team would be a group that's sharing a common goal that they also have common rewards.
00;15;47;21 - 00;16;17;27
Unknown
One of their success to the team. And there's times in organizations where we may call a team, but really, are we sharing the same goal? Are we willing to put ourselves, number two. So we go to the actual team in the organization? Yeah, yeah. I think going back to what Craig said over there about a career map, I think sometimes we get blindsided by the day to day nuances that we all deal with, that we sometimes forget and just show a clear message to our team of how they should grow.
00;16;17;27 - 00;16;36;04
Unknown
And I think that generates frustration, generates, you know, lack of wanting to be there. And that's why people go out and look, it generates just, you know, a dragging of the culture, you know, and, and I think it affects morale. Right. So when people are unhappy, it's, it's a cancer. Right? So negativity is easy to spread.
00;16;36;06 - 00;16;51;25
Unknown
We see it every day and everything that we read. Positivity, not so much rate. we see that in social media, in the news. Take your pick rate. How many how often do you see positive things versus how much do you see negative things. So we know what sells. And I think that's that's how we're kind of wired back to your point.
00;16;51;25 - 00;17;11;08
Unknown
But I feel like you know, kind of piggyback in both of those things. I think that's an area I'm probably weak at is really providing a direct map like, hey, you know, here's your real path and go from one year to three year to five year. You know, to grow with inside my organization and to do that. And I think that's a challenge, including yourself like yesterday Steve Moore's quite the talk.
00;17;11;08 - 00;17;31;10
Unknown
Right? I mean, they you have a crew that you know I do that a lot. But it directors that we're working in to be a CIO so I can excel. Right. And just the soft skills, it's the hey listen, be an active listener. Don't interrupt. You know some of that stuff so you can operate at executive level. So when you see that you're a proven yourself.
00;17;31;10 - 00;17;52;28
Unknown
And now we're just a culture of improvement or, you know, it's pretty neat. But everybody's got to feel that. So good comments. Thank you. You know for sure. And reminds me at the time, you know, many years ago I always thought, you know, you get on the airplane and they talk about the oxygen mask and somebody you probably heard that wear, you know, put it on yourself first and then take care of the other stuff.
00;17;53;00 - 00;18;10;19
Unknown
Man, that's so selfish. I'm about other people, you know? I want to take care of them and then I'll worry about myself. But if I'm not healthy, you can't take care of the other. So I think it's a great point about investing in ourselves. It's something that, you know, I've struggled and and continue to struggle with is making margin so that I can invest in myself, making margin.
00;18;10;19 - 00;18;27;03
Unknown
And then what would happen a lot of times if somebody would say, hey, I need you or this or that, and then the time that I devoted to myself is usually the first thing that I get back to meetings and other things like that. So definitely can be a struggle. One of the things that we struggle with, I think, is just inside of the team, is we're fostering a culture on our team for everyone to work together.
00;18;27;08 - 00;18;45;29
Unknown
So that's one of my jobs to find a foster culture. So we get my weekly catch up. But then also I'm fostering a belief about my team amongst the whole group. So all the other teams, how they view it, it's like you're talking off the topic, but team contributor, I have a dynamic team that will go out constantly and try to solve problems.
00;18;45;29 - 00;19;01;06
Unknown
And I'm like, you don't understand the bigger picture of what we're doing here. And every time you go out that you're changing the dynamic of what I'm presenting to the rest of the group, because you don't understand what's going on in the bigger picture. So maintaining both those things separately and trying to build everyone up is an interesting process.
00;19;01;06 - 00;19;19;09
Unknown
Yeah. For sure. Do you have one question here? Yeah, we do one once every two weeks. So we constantly talk about it and review it and have those discussions often. Yeah, a lot of times people don't know what their target is. You know, I saw this in industrial level. You know, we want you to be positive. You can't be negative.
00;19;19;09 - 00;19;40;21
Unknown
Like, oh, now I and we get the scoreboard. A lot of people use goals now it's called the People Analyzer. Like they just want to know what the score card is that they have to hit, you know, how they adjust. So it's one on ones. And then to the whole person manager there's a best practices out there like every you know you know you should do a weekly or just by week whatever.
00;19;40;23 - 00;20;01;00
Unknown
But every third one make it personal. How is there anything going on in your life that's going affect work? You just shut up and let them talk because there's something, you know, you see their performance going downhill. But maybe I was in the hospital. Kids, you know, whatever. Something's going on. That whole person management is starting to see sticky retention and optimization, too.
00;20;01;00 - 00;20;30;29
Unknown
It's kind of a rhythm that you get in. Yeah, yeah. For sure. One other thing, I think it's been a thread that's been running through many of these is that it is part of a routine called a business. And if we can establish that to the people that we talk to every day, if they don't understand that we're support a mechanism that enables them to be the best work that they can do operationally or accounting wise, or even at the line level.
00;20;31;01 - 00;20;54;22
Unknown
I had a very early mentor the talked about, standard preach about the best employees tend to connect to disparate groups together, and I think it's a very unique opportunity to do that every day, the week. Okay. It's more social impact and company impact and culture impacted in somebody. And number one, I meet the drum. It's to be represented at executive.
00;20;54;22 - 00;21;13;18
Unknown
Do you know down through Seattle filter and it is everywhere. You know it's just not siloed. It's like even when budgets like everything else right. You know you know it's like how do you decide how you decide for that. but when you talk to people, when you're junior, senior support people, talk to anybody, they can have a cultural positive.
00;21;13;18 - 00;21;36;06
Unknown
Our cultural context in that. And we have, influence now, which we have take teachers before I just I take yourself good. I go back to the job. It's not that way anymore. It's how it interacts with all the other departments. for sure, for sure. So let's talk through a couple couple of things with reference to a team kind of on that theme of self-awareness.
00;21;36;09 - 00;22;08;19
Unknown
And we've talked a little bit about this and just started our discussion. But suddenly knowing the people on your team and we'll talk a little bit about what the working genius assessment is, one way to to understand and know your team, but community, how everyone fits on the team. This is another big one, is making sure that everyone that sits there knows exactly what their role is and overcommunicate that clarity is super, super important because what studies have shown is that once everyone really, truly understands where they fit on the team, then all of a sudden their productivity starts to go up, their engagement goes up as well.
00;22;08;22 - 00;22;32;00
Unknown
And I think this last point emphasize completing over, competing again, completing one another to say, here's my strengths, here's your strengths, here's how we're better together now. Healthy competition I think is not a bad thing, okay. But what we don't want is competition to get to the next title or the next position. It's more about how can we actually look to the success of the team as our first goal.
00;22;32;03 - 00;22;55;00
Unknown
So. So now what I love to do is kind of transition a little bit into the working genius model. And so by show of hands, how many of you have either taken the working genius assessment or are familiar with it? Okay, great. So we've got a pretty good amount of awesome. And then of you, how many of your teams have also been a part of it as well?
00;22;55;00 - 00;23;10;00
Unknown
Have we looked at it as a team as well too? Okay. So ours has been more focused on because I'm on the executive board. So there's been more focus on the executive. Okay. I did have my leadership do it. Okay. That but I mean, I don't know that we expanded into the rest of the techniques. Okay. Thanks. Awesome.
00;23;10;02 - 00;23;27;23
Unknown
So we just focused it on on the leadership side okay. We kind of compare, you know, on executive level where we all kind of fit in, you know, complement each other. And you know that's great. Yeah okay. Well so what I love about that is that if there's things that you've picked up, let's keep this an open conversation.
00;23;28;00 - 00;23;46;06
Unknown
So there might be things that we mentioned. Because ultimately if I were working with a company to do this, we would probably be sitting down for 3 to 4 hours together going through this. And there's so there's a lot of things that that we may highlight, but if there's important parts of what you've learned, that you like or maybe something that you didn't, let's, let's kind of share that as well.
00;23;46;08 - 00;24;06;09
Unknown
So I think one of the things that I'd like to share, and Craig can talk a little bit about is what makes working genius assessment different. You know, there's personality assessments. There's a lot of different tools out there. I think there's a couple of things that I've seen. Number one, working genius, is about 80% productivity. So it really has more to do with the art of getting things done.
00;24;06;11 - 00;24;35;09
Unknown
we like to say in the working genius world, there's six steps to getting anything done. And we'll understand that those are the six, areas of the working genius. So really about 80% productivity, 20% personality assessment. I think the second thing would be, it's extremely easy to understand and comprehend. So, you know, right now, we were talking the other day, we've both done 60 personalities, but it's really hard if if I say I'm an INFP and you're an s TJ, what does that mean?
00;24;35;11 - 00;24;56;24
Unknown
How do we work together? so again, working genius is really simple when it comes to understanding it. And I think also the fact that it's applied to work makes it something that a lot of people on the C-suite love to work with. Because, again, sometimes the assessments have this reputation of being kind of soft or or really not as valuable to business.
00;24;56;27 - 00;25;06;19
Unknown
working genius solves that because, number one, it isn't about work, it's about business. And it's something that's that's easy to understand.
00;25;06;21 - 00;25;30;12
Unknown
So what I'd love to do is just briefly kind of talk about the different, geniuses that we have. And when Patrick mentioned we talked about this, you'll notice the sales widget he had talked about in one of the, podcasts that I think he got to about he and he realized, hey, this can spell something. And so I'm like, go ahead and and and make sure that it's still something that we could use.
00;25;30;14 - 00;25;56;00
Unknown
But what I would love to do is type in the open areas. Number one, any time that we start any type of a process that typically belongs to the the genius of wonder. And so what is wonder? Wonder is the genius that kind of ponders the possibilities. Ask the question, could this be better? Could this be different? the genius of wonder almost has like a sixth sense to sense.
00;25;56;00 - 00;26;18;07
Unknown
I think that there's opportunity here. Doesn't necessarily know what that is, but can kind of feel that. And I think a lot of us have worked with somebody that has the genius of wonder. The next genius we look at is the genius of invention. So that that inventor kind of responds to that, that question to say, hey, I've got some great ideas.
00;26;18;09 - 00;26;37;12
Unknown
the genius of invention is somebody that loves a whiteboard, somebody that loves starting from scratch. That would really be the invention once we had these ideas. Now we have to go to the next step, which is kind of that discernment of these 3 or 4 ideas. How many of these will work well for our company, for our organization, what we're trying to do.
00;26;37;15 - 00;26;55;17
Unknown
And so the discernment kind of comes through to look at that. And then typically when they go back to the inventor again and and they call this the ideal looper, it kind of goes back and forth to realize, okay, here's some changes. What if you tried this and that? And before too long, we now have an idea of a process that makes sense.
00;26;55;17 - 00;27;17;21
Unknown
To sort or not gives it to the galvanizing and the galvanizing. Genius is really someone that loves to rally the troops, loves to look, to say, okay, this is what we agreed that we're going to do. Here's some areas that I think we can use to get this done. Let's keep people motivated and not only motivated, but keep pointing them back to what was the overall goal of what we decided to do after galvanizing to go to enablement.
00;27;17;21 - 00;27;42;13
Unknown
And I know a lot of times enablement can kind of have a bad connotation. You know, we think, well, you're an enabler or you do this or that. Let's think of enablement in the positive term, almost like support. Somebody with the genius of enablement sees what it is that we're trying to accomplish and raise their hand to say, hey, I want to jump in or I know others that I can get involved, and they almost anticipate what the next steps will be before we actually even need to take them.
00;27;42;15 - 00;28;00;22
Unknown
And then the very last genius, the genius of tenacity. That's the genius that says, okay, it's time to get us over the finish line. You know, I can think of countless different projects I've been involved with in years past where we just couldn't get them to completion. I didn't realize that we didn't really have some the genius of tenacity on our team.
00;28;00;25 - 00;28;17;15
Unknown
And so the genius of tenacity is somebody that looks at the specs to say, this is what we agreed we would do. Here's all the details I want to make sure that we get this across the finish line. And I think it's important to understand that. It doesn't mean just because the person has the genius of tenacity. They're doing all of that work themselves.
00;28;17;23 - 00;28;42;27
Unknown
What it really is, is they're the ones taking the lead to make sure that they and others are actually completing what we need to. So a funny or about funny story, I'm an IG, you know, build it cheerleader everybody on and it off to get done. I had my wife do it. She did too. And I was one of those like you, you know, composers all this complicated like it's a great idea.
00;28;42;29 - 00;29;02;20
Unknown
But what does this have for this point? What do you quit? I fell down ever since we did that. Really great point. You're just turning my idea to our relationship. Went through all of the lots of the personal side. It's funny. And not only because I finally did after 33 years, but as I got so what I did.
00;29;02;20 - 00;29;21;08
Unknown
So it is funny, but it was like, oh, this is, you know, personally and professionally. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And similar thing with my wife and I, she is enablement, tenacity. So kind of that finisher. And you know, for years she didn't understand. She says, Terry, can you go to the store and, where's your list?
00;29;21;08 - 00;29;38;27
Unknown
And I thought, well, I don't have a list. Just tell me what you need and I'll go get it. She's like, no, you need a list. And it just was interesting where we would at operate differently. And once we understood how we were different, we understood how we could help each other and work better together. And that kind of takes us into what we call guilt and judgment.
00;29;38;29 - 00;29;56;26
Unknown
And so for me personally, there have been times since, well, I'm not really gifted and a genius, and that enablement or tenacity, that kind of taken across the finish line that I don't have, a lot of things started and nothing finished. And I would just be and it just there's something wrong with me because I'm, I'm, I need to finish this.
00;29;56;26 - 00;30;14;29
Unknown
But all of a sudden something else comes up. It's like, well, let me look at this too. And before long, I'm just not getting the things done that I needed to. And so there's this guilt that I felt personally to understand. Why? Why am I this way? What's wrong with me? Do I just not have a enough motivation to do things that I see others doing?
00;30;15;01 - 00;30;35;25
Unknown
working genius is something that really helped me to understand that. As I went through that to, and when we take it away from ourselves and now we go to judgment, now all of a sudden we have this scenario where we can judge others. Well, wait a second, why are they not good at that? Or, you know, there's this term called the fundamental attribution error.
00;30;35;28 - 00;30;53;11
Unknown
And it really I think if we want to factor down to what it means, it basically means that we judge others on their results. We judge ourselves on kind of our intentions. So we really are much harder and others than we are in ourselves. You know, think about this. How many times have maybe you walked into a meeting?
00;30;53;11 - 00;31;10;14
Unknown
Let's say it's, you know, a really important meeting and somebody walks in 3 or 4 minutes late. You know, I know myself, I might think, okay, that's rude. Or maybe that person is lazier, don't care, whatever it is, but you kind of form that judgment. But if I walked in three minutes late, well, that's because I'm busy.
00;31;10;14 - 00;31;31;12
Unknown
I had to do this, this, this, this. And so I kind of cut myself a break. And so what we've learned is that once we understand with with working genius, we're, you know, the individuals, geniuses, their frustrations are, we understand that that judgment can take a backseat to to what we're feeling. So.
00;31;31;15 - 00;31;50;29
Unknown
So I won't spend too much time, on this one. But this one really talks about the three stages of work. And so this wonderful invention, really, that's the ideation stage. That's where coming up with the ideas, the middle part is one that actually was the activation is the part that a lot of people even never really thought about.
00;31;51;02 - 00;32;07;17
Unknown
A lot of times people before the genius would think, hey, we got an idea, it's time to implement it, not really understanding it, but then activation that discernment to determine is that idea a good idea or the galvanizing to make sure that we're stepping forward and rallying the troops to do that was a very, very important part of it.
00;32;07;19 - 00;32;16;26
Unknown
And then when we get into the enablement tenacity, that's really into the implementation of what we're doing.
00;32;16;29 - 00;32;52;03
Unknown
And this is a neat one. when we talk about responsive versus disruptive. And so of the geniuses, we've got three geniuses in responsive. And then, the lower three geniuses being disruptive, so responsive. The genius of wonder I'm basically responding to the environment around me. what it is that that I think the need is or where the potential exists, but it's basically a response to the environment around the inventor that's disruptive, that's basically taking what input of the genius of wonder, and that's coming up with ideas and disrupting what that might be.
00;32;52;05 - 00;33;26;14
Unknown
Again, discernment. We're now responding to the inventor to galvanize her. Now again, we're back to the disruptive. Now we're we're we're inspiring and motivating people to to accomplish what it is we need to do what we agreed to do. Enablement. Now, again, I'm going back to the responsive side again with enablement. I'm responding to the the call of the galvanize with the rallying cry to make sure that I'm helping our team do what we need to do to make sure that I'm anticipating what it is and tenacity, again, disruptive, meaning that we're taking it across the finish line and making sure we complete it based on the specs that we've agreed to.
00;33;26;19 - 00;33;56;12
Unknown
I learned a lot because I'm a double disruptive, so people get mad at me, you know, people who are selfish. You use power by asking for 20 hours journey together and just keep is there. We could be battery things, movement. So just something to be aware of. Yeah. And for me, I'm I'm double responsive. And probably the one time that I realized that double responsive for me and responding to others is that I was having a, you know, a monthly staff meeting.
00;33;56;12 - 00;34;15;29
Unknown
Well, it actually knows. And our company meeting in this case, and I had about 150 of us. And I'm going through this PowerPoint and and really what I was trying to do was model myself after someone else that I really respected. That was a great presenter, super exciting, encouraging. And I just realized that. But halfway through, I'm just not connecting with the company.
00;34;16;01 - 00;34;40;09
Unknown
And so there was a question that that somebody had asked. And before long I started fielding questions and we just turned it into a town hall format. And it just happened just kind of organically. What I didn't realize through that is our meeting that went from 330 to 430, actually ended up taking 3.5 hours, and everybody stayed because all of a sudden that was a form to ask questions and really get into what it was.
00;34;40;09 - 00;35;02;20
Unknown
And so for me, I realized the way that I wanted to connect with the organization was through a town hall format where we could just have a relational conversation. So every meeting after that, I changed to that format, because that's really what suited myself. And so I think what we'll learn through this assessment is the more that we can become our authentic self and our authentic leader, I think the better that we can be when it comes to leading the team, because they can tell the difference.
00;35;02;20 - 00;35;22;07
Unknown
I was trying to model myself after somebody that was really motivational and they could see right through thing. That's just not me. So this is a fun slide. one of the things and I may have not mentioned, Patrick Lynch really is the one that actually created the working genius. not only the model, but the assessment as well.
00;35;22;09 - 00;35;44;06
Unknown
And so I love when, when when he talks about this, but there's so many different ways to look at this model. This is one that we think about the altitude of the genius. And so if we think about it from let's just use a airplane analogy. We're at 30,000ft, the genius of wonder. And so with that genius, we're basically deciding where is it that this plane is headed.
00;35;44;06 - 00;36;05;20
Unknown
And just a couple degree change at that altitude makes a huge difference on the destination. And so, you know, let's say that the genius of wonder might say, okay, we're here, we've got this team in the plane. we need to go somewhere. We need to go somewhere where we can connect, and we need to go somewhere where we can energize as a team.
00;36;05;22 - 00;36;29;16
Unknown
Well, all of a sudden, we dropped down to 25,000ft. We're down to the genius of invention. The invention says you know what? I've got an idea. I think we should go to big Sky in Montana, because that's great. There, there's. There's a lot of great skiing there. There's there's places that we can. We can go the Discerner looks at that idea, and now we're down to 20,000ft and says, you know what?
00;36;29;18 - 00;36;46;29
Unknown
it's it's February right now. Just had a huge snowstorm. This is not a great idea. There's not even an airport that has the right fuel for us to land. So now we go back to the inventor again and say, you know what? Okay, let's change this. Let's go to Scottsdale, Arizona. You know what? We've got great golf there.
00;36;46;29 - 00;37;07;28
Unknown
We've got great nature. And so the district comes back and says, okay, this makes sense. Now we're down to that galvanizing. We've decided this is what we're doing now. We're down at 15,000ft. The genius of galvanizing starts to say, okay, let's get everybody excited. What do we need to do to to go to Scottsdale? Here's the things that we can do, and let's make sure that everyone is rallied around this to make sure we accomplish this.
00;37;07;28 - 00;37;23;24
Unknown
And this is going to be a great retreat for us. Then we get down to 10,000ft. Now we're down to the enablement side. Well, we need to start to prepare to land this thing. We need to to to call the towers and make sure that we're doing what we need to do. So what things do we need to do to accomplish that?
00;37;23;25 - 00;37;42;09
Unknown
Who do I need to involved and anticipate the needs? And then finally, we're down to 5000ft to the ground. Now all of a sudden we're at the tenacity. What's the final stages? Okay, we have to buckle the seatbelts. We have to do whatever we need to do to go down to the bottom. So we actually did this at our company or our executive leadership team.
00;37;42;13 - 00;38;05;13
Unknown
And I misunderstood this. So I extend the question to our president. And I thought like this is levels of leadership. So I read this when I saw this as the CIO and the C-suite people are at the top, and then your supervisor at the bottom. And he explained to me that it's not necessarily like in a ladder like that, but it's more of a C-suite team should have try to have more of each of these personalities on the team so that they're well down.
00;38;05;16 - 00;38;20;29
Unknown
And instead you can have galvanize as enablers, which is my specialty. And you can also have wonders and inventors all on the same team. And they're just looking at things differently. And so that was a big change for me. And the way I viewed things, because I thought because my were at the bottom of this, that I would never be able to get out of that level.
00;38;21;04 - 00;38;37;02
Unknown
I was going to explain that was really great. Yeah. And I think it's a great point. I think what what also, every one of us does each one of these six geniuses, every one of us does what we'll find through this assessment is really where do we get the most joy, energy and fulfillment. And that's the big thing.
00;38;37;07 - 00;38;54;08
Unknown
But another point that that I can mention to is, is I've done this with a lot of different organizations. There's a lot of CEOs and CEOs that I've met there. And the thought is, if you're a CEO, you've got to be the big visionary. You've got to really be in the W or the AI. not true at all.
00;38;54;08 - 00;39;15;27
Unknown
Some of the best organizations, have ET. So again, there's not one of these is better than the other. But as you illustrated, having a mix where we have everyone covered, we'll talk a little bit about that as a team is big. Yeah. What what happens if you get reduce meeting to part advice would you have to leave these right.
00;39;15;29 - 00;39;37;00
Unknown
Like you have many cases people and people involved. They like to be like yeah. Cuz they like content. Great ideas. Yeah. And change. Yeah. Obviously you have these really high and this guy is really a people that they don't really have any of the, you know, enablers or the people that can get the results that you want.
00;39;37;01 - 00;39;58;22
Unknown
So like, how do you how do you prevent from ending up with too many personality types and that become the problem? Yeah, it's a great question. And I'll say this, sometimes the results of that are different than you might expect. I worked with a company about six months ago, and almost their entire executive leadership team had geniuses and enablement and tenacity.
00;39;58;22 - 00;40;28;24
Unknown
So walking into that common knowledge might say, man, these guys may not have great ideas, but they finish stuff all the time. It's just the opposite. They couldn't get anything finished because they arise from the tactics and never really focusing on up above what it is that they had needed. What we ended up doing for that group that help solve that is, we did the working genius for the next level leaders and found out that they had some geniuses at that next level, and we then brought them into some of the strategic meetings and really kind of help supplement.
00;40;28;24 - 00;40;46;12
Unknown
And then what that also did is gave them a path of trajectory where they had more influence. And it just kind of really had a great, a great result. I'll say, if if you also don't have that, there's times where somebody might bring in a consultant for, let's say, a meeting to say, okay, know you have these geniuses, we're going to hire you for a half a day to sit in and kind of help us through that.
00;40;46;12 - 00;41;10;14
Unknown
So those are kind of two ways that I've seen seen that accommodated hire or borrow. Know if you know your person, that whole you got to get it into that team. Just keep people rather. Yeah. Yeah. And that's exactly what we did. What he said is we you have to identify with it. And I think as we've looked to elevate people or when we fill missing things, you try to look for those missing skill sets because we we our group covered the gamut.
00;41;10;14 - 00;41;24;09
Unknown
But we did have some holes in there. I mean, and some of them were obvious, right? Like our founder, we knew I could have told you Michael was without even doing it just because, you know, he was a wonder guy. And, you know, he's been in the business forever. The day you get to see him, if you know him.
00;41;24;09 - 00;41;51;22
Unknown
And and it was also interesting to me when we looked at our executive team, how close I could almost just mentally like say, I know that's a tenacious person. Our CFO defines the word tenacious. Yeah. You know, and it's like, absolutely. She fell through that. And then some other surprised me. Some of the ones that we found that we were closer to and we realized we are what happens sometimes you'll have your peers that you kind of gravitate towards, and you find that you guys are very complimentary.
00;41;51;24 - 00;42;13;24
Unknown
You know each other and you don't even realize that that made a big difference in how you perceive and look at that. Yeah, but I think you have to look when you bring someone in. I mean, this is part of our assessment. Now, you know, when we bring in an executive or look at that, you know, as a group strategically we look to see where they fit, to see how they're going to build that cohesion with the rest of the team that out to fill the hiring of letters and skills tell you key.
00;42;13;26 - 00;42;35;09
Unknown
And to your point of that, thank you for sharing all that. The letters are sticky like Enfj can't team put a team together based on that. And that's self-awareness. This builds up and runs our teams. Yeah. And Terry made this point, and I think it's worthy of emphasize because you weren't passing so quickly. And David also made the same point.
00;42;35;11 - 00;43;06;03
Unknown
I mean. We we find out who we are. But that doesn't mean that we're exclusively in any one of these in any of the assessments. Right? You know, we may have a portion of us, it's just what might be most comfortable or most dominant in or anything else of that nature. And sometimes, because leadership can a situation, you know, we might have to step outside and have a more case of wondering that might be a retreat, go off to the side.
00;43;06;04 - 00;43;24;17
Unknown
Think about this. How might we do this better? How are we going to increase sales? You know, what's our Swot analysis? With that, we might take ourselves out of team and get us in the W for a little bit. And we have to do that. so again, I think that there's some pliability to it. And we definitely have a comfort zone.
00;43;24;17 - 00;43;44;00
Unknown
We definitely, you know, how we like to work, but that doesn't mean that we're exclusive out in. Absolutely agree. And one thing that that research has also shown is that a lot of times when we go outside of our area of genius, we may be doing it to support our genius and so what I mean by that is let's say that we're let's say we're enablement and tenacity.
00;43;44;00 - 00;44;04;24
Unknown
And so we really focus on and we get joint fulfillment on getting those things done. Or I cross the finish line. There's times where to support this genius. We may have to go through the ideation to come up with an idea of how we can get it across the finish line faster and smoother. And so a lot of times when people say, well, I can do this pretty well, there's times that something may not be in their genius, they can do it well.
00;44;04;24 - 00;44;12;15
Unknown
And a lot of times it's to support some of their other geniuses. They just don't really realize it.
00;44;12;17 - 00;44;30;17
Unknown
So what I would love to do is talk a minute about a profile. And so some of you that have taken the assessment have seen the profile. I'll just show you quickly my profile. And there's this is just one page of it. But what I really want to do is talk about these three things here. Working genius is what we've talked a lot about.
00;44;30;19 - 00;44;53;13
Unknown
But there's something called the working competency in the working frustration. And so what I love to do is think of this, we'll think of this as a coffee cup. So we're at coffee. We have something like the Starbucks cup and we've got coffee inside there. We've got the lid on the top. Okay. When that coffee is staying hot all day long, that's our working genius.
00;44;53;13 - 00;45;11;13
Unknown
That's something that we can do all day long, and we feel good about it. It doesn't drain us. We feel fulfilled. We feel joy from that. If we take the top off of that and we just have a cup with no, that okay, it stays warm for a while, but ultimately it's going to to cool down much faster.
00;45;11;15 - 00;45;28;19
Unknown
That's kind of a working competency. That's something that we're probably good at. That's something that we can do for a while. But the longer we do it, it starts to drain us last with at least working frustration. That would be the same coffee cup. But what we basically do is we just drill some holes in the bottom and it's just pour it out.
00;45;28;21 - 00;45;46;25
Unknown
That's something that, as we're doing it, it's draining. We know it. We can feel it doesn't mean we can't do it, doesn't mean that we may not be good at it. But that's the working frustration. And so for me, this is one of the, one of the, slides on the assessment and discernment and wonder are my genius mind working competency.
00;45;46;28 - 00;46;08;07
Unknown
I would like to ask, these are your likely areas of work competency that you're capable and don't mind providing. But again, it's not long term. And then working with frustration, is identity. And, you know, for me personally, when I saw this assessment, at first I was kind of frustrated because I thought, I'm a CEO and ideation is on the bottom for me.
00;46;08;10 - 00;46;26;06
Unknown
I thought, well, I thought, it's not true. I make decisions all the time and I've got great ideas. And what I never realized, you know, there was a point when our, our organization got to about 100 of us. And I remember going to our executive team and I met with some clients and they said, you know, we used to like you guys better when you were smaller.
00;46;26;06 - 00;46;44;20
Unknown
You've gotten so big that, you know, we just we just don't like as much, your organization. And it kind of was a step back for me. And additionally, that conversation though, they said, but we like the fact that you've got a lot more people. So if something happens, you've got, you know, other resources you can bring in in this, in that.
00;46;44;20 - 00;47;07;13
Unknown
And so I came to the team and I said, here's what I heard from the client. They want us to be small but also be big. And I remember just saying this big thing. And so they come with all these, you know, that the team came up with all these different ideas about, well, rather than having, you know, this big service desk with 30 people, what if we break people down into pods and have a special escalation?
00;47;07;13 - 00;47;22;27
Unknown
And so that way, most of the time they're still dealing with their same resources, but only when things get really difficult to the escalate to these other resources. And so, that was before it was about that was before small. This is the this is many, many years ago. And so I thought this sounds great. So I discerned it.
00;47;23;04 - 00;47;40;02
Unknown
What I never realized until the working geniuses that wasn't my idea. I just gave them a big picture of here's a potential issue. They came up with the ideas and I helped discern it. And so then when I realized I'm really not gifted at ideas, I'm just gifted at looking at other ideas and seeing what may or may not work.
00;47;40;05 - 00;48;00;28
Unknown
And so one of the frustrations, not the working frustration, but one of the frustrations I've seen with certain individuals is that when they get this assessment, they try to look to see, well, how does it fit their job? You know, I remember talking to a, chief innovation officer and his ideas for wonder were frustrations. And he's like, I don't agree with this.
00;48;01;01 - 00;48;17;09
Unknown
when we started to dig into it, we found out that really, his lack of agreement had nothing to do with who he was. It had more to do with the role that he was actually positioned in. Fast forward about 7 or 8 months, he moved into a different role in the organization has been flourishing. So there's interesting things about assessments.
00;48;17;09 - 00;48;35;03
Unknown
But what I can say is if there's certain things that if you were to take this assessment that just kind of strike you wrong or don't feel right, start to dig in a little bit to to why that might be. And a lot of times it could be because of what you're expected do versus, again, what you're authentically wanting to do.
00;48;35;06 - 00;48;55;17
Unknown
So one thing I'd love to just, talk a little bit about is the power and the magic of working genius really comes alive when you apply it to your team. Okay. So it's helpful for each one of us to know kind of where our joy and fulfillment, because ultimately, the things that we find joy and fulfillment doing are the things that we're usually the best at doing.
00;48;55;19 - 00;49;15;09
Unknown
Okay, this is a sample. What we call a team map is when we run this for an executive team or any team in your organization, we can then place everyone into their categories of genius and frustration. And so as we look at this a couple of questions. It's people a lot of times ask, well what about the working competency.
00;49;15;09 - 00;49;32;15
Unknown
Why isn't that put in there. And there's a couple reasons. Number one, putting a working competency makes it a little bit harder to read. And number two, I think what we need to do is we need to look at a competency as something that we don't want to encourage using more of. And so we really focus on the genius and the frustration.
00;49;32;17 - 00;49;50;25
Unknown
last thing that we do when we look at a team is there's an Asterix by the rocks. And you might wonder, well, what's the asterix meaning? Well, Ross is the CEO of this, this organization. and so the reason we put an Asterix is typically the CEO will almost count for two times what a normal genius would be.
00;49;50;25 - 00;50;12;01
Unknown
So, in other words, the CEO mastery, is going to be a focus. And of course, the frustration with reference to wander when you've got lost in these other with frustration and you've got only one person with that genius is going to be, an area that we need to pay particular attention to this team just because, because of the conflict, for sure.
00;50;12;04 - 00;50;33;00
Unknown
But ultimately, the goal, I think, is there's a few of you excited to hopefully have the geniuses covered. in this case, there's no genius of discernment. Let's take that stage so you could drive off a cliff so we know the holes in the idea, but these are magic. Sure. Proper processes so that that's that's a change or something like that.
00;50;33;00 - 00;50;54;29
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah for sure, for sure. another danger zone. And this one is we've got a lot of downsizers. And so, they're going to be excited to, to get this company to do a lot of different things. May not be the right things because we're not discerning it. Well, but by all means. And we're going to be, excited to, to rally the troops around a lot of different things.
00;50;54;29 - 00;51;20;17
Unknown
And ultimately, what can happen is things don't come to fruition. They kind of go back again. And really nothing, nothing gets completed. So, yeah, some of my clients, really struggle discernment. And you'll sit and spin their tires on the strategy, direction and things like that for years. And, you know, they've got big ideas and they get people to get there, but they don't have anybody in the middle of.
00;51;20;19 - 00;51;48;24
Unknown
Yeah, there's so on. And so this is best for us as a group. And where would you most likely pull the geniuses out of maybe some of these other ones where you say maybe they're not in the right position, right. To kind of yeah. Some of that. Yeah. So discernment is a really I mean, they're all important. But to discernment, what a time and a couple different things that I would look at is is there somebody or a group at the working competency that has discernment that can be a little bit of a stopgap.
00;51;48;24 - 00;52;16;03
Unknown
So a working competency again, as somebody that has some experience there, they do maybe not find joy, but they can do it if they have to. Okay. The the concern with that is that if they do it long term, they'll experience the same burnout as somebody that's got the frustration. again, when it comes to discernment, bringing somebody into that from another part of the organization that you trust with the actual information that we're talking about.
00;52;16;06 - 00;52;36;25
Unknown
the the hard part is these are these are kind of hardwired as to who we are. I've taken the assessment multiple times just to say, Will I ever be different? And I haven't been great. Same thing I know you've done it. And and we we stay with where we are so it becomes difficult. What I can say is, I don't think that anyone will use this as a de facto tool to say, bring this into the organization.
00;52;36;25 - 00;52;54;14
Unknown
Let's fire certain people. I mean, that's that that's not necessarily what we're trying to do, but what it does do is it puts that self-awareness. So if there is a time when somebody has the frustration, discernment, and they discern and they do something well, we can actually encourage them to say, you know what? I know that this is not something that you enjoy doing.
00;52;54;16 - 00;53;09;26
Unknown
this is something that is is not in your sweet spot. But again, you did it. And we really appreciate you did that for the group. But yeah. So not to go to another thing, but there's another great book called it would be great if you've ever read. And I think you have to partner this with who's the right people on the bus.
00;53;09;26 - 00;53;25;29
Unknown
And so there's some core philosophies out of there. And I think this isn't just one way. I mean, sometimes you do have to be honest. Yeah. Okay. I understand you say you just want to fire somebody, but that person may not be in the right seat as we keep talking about earlier. And that's like a tough thing to do sometimes.
00;53;26;06 - 00;53;44;23
Unknown
But you have to be honest sometimes on your on your team and your organization, like this is going to happen. I mean, this guy either needs to be moved or this just may not be the right person for my organization. And that's a tough discussion, but it's something you have to have those right people. I ask myself all the time, if I'm in the middle of the ocean, do I want the boat with me?
00;53;44;24 - 00;54;02;14
Unknown
It's not about their credentials, by the way. It's about who's going to help me get the land. Yeah. You know, at the end of the day, that's who I care about, you know? And you have to have those hard things about this, and I, I try to look at this and partner with those good to great constructs, because I really think those two are so complimentary of each other.
00;54;02;17 - 00;54;19;09
Unknown
And to me, that's how I feel like we've been successful. Because you do have to assess that, know you're missing to certain. You know what I mean? That that could be like, maybe I need to hire somebody, or maybe I don't have the right people on this mix. Have you ever used to people analyzer Voss, or that? Have you ever looked at a.
00;54;19;11 - 00;54;42;23
Unknown
Yes. I mean, it pretty subjective, like right? Getting minuses is like in the I like your analogy of the middle of the ocean. It gets you to the truth, right? You know, not rational. It's true. You know, that's what you got to get, right. One thing I'm I'm excited about that. With reference to working genius and bringing someone on the team at a lot of clients that have used this in their interview process, where they're hiring someone and them, that assessment.
00;54;42;25 - 00;54;58;15
Unknown
And at first I thought, you know, how is that going to come across? Are people going to say, no, I don't want to do this. And in every situation they welcome it because ultimately they want to make the right decision that they're going to the right team to. And so there's been a lot of decisions made about bringing someone in that that has that.
00;54;58;15 - 00;55;22;19
Unknown
So great points there for sure. And this this is really the was the name of the book again good to great. Oh good to great okay. Yeah. yeah Jim Collins yeah. so this is always a touchy one about having the right people on the, you know, on the bus. Right. because I think that particularly now, we try to preserve everyone, you know, we want to keep everybody whole.
00;55;22;20 - 00;55;40;13
Unknown
We want to make it about performance and not, you know, personal and that type of thing. And I think that one of the opportunities that we have as leaders is to have that conversation early and often, because I think what happens is we don't have the conversation early and often, and we get to a point of frustration. Right?
00;55;40;18 - 00;56;03;06
Unknown
And now it's it's it's just a trigger, right? You know, we're just we're, you know, fire ready aim type of thing. Right. and so if we are, if we are starting early and often, maybe we can migrate that person off the bus, right? Literally out of the company. Right. Hey, this is this is not working out, but I'm here for you.
00;56;03;12 - 00;56;21;24
Unknown
I'll help you find that spot that that works better. And if we do that, I think we can preserve the person and the performance all at the same time. Very well. So, yeah, you know, I listen to our community podcast. I get a really cool exercise every day. They have a story where everybody's maybe aspiring to get fired or whatever she did or did.
00;56;21;24 - 00;56;45;11
Unknown
You just came into a boss and said this, right. This is I, ended up being pushed out because she got used to the wrong seat, her natural skills, but she did the work of self-awareness, and she knew how she was wired until in the script, you know? So that's a great point. But it really does get to true when I am on my water and it might fit for the company or not.
00;56;45;13 - 00;57;02;08
Unknown
Right? Yeah. Well, yeah, because again, we talked a little bit about Sweet Spot in the title. When you're in your sweet spot or working, you're working genius. I was doing, you know, one talk and there toward the end, the guy said something that was just fabulous. And I said, I'm going to have to reuse this. He said, I don't know why they call this working genius, because you're working into your genius.
00;57;02;08 - 00;57;17;10
Unknown
It doesn't feel like work. And that's really a neat thing when you share that with me, it's like a light bulb came off because again, when we're in our genius, we can do this all day long. And so when people think about burnout, a lot of times they'll come home and they'll be thinking, well, I'm burned out because I'm working too many hours.
00;57;17;12 - 00;57;33;27
Unknown
Well, I love to play golf. I was playing golf all week. I'm not going to be burned out doing that. Maybe frustrated it for a few shots. But again, when we're doing things that we enjoy. Well, yes. Correct. See me play. But but still it's, it's all about where we find our joy fulfillment. Yeah. That's good, I like that.
00;57;34;03 - 00;57;53;04
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. So good. So what I love to do, I know we have just one thing we want to touch on. I want to make sure we honor everyone's time and have enough time to to kind of talk about any further Q&A or genius of meetings. And so this is this is one of those things. And thinking about these different types of meetings, which geniuses are there.
00;57;53;04 - 00;58;11;04
Unknown
And so what I've seen companies do that really, really is helpful is when they're having an annual or let's say, a quarterly offsite meeting. That's typically not the meeting where we need the genius of enablement or tenacity or even galvanizing. This is really that ideation. And so they called it out and they say, hey, this is a meeting, okay?
00;58;11;11 - 00;58;29;29
Unknown
And this meeting doesn't mean that others that aren't we can't go. But it's led by that I and they make sure to kind of keep it back going to that same area, monthly solution to, let's say a, let's say a strategic meeting that you might have monthly. Now we typically get a little bit of discernment into there, because we're in a frame where we want to see some discernment.
00;58;29;29 - 00;58;48;14
Unknown
Still more of the ideation, but we're bringing in some discernment when we get to the tactical or weekly staff meetings. Now we're more discernment, and then we kind of get down into the enablement and or tenacity. And of course, if we do any daily stand ups or task oriented meetings again, that that genius again gets into more of that implementation, the ease.
00;58;48;14 - 00;59;04;29
Unknown
And that's what I see a lot of companies do. And think about this with reference to the altitude, is they try to have a meeting and people are going all over the place. And what the tendency is, is that if we have a genius, we're going to tend to go toward that genius unless we kind of call it out.
00;59;05;02 - 00;59;20;04
Unknown
And so what I mean by that is I'm a person, so I'm going to be up at 30,000ft if I'm in a, in a meeting where we're talking tactics, I'm always going to try to bring that plane right back up there. And then somebody else that might be in a, in a discernment is going to, to, to bring it to the discerning face.
00;59;20;05 - 00;59;38;26
Unknown
I think of this plane going up and down and up and down. And before long we're all motion set. that's what can happen in meetings. And I think they happen a lot. And so it's working. Genius. Just having that language to say this is a meeting or this is a meeting or this is a team meeting, really has helped a lot of organizations when it comes to meetings.
00;59;38;28 - 01;00;03;11
Unknown
I've seen more companies call letters for meetings and I am good, especially with the visionaries or CEO visionaries. You know, you have to get started. I think people get frustrated like we never getting done, but we start calling out the purpose of the meeting. We have people speak up. They're genius. You get traction, you start. Yeah, it is pretty cool.
01;00;03;11 - 01;00;27;09
Unknown
So back to the adoption thing. I, I just that it's kind of weird tonight I just promise. Yeah. Yeah. It's manufacturing shot this that we need. We need it for this. You know, they call people out. Yeah. You know, and I've also seen if there's organizations that need more of a virtual type meeting right there in their their name, that right after the name, they'll put, you know, or whatever.
01;00;27;09 - 01;00;52;00
Unknown
They're geniuses. So everybody can kind of see where their geniuses are when they're, where they're interacting virtually as well. And that can be super helpful. Going, yeah, come on. In closing comment I don't know if I'm here or not. This you know, before I start, for all of you, I yeah, we're starting to think like like developers keep people in their screens about where they like to code.
01;00;52;02 - 01;01;12;20
Unknown
Comment. Now I can do all the time for you know, so she is that a standard? Yes. Is there version control. All is yes. From that I can stuff that off says version string. Then you have the standards. So start to think about how do I keep people in their sweet spot to continue as far as is helping them.
01;01;12;23 - 01;01;36;10
Unknown
Right. It's it's a plus. And you know, it's definitely disruptive, but it's also an accelerator to people's good. Yeah. So yeah get throughput out. So yeah I think that's a great point. And you know I think you know Craig you mentioned sweet spot. And again what I think sweet spot I think the thing that I would love for all of us to take away is sweet spot has all to do with self-awareness, whether it's self-awareness for yourself, self-awareness for the team.
01;01;36;12 - 01;01;58;16
Unknown
And once we have that self-awareness and then this second component that's just as important is trust. And so thinking about, you know, we haven't talked much about trust, but I'll I'll kind of conclude on that. And the fact that once we know our working geniuses and so we know where we all fit in, we still have to have that element of trust so that we can work together to actually accomplish what we need to.
01;01;58;18 - 01;02;16;26
Unknown
And a lot of times in organizations, if I look at what's the biggest thing holding the team back, it is that lack of trust. And one of the things that, you know, we think about, there's two different really, there's two different types of trust. There's kind of what we call vulnerability based trust. And then there's predictive trust. Predictive trust is, hey, I know this individual.
01;02;16;29 - 01;02;36;12
Unknown
I know that they're technically savvy and they say what their they're going to do and I know they're going to accomplish it. Vulnerability based trust is really is someone really willing to be vulnerable okay. And vulnerable meaning they're going to admit when they make a mistake. they're going to say things like, hey, that's a great idea. tell me more about that.
01;02;36;14 - 01;02;54;29
Unknown
They're also going to say, hey, you know what? I made a mistake. And I'm sorry that that vulnerability based trust when I see organizations start to embrace that, that's where the, the organization really takes off. And then they can have things like productive conflict and other things to really come together to use their geniuses to really become better.
01;02;55;06 - 01;03;19;09
Unknown
But without trust. understanding geniuses can only go so far, but trust is a big part of it. And the umbrella around all that is that environment, psychological safety, where you talk about truth, you talk about when you are in control space, what frustration you get that you got to optimize those. Yeah. So just, last thing, next steps.
01;03;19;11 - 01;03;48;12
Unknown
individual working genius assessment. Anyone that's interested, they're $25 to go to working genius.com. And you can do the, assessment Myers-Briggs talked a little bit about that or 16 personalities. that's a free one. And that's a really good, personality based assessment. Not so much productivity, but personality. if you have a team and you're interested in actually dive deep diving into a working genius for a team where it includes individual and team based assessments.
01;03;48;14 - 01;04;18;24
Unknown
reach out to me. I can give you more information about that. matter of fact, with this, with this email here. if you're interested in working genius assessment, the first ten of you that reach out to me, I'll send you a free code and you guys can go ahead and do your individual assessment. So one thing to point out on the screen, we get to a lot of kids, teenagers and that's good if you have kids, have be 16 personalities because it's not the mom or dad telling what they should be or what they think they should be, it gets them to get outside and independent view.
01;04;18;26 - 01;04;40;04
Unknown
It helps with college choices, and I think a lot of kids, my daughter's friends, just with college choices, career choices that really get you thinking. So what self-awareness and self-awareness. You basis decisions. And I'll say the last thing, and this is one that I give to, anyone taking an assessment, I'm guessing most of you have probably taken a lot of different assessments, especially with working genius.
01;04;40;06 - 01;05;03;09
Unknown
just go into with an open mind. and really just going into it, being vulnerable to say, this is who I am. There's a lot of times where when I see a person that goes to working genius, and let's say it doesn't match exactly where they are, they were more going into it. The mindset of, this is where I'm supposed to be at work, and this is how I'm supposed to answer that question, rather than, this is really who I am, and this is what authentically brings me joy, fulfillment.
01;05;03;12 - 01;05;30;11
Unknown
So. Oh, Doug. Oh, yeah, this quick question, one thing that we've thrown around, they're giving them different, opinions in our organization about the assessment. do you recommend reading the book before taking your assessment or taking your assessment for reading the book? Yeah. So what I would say is this, I don't think the order matters as long as once you do those, then you kind of put it into place.
01;05;30;11 - 01;05;47;05
Unknown
What I wouldn't do is just take the assessment, not read the book, and then try to implement it, or vice versa. What I love about it is reading the book is kind of like a fable. You know, if you read a lot of luxury books, they're easy to read. it's kind of this fictional story, but it really drives those concepts home.
01;05;47;08 - 01;06;04;09
Unknown
most people, I would say, take the assessment first and then read the book only because I would hate to have it where you know more about it. And then you might look at this question and say, I think they're trying to lead me here. Here, here, here. So, but what I would ultimately say is both are good before you actually put it in into place for the organization.
01;06;04;09 - 01;06;27;05
Unknown
Having both of those is is definitely good. Question. Yeah, I mean it's affordable, right? So you can figure out a way to spend said if you're interested in implementing it for maybe a small team or something. Your team. Yes. Start with yourself and really start with a smaller group and learn from there. Yep, yep. There's absolutely start with yourself.
01;06;27;07 - 01;06;47;09
Unknown
Then kind of go to the smaller group. And then again if there's interest in you, really want to dive deep into it. what I do as a certified, implementers, I'll go in, run team maps and we can talk about it. But really, the magic comes is when you put it to work with the team and I think that's just getting that facilitator and making it work for the team.
01;06;47;11 - 01;07;09;00
Unknown
It makes sense because by the time it can. But again, I think there's other, other ways to start it. But yes, I love going in with the teams because what you can do is, first off, you want to make sure that it's not an event. Whatever we do, if we do the assessment, it's not an event that you do once and then kind of forget about once it becomes part of the fabric of your organization, once you come, it becomes part of your language, of how you work.
01;07;09;07 - 01;07;39;27
Unknown
And then you come back to say, are we actually using that? And then challenging one another? Great stuff and selling the idea. But let's say you love what you see and, you'd like to see, team facilitation. Any thoughts on how to sell that up into your leadership team? Yeah. usually the best thing is this. This assessment right here resonates extremely well with with owners and CEOs because it's again, based more on work, not so much on personality.
01;07;39;27 - 01;08;03;13
Unknown
So I think selling it to say, hey, this is something based on the art of getting work done. And when you talk to an owner or a CEO or some of the executive level, getting stuff done is what they're worried about more than what's your personality on disc or this or that. So helping the company to achieve that, to get more work done to to have employees that feel, our team members that feel empowered and excited to come to work, those are the big things that this can do.
01;08;03;13 - 01;08;24;10
Unknown
I think that's how you can sort of get our productivity optimization, retention, you know, just drops down to the bottom line problems, you know, so it's only $25. It's easy to sell. Yeah. And if you sell one you know like how many did it start out. It's 25 bucks I mean they see it. Yep. Start getting into it and expanding from there.
01;08;24;11 - 01;08;41;09
Unknown
Yeah. It's it's it's nothing in the grand scheme. Yeah for sure. And again and I think we talked a little bit about this but using it at home too. So you know having your your major take it and then have one of their family members taken and all of a sudden they realize the power of just their home team understanding that as well as respect to.