Discover Your Working Genius with Patrick Lencioni

Mark Cole:

Hey. Welcome back, podcast family. I am excited to have you on the Maxwell Leadership Podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders who multiply value to others. I’m Mark Cole, CEO of Maxwell Leadership, and I’m going to say this right out of the gate. The way you think about your leadership strengths, your leadership abilities, is about to change. That’s because in today’s episode, I’m joined by John’s longtime friend. Pat, I’m going to go out on a limb and say my longtime friend, Patrick Lencioni.

Pat is… He’s one of the founders of The Table Group and he, in my opinion, is the pioneer of organizational health and this movement around organizational effectiveness. He’s the author of 12 books. Sold over seven million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages. As president of The Table Group, Pat spends his time speaking, writing, challenging, creating leadership teamwork, organizational health, and he does this with consulting, book and content that will shape your thinking. I can say personally that our team here at Maxwell Leadership is better because of Pat and the rest of our friends at The Table Group.

And so, Pat, you’ve been here before, but I am so glad to have you. Welcome back to the Maxwell Leadership Podcast.

Patrick Lencioni:

It is fun and an honor to be here. Talking to you and partnering with you guys is really a blast for us, so this is exciting. I love it.

Mark Cole:

It is. By the way, today I’m going to challenge all of our listeners. You need to go and you need to get a visual on this because I’m holding right now in front of our podcast viewers… I’m holding The Six Types Of Working Genius and this is a tool that absolutely impacted myself and our leadership team, and if you listen to this podcast, you know that we’re not only about having fun. We’re not only about adding value. But, we’re into challenging you.

And so, Pat, the last time you were on, you and your team had just finished creating this Working Genius Assessment. So, we had John Maxwell take the assessment. You walked us through the results and how powerful the assessment really is. John said often, “I’m better for taking that.” And, in just a minute, we’re going to tell our listeners how they can take it themselves. By the way, if anyone wants to go back and listen to the episode with Pat and John Maxwell, go to maxwellpodcast.com and we’ll have that in the show notes.

Now, before we go any further, let me make sure to remind you that you can go to maxwellpodcast.com/genius and you can download the bonus resource from today’s episode. But, let’s go. We’ve got Pat here and Pat, I’ve got to ask you first. You’ve written a lot of books. Over seven million pair of hands have held your books. What makes this book that goes along with the assessment…? What makes this book Working Genius so different for you?

Patrick Lencioni:

You know, this is the first time that we wrote the book after we put together the material, and we made this assessment because when we first came up with this idea accidentally, we thought, should we write a book about this? And, we were like, no. We want people to start using it before that. A book takes a while to write and to publish. We said, let’s develop an assessment and get it into people’s hands. And so, far more than quarter of a million people have taken this before we even wrote the book. So, we’re like, oh my gosh. So, this is a really interesting thing, that the ideas are actually out in the market and we’re writing the book afterward.

Now, it’s still fiction. Most of my books are fiction. This one’s a little more… It’s semi-autobiographical because of the way this came about, but… So, I think that’s what makes it a little different.

Mark Cole:

And so, we’re going to get into both the content and the assessment in just a minute, but let me pause right here, podcast listeners, because you’re so passionate about growing and bettering yourself and right now wherever you get books, wherever you buy books, bookstores… In just about two weeks, you’re going to be able to get for the first time ever… It’s just releasing. Pat’s new book. And, if you’re like me, whether it’s The Advantage, whether it’s The Things That CEOs Need to Work On To Become Better, you’ve been impacted by Pat’s book and Patrick Lencioni’s new book is ready for you to go get that.

But, Pat, let me get you to tell our listeners this concept. The Working Genius is all about this idea of finding what’s our best, how we can operate personally as well as with teams. So, tell us about what prompted you and your team to create this assessment and then now ultimately the book.

Patrick Lencioni:

You know, it really came from my own personal frustration. I’ve always been fascinated with jobs and why people like their jobs or don’t since I was a kid and… But, I was finding myself just a few years ago working in my own company with people I love, doing what I loved, generally, and I’d come to work excited and within an hour or so, I would find myself frustrated and somebody in my office said, “What’s going on with you? Why are you like that?.” And, I thought, “I don’t know. This doesn’t make any sense, but I want to figure it out.”

And so, it was by accident, just trying to solve my own problem and frustration at work that this model emerged and then I thought, maybe this isn’t just about me. And, we started talking to other people about it and we were like, oh, this is universal. And so, it all kind of went from there, so it… But, it came about because I was really trying to solve my own problem in that, how in the world can I still be frustrated in my work? And, that’s what led us to discover the six types of working genius.

Mark Cole:

Well, and you just touched on this, but I’ve heard you say if you want to be successful and fulfilled in your work, you’ve got to tap into your gifts, and then you go and you say, but that can’t happen if you don’t know what those gifts are. Can you kind of unpack that idea for our listeners? Why is it so important to identify our gifts?

Patrick Lencioni:

Yeah. You know, to explain that well, I think it’s important to say we realize that there’s six different activities that are involved in any kind of work. Right? Whether you’re launching a company or rolling out a project or getting things done, managing your household, planning a family vacation, any kind of work, running a church, involves six different activities and only two of them come naturally to any person, that they give you joy and energy. And, if you don’t know what those two things are, then you don’t know how to connect your work with what’s going to make you fulfilled and what’s going to give you joy and energy and make you more successful and more productive.

And so, the problem is there’s people in the world who are not fulfilled in their job and either they quit their job or they move to a new city or they go to another company and find themselves not really loving their work still and it’s because they didn’t realize the gifts that God gave them that He intends them to use. And, if we don’t know what those are, then we can’t steward the gifts He gave us. See, because of those six, only two are genius. We get joy and energy. We’re great at those. Two of them are our frustration. They drain us of joy and energy. We better know what those are. And, then two are in the middle where they don’t make us joyful and energetic but we can get by for a while.

Well, if we don’t have the self-knowledge of what those things are, becoming happy in our jobs is going to be a crapshoot at best. So, that’s kind of what it’s about, is figuring that out and understanding that God put us on this Earth to use the talents He gave us, so we better know what those talents are.

Mark Cole:

Podcast family, before we jump back into today’s content, let’s talk about time. I want you to think about the tasks that steal your time. You know, the things that keep you busy but aren’t necessarily the best use of your time or the most productive. Maybe it’s inbox management. Maybe it’s managing your calendar, like me. Maybe it’s processing payroll.

Now, what if I told you that delegating those tasks, saying no to those tasks, could help you reclaim an average of 15 hours every week? That would allow you to say yes to the things you love, the things you’re good at, the things you should be spending your time doing. Sound too good to be true? It’s not. All it takes is focusing on your strengths and delegating your weaknesses. That’s where our friends at Belay can help.

Belay has been helping busy people do just that with their U.S.-based virtual assistant, accounting, social media, and website staffing solutions for over a decade now. And, to help you get started, Belay is offering an exclusive VIP promotion to our Maxwell Leadership Podcast listeners. To claim this offer, just text Maxwell to 55123. That’s M-A-X-W-E-L-L to 55123. Get out of the administrative weeds and back to casting vision for your next big thing with Belay.

Obviously… I mean, 250,000 plus have taken this assessment. The reviews from people I’ve just talked to… I know your team knows a lot more, but the assessment and the passion and the people that have been impacted… Truly, it’s a great, insightful experience. In fact, team, you can count John Maxwell on that. John really was impacted by our conversation about this. Pat, what do the leaders get out of The Working Genius that they can’t find in other leadership assessments?

Patrick Lencioni:

Well, so, I am an assessment junkie. I’ve always loved them. Myers-Briggs, DISC. There’s a bunch of them. The thing that frustrated me was I was never quite sure how to apply those in the day to day activities of work. And, like, I’m an ENFP in the Myers-Briggs and I’m like, “Well, what does that say about the role I play in my company?.” And, it took a long time and we’d kind of guess at it. But, what this assessment does is it gives people immediate practical benefits. Literally, it takes 10 minutes to complete and within 10 minutes of reading the report like you have right there, you look at it and you go, “Oh, no wonder I love this part of my job and no wonder I’m not great at that part and no wonder when I have to do this I get frustrated.” And so, it’s immediate benefits. It’s practical and it’s relevant to the day to day activities of getting work done.

My wife and I, as husband and wife, we know what our Myers-Briggs type is but it was this tool that helped us understand how to improve our marriage even more because so much of work, even marriage, family life, whatever you’re doing, is about understanding the work you do. And so, my wife and I would get frustrated at each other because we both expected the other person to do things that they didn’t like and we realized that neither of us were good at them and it was time to stop blaming each other and actually find a better solution.

So, it’s… I think the difference is it’s immediate, it’s super-practical and it’s relevant to the day to day. We were able to reorganize my team and our roles and responsibilities within the first hour of learning our Working Genius, whereas we weren’t really able to do that using the other tools.

Mark Cole:

Well, and I’m going to go into team in just a minute because it was a profound aha for me and my team too. I’m not having a podcast today with a friend of ours. I’m talking to an incredible speaker, writer, thought leader, consultant of some of the world’s greatest companies. But, I’m talking to an individual that his work, this current work, is impacting us. But, Pat, before I go there, what is it that makes identifying our gifts so challenging and yet so necessary to personal effectiveness and team effectiveness?

Patrick Lencioni:

You know, I think one of the challenges is that we buy into some of the things that we learn in the world about what’s valuable. So, in other words, depending on our education or our upbringing or what’s going on in society, people say, “Well, these are the skills that are most important.” And so, we think, “Well, I’m supposed to be good at those.” And, those are preconceived notions that are not necessarily accurate and can make us feel guilty for being who we are.

So, like, I grew up thinking that one of the six types of working genius is tenacity and I grew up thinking tenacity was the most important thing. Finish everything. Be on time. Be neat and tidy. And, that’s kind of how school was and that’s kind of how my dad was and my first job out of college. And so, that made me think, well, I’m not good at those things so maybe I just… Maybe I’m just not very worthy. And, I realized, oh, no. You don’t have to be good at that. There’s other jobs and other situations in life. And so, that’s when I discovered… And, I can’t believe it. I was 54 years old when I discovered, oh, these are my geniuses and they’re valid. I felt guilty for years.

You know, we had a pastor write to us right after this came out and said he felt guilty about being a pastor for almost 20 years. He felt like he shouldn’t have been one and he wasn’t good at it and he was unworthy. And then, when he did The Working Genius, he said, “I don’t have W and I, which is wonder and invention.” So, writing a sermon or a homily was really hard for him and he said, “See, I’m a failure.” And, then when he figured out what gifts God gave him, he thought, “No, I’m a counselor and I’m good at running the organization. I can borrow wonder and invention from other people to help me with my sermons. I don’t have to be all things to all people.”

And so… So, I think one of the things that makes it hard is we have these preconceived notions that, well, we have to be good at everything or that there’s a few skills that if we’re not good at, we’re not worthy. The other thing though, Mark, is I think we also discount the things that we’re naturally good at because they come easy. My 16-year-old son, who’s a really deep thinker… I was helping him with some work in his class and he said, “Well, I wrote this poem for my class but it’s no good.” I said, “Why not?.” And, I read it. I think this is good. He goes, “Dad, I did it in 10 minutes. It was easy. It can’t possibly be good.” I said, “No, but that’s your gift.”

So, we tend to discount. Well, if it came easy for me, it must not be that important. Anything that’s important has to be a grind.

Mark Cole:

Wow.

Patrick Lencioni:

And so, these are the things that make it hard sometimes to recognize our geniuses.

Mark Cole:

Wow. This is so insightful. We teach all the time. John says everything worth doing, it’s worth doing well. Everything worthwhile is uphill. But, yet you’re sitting here saying, yeah, but there’s some things, your genius, that it makes the uphill climb of doing significant an enjoyable journey because we’re in our strengths as we climb.

Patrick Lencioni:

Yes. And, here’s the great news about this, and we didn’t know this when we came up with it. It was by accident. It was really an individual tool first.

Mark Cole:

Yeah.

Patrick Lencioni:

Like to understand yourself and what you should be doing. But, the beauty of it is, and this is why it’s all from God, is that we need each other.

Mark Cole:

Right.

Patrick Lencioni:

God did not give anyone enough skill, other than Christ himself, so that we could be… We could do everything. We need others. And so, like in my marriage, I have two geniuses of the six. My wife has two geniuses of the six. Even if they’re different, we’re lacking two and in fact ours have a little overlap so we’re lacking three. We need others.

And so, John is right. If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. That doesn’t mean I have to become great at the things I’m bad at.

Mark Cole:

Wow.

Patrick Lencioni:

It means I have to seek out and honor and celebrate those that are good at things that I’m not good at and then the one plus one equals five because then we come together and we can lean into the things we’re great at. Yes, we all have to do things we’re not great at sometimes. To expect us to be fantastic at those is unrealistic.

Mark Cole:

Okay. Okay. So… So, guys, I’ve had the privilege of taking this. We’ll talk about that perhaps in a minute. John’s taken it. The question is, podcast listeners, viewers, have you taken it? I know 250,000 and maybe it’s all of our podcast listeners, Pat, but I kind of think it’s not. So, I’m going to give you a way right now before I go into this next segment with Pat. I want to give all of you a chance to go take this assessment and make it make sense for you. It will set you free and give you awareness to what you’re good at and be comfortable with that, but what you’re not so good at and resource yourself with teammates and other things on the things that you’re not.

So, go to maxwellpodcast.com/genius and you will have right there a link and I want to show Pat’s team that the Maxwell podcast family is passionate about finding our genius. Go pick up the book. Go take the assessment.

Now, Pat, let’s dig into now the team aspect of this. So, someone’s taken The Working Genius assessment. They’ve got it. They understand it. How do leaders leverage the insights gained from this assessment?

Patrick Lencioni:

So, the thing is first of all you apply it… You read it about yourself and you go, okay. God made me this way. I’m going to embrace this. Boy, I’m really good at some things.

Mark Cole:

Yeah.

Patrick Lencioni:

And, just as much of a relief is I’m not good at some things and I’m going to let people know that. They probably already know. I get a huge sense of relief by just admitting that. So, it allows us to be vulnerable and humble. But, then… And, we put together a thing where a team can take this. They get a team map where they can see all the geniuses required to get work done and across their team where they have gaps. They might have some, it’s like, hey, nobody on our team is good at this or boy, we all have similar ones. That’s where… That’s where we all tend to focus, but we don’t do these other things.

So, the team map gives any group of people a real sense of what their collective strengths, weaknesses, are. And, right away they’re going to go, “Oh, no wonder we have conflict when we do that because none of us want to do it.” Or, “No wonder that one project went so well because it really fit our collective geniuses.” And so, the team map allows you to look at it and in one glance see what’s lacking and where you’re strong, where you’re weak, and you can reorganize and really restaff a project or your work to fit people’s geniuses.

In my own company, Mark, I am not a galvanizer. That’s one of the… You are. You are. Galvanizing is one of the six geniuses. It’s one of yours. It’s not one of mine. I was galvanizing every day that I came to work and it was crushing me and it was preventing me from doing the things I loved. Well, just when we invented this and everybody on my team took it, I looked at one of my guys, Cody, that you know, and he loves galvanizing. And, I said, “Hey, Cody. Do you want to be the chief galvanizing officer?.” He said, “Are you kidding? I would love that.”

Mark Cole:

My dream job.

Patrick Lencioni:

And, I would say, “I would love not being that.”

Mark Cole:

Yes.

Patrick Lencioni:

His.. Quality of our work went up. It was such a win-win. But, it wasn’t until we understood those things that we could do that. We’ve seen this happen with so many teams within minutes of taking it. They’re like, “Well, we should rethink the way we’re working.” It’s really a huge relief.

Mark Cole:

Okay. So, let me model that. So, this is not something that Pat and I had to rehearse because his team came down. It was a brilliant experience and Pat and I are working together to make this experience available to you around the world, to come together as a team and figure that out. I’m just whetting your appetite, podcast family, because we’re going to find a way to get this out there.

But, Pat, I can speak from firsthand experience. You come in. Your team comes in. Brilliant team, by the way. Feel good about your team and the guys that came over here to Atlanta to help us.

Patrick Lencioni:

Thank you.

Mark Cole:

We all tested. We all did our Working Genius and we all felt like geniuses walking into our leadership team to meet your team. And, we realized, Pat, that there was one person out of our 11 vision lead team. I have 11 people that helps me on the vision side of our lead team. There was one person in that team that had the genius of tenacity. Now, watch this. We’ve been scratching our head. Why are we finding every opportunity so good and so exciting but we look around and we don’t finish opportunities that we start?

And, Pat, it changed the behavior and the tone, the climate, of my leadership team meeting because now when we come up with a good idea, I look over at Chris and I say, “Chris, you think we can complete this? Do we have the team and the resources at your disposal or at our disposal to make sure that we have the ability to complete this opportunity if we start?.” And, slowing the team down that’s very opportunistic to answer the tenacity question with the only person that really has a genius out of 11 of tenacity has changed the way that we look at opportunity and the way that we work as a leadership team.

Patrick Lencioni:

Yeah. And, Chris has that genius and when he’s in that meeting, he’s feeling like, “Crap. I’m going to have to be the finisher of everything.”

Mark Cole:

Yes.

Patrick Lencioni:

And… And, what… Because, I worked with a team once that had one person with tenacity also. Tenacity, they like to get things done. They don’t get satisfaction unless things get finished whereas I get satisfaction from starting things and then moving on to the next thing. Well, we burn out those people and so to turn to him and say, “Chris, you tell us if we’re prepared to do this correctly and what we need to do,” gives him more influence and allows him to realize he’s not going to be relied on to do all the finishing work.

Mark Cole:

And, here’s what’s also interesting, Pat, that I’m sure you’re going to address in the book. But, this is what we found. Chris is… He’s not… He’s borderline introverted, so he would be an I on the Myers-Brigg. But, he’s borderline introverted which means that it’s not easy for him to assert his concern that we can’t tenaciously finish a project. But, now that we have the breaks, the speed bump, to realize there’s a genius in the room that needs to be consulted, Chris doesn’t feel awkward at getting his word in. We pause and allow him to fill the space to get his word in because his temperament is more to wait and let people come to him rather than him to insert himself.

Patrick Lencioni:

Right. You’re saying, “We know you have that genius. Infect us with that.” Because, he’s not going to want to… He… And, by the way, even if he were extroverted, if he’s the only one there, people are going to go, “Yeah, we don’t want to hear about implementation. We want to dream more.”

Mark Cole:

That’s right.

Patrick Lencioni:

So, you’re saying we’re going… Hey, let me tell you another story, Mark. I worked with an executive team of a… Of… I don’t know. It must be like a $20 billion company or something. And, it’s in the high tech arena and I… We… Right when The Working Genius came out, I was working with them. I said, “Hey, you guys. Take this assessment. Let’s see what it is.” I was pretty concerned that they were going to think, oh, we don’t need an assessment.

So, they fill it out. They look at their team map. This is a technology company that had been behind the market for 10 years. They had been largely relying on old products and the market would change. They were lagging. They were never that performing. Their board was disappointed in their results. So were they. They took the assessment and they realized that no one on the team… Nobody on the team had the genius of wonder, which is the first genius. Like, wonder is like sitting around and pondering, like what’s going on in the world. What’s going on in our market? I wonder how people feel about things.

They looked at this and they said, “Well, it’s… Now it’s obvious why we’re so far behind the market. We never sit and ponder what do our customers want. What’s going on in the future? What’s going on in the world? We all want to get things done.” So, they were on the opposite end of the scale. They were just executors and it was the CFO who said, “If we don’t hire somebody to wonder or start teaching ourselves how to do this or carving out time to wonder, we are never going to catch up in the market.” And, everybody on the team said, “That’s the problem.”

So, they weren’t even skeptical about the fact that they had identified their issue. But, then it got better. This is a technology company. Nobody on the team had the second genius, which is invention. A technology company where none of the executives had the genius of invention. Well, there was one and he was the lawyer. So, their legal counsel was an inventor by God gift, but nobody else on the team was and this was a team that had not innovated in years.

Well, you know what they did? They put the lawyer in charge of new technology acquisition and he was like, “You’re kidding. You’re going to let me do that?.” They go, “You’re the only inventive one here.” He was thrilled. So, a year later, I went back and looked at that company’s website. That guy’s not even the lawyer anymore. He’s full time on technology.

Mark Cole:

That’s fantastic.

Patrick Lencioni:

See, they took a guy who spent all these years going to law school and they said, “Forget about that. We need you in a different role.” He’s thrilled. The company is doing better. And, it was all because they realized they had a couple gaps and they could fill those just by tapping into the geniuses of the people on their team.

Mark Cole:

Your books, whether it’s The Advantage, whether it’s to show us that great teammates are hungry, humble or smart, just some of the handles you’ve given for us that are trying to lead companies… Your work precedes the incredible impact that we all have felt because of your work. It’s incredible.

Patrick Lencioni:

Well, thank you. That’s kind.

Mark Cole:

I think you’re on to something here that… Well, thank you, but thank you. I mean, I appreciate you appreciating me. But, I’m trying to appreciate you and the impact that you had.

Patrick Lencioni:

Well, thank you for thanking me for thanking you.

Mark Cole:

I think what you’re [inaudible 00:26:44]. I think what you’ve given us with Working Genius is truly genius, to overplay the word, because it not only helps us understand ourselves, it not only helps us understand the gifts of the people working in our room. It allows us to know where we’re coming up short and so often as a leader that I lead companies or working with some of the world’s greatest leaders and organizations, I realize they don’t know what they don’t know. It’s a colloquialism. That’s a statement.

Patrick Lencioni:

Yes.

Mark Cole:

But, this book, this assessment, this book, is actually going to do that. I want to remind our podcast listeners, our viewers, and then I’m going to come back with one more question, Pat. I want to remind you three things I want you to do in this podcast. One, I want you to get the book. It’s coming out in a couple of weeks and I want to get this book in your hands, not for you, although I want you to read it. I want you to get it for the people around you that you need to be unlocking, that you need to be unlocking the genius within them.

Pat, you may or may not know this. Our podcast listeners do. I wake up every single morning asking the question. How do I add value to people and inspire them to reach their potential? That was my purpose statement. The second greatest day in my life was discovering that. I knew that that’s what I was supposed to do. This book that I want you to go pick up will help you give insight to yourself. It’ll help you unlock the potential of others.

Number two, I want you to take this assessment. I want you to go to maxwellpodcast.com/genius and I want you to get this assessment, Know Your Genius, and begin to unlock the others. There’s one other thing that I’m super excited about. Watching John Maxwell and Patrick Lencioni on stage. I remember The First Catalyst, Pat, and then Willow Creek Leadership Summit, and I watched you and John share stages often in the same event.

We have an event coming up on October the seventh. It’s actually going to be live in Atlanta and it’s called Live to Lead. And, Pat, you and your team have adjusted your schedule, worked it out to where you’re going to come and in that setting, you’re going to talk about Working Genius. It’s on October the seventh and what we’re going to do is in our show notes, we’ll put in a website, l2latl, l2latl.com, and we’ll put that in the show notes and you can actually join us live. We have a little bit more space. We’ll make space for you. And, then also there’s a place on there to watch the event virtual and you’re going to get to access more of Pat and just… Than just this podcast.

Pat, I’d love to just kind of wrap up with maybe your Working Genius, maybe mine. Let’s individualize this. What is your Working Genius and how has that helped you grow personally in your work and in your leadership? And, then maybe you want to talk a little bit about mine to where all of our podcast listeners can finally figure me out.

Patrick Lencioni:

So, I’m an inventor discerner, I and D. That’s fairly up toward the front, so I like to come up with new ideas and then evaluate them. And, there’s a term for my combination. We have a term from all the different combinations and I’m what’s called the discriminating ideator. So, I like to come up with new ideas but I like them to be useful and practical. Okay. So, that’s what I’m good at. What I’m not good at is galvanizing, getting behind other things, and finishing. So, I’m not an implementer. I am an ideator and an activator, so to speak.

You have a very interesting type. You’re right in the middle and you are a… You have discernment, which is the gift of gut feel and intuition and integrative thinking, and galvanizing. So, you are what’s called the intuitive activator. So, let me tell you something about yourself. When you know in your gut that something is a good idea, you’re not looking for a thousand pages of data to confirm that. You’re like, “I think we know enough. Let’s get started.” You’re good at seeing the patterns and saying, “Okay, 80-20, this is a good idea. Trust me, you guys. I think we can launch this now.”

Whereas, some people, if they don’t have discernment, are going to want more data and more specifics and whereas you rely on that gut. And, that’s not… That’s not lazy. It’s… That’s the gift you have. So, you see a situation. Somebody can bring you an idea and you can go, “Whoa. That’s a great idea.” I will tell you Cody, who works for me who’s like my COO… Cody is a DG like you. When we presented this to him, he said, “This is going to be bigger than The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.” And, we said, “Really?.” And, he goes, “Yep. Let’s go. Let’s get started right now because this is going to be.” And, we trust that because he is an intuitive activator.

So, you are that guy right in the middle who takes… Who loves to work with visionaries and you evaluate whether their ideas are good and then you go, “Okay. Let’s translate this into action and get other people to get moving on this.” So, you’re the key part in the middle that connects all those things. Without those skills, many organizations have great ideas and they wonder why they never quite get implemented the way they think they should.

Mark Cole:

Well, I’m going to let you leave some closing thoughts in just a minute, but not only is Cody right, he is the right kind of genius because we have the same genius. But, I do think Cody is right, again, not because we are joined at the hip in how God created us. But, I think he’s right because we are on to something and I think we’re on to something because before the first book was ever released, Pat, you’ve got 250,000 people being impacted by this message, by this tool.

I think Cody was right also because the more we as a team… We get into this and we’ve done Five Dysfunctions. We’ve done… We try to do all of your stuff, like many other great well-run organizations. But, for us as we had this common language, because we teach that culture is common language that drives common beliefs that then ultimately drives behaviors, and that’s how we kind of work through culture related issues. And, what you’ve done with this assessment is you’ve given that common beliefs, you’ve given our… You’ve given common language and we all have a belief that we all have something unique to us that we can bring to the table and then that begins to drive the behaviors, again, specific of my leadership team.

And, I just want to thank you. I’m excited to see you at L2L in a couple of weeks. I can’t wait to get the first copy of the book in my hands. Thanks for letting my team have this assessment and the tools that it was. But, I’m excited about this message that you’ve got, this way that you are helping leadership teams understand each other. And so, before we sign off today, I wanted to just give you a last chance to just encourage us with this content.

Patrick Lencioni:

You know, I think that one of the things I want to say is this. Like, so, when we were brought into this world, God gave us gifts and imagine standing in line and He gives you a gift and it’s wrapped up. We’re meant to open those gifts and know what they are and it’s more important that we know what ours are than wondering about what everybody else got. And, I will tell you, of all the things I’ve ever done, this has had a greater impact on me understanding my wife, my children, my coworkers, my friends, in a way that allowed me to be fully me and to celebrate who they are.

And… And, you know, Saint Francis once said, “Seek to understand others before they understand you.” And, when you understand what people’s gifts and geniuses are, it’s so much easier to accept them, to draw out what they’re good at, and to help them feel good about who they are. So, it’s productivity for sure. It’s effectiveness at work. But, there’s something beautiful about being able to understand others and avoid unnecessary strife when really it’s all goodness and it’s all about leaning in to who we are and who God made us to be.

So, that’s what I would just say, is this has changed me more than anything else I’ve ever done, for sure, and I hope it changes many other people in that way too.

Mark Cole:

Well, it will and it has and it’s genius. I mean, it’s genius what you’ve done here. Hey, l2latl.com. You’ll hear Pat do this, do a talk about Working Genius and working together with Working Genius at our Live to Lead event. Pick up the book wherever you buy a book. Bring it to Atlanta. Let Pat sign it. I’m looking forward to that. And, then finally, go to maxwellpodcast.com/genius and find your working genius. Here’s why. I tell you this all the time, podcast family. The world needs leaders who will bring powerful positive change and that’s what we’re about. We want to bring powerful positive change and here’s why. Because, everyone deserves to be led well. We’ll see you next week.