Patrick Lencioni: The Genius Way to Crush Team Burnout and Unlock Peak Productivity | Leadership | YAPClassic

Leadership expert Patrick Lencioni spent nearly 20 years feeling drained and frustrated at work, despite loving his job and the people around him. As the CEO of his own firm, he was constantly pulled into tasks that fell outside his natural strengths, with no clear understanding of why it was killing his productivity and energy. That frustration led him to create the Working Genius framework, transforming how leaders and entrepreneurs approach team building. In this episode, Patrick breaks down the six working geniuses to help you build teams where people find genuine fulfillment at work. In this episode, Hala and Patrick will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (01:18) The Origin Story of Working Genius (04:19) Finding Joy and Energy at Work (08:05) Defining the Six Working Geniuses (20:51) Applying Working Genius to Entrepreneurship (30:51) How to Apply Your Assessment Results (35:18) Doing Work You Don’t Enjoy (38:32) Working Genius Assessment vs. Personality Traits (50:18) The Three Stages of Teamwork (59:02) Using Working Genius for Better Hiring (01:03:56) Identifying and Fixing Team Genius Gaps (01:15:33) Tips for Running Better Meetings (01:22:35) Daily Habits for Personal Success Patrick Lencioni is a bestselling author, speaker, and founder of The Table Group, specializing in organizational health and leadership. He has spent over 25 years helping leaders build high-performing teams and improve workplace culture. Patrick is the author of multiple business classics, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Six Types of Working Genius. His work has impacted millions of leaders and entrepreneurs worldwide. Sponsored By: Huel - Get over $50 in savings with the Discovery Bundle from Huel. Use my exclusive code YAP15 for 15% off at huel.com/yap15. Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Quo - Run your business communications the smart way. Try Quo for free, plus get 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/profiting Experian - Manage and cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reduce your bills. Get started now with the Experian App and let your Big Financial Friend do the work for you. See experian.com for details. Intuit - Start paying bills the smart way, not the hard way. Learn more at QuickBooks.com/billpay AT&T Business - Power your small business with reliable connectivity from AT&T. Switch today at business.att.com. Fabric - Protect your family with term life insurance from Fabric by Gerber Life. Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com/profiting ZocDoc - Stop putting off those doctors’ appointments. Find and instantly book a doctor you love today at Zocdoc.com/PROFITING Blinkist - Turn the world’s best nonfiction books into quick 15-minute reads or listens. Grab your free trial plus an exclusive 30% discount at blinkist.com/profiting Resources Mentioned: Patrick’s Book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: bit.ly/-TFDOAT Patrick’s Book, Death by Meeting: bit.ly/PL-DBM Patrick’s Book, The 6 Types of Working Genius: bit.ly/T6TOWG Patrick's Book, The Ideal Team Player: bit.ly/PL-TITP Patricks’ Company: The Table Group: tablegroup.com Working Genius Assessment: workinggenius.com/profiting YAP E394 with Patrick Lencioni: Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Networking, Goal Setting, Time Management, Problem Solving, Decision Making, Leadership Skills, Strategic Planning

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hala Taha?

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• 0:45Hala Taha?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  The things you're best at are the things that actually give you joy and energy that fill you up. But if you have a job where you're called to do too many things you don't like, and you're not exercising your geniuses, that's misery.

• 1:21Hala Taha?

  Let's go over the six working geniuses. What are they?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  So the first genius, it's really important. It's called the genius of... The second one is after that comes, this is a really interesting one. Too many people get fired from organizations where they're good cultural fits, they're just in the wrong chair.

• 1:40Hala Taha?

  Are there certain working geniuses that make for better entrepreneurs than others?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:49Hala Taha?

  Yep, fam, I have to say, one of the most important things in life is to feel happy at work. We spend so much of our lives working, and if your job is constantly draining you, well, that's a real problem. As promised, we're replaying Patrick Lencioni's first episode today, and it's just as good the second time. Patrick is one of the most respected voices in organizational health and is a bestselling author who's helped millions of leaders build stronger teams. In this episode, we break down the six types of working genius, how they show up in your career, and why you might be burning out doing work that was never meant for you. Trust me, you're going to learn a lot from this one. Here's my conversation with Patrick Lencioni.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Patrick, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  It's great to be here. This will be fun.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  I am so excited. So you are a legend in the management space. You've been writing, speaking, and consulting on organizational health and team effectiveness for 25 years now with the Table Group. And you're a founder, you're an entrepreneur, and even though you love your job, you love your industry, you've still been frustrated at times at work. And I can relate here because I'm the CEO and founder of a company that I love called Yap Media. I'm living my dream as a podcaster, selling sponsorships and running people's social media. But even me, it's like a roller coaster. Even in the same day, I might be finding joy, and then at the same time, I'm frustrated, right? Even in the same day. I know that I

• 3:16Speaker 02

  love my job, but it's still frustrating. So let's talk about you. Take us back to this time where you were frustrating as the CEO and founder of your organization. What were you feeling? And what were some of the insights that you gleaned from this experience?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Well, Hala, it only lasted for about 20 years. And I didn't understand it because I love, like, I love the people I worked with. I loved what I did. And I'd come to work excited. I didn't have the Sunday blues. I was like, I liked my work. But then I would get there, and then I'd be really happy in one moment, and then frustrated another. And, and this went on for a long time, and I never got it. And finally, one day, one of my colleagues said, what's going on with you when that happens? And I said, I don't know, but I want to figure it out. And so I sat there for the next four hours, God willing. I mean, it was amazing. I don't even quite remember what happened, but I was writing at a whiteboard. That's what I do. I like to come up with things. And I realized that there were six different kinds of, of work that needed to get done in our company. And

• 4:14Speaker 01

  I really loved two of them. And every day I came to work excited to do those. And then I'd get dragged into doing something else that I didn't really like. And people thought, well, you have to do that because you're the, the leader and the CEO. But as it turned out, I didn't. But I was constantly getting sucked into that. And that's when I came up with this model. But I wasn't trying to come up with the model. I was just trying to explain my own frustration. And then we, we had one of our consultants saw it and then he met with the CEO the next day and the CEO was complaining about something that was frustrated and he explained the model to him and the guy had tears in his eyes and he was like, oh wow, this is, this is my thing.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  And we realized there's something universally applicable here and we built a, a, an assessment in the next three months and, and released it and without a lot of fanfare or advertising, it took off. And, and there was something universal about that. So now we've had like a million people take this assessment. It's growing faster than anything I've ever done and we are hearing from people how it's changing their lives and allowing them to do what they, what they're meant to do, what God made them to do, rather than the things that they thought they were supposed to be doing that weren't good for them. So.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  That's the story. It was by accident. Most of the things I do are by accident, just being out in the field. And so that's what happened.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so Patrick's referring to the working genius assessment, right? So it's called working genius. So talk to us about everybody's God given talents and why you believe that people are more fulfilled and successful when they're leaning into their God given talents.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Well, and you know, it's interesting because I take all the assess, I've, over the years I've taken Myers-Briggs and DISC, I like them all, you know, we use them in our practice and consulting to CEOs and their teams. But there was never any that was really about what you did. Like they were kind of more personality or perspective and this is about like the actual tasks you like to do. And, and what it comes down to is joy and energy. What fills you with joy and energy? Sometimes we can get good at things we don't actually like. And I kind of did that in my life because when you, when you need to achieve, whether you do that because of wounds or because you really want to, you get good at things you don't like. But, but the things you're best at are the things that actually give you joy and energy that fill you up.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  The things that you can spend 12 hours doing in a day and go home and feel like what a great day, I feel energized. And then the other things that I don't like. I can do for three hours in a day and get really tired and really frustrated. So, so that's kind of what this is about. It's about how to identify the things that we were put here to enjoy. We still have to do things that we don't love sometimes, but if you have a job where you're called to do too many things you don't like and you're not exercising your geniuses, that's misery and I don't believe God put us here to, to be miserable in our work.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  How do you feel like the pandemic made all of this like more exacerbated? Like, how did it kind of make it worse in terms of us with our working geniuses and talents and having to work together as teams?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Well, I'm a believer in, um, so I love flexibility at work. I do love flexibility at work, but I think people are meant to be together. And yes, there are some jobs that you can do remotely sometimes and I love that people can stay home with their kids sometimes or work from the road and all those things. But the fact that we went all in on remote work, I think really deprived people of the range of, of interactions that they needed to build relationships and to derive the sense of fulfillment that they need from work. And there are certain places that are still operating as though that exists and, and morale and productivity have not recovered in those places. I think we are meant to spend a good portion of our working time together.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Now, that doesn't mean that there are some jobs that, that have to be remote. That's great. I have learned how to have productive Zoom calls and do things remotely. But there is still no complete substitute for doing what you love and doing it in a room with other people that you care about.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. I have a fully remote team and I think it's hard for some folks and especially in this day and age, like we've got to learn how to work together online. And a lot of things that you, that I took away from this assessment, I feel like I can implement even though I have a remote team. So like, I'm super excited about that.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And you know, there are healthier teams. That work remotely than teams that are together that are dysfunctional. So really becoming a functional team, which is what my career has been about is helping teams get more functional. That is more important than whether you're remote or not. And we learned how to do some really amazing things on Zoom like engage in healthy conflict. Like really have deep creative conversations. It's harder to do remotely.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  But it can be done. But all things being equal, I think that spending time in it with each other is does it is an advantage.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  It is.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  If you can make it work.

• 9:12Speaker 02

  It is. Okay, so like all good entrepreneurs, you had a problem yourself. You went about to solve that problem and then you decided you were going to scale it out and give your learnings to other people. So you put out this book called The Six Types of Working Genius and you have this working genius assessment. I took the assessment, so I can't wait to go over my results. But first I want to understand these six working geniuses. I want to understand more about them. Can you define what a working genius is exactly?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Right, and there's six of them. So there's six possibilities, but only two are what we call our own working genius. Like the ones where we get joy and energy. I like to say like if you're pouring coffee in a cup and it wear a Yeti mug and you screw the lid on tight, your working genius will hold that energy all day. You know, you're working. There's two others that are in the middle, which we would call your working competencies.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  And I know yours because I looked at your thing. And those are things that we we don't hate doing them. We can do them fairly well. They're like pouring coffee into a cup and putting a little plastic lid on it. It'll stay warm for a while and so we could do that. But then there's these two that are called our working frustrations, which is like pouring coffee into a cup that has a hole in the bottom. And our our energy and our joy are just drained by those. And so everybody, there's these six categories, which I'll explain in a second. And everyone has two that they love, two that are okay and two that they really struggle with. And if we don't know what those are. Then the best chance we have at enjoying our work and fulfilling our potential is kind of a crapshoot. It's like, and the first job I took out of college was the best job in America at

• 10:46Speaker 01

  the time, and it was totally wrong for me. And I did not understand why I struggled, why I wasn't happy, and why those two years went by like 10 years. And it was because I look back now and I realize I was doing exactly the things I wasn't meant to do.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  It's so interesting. When I was looking at my assessment, I felt, and we can, we'll go into this later, I actually felt like some of my competencies and frustrations, I used to be better at when I wasn't necessarily an entrepreneur with all of these responsibilities. So I actually felt like they changed over time.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Now, here's what we found. We think you're born with these.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  But I felt the same way you did, because I used to be really good at things that I would have preferred not to do, but in order to be successful, I had to make myself.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  So it wasn't until, and when we talk about these things, like we had a guy once come on, and one of the geniuses is called tenacity, which is the finishing of things. Okay? And that's neither your nor my genius. We like to start things, but the last stage of things and finishing things and grinding toward the end, isn't our favorite thing. And this guy said, hey, I'm a doctor, I went to med school. If I got through med school, this must be one of my geniuses, because I did really well. And we asked him one question, said, did you like it? Did you enjoy that? He goes, no, I hated it. I couldn't wait for it to be over. We said, yeah, there's a difference between succeeding at something, even if it drains you of your joy and energy. And right away, he goes, oh yeah, it's definitely not my genius. So sometimes people have to say, yeah, I did that. I did it because I had a goal in mind.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  I wanted to accomplish something, but it didn't really feed me.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  And I think the things that feed us, we're born with. I remember as a kid, my geniuses, I didn't get to exercise them, and it frustrated me, and I didn't even realize it until I became an adult and came up with this.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I feel like my assessment described me to a T. So before, I feel like we're teasing everybody. Let's go over this, the six working geniuses. What are they?

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Okay. So the first one, we're gonna start with our, our head up in the clouds. We're gonna go from the highest altitude.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Down to the most practical on the ground. So we're gonna go down, and it's kind of how work. The flow of work happens. So the first genius, you and I don't have this genius, but it's really important. It's called the genius of wonder and it happens at like 60,000 feet, head in the clouds. And this is a genius that most people don't even think of as a genius. In fact, they were probably told not to do it most of their life. Mm-hmm. And it's called the genius of wonder. And people with the genius of wonder ponder things. They can sit and think about things and ask questions without an answer. They're like, is there a better solution out there? Are our customers happy? Why are things like this? What's the point of all this? And it's where every new idea ultimately starts is

• 13:36Speaker 01

  somebody asks the question, why is it like this? It's just like this model came about because one of my colleagues who had wonder said, why are you like that, Pat? I'm curious as to why you get frustrated and then why you're happy. And somebody asks the question, my wife is a wonderer and she is constantly asking the big questions. And when you're young and you do this, your teachers tell you to stop and they're like, why aren't you on board and why are you still asking questions? This is a critical genius and most people that have it have never really been understood or rewarded for it. This is probably the most mysterious of them all. That's the first one. The second one is the person who comes along and this is you and I share this genius. And that's the genius of invention. And when somebody asks the question like, why are things like this?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  We go, I don't know, but I'm going to figure it out. And we get a whiteboard and a pen and no restrictions. And we love to come up with new ideas and solutions out of nothing. And what I thought is everybody liked that. And there are people that hate that. When I ask them to do that at work in my office, they're like, I hate that. I have none. That's their frustration. And that's one of the things we realize is that one man or woman's trash is another man or woman's treasure. The very things I love, other people are like, please don't make me ever do that. You know? So wonder starts it, the question. Invention comes up with that new idea. And those two are what's called ideation, the first two. After that comes what we call discernment. This is, this is a really interesting one.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Discernment is people that have the genius of instinct and intuition and gut feel. And they look at something, even something they don't know about. And they have this way of thinking that they can kind of identify the right thing. It's like those people that you ask for advice about everything. We have one in my office. Her name is Tracy. She has great discernment. And every, it's, people are constantly saying, well, ask Tracy. Should you refinance your house? Ask Tracy. Should we go to Europe on vacation this year? Well, ask Tracy what she thinks. My wife will say, I'll say, dude, does this look good for this thing I'm doing? She goes, ask Tracy. And Tracy said, when she was a little girl, all of her friends did that too. She just has this amazing gut feel about things that everybody trusts. And it's, it's pattern recognition. It's not linear thinking.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  It's kind of being able to look at something and go, yeah, that's the right answer. She's the editor of my books. She never studied that. When I write a chapter in a book and I send it to her, if she says, this is a great chap. I know it's true. And if she goes, this doesn't make any sense to me. I'm like, I'm gonna rewrite it, even if I disagree. So discernment is the third one. The next one after that is your other genius. It's called galvanizing. Galvanizing is people that get joy and energy out of getting up in front of people and inspiring them and encouraging them and exhorting them and rallying the troops. And, and some people love to do that. As it turns out, I don't. I can come on a podcast and talk about it once, but I'm not good at kind of keep pushing and keep people going.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  And that's what led to this model because every day I'd come to work and my staff would go, galvanize us. They didn't use those words. They were, galvanize us. And I was like, oh gosh, I'm so tired of this. And yet there's people like you. And there was a guy in my office who go, oh, I, I'll do that every day. And so I made him my chief galvanizing officer. I said, you're gonna do that? And he's like, well, do I really have the, the authority to do that? I said, no, no, no, it's a gift. It's a gift that you're good at. His job satisfaction went way up. So did mine and the productivity of our office changed overnight. So, so that galvanizing is really important. The next two are what we call implementation. And, and the next one is called enablement.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  I don't have this one, and neither do you, according to your report. It's a working frustration for us, and that means this, it's really important to understand this. Enablement, there are people who wake up in the morning and say, I just want people to ask me for help. Now, you and I love to give people advice and get them excited, but we don't necessarily want to help people on the terms that they need. If my wife says, I need your help, the first thing I do is like, whoa, wait, wait, what kind of help? And if it's the kind of help that I love to do, then I'm like, yes. But if she says, I just want you to do what I ask you to do, I actually kind of wilt, and I feel really guilty, like, I'm supposed to be a good person. But there are people in the world, and they are glue on teams. And you'll know people in your organization that are like this,

• 17:59Speaker 01

  who just love, they get joy and energy of just being asked to help. And they say, yes, they're the first to volunteer, whatever you need, I'll do it. Yep, I'm on board, let's get started. And we love them, we need them, but we don't all have that. And so enablement is the fifth genius. And the last one is tenacity. And that is, it's one thing to want to help, it's another thing to want to finish. People with tenacity love to make their numbers and drive closure and hit the goal. And in fact, they're not actually happy unless they're completing things. And I'm actually only happy if I'm starting things. And then I move on to the next thing before it's finished.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  So that's the sixth one. So it spells widget, which was a kind of an accident. And it goes from wonder to invention to discernment to galvanizing to enablement to tenacity. And those are the six types of working genius.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  So cool, and I really do feel like it really describes people accurately. Like, every time you're saying that, I'm like, oh, that fits Kate, that fits Jason. And like, you start to think, oh, like, she's got these two. So let's go on to my results.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Selfishly, so I was invention and galvanizing, which totally makes sense, because my whole life, I've been inventing things, starting businesses since I was four. I'm president of everything. Like, my whole life, started so many charity organizations and like, different companies, blog sites, you name it. Like, I'm just always have a team of 50 around me, no matter what I'm doing, even if I'm not paying people. It's crazy, I'm just really good at motivating people and thinking of new ideas, my whole life.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  It's your genius.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  It's it's me, and I feel like it's very entrepreneurial.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Uh, so I did want to ask you, are there certain working geniuses that are more entrepreneurial? Or make for better entrepreneurs than others?

• 19:59Speaker 01

  There are, well, because the interesting about entrepreneurship requires every genius. But the people that start things, the ones that that that get it going right away, that that that serial entrepreneur that really sparks the idea. If your type is perfect for that. Because but but now, without people with tenacity around you. You might, and and that's what you're what a genius of yours is surrounding yourself by people with people that do things well that you don't. Right? So entrepreneurship, you need people who finish things. You need people that come alongside and help. You need people that ask the questions. You need people that. But your thing is like at the heart of entrepreneurship. It's like, I have an idea and I'm going to get out there and I'm going to share it with people. And I'm going to ask people for their help.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  So I would say your type is about the tip of the spear on entrepreneurship in many ways. But you need to surround yourself by people that do the things that aren't your favorite. So like, so when you think about a startup company, for instance, let's say five people get together to start a company. If they're all your type, it's gonna fail.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Right? Because they're all gonna want to do the same kind of things. And then and the other and I've seen this in the Silicon Valley before because I've done a lot of work there in my I live in the Bay Area. And there's these companies that get together and everybody wants to be an entrepreneur and nobody wants to be the one to like, no, I want to just crank. I want to take inspiration from you and then deliver on that. And if you don't have that diversity on your team. It's not gonna work.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  It's like a band. If everybody wants to be the songwriter and the lead singer. It doesn't work and the drummer has a different thing and the keyboards do a different thing. And usually that corresponds to some working genius. So it's a really interesting thing how we all need them, but the tip of the spear in entrepreneurship is in IG is perfect.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I love that. I love hearing that I'm a good fit to be an entrepreneur because it's what I'm doing. So I have a working competencies, right? So uh, these are different than frustrations, different than my working genius. And these are things that I actually feel like I'm really good at, to be honest. So my working competencies were tenacity and discernment, which especially tenacity. Like I get my stuff done and I love getting stuff done. So I was curious to understand, like, why is it only two working geniuses? And what are we supposed to do with our competencies? Are we supposed to try to make them strengths? Are we supposed to just leave them alone? Like, how should we handle it?

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I love this question. Definitely don't try to, don't try to make them stronger than they, than they are. Because people do that too often. When Michael Jordan got out of college and he, he spent his first two years in the pros, he was really good at defense and dunking the ball and going to the hoop. And people said, well, should we then make him get to become a great shooter? And people said, no, no, no. Make him continue to work on his strengths. He will become a great shooter because he won't feel like that defines him. And he'll do that without pressing. So you're going to be good at those things. And the fact that those are your competencies is really important because you are not allergic to finishing things. And you're not allergic to evaluating things in discernment. But the thing is, if I made you do, finish things and you had no input into the innovation

• 23:14Speaker 01

  around it and getting people excited and your job was just to crank, you'd realize that that would exhaust you after a while.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Got it. That makes a lot of sense.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  So it's something that you don't mind doing, especially if it's in service of the idea you came up with and helping people rally around it. But to, to do that in a vacuum would be painful for you.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Hmm. That makes a lot, a lot of sense. Okay, so my working frustrations were enablement and wonder. The enablement part was so eye opening for me. Because as of now, I have a 60 person team, okay? And I'm still like hands on managing my sales and marketing team, but I'm also the CEO and founder of the company. So I'm like the CEO, CMO, sales leader of my company.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Now, I find that

• 24:01Speaker 02

  As of now, today, in 2024, I'm a different type of leader where like I just can't handhold anyone anymore. And anybody who's not a rock star, who's not moving as fast as me, I'm just like, all right, you're slowing me down. Let's, I'm pulling you in now because you're getting it and this person's off to the side. And it's like, I'm, but I wasn't always like that. I started with a team of interns and volunteers. My whole company started with 20 volunteers that worked for free for me. And I used to handhold everyone and teach everybody everything and be very, very patient. And now it's just a different, I just have different responsibility. I just can't be that person anymore. So it made

• 24:42Speaker 02

  me realize that I need to get some sort of middle manager between some of these employees. And like made me realize how valuable like my business partner Kate is, who is super patient. And I know if she took this assessment, she would have enablement.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I know the people in my, and that's the thing about this, this, this assessment is that 10 minutes after getting the results back, you go, I got it. It makes sense and you know what to do. We've seen companies like reorganize, and I don't just mean like the titles, but like reorganize how work gets done. They look at this and they go, oh my gosh, we're not even tapping into that genius of yours. And the people are like, I know if you let me do that more, I'd be so much happier. And you're, you're looking at your people going, they have enablement. That is allowing me to do what I do best. And I know that I have somebody else who's going to be helpful and listening and patient with everybody and all that. But if everybody had that, you wouldn't get things done either.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  And so it's, it's the, it really is, the word diversity in this is so critical. Now, the other genius that you, that's a frustration for you is wonder, which is like, if people just sit around and, and ask questions and ponder things and don't have a bias for getting something done, that's probably frustrating to you.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's actually like, I don't want to say, I was thinking through this and I was like, man, I hope I'm just not this like egotistical founder because I'm like, I think I have all these, with wonder, I'm just like, I know what to do. I don't need to wonder about it. I know how to push my business forward. I don't need to wonder about everything.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, or five minutes of wonder, that's enough. Here we go.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Well, I will tell you something. To go a little level deeper, which is a new book I'm working on something right now. And that is sometimes because of the way we're raised, um, we have this desire to achieve. I had this growing up and, and I was, I was actually really good at the things I was, I hated. The first job I got out of college was a job organized around the very things I liked least. But because I had this achievement mentality, it was like, then I am going to do it. And I've come to realize now that I have wounds that I didn't even know were wounds. I thought they were my superpowers. And you know, and you're young and you're like, I can power through anything. And that doesn't mean we're meant to.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  And so as you, as you understand your genius is more, it'll be nice for you to be able to go, I don't have to be good at that.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  You know, but for the longest time, when I was young, I was doing all the things I didn't necessarily like. And I said, see, I'm pretty good at this.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. And sometimes we have to to get the experiences.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and when, and then you're going to be a parent and you gotta, you gotta do everything. You know, I can't go, well, my kid's diapers need to be changed. I'm not a T. I don't finish things, so I guess I'm not going to do that. It's like, no, no, there are certain things in life where we, and in fact, even in any job, every CEO, every leader has to do all of them a little bit. But if they over index on the ones that drain them of energy and they don't give themselves the, the experience of spending a lot of time in their genius, um, it's really bad.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  It's really bad and burnout and, and really, I think a lot of addiction comes from that. A lot of really difficult things because we are meant to exercise the gifts we've been given.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, and entrepreneurs are more prone to burnout. It's like 25% of entrepreneurs or more have burnout, more prone to depression, addiction, to your point, anxiety, stress. So we do need to manage our energy levels, which is what this assessment is all about.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yes, and, and we need to not feel guilty about not loving every part of what we're supposed to do. One of the things on our assessment, a team of five people, like if you're having a little entrepreneurial organization, all five of them can take it and they can look at it and they're gonna go, "Oh, my gosh. You mean, you like that? Oh, you do like that. Would you do that instead of me? And I could take this off your plate." And, and literally, we, this is more of a productivity tool. We didn't design it that way. We thought it was just a personal, um, a personal understanding insight. But we've seen that when five people that work together, each understand one another's geniuses and frustrations and competencies, they adjust and everybody gets to do more of what they love, and the productivity and

• 29:00Speaker 01

  success goes through the roof. And that happens like in an hour. They look at this and go, "Holy Toledo, I know what we need to do."

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, let's talk about how people can take this assessment. So, Young Improfitters, I highly encourage you guys to check this out. It takes 10 to 15 minutes. You can go to youngimprofiting.co/work to take it. It's a 42-question survey. I literally did it in 10 minutes. You get your results right away. And like I said, it's eye-opening. Like, as soon as I read the report, I was like, "This sounds exactly like me, and I know exactly what I need to do." Can you talk to us about what people can use with their results? Like, how do people utilize their results typically?

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, first of all, because there's, if you, if anybody took math, I didn't remember how to do permutations and combinations. Because there's six geniuses, it means there's 15 pairings. Okay? And every pairing, like, your pairing is what's called the evangelistic innovator.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Like, you, you like to come up with new ideas and evangelize them. You have energy for those. And everyone has a two, a two-word descriptor. And these are the things people look at and go, "Oh, my gosh, that's exactly who I am." And what should you do with that? The first thing you should do is you should share it with the people you work with and the people you live with, because it's going to help them avoid what we call the fundamental attribution error. And the fundamental attributionary is when you do something that I find annoying, Hala, I will attribute to your character. I will do that. But if I do something that causes people to think I'm annoying, I'll attribute it to my environment. And this is where relationships break down. I need to go, oh, you're wired that way. You're constantly excited and, and, and exuberant about all these ideas, not because there's something

• 30:37Speaker 01

  wrong with you, because that's who you are. Whereas some people can go, gosh, that's so annoying. Well, we all do things that are wonderful and annoying, and it's because of how we're wired. And when we understand that about each other, we actually start to under... The prayer of St. Francis is to seek to understand more than to be understood. So we seek to understand one another. The other thing you should do is talk to your manager about it, or talk to your colleagues about it. We had a guy who called us and said he was going in for his performance review, and he knew it was gonna be bad. He had had a bad year. And the night before, he took his working genius, and he looked at the results, and he was like, oh, wow. He walked into the room, he handed it to his boss and his boss's boss, I think they're both there, and said, would you guys look at this before we go over this? And they looked at it, and they were like, oh, my

• 31:19Speaker 01

  gosh, you're totally in the wrong job. And, and he goes, yeah, I think so, too. And they're like, you know, we have another job that you'd be great at. And, and he said, I spent $25 on this darn assessment, showed it to my boss, and I got promoted instead of fired. Oh, my God. Too many people get fired from organizations where they're good cultural fits, they're just in the wrong chair. Hmm. And, and it's so hard for managers to know, like, what's wrong with this person? We had a CEO, Hala, who was gonna fire his head of sales, this wonderful woman, who was a good cultural fit. And she had made her numbers, and her staff loved her, and the customers loved her. She was fantastic. But then the market changed, as they always

• 32:02Speaker 01

  do, and entrepreneurs know this better than anyone. And when the market changed, he said to her, hey, you know, we need a whole new sales strategy. And she was dumbfounded. She was stumped. And he kept going back to her, so did you come up with that? And she goes, no, I got, I got nothing. He goes, I was about to let her go. And we did the working genius and I realized she had no invention at all. She was all about implementation. She had enablement, her staff loved her, her customers loved her because she was always responsible. She was tenacity, so she made her numbers, delivered on what they said, but she didn't have invention. And so they borrowed a guy from marketing to come work with her, and in three hours, they came up with a new sales strategy. He said, "I almost fired one of my best people." And leaders do this

• 32:44Speaker 01

  all the time, because I couldn't understand that she's not great at everything, and that we can borrow skills from other people, or work across divisions, or change people's roles to fit their geniuses. So I think this could be such a good way to avoid losing good people, over-hiring when we have people in our organizations that aren't being fully tapped.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  And so we're finding that this is growing faster than anything, Hala, that I've ever done. And it's having a greater impact on organizations and people and their lives than anything we've ever worked on. So it's crazy.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  It's really, really cool. I love taking it. I'm gonna have my whole team take the assessment. So again, guys, if you guys want to take the assessment, go to youngandprofiting.co/work. I'll put the link in our show notes so you guys can get access to it. And so I want to talk about what we should do when we have to chew glass as entrepreneurs. So there's this famous quote from Seth Godin, Elon Musk, nobody knows who really came up with this. He said, "Running a startup is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss." And basically, what Elon and Seth meant is that as an entrepreneur, you want to work on all these new shiny things. A lot of us are inventors, but you end up having to work on the problems of your business.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  You have to chew glass, do the things you don't want to do. Like you said, entrepreneurs have to do this, and especially people young in their careers, which I think there's a lot of young people listening where they're having to chew glass. They can't pick and choose what they can work on yet, because they haven't built that foundation. So how can we like manage our energy levels and suck up and do our frustrations at work, our working frustrations?

• 34:30Speaker 01

  And we didn't go over these questions. So if anybody thinks we did, but this is a fantastic question, and I have an answer, a very specific one. So much of working genius is about alleviating guilt and judgment. So in other words, so when you have to chew glass, what's worse than having to chew glass is feeling like there's something wrong with you for not liking it. So when you have to do something and you go, oh crap, I have to go do a performance or enable, do enablement or do tenacity for us. Or enablement would be a good one. It's like, instead of saying like, what's wrong with me? I guess I'm a fraud or what's, I should like this. It's good to go, hey, this isn't the thing I love, but I know I have to do it.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go in there and do it and I'm not gonna feel bad about myself for not loving it. Like, like in our office here, my son works with me. He, he doesn't like tenacity. And so he'll go into an office and go, hey, I'm going into the T cave, you guys. I got three hours of tenacity work to do. I'm gonna roll up my sleeves and do it. I'm probably gonna be kinda grumpy and when I come out, I'm probably be exhausted. And, and it's, it's his way of saying, it's important. I'm gonna do it well, but I don't like it. And when you know that you're allowed to say that, it's like, yeah, I can do stuff that I don't like. But if you're, if people are like, what's wrong with you? You're supposed to like doing the accounting. You know, if you're an entrepreneur, doing the books is supposed to be, you're supposed to love every part of your job. But when you can go, no, I actually hate this, but it's necessary. I'm gonna go push through it.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  And at the end of it, and, and if you don't do it perfectly, you should go, yeah, I'm probably never gonna do it perfectly. Some people actually love this stuff. So I really think it's taking that guilt. So when we're chewing the glass, we can go, man, I can't wait till this is done so I can go back and do the stuff I love.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could also imagine that it will help us just become aware that like, hey, this is probably something I'm gonna procrastinate because I hate doing it. And let me put some boundaries on myself. Let me do like a Pomodoro technique and time myself to do it. Let me gamify this. Let me do something to get it done.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. And we don't need to do those things with the stuff we love.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  And in fact, when we do those things with the stuff we love, it's kind of a bummer because we're like, oh no, don't limit this. Let me just enjoy my work. So it's a great, I love the, what you said. It's like, find ways to get through it. Without making yourself feel like there's something wrong with you for not loving it.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Hmm. So how do personality traits interact with working geniuses? Like, how is it different than personality traits?

• 36:54Speaker 01

  This is a great question, and we're really working on this right now. Like I said, we like Myers-Briggs and StrengthsFinder and all those other things, you know? StrengthsFinder is interesting, there's so many of them, it's hard to remember. But, but your personality is the noun, is what you bring. So like, and like, we use Myers-Briggs a lot. My Myers-Briggs type doesn't say what I like to do. It says what my preferences are about how I think and how I, how I just approach the world. Working genius is what you do, it's the verb that goes with the noun. And what's interesting is like, I know people that have my same Myers-Briggs type, my same personality.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Like, we're extroverted and we're idealists and we're, and we like to keep our options open. But they have a completely different working genius. They, they take that personality and then they actually get crap done and, and they like details around that. Whereas I am an ENFP, but I like to invent and discern things. And so the, what we've realized is so often we look at a person's personality type and we think that tells us what kind of job they should have.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  And, and it doesn't, not at all. It tells you kind of what generally motivates them in life, but not like what that translates to in terms of the role and what you do every day.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Because when we used to use Myers-Briggs, we were like, so should I be in marketing if I'm an ENFP? And we're like, well, first of all, what do you mean by being in marketing? Secondly, what do you love to do?

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  And so it's very different and the combination of the two is great, but the thing that's really lacking out there is people don't know the tasks that they love.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, like we said, I'm an evangelistic innovator. What are you and what are some of the common pairings out there that people should be aware of?

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm an, I'm an ID, which means I like innovating and discerning, which means I'm what's called a discriminating ideator, which means discriminating means this. Like, when I write, I'm, I'm an author, I've written a lot of books. My first draft is usually pretty good. Because while I'm innovating, while I'm writing, I'm actually editing myself too. Because I'm, I'm kind of like, that doesn't make sense, that doesn't make sense. So, so I don't, I don't, like, like, I have some, I have so many good friends that are your type, right? And I love working with them. They have a hundred ideas. They're, they're constantly come up with them. And they'll check in with me and go, hey, can you discern this for me? And then, and the discernment part, what you have in your, in your competency, is what says, hey, those are the three that you should pursue.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Those other seven are okay, or this, these two wouldn't work. And it's like, so, and, and to, to check in with a discerner, and go, check me on this, does this sound right? And they'll go, those are the three that you should pursue with, with abandon. So I, I am pretty good at figuring things out quickly. But what I don't do is, I don't do what you do, which is stick with evangelizing it. I need people around me that love to do that. And when they'll look at my idea and they'll go, that's a great idea. I'm gonna go out and tell the world about it. I'm like, thank you. And, and I'm gonna tell them again, and again, and again, because they really, so, um, so I'm what's called the, the, um, discriminating ideator, which is more about the judgment than the action. If that makes sense.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Interesting. And what are some of the other pairings that, that you have, uh, in this assessment?

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Well, like, if you're a WI, which my wife is, and then some close friends of mine are, which are the first two, which is all ideator. They're called the, um, creative dreamer. And they're just like, you know what'd be cool? I have this idea. And you're like, yeah, but we, we gotta go tell the world about this. They're like, oh, I don't know. And they change their mind a lot. And then they, they just love to stay up there at 60,000 feet. Where you're, you're, you're galvanizing as closer to landing the plane, right? And then on the other end of the scale, there's the E and the T that are the implementers. And that's the loyal finisher. The ET is the loyal finisher. They love other people to set the direction, other people to get things organized. And then they're like, I will do what you asked me to do and I will, I won't stop until it's done.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  And let me tell you, I love WIs and I loved ETs. But in the same meeting, it can be really frustrating. Because if I'm having a brainstorming meeting, my, the WI is so happy. They're like, yeah, let's, and the ET is like, uh, I got work to do. Can we just get through this? Or you're brainstorming and they're like, well, that'll never work because the budget doesn't. And you're like, no, no, no, you don't have to implement it yet. Or if you go to an implementation meeting and the WI is there and you're like, the day before the launch and the people are like, okay, this is what we need to get done. And the WI says, hey, I have an idea. Maybe we should, and you're like, no, no, no, this is not the time for new ideas. We have to actually do this. So one of the things we say is, when you're in a meeting, identify what kind of conversation you're having.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  This isn't a GT meeting, which is we're going to get stuff done. Or this is a WD meeting where we're going to actually just kind of throw things against the wall and evaluate them. So that people can go, oh, okay, I'm not very good at this. So I'll, I'll sit back and be patient. Otherwise, people come to meetings and the ET wants to drive things to closure. The WI wants to brainstorm. And everybody's kind of pissed off because we didn't really know what kind of discussion we were having. And they were just bringing their best selves to the table. Does that make sense?

• 42:15Speaker 02

  Totally makes sense. And I love that. I love the fact that this assessment allows you to know more about your coworkers. So you can kind of be proactive and be like, okay, I've got two people that are going to be opposites in this meeting. And I don't want to just spiral out of control. So let me just set some boundaries before we even get started.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  And then, and you can also, you know what I love about this, Hala? Is that you can also have conversations that seemed like dangerous or even offensive before. And somebody will go, like you're in a meeting and somebody will go, you know, I, I wonder if we should rethink this. And somebody go, that's your W, huh? And they're go, without, that's not a criticism. It's like, oh, this is your W coming out. And they're like, yeah, and they go, you know, I don't think that we're in a W place right now. I think we should do that another time. And it's not offensive. They're like, oh, oh, okay. We're actually meeting them where they're at and saying, and there's another meeting where you'll turn to somebody and go, hey, we need your W. Are we in the wrong, are we doing the right thing? So it's so great to be able to have those conversations. Or, or sometimes somebody being too E.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  And they're too much trying to please people. And you're like, hey, you're managing this person. They're not meeting their numbers. They, we've had a problem. You're, you're really patient, but maybe you're being too accommodating.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  And that's probably your enablement.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  And so rather than saying there's something wrong with you. It's like you're, you're naturally inclined to this. We usually love that, but maybe it's not appropriate here. And people receive that really well. They're like, hey, you're just recognizing me for who I am.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could imagine that that would lead to a lot more employee satisfaction and retention, people just being happier at work.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And if, and usually in an organization, there's a place for everybody if you know what they are. And if you have a small organization and, and, and there's only a few people there. You're an entrepreneur and somebody's geniuses don't line up with what you need. Instead of rejecting them and making them feel like a bad person. What you say is, hey, you know, you really should use these skills. And, and we don't have a role for you here to do that.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  But you're meant to use them. So we're not saying you're not a good person. We're just going to help you find a place where you can be who you are. As opposed to trying to justify it by saying, well, you didn't deliver.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Like there's something wrong with you. I mean, I will tell you, Hala, that first job I had for two years, which was right out of college. And it was the number one job in America. Somebody wrote a book that year, the best places to work in America for college grads. And this was listed as number one. And I got the job, I don't know how. And it was all wrong for me. Well, I didn't know that. I just thought I failed.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  And, and 35 years later, I'm figuring all this stuff out. And I'm like, oh my, I didn't fail. I just took the wrong job.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  And probably had, had they known what my working, it's funny. Do you, I don't know if you know who Meg Whitman is, but she's the-

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Of course, I worked at Hewlett Packard for five years.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Well, I worked with Meg in my first job at Bain and Company, right? And I, I really appreciated her because she pulled me aside after two years at Bain. And she said, Pat, you would be a good partner here. And because that's kind of what I ended up doing. She goes, but this analyst job that we hired you for, this isn't for you. And I was like, no, it's not. I hate it. But she said, you'll be a good partner one day, but this kind of work right here. And, and the problem sometimes in companies is we make somebody prove themselves in one kind of work in order to get promoted into another kind of work when they were meant to just do that one. Like the best salesperson isn't necessarily the best sales manager.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  But Meg, even back then, said to me, you're going to do really well someday, but this kind of job right here is not good for you.

• 45:51Speaker 02

  And honestly, as I'm thinking about my employees, I can already tell like who's in the right job and who's not.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  I already know, I'm already like, oh, I need this, so and so and so to take the assessment. Cause I know in my gut that they're not in the right job because they're great people, very smart, but not doing rock star work.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  And when they get seen that way and you can say to them, hey, you're not, there's nothing wrong with you. We just have you in the wrong role and you're meant to work in the right role. That's so liberating.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  So something that helped me put this all together was really thinking about the working geniuses as the recipe to actually complete a project, right? And you have these three stages of work. So I'd love for you to explain how all of these sort of work together to actually complete a single project. Cause we need all of them to do so.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yes. So early stages in an organization, the W and the I are really at play. And, and, and, and the D two and the G a little bit, but, but you're, that's, that's the ideation phase. And you know, we talked to these guys at Nike years, a few years ago, and they talked about how they had people that do product ideas, you know, ideation. And so they come up with some idea, we can put gel in a shoe or, you know, whatever they come up with their ideas. And that's called ideation and that's early on. But then somebody needs to take that idea, the, the middle two are called activation. And the discernment and the galvanizing is evaluating whether the idea is good and, and working with the innovator to tweak it. And then when it's ready to go, galvanizing people and getting them. On board.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  And at Nike, they were talking about how they went from ideation, they skipped the the the middle stage for a while. And then there were people in implementation, the E and the T, that's the later stage of work where you're actually just getting it done. The the the product's been set, the the plans are there, now we just have to execute. And if you go straight from ideation to implementation, which is what they were doing, the people in ideation are like, why don't those people implement our ideas better? And the people in implementation are, why don't they send us better ideas? Because nobody has tweaked them and and and rallied people around what needed to be done. So the three stages go from ideation to activation to implementation.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  And and that's kind of how now, of course, you're doing a little bit of each at every step, it's never completely linear. But when you move out of the ideation phase, it's really important that people realize that and they focus their efforts. And there's some people that have a harder time with that. And so when you when you can talk to them about that and go, hey, listen, we have three weeks until this launches, we really have to stop going back and questioning everything. Or, hey, we're we're at the early phase here, and I know you want to implement things and you want a timeline, but we're not there yet. So come to the meeting, but sit on your hands if you have to while we're while we're brainstorming this, because we're not ready to start putting the detailed plans in place.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Is this something that we should actually like think through before our project? Like, who's going to be responsible for each of these three phases? How are we going to put this in a project plan? Like, is it something that or is it just like a natural thing that happens?

• 49:02Speaker 01

  I think it's the answer is somewhere in between and and probably closer to, yes, we should do what you said originally. But it's never going to be perfect that way. But I do think we should go like, hey, we're we're at the early stages of this. We have to have a WID meeting where we're going to get together, wonder, invent and discern. That's all we're going to do.

• 49:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  So you're probably best at leading that meeting. For the next week, why don't you realize that that's what you're going to help us do? And if there's other people that struggle with that, let's be aware of that. And then we get later, and it's interesting because you have I, which is an ideation, but you have G, which is an activation which leads to implementation.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  So like for you, this is an interesting thing, Hala. I say this a lot. I think that there are times when you're innovating, you're ideating, and you have to let people know that you're not galvanizing. Because you could probably go to people and go, "Oh, this would be a cool idea." And the implementers are like, "Okay, you want us to start right now?" And you've got to go, "No, no, no, no, no, I'm just ideating."

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is so true.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  So I often say to people, "I'm not G-ing right now, I'm I-ing."

• 50:09Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Because otherwise, they'll run out, they'll want to go out and implement something, and you're like, "Oh, no, I'm just throwing it against the wall for your discernment, rather than galvanizing you for your enablement." Does that make sense?

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Totally makes sense.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  And there's other times when you're like, "Okay, we should do this." And people are like, "Well, I'm not really sure, and oh, no, I'm not ideating right now. I'm galvanizing you, I need you to act." We've already discerned this. So it's just the language and knowing what stage of the conversation you're in, or the project you're in, or the work that you're in. And a lot of entrepreneurial companies are really comfortable with the ideation, and then they get frustrated when it comes to implementation. That's why even the most innovative, young company in the world needs enablement and tenacity.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  So I want to move on to more of like team effectiveness, productivity, talking about how we can roll this out to our whole organization. So let's start there. If we wanted to roll this out to our organization, what are the stages of actually doing that? Like, what should we think through?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  And we're doing that more and more now. And the first thing is, and the good news about this is it's so... The results are so, they resonate with people so quickly that there's not a lot of organizing you have to do. In other words, once a team, I think it's good to do it in teams, right? Okay. So, but we have organizations where everybody in the company does their working genius. And, and suddenly people are, and they know what they are, people remember what they are. And so people are going around the office going, hey, we, could you come to this meeting? Well, I'm not in your team. I know, but if you come to them, we really need some galvanizing. We don't have anybody on our team that does that. So it's like, first of all, just get as many people in your organization to know what they are. The language, the vocabulary, and the way people work together is going to change. Okay.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  But then do the team map. The team map is a piece of paper that shows you in all six geniuses where you have people with geniuses or frustrations. And so you can see the gaps. Okay. And right away, literally, you look at it, I had a team I worked with, Hala, and it was a technology company, but a big one. And, um, and they had nobody on the executive team with invention. None, nobody. And it was a technology company. Wow, that's terrible. And you know, they were, no, and they were frustrated. For 10 years, they hadn't had a new idea. They were usually, they were really extra, using their old products. And they were like, why can't we come up with a new product? Well, we looked at their type and it's because they were all about implementation. They're all like, well, we gotta make our numbers, we gotta have our, our tight schedule.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  And nobody there liked to sit back and ask questions and come up with new ideas, except for one guy on the team. And he was their lawyer. And, and they were like, why don't you take over new technology acquisition? He's like, well, I'm the chief legal counsel. And they're like, yeah, but you like it, don't you? And you're good at this? And he's like, I love it. I would love to do that. Two years later, he was not, no longer even in the legal department. He was running that part of their business. And so, so what, the, the answer to your question about how do you roll this out? Get people to do this and talk about it on their teams and they are going to solve problems just looking at it and going, well, hell, I could do that. I love that. And somebody else is gonna go, you love that? Why? I hate it. And they're like, well, because I'm this.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  And they're gonna go, well, let's change the way we're getting this done.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  So, so there's not a lot to do there, but there is this. We, we have a program around which we call certification, which is you can take one person in an organization and make them kind of an expert in this in two days. We have this training thing where you can do it online. It's virtual and in two days you can become an expert and then you can be the consultant to your organization to help them figure out how to do this.

• 53:46Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  So a lot, we've had like 3,000 people get certified already and, um, and like companies will say, we're sending three of our people through certification and they're going to teach everybody in the organization how to use this.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. I have to say whenever I roll, I'm definitely rolling this out to my organization because first of all, it's, it's so cost effective. It's $25 per, it's like not expensive and the amount of money that you'll save from productivity and not having to hire. And it's just a game changer and even just the activity itself, I feel is going to make my employees happy and feel like we care about them.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  I'm just going to roll it out as like an activity that we do across the company and then everybody has new language, which creates a deeper bond because everyone's talking about, are you, you know, are you an innovator? Are you, do you have tenacity? It's, it's something else to bond everybody.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  Together as well.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  And it's not a judgment thing because like there are some things that people go, I don't want to be put into a box. I don't want to be limited. They don't respond to this like that very much at all because it's about joy and energy and everybody wants to know, everybody wants to be able to share it to people. Hey, I really love doing this. So if you could let me do this more, I'd be really happy. They don't feel like they're being judged. It's really about revealing to other people what their favorite things are. And so it doesn't feel like any people get condemned. It feels like it's like, it's people feeling understood.

• 55:09Speaker 02

  The other thing that an idea, and this is not something I necessarily read. I literally just got this idea is that I want to implement it as part of the hiring process.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Oh, this is, we think that, I gotta tell you a story. So. You know, you're not really allowed to use in hiring, there's there's certain legal limitations about using assessments.

• 55:31Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, but but but it's not as bad as people think, but we actually had a lawyer come to our office, I worked with him and his team. I didn't know this. He was the guy that argued the case before the Texas Supreme Court to not let them use assessments in hiring because they thought it could be biased and all those other things. So he hated assessments. I did not know this. We did working genius with him and his team. At the end of two days, I found out that he was that guy. And he goes, I think this one works. Because he was actually giving people feedback. And and he goes, I can't believe how everybody is resonating with this. And I make it makes sense to me. And I'm actually now talking to them using the working genius.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Because it's related to work itself, it actually allows us to avoid hiring people who are going to be miserable, or hiring somebody and putting them in the wrong job. So we've actually, we're developing, it's almost done, an AI tool where you could type in a one paragraph job description. We want this person to do this, and this, and this, and this. And it'll spit back to you the most likely working geniuses that will help that find the person that would do that. And you know who loves it is employees who are getting hired and they're like, I don't want a job I'm gonna hate.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  So it's a great matchmaking tool. And we use it when we talk to people, you can't necessarily force people to, but a lot of staffing companies, they're gonna, they're talking, they're gonna get their candidates all to do it, there are staffing companies that do this now.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  And then when their clients call and say, hey, we need somebody to do this job, they look at their working genius and they go, hey, I think this job would be great for you. Or I think I have a person who would love this. And it's it's taking staffing and hiring from a crap shoot, where 50% of the time a person's like, I don't know why I took this job, to one where we're getting a lot better at knowing who's gonna succeed and who's not.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  I'm sort of disappointed because I was so excited that I was like, okay, I'm just gonna make this mandatory because like, for example, I'm looking for an EA and I need to make sure they can create.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Well.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  And I need to make sure they have tenacity. I need those two things.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Okay, so here's the thing.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  Innovation and tenacity.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  I love it. So, an EA is a perfect job because one EA is not the same as another. Hey, one CEO is not the same as another. Depends on what kind of company it is. But, so you're looking for an EA. What you can say to them is, hey, I would love for you to take this if you want to. It'll help you. It's a gift. Here's a gift for you to do this. Then I'm just gonna describe what I want. And if you think that it's a good match for you, then that's fantastic. We'll talk about that. But oftentimes, it's the candidate who will look at it and go, oh, no, please don't hire me for this job. This is gonna be miserable for me. Because you, for you, you're saying you want somebody with tenacity, and you said somebody who can create.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, in- invention and they've got to get stuff done.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Okay. So, that's called the methodical architect.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Okay. And, and that's very, like, if I had an administrative assistant, and we're hiring one for me right now.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  And, because I'm moving to a new place and we get, I need a new one. And I need a DT, which is discernment and tenacity. You know why? Because I will not give them detailed job descriptions. They're gonna figure out how to help me. Now, if I were a different personality as a CEO, I would tell somebody what to do. And I might want them to be an ET, which is to do whatever I tell you.

• 58:58Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  But I'm gonna say to them, could you figure out what you think I need? Because I don't know.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  And, and that's really different. And, and in your case, because of the work you do, you want somebody who's actually creative. Now, there's a lot of people that don't want an EA that has that.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  So, it's not so much about... Every job with that title needs the same thing. Frankly, one person's executive assistant is different than another's. One person's head of marketing is different. People talk about this, like, what would be a good head of marketing? And I'm like, I don't know. Do you want somebody who's lead generation and closes deals? Or do you want somebody that's coming up with a new brand strategy and understands the market from a strategic standpoint? Those are two different roles.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Do you know how often, and you know, the CEOs hire a head of marketing and they don't even know what their working geniuses are? And they say, well, they were good at marketing before. Yeah, but they did a totally different job.

• 59:44Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  So I think working genius. I don't know how to make it mandatory for a candidate, but usually you can say to the candidate, if you want to figure out what you are, I'll tell you what we want. And then you can convince me that you think you could do that.

• 59:58Speaker 02

  I love it. That's what I'll do. That's the approach that I'll take. So another thing with teams is that you say that there's sometimes genius gaps. Can you talk to us about some of the common genius gaps and how we can actually figure out if we have any gaps in our organization?

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, like if there's an organization that has no T, right? That like you look like there's five people working on something, and nobody has tenacity. They're like, how come we have these great ideas, we get motivated, and then nobody, they never seem to get implemented? Or, or you only have one T on your team and you're killing her, or you're killing him. Because every time you get to the last stage, we're going to that person going, okay, can you finish this? And the finishing stage often takes a long time, and we're crushing that person. I did an organization once where I looked and they had like 10 people start up, and one person on the team had tenacity. And I think her name was Laura. And I said, hey, Laura, I just met them for the first time. Do you ever think you're going to get crushed? And does everybody else think she might quit because we make her do too much? And they were like, oh, my gosh, how did you know?

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  And it's like, because she's the only one that finishes. And they're like, oh, no, we got to hire more finishers or actually rethink about how we do these things. Or, or if you're a company that has no W and I, you know, you might be the most organized, efficient company in the world, but nobody's actually saying, maybe we need a new product, or maybe our customers aren't happy. So, you know, you're not as, you're not identifying the opportunities. So any gap in the six things, if there's an egregious gap causes problems. If there's no enablement, I had an organization that I worked with that was, that served churches. So they're very kind, but nobody had enablement. And so they were like, how come nobody helps?

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Shouldn't we be helpers? We work with churches. It's like, oh, nobody has the genius of enablement. Nobody comes along and says, yeah, I'll volunteer to do that for you. And so any gap is going to show up. And usually teams look at the gap on the thing. And in five minutes, they're like, oh yeah, this is why that project failed. Or this is why we were good at this thing, but why we're not good at this thing. So it's pretty predictable. It's pretty self-explanatory.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  And you say that the best way to sort of identify these is by visualizing everything with a team map. So like, what's that process like?

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  So everybody takes their assessment on an account. And then they just say, print a team map. And it's just a piece of paper comes out and it says, wonder. And it shows the list of people that have it as a genius and the list of the people that have it as a frustration. And if there's none, then they all have it as a thing in the middle. It's very easy to see. And there's green and red. So you look at this thing and you go, oh my gosh, we have no green in discernment. Or we have a whole bunch of reds. In my organization, we had a whole bunch of reds in invention. And I was the only green. And so not only was I the only inventor, but the other people in my organization really hated having to come up with new ideas.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  And what that told us is two things is one, we can't be pulling me out of invention too much because there's nobody else that's going to fill that gap. And when we hired the next person, it would sure be nice if they had invention as a genius or at least certainly as a competency. So there was a little bit more of that in the atmosphere.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it reminds me of my organization so much. Like I started with a social agency, super innovative, always going viral. And then I launched my network. Kate's running my agency. She's more of enablement tenacity. And I'm always just like, we're using the same strategies that I did. Like, and then I'm like trying to figure out the new strategies and I'm getting mad at her because I'm like, you're not inventing. But now I realize like, that's not what she's good at. I need to get somebody else that's going to invent. So it's

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  How great is that to realize that? Cause what happens is then people will say things like, like, so I don't have in enablement and tenacity. And it's very easy for people to think that I, or for me to think about myself that I'm lazy. Now I work my ass off, but, but I'll go like, I guess I'm kinda lazy because I don't have enablement and tenacity. It's like, well, I'm just not an implementer, but I'll work really hard in the things that I do. Or a person that doesn't have invention, we can go, they're not very smart. And they're like, what do you mean? Like, well, gosh, I come up with these ideas. They, they, can't they come up with an idea? It's like, no, it's just a different genius. They're smart, but in the thing that they do. So it avoids judgmentalism.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Now, let me tell you, if a person is really lazy, you know, I have a book called The Ideal Team Player, and it's about humble, hungry, smart, the three values of a good team player. There are people that aren't hungry. They don't work hard. So there are people that are slackers and yeah, they deserve to be recognized as such, but that's not about their skillset. It's about maybe they're just not motivated. Maybe they never learned how to work hard. Maybe they don't really care that much. So I'm not trying to say that there aren't things that you should let somebody go from your organization for. There are.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  But if it's just that they're wired differently, man, that's a tragedy when we lose good people because they're just wired differently and we attribute it to something else.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  Totally. I totally agree. And it's really hard to hire people and it wastes a lot of time. So if you could just sort of plug people and switch roles and lateral moves, like that's going to save a lot of money and time.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really think in terms of productivity, if you have four people and you have them in roles and you didn't know why, and you figure out they're working genius and you make adjustments, you're going to save two hires. And there was a saying years ago, I remember when I first got out of school, and they said, if you have five engineers working on a project and it's not getting done, get rid of two of them. And, and what they meant is sometimes it's just that, you know, there's too many and that. But I actually think when you tap into, if you have five engineers working on a team and you actually help them understand their geniuses, they're going to get the work of nine done. Would you please let me know how that goes? I can't wait to hear what you guys learned. It is so fun to get stories back from people who have rebirthed an employee by helping them figure out their thing.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Or avoided. Hiring the wrong person or letting go of the wrong, I'd love to hear those stories. So which if you would share that with me, I would love that.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Of course, I'd love to tell you about it. I'm very excited. In terms of how you roll it out to an organization, is it a different process or are we still going and taking the assessment individually or are we like signing up our organization so we can see all the results? How does it work?

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  If you go on there, it'd be, it's very clear. I know that because people do it all the time. And I can also tell you, I don't know. As the inventor of this, I'm amazed at like, I'll be at some place and I'll say, hey, you should take the assessment. And then I'll go, I have to find somebody that can get you on to do that because I don't even know how to do it. But, but it's very simple. When you go on and everybody fills it out, it's just one person signs them all up and they put it in the same account.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  Got it. Okay. So youngandprofiting.co/work. You guys can take the assessment individually or you can sign up your organization. We'll make sure of it.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  And call us if you want. We're at tablegroup.com or and, and you can find us on the internet and you can call us and we'll walk you through it.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  Okay, perfect. Okay. So let's get into some more tactical stuff because I know you're really good about like having good meetings. We talked about Zoom, like just some productivity, team management type of stuff. So you've written in the past that it's a mistake to think that A-level talent doesn't need to be managed.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  So what do we need to know about how much to manage someone and especially maybe in the context of working geniuses?

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think, and that's, and I love that you asked in terms of working genius because I've been saying this for years, but working genius helps us understand how they might need to be managed because not everybody's the same. But one of the things I find in organizations is a lot of CEOs, one of the things they don't do is they don't manage their direct reports. And what they do is they say, well, I'm a CEO now and this person's on my leadership team, so I shouldn't have to manage them. They're an adult. Or they, they think that managing is micromanaging. And so they say, well, I don't want to micromanage them. I trust them. But the truth of the matter is every person in the world.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Benefits from management. And that's why being a CEO is so dang hard. Because it is unmanaged. And a board does not manage a CEO. Oftentimes, boards need to be kind of humored. And one of the hardest things about being the CEO of an organization. It's lonely and there really is no guidance. Now, you have to seek out advice. But there's nobody that says, I own this and I will give you direction and I will. The buck stops with you when you're the CEO. So there's something naked about that role. And that's why it's a very lonely and hard job. But when leaders say, and I fall into this category too. I don't like to manage people by objectives and details and all these things.

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Because I'm an ID, I hire people and I go, hey, um, I hired a guy recently. Who has ETs, all implementation. But I said to him, hey, why don't you just figure out what your job scope should be? And you tell me what success looks like and you tell me what your job should look like. And I just, I want you to figure it out on your own. And he was like mortified. Because that's my ideal job, by the way. And he's like, I want measurables. I want structure. I want expectations set for me. And I realized I can't manage him the way I would want to be managed. I have to manage him to make him the best that he can be. And too often CEOs abdicate responsibility. They don't delegate and they don't.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  I say at least be a good macro manager. Know what they're working on. Know if they're doing well. Check in with them. Provide what they need based on their working genius. And take responsibility for being their manager. And I don't care if you're running a $10 billion company and you're managing the CMO. Or if you're an entrepreneur and you have four employees. Everybody needs to be managed. It doesn't mean that there's a specific system for it. It doesn't mean you're checking in every day on their deliverables. It's less about efficiency and it's more about effectiveness. And so even if you don't necessarily like doing it. Do it and do it for them based on what they need.

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  Hmm. Yeah, even just like I said, like taking this assessment made me realize even though I have employees that haven't taken it, I know what they are now and how I need to manage them somehow. You know, it's just so clear. It's really clear.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  And you know what you're gonna do with them? You're naturally gonna go by their office and brainstorm and inspire them.

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  You'll do that. I don't have to tell you to do that. But what you might not do is go, okay, do you have enough information about whether you're succeeding or not?

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  Exactly. The management, the enablement stuff, like how can I be a better enablement?

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  It's chewing glass for me. I don't like it, but I have to do it.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  You know what's great, Hala? When you go to them and you go, hey, you know me, I'm in IG. By the way, I want you to see this. And they're gonna go, of course you are. That makes sense. So, but there's things you need that I don't do naturally. So just know though, I'm not saying that I don't want to do them. Just know that it's not easy for me. And if you come to me and say, hey, I need more clarity from you on something, I'm not gonna take that as a complaint. I'm gonna take that as a compliment that you know I'm not good at it and you need to provoke me to do it. And that'll give them permission to do it without going, um, Hala, are you gonna get more specific with us? And you're gonna go, not naturally I won't, but if you ask me to, I will. So they can coach you. Your employees will be your best management coaches when you give them the language and the permission to do that.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. So something that we agree upon is, uh, meetings don't necessarily, a toughest, successful meeting, it doesn't have to be short. Okay, I've heard that. And this is something that me and my business partner, Jason, disagree upon all the time, where he just wants to have short, short meetings. And I'm like, we had a short meeting, but like what was accomplished? Like, we don't know what to do. We need to talk about it. Like, it's not about just having short meetings. We need to know what to do and have clarity, right? So I'd love for you to just break down some of your best tips in terms of having good meetings. And also the fact that a lot of people tuning in right now are having Zoom meetings. Let's be honest.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Most of the meetings are Zoom. So let's, let's talk about that.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  And the hardest thing about Zoom meetings, Hala, is that First of all, and we learned this at the beginning of COVID when I just saw this movie called Hot Fuzz and it was based and they there's this where they go this shit just got real. You know, it's like a cop movie and that was from Bad Boys or something like that. But I remember when COVID started, when we were doing our third Zoom meeting and I finally provoked real conflict. I really and and we said, I think this shit just got real because too often on Zoom it's harder to go there because you're not in the same room. And after the meeting's over, you're not going to be able to recover and kind of walk over to the kitchen and talk to them about it. So sometimes we don't go deep and get messy during Zoom meetings the way we need to.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  So that's the thing I would say first of all is is when we're doing stuff on Zoom, we've got to get to that place where we're being fully human. And it's harder when it's two dimensional and there's not follow up and we don't have incidental time. So we need to do that. But the other thing is I would love to know what your partner's working genius is. Because the thing about a short meeting, it's efficient, but it's not necessarily effective. And and I'm I'm a believer in effectiveness over efficiency.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Okay, and so sometimes a meeting wanders, but it needed to and it sometimes it takes 45 minutes in a meeting before you finally realize, oh, my gosh, we were talking about the wrong thing.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  And when when a person's sitting in that meeting going, look, checking their watch and going, well, I have another meeting to go to and I have real work to do. And here's here's how to help a person understand that. There's four different kinds of meetings that a leadership team has to have and you and your partner have to have. There's four and you can't do them simultaneously. When we do them simultaneously, it doesn't work. I call that meeting stew where we toss out every ingredient in the cupboard into one pot and stir it up and it just tastes bad. And the four different kinds of meetings that need to be separated are, one is what I call a a check in, a daily check in. And that's like a five to 10 minute, like, what are you doing today? What are you doing today? Okay, great. That's great. Okay. Oh, I didn't know you were going to be doing that. Tell Fred I said hi. Oh, can you ask him about this thing?

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  Okay, I can take that off my list. Totally like administrative check in. Don't sit down just every day. This is the me saying to my wife, hey, who's picking the kids up from school? What time are you coming home? Here's I got this meeting today. Okay, great. The second meeting is called your weekly tactical, if you do it weekly. And this is the running the business meeting where you sit down and you go, okay, these are our goals. Here's how we're doing. Do we need to solve any near term problems? This, this one's green, this one's yellow, this one's red. Alan Mulally, who ran Ford, did it that way too. Green, yellow and red. We do that at our company too. Like, how are we doing? These are our five big things we're working on. How are they going? What do we need to do? It's, it's probably an hour, maybe 90 minutes. It's pretty tactical and it's focused on moving the ball forward.

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Okay. The problem is there's a third meeting and we usually combine it with the second meeting. And we call this the, the strategic topical meeting. This is like there's some big new initiative or idea or problem. And it's really interesting and it's really urgent. And so we try to talk about it in the same breath where we're going through our goals. And we never give it enough time. This is the meeting where we need to go into a room, clear out two hours and say, we have a competitive threat. Or we have this new product idea or this new partnership. Like you talked to me before about there's new partnerships you're developing. Don't have that during your regular weekly meeting. Have a separate meeting and all we're going to talk about is that partnership.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  And go in there, roll up your sleeves, grab some food, get a whiteboard and argue and debate and dream and do this. That's what people in business school call the, um, a case study. It's the most fun you can ever have. And yet we kill that fun by having, by having it in 10 minute increments in between going through our checklists. And it is, it robs our meetings. It makes the tactical meetings confusing. It makes the strategic meetings far too limited. And when the leaders of an organization do that, it's, it's, it, they really lose their way. And so, so when somebody says, let's have a short meeting, I say, yeah, make your tactic, make your daily check in short.

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  Hey, maybe make your weekly tactical fairly short, but never cut off a conversation that needs to be explored and worked through. And it's messy. And that's the biggest problem I see in organizations. They combine their strategic conversations and their tactical ones in the same meeting, and it's never good for anybody. The fourth kind of meeting is what I call, I think it's once a quarter you should probably do it, and maybe it takes two hours, maybe it takes a half a day. And that's just the quarterly check-in where you just get out of the office, you take a breath, and you say, is this working? Are we, what's, that's probably a WI meeting where you just step back and go, is there anything we're not seeing? What's going on in the market? Are we, how are we doing as a team behaviorally?

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  You just need to do that every once in a while. Those four kinds of meetings, most organizations try to have all four in one meeting, and they call it their weekly meeting, and that's why people hate meetings.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  I'm actually really proud of my company because we do all four.

• 1:17:27Speaker 01

  You do?

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  We do all four. So we call each other Scrappy Hustlers. That's our like name.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  And every morning, we do a Hustler Huddle. I do it with my executive team, I do it with my sales and marketing team, 15 minutes. What are we grateful for? What are we working on? Are there any blockers? How do you feel now? Like, that kind of a thing, every single morning. We do something called G90s, where we talk for 90 minutes every week, me and my executive team, about all of our problems, called G90. Then we do a monthly strategic meeting to talk about any strategies, and then we do a quarterly planning, which is the ideation stuff.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  So I feel like we're really on track here.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  You got it. That is crazy. And, and, and because you know that people have different contexts when they go into those meetings, and you can't do them all together. Good for you.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, no wonder we're doing so great. All right, Patrick.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Seriously, meetings are key.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, so I know that we're a bit about, at a time, and honestly, I had such a great conversation with you. I loved learning about The Working Genius. I loved understanding how this is going to impact our teams. I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests. And so you can kind of just think of this as not having to do with the topic necessarily, just whatever comes from your heart. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improfitters can do today to become more profiting tomorrow?

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Wow. So, I mean, I wanna give a thoughtful answer to that.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  You know, I think that one of the things that people don't do when they're young is get very clear about who they are and what their, what their personal values are. And we kind of, we're too opportunistic and kind of reacting to whatever's going on and actually sit down and write down like, this is the person I wanna be and this is what I wanna do. And, and it's so crazy. It's so simple. But, you know, they say if, if you don't know where you're going, all roads lead there, or no road is, is right. And so I just think people need to be a little clear about, yeah, this is what I'd kinda like to do and who I'd like to be. And then that contextualizes everything else. So, that's a very general thing, but it's so simple. And most people are like, yeah, I haven't really done that.

• 1:19:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. So actually step back and think about who you wanna be in the future, your future you. Like, what do you wanna grow into?

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  And what would you say is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond business?

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  Well, for me, it's, it's two things. It's healing. It's identifying the, the things that happened to me when I was young that I, I thought were my superpowers, but they were actually wounds, because I was working out of those. And then every day I pray. I wake up and I pray. And if I, and I, I literally, I'm Catholic Christian. I listen to the, some Bible readings and I pray. And that is all the difference between waking up and feeling like scattered and, and lost and feeling like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, everything's good.

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  What is, what, just to dig deep on, on that just a bit, is like, is that like sort of a gratitude practice that you have? Like, what do you feel like that does to set the foundation for, for your day? And how can people mimic that?

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's everything. It's interesting that you ask that. Cause, so I have, I have this app. It's called Amen. And, and, and it goes through the readings of the day. So which, which is like, seven minutes, eight minutes of the readings, Old Testament, maybe Psalms and the Gospel. And then it asks you a series of questions. And I think in those questions, it kind of gets at the four areas of prayer, which is like gratitude, like what you're grateful for. Petition, like what you want, what you need. Praise, which is like, God, you're good. I mean, this is great. And then sorrow. And like, like, hey, I wanna be better. And I'm sorry I did these things. I think it kind of touches on all four of those kinds of prayer. But I'd like to be more, more, gratitude is the thing I need to work on the most. I, I grew up, every time I accomplished something, I would go like, okay, what's next?

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  And I never felt safe just going, "Oh, that was wonderful. Thank you. That's great." So gratitude is a deficiency area for me. And I learned that from John Gordon. I don't know if you know who John Gordon is.

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  Yes, I had him on the show, yep.

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  Oh, he's like one of my favorite human beings, one of my good dear friend. And the gratitude thing is so critical, so.

• 1:21:41Speaker 02

  Michael Jervis came on the show and he taught me this morning ritual where he says before he even gets out of the covers, the first thing he does is, "What are three things I'm grateful for?"

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:21:51Speaker 02

  Before you get out of the covers. So now every morning before I even wake up, when I'm laying in my bed, before I get out of bed, I just say, "What am I grateful for?" And then I get up. And it just helps a little bit, you know, especially if I remember to do it. It's always a better day.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  That's great. I'll remember that. That's fantastic.

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  Patrick, where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  Well, my company is called The Table Group. So if you go to tablegroup.com, you can find us there. The Working Genius stuff is at workinggenius.com and they can get to that through your site. And that's, that's it. You know, there's one thing I have that I've started recently. I do a morning three-minute devotional for professionals who are followers of Jesus. But if you're not, if you're curious about Jesus, you can do it too, because I love everyone. But it's a three minutes. It's called The Three Minute Reset. Me and a guy named Kristofanik do it. And I've found that a lot of people really like it. And I just started doing this January 1st of this year and it's every weekday. And so, because a lot of people are like, "I don't know what I want to do around my faith." And it's like, "Well, here's three minutes.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Maybe you can just start with three minutes." And it's combining stuff that I do in the work world with faith. And so a lot of people really like that. It's grown, so.

• 1:23:02Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  It's called The Three Minute Reset.

• 1:23:04Speaker 02

  How do you join it?

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  You just go wherever podcasts are and type in The Three Minute Reset in my name.

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  Oh, it's a podcast that you can listen to every morning?

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's essentially a podcast with a daily three-minute thing.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  Oh, cool. We'll put the link in the show notes. Again, guys, if you want to take the Working Genius assessment, go to youngandprofiting.co/work. We'll put that link in the show notes. I can't wait to hear what you guys think about that assessment. If it helped you, let us know. Write us a review. Patrick, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  It's been a blast. Thank you, Hala.