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

Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business.

“Start your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/profitting.”

Quote is an AI-powered phone system that brings your calls, texts, and contexts together in one place. Try Quote for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to Quote.com/profitting. Indeed helps you attract, interview, and hire talent all in one place.

Get a $75 sponsor job credit to boost your job's visibility at indie.com/podcast. Experience is a financial app that negotiates your bills and cancels unwanted subscriptions. Get started with the experience app today.

As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngimprofitting.com/deals.

The things you're best at are the things that actually give you joy and energy that you feel you have. 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. Let's go over the six working geniuses, what are they?

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 their good cultural fits, they're just in the wrong chair.

Are there certain working geniuses that make for better entrepreneurs than others? Yes. Yeah, 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 Lenzione'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 it's a best-selling

author who's helped millions of leaders build stronger teams. In this episode, we break down the six types of working geniuses, 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 Lenzione. Patrick, welcome to Young Improveding Podcast. It's great to be here. This will be fun.

I am so excited. So you are a legend in the management space, even 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 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 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? Well, Hala, it only lasted for about 20 years.

And I didn't understand it, because I love the people I worked with, I love what I did. And I'd come to work excited, I didn't have this 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 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 set 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 work that needed to get done in our company. And 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 leader in 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. And I wasn't trying to come up with the model. I was just trying to explain my own frustration. And then we had one of our consultants saw it, and then he met with a 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 my thing." And we realized there's something universally applicable here.

And we built a, an assessment in the next three months and released it. Without a lot of fanfare or advertising, it took off. 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

So 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. 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?

Well, and you know, it's interesting because I take all the assessed. Over the years, I've taken Myers-Briggs and Disk. I like them all. You know, we use them in our practice and consulting to see Eos and their teams.

But there was never any of that was really about what you did.

They were kind of more personality or perspective. And this is about like the actual tasks you like to do. 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 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 the things you're best at are the things that actually give you joy. And energy that fill you up. 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 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. You're not exercising your geniuses. That's misery. And I don't believe God put us here to be miserable in our work. 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? Well, I'm a believer in, so I love flexibility at work. I do love flexibility work.

“And 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 interactions that they needed to build relationships and to derive the sense of fulfillment that they need for work.

There are certain places that are still operating as though that exists 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. Now, that doesn't mean that there are some jobs 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. 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. We've got to learn how to work together online and a lot of things 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.

Absolutely. And 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 as helping teams give more functional. That is more important than whether you're a motor 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. Yeah. But it can be done.

“But all things being equal, I think that spending time with each other, it is an advantage.”

It is. It is. If you can make it work. 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 these assessments, 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? Right. And there are six of them. So there are 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 where a yeti mug and you screwed 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

you're working competencies and I know yours because I looked at your thing. And those are things that we don't hate doing them, we can do them fairly well. And they're like pouring coffee into a cup and put a little plastic lid on it will 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 energy and our joy are just

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 it enjoying our work and fulfilling our potential is kind of a crap shoot, it's like, and the first job I took at a college was the best job in America at the time and it was totally wrong for me. I did not understand why 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 realized I was doing exactly the things I wasn't meant to do. It's so interesting when I was looking at my assessment, I felt and we can, we'll go on to 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.

Now here's what we found.

We think you're born with these, 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. Yeah. 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 to your med school, this must be one of my geniuses because I did really well." And we asked him one question that did you like it? Did you enjoy that? He goes, "No, I hated it. I couldn't wait for it to be over." He 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. I wanted to accomplish something, but it didn't really feed me." Yeah.

And I tell him 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. I didn't even realize it until I became an adult and came up with this. 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 the six working geniuses. What are they? Okay.

So the first one, we're going to start with our head up in the clouds.

We're going to go from the highest altitude down to the most practical on the ground. So we're going to go down. And it's kind of how 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. 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 somebody asks the question, why is it like this? It just like this, 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 the 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 are 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?" We go, "I don't know but I'm going to figure it out." And we get a whiteboard and a pen and no restriction. 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 like, "Please don't make me ever do that." So, wonder starts at 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 a really interesting one. 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.

And 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, "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 pattern recognition. It's not linear thinking. It's kind of being able to look at something and go, "Yeah, that's the right answer." She's the editor of my book. 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 I know it's true." And if she goes, "This doesn't make any sense to me, I'm like, I'm going to rewrite it." Even if I do. 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 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.

“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'll do that every day." And so I made him my chief galvanizing officer, and you're going to do that. And he's like, "Oh, do I really have the authority to do that?" No, 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. Wow. So, galvanizing is really important.

The next two are what we call implementation. And the next one is called Enablement. 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, even I love to get 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 I kind of help that I love to do, then I'm like, "Yes!" I just want you to do what I ask you to do. I actually kind of willed, 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, 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. Love them, we need them, but we don't all have that. And so, enablement is that 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. So that's the sixth one.

So it spells widget, which was 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. 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 too." Young and profitors, raise your hand if you've ever googled one tiny symptom and then five minutes later, you're convinced that you're dying.

I know I have been there done that way too many times, but instead of guessing and spiraling, I use Zachtock. In fact, I've been using Zachtock for like ten years. I literally don't know how to book doctors appointments any other way. It's a free app and a website that helps you find in book high quality in network.

Doctors based on your needs. You can search by symptom or specialty, read verified patient reviews, and see doctors with available appointments right away.

“If you're a busy entrepreneur and you need to squeeze in a doctor appointment on a random”

time, you can find the doctors that have availability when you have availability. When an in-person or video visit, it's no problem. With Zachtock there are over 150,000 providers across all 50 states and over 200 specialties. And you doctor, you could imagine and you visit that you need Zachtock. We'll have you covered.

And most appointments happen within 24 to 72 hours. So next time you start doing scrolling your symptoms, skip the stress, and book a real appointment with a real doctor on Zachtock. Stop putting up those doctors appointments and go to Zachtock.com/propheting to find an instantly book a doctor that you love today.

Zachtock.com/propheting and thanks Zachtock for sponsoring this message. Now, I'm not afraid to say, producing this podcast for quite a skills I do not naturally have. From audio engineering to video editing, I have to hire experts who are way better than me in those areas.

“And as I scale my podcast, this becomes more and more important.”

And every time I need to hire, my first thought usually is, this is a job for indeed sponsor

jobs. When you sponsor your job on indeed, you find candidates with the exact skills you're looking for, without the stress of digging through endless resumes. Other jobs posted directly on indeed are 95% more likely to report a higher than non-sponsor jobs.

That means you're not tossing your post into the void you are connecting with qualified people who can actually help your business grow. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results.

When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for indeed sponsor jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to help your job get the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about

indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire. This is a job for indeed sponsor jobs.

Hey, Appham. If something unexpected happened to you tomorrow with the people who depend on you, be financially okay.

“I asked myself that question and honestly, I didn't love my answer and that's what pushed”

me to get covered with fabric by Gerber life. Fabric by Gerber life is term life insurance you can get done today made for busy parents and entrepreneurs like you, all online, on your schedule, right from your couch if you wanted to. You could be covered in 10 minutes with no health exam required.

And the cost is way lower than you'd expect.

Up to a million dollars in coverage for less than a dollar a day.

There's also a 30 day money back guarantee so you can cancel at any time. So really, what are you waiting for? When my dad passed away in 2020, he had life insurance and that was a big help for my mom. I honestly don't know what would have happened if that wasn't the case.

So thankfully, he was smart enough to get life insurance. Are you smart enough to do the same? Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family. Apply today and just minutes at meet fabric dot com slash profiting that's meet fabric dot com slash profiting. M-E-E-T fabric dot com slash profiting policies issued by western southern life assurance company,

not available in certain states, prices subject to underwriting and health questions. So let's go on to my results. Yeah. Selfishly. So I was invention and galvanizing, which totally makes sense because my whole life I've

been inventing things, starting business since I was four. I'm president of everything, like my whole life started so many charity organizations and like different companies, blogs, 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. It's Virginia. It's it's me and I feel like it's very entrepreneurial.

Yes. So I did want to ask you, are there certain working geniuses that are more entrepreneurial or make for better entrepreneurs than others? There are, well, because the interesting thing about entrepreneurship requires every genius. But the people that start things, the ones that get it going right away, that serial entrepreneur

that really sparks the idea, if your type is perfect for that, but now without people

“with tenacity around you, you might, and that's what your 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 question, you need people that, but your thing is like at the heart of entrepreneurship, which is 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.

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 going to fail.

Yeah. Right? Because they're all going to want to do the same kind of things. 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.

Totally. 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 and entrepreneurship is in IG is perfect. 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 working competencies, right? So 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 is especially tenacity. Like, I get my stuff done and I love getting stuff done. So I was curious to understand, why is it only two working genius says, and what are we supposed to do with our competencies?

Are we supposed to try to make them strength? Are we supposed to just leave them alone? Like, how should we handle it? Yeah. And I love this question.

Definitely don't try to make them stronger than they are, because people do that too often.

When Michael Jordan got out of college, and 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're 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 around it and getting people excited and your job was just to crank the unit, you'd realize that that would exhaust you after. God, that makes a lot of sense.

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 do that in a vacuum would be painful for you. That makes 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% 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. Now I find that, 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

us fast as me, I'm just like, all right, you're solving me down, 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 me realize that I need to get some sort of middle manager between some of these employees and like made me realize how valuable my business partner Kate is who is super patient and I know if she took this assessment, she would have an able meant exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

And I know the people in my, and that's the thing about 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 and but like reorganize how work gets done.

If you 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 an ablement. 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. Yeah.

And so it's, it's the, it really is, the word diversity in this is so critical.

The other genius that you, that's a frustration for you is wonder, which is like if people just sit around and ask questions and ponder things and don't have an bias for getting something done, that's probably frustrating to you.

“Yeah, I think it's actually like, and I don't want to say, I was thinking through this and”

I was like, man, I hope I'm just not just like ego-tistical 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. And I know how to, my business for it, I don't need to wonder about everything. Yeah, or five minutes of wonder, that's enough.

Here we go. Exactly. Exactly. Well, I will tell you something to go with a 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, we have this desire to achieve.

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. And so 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. And so don't be half-do to get the experiences. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Um, and then you're going to be a parent and you've got to do everything. You know? I can't go.

Well, my kids' diapers need to be changed.

I'm not a T. I don't finish things. I guess I'm not going to do that. It's like, no, no. There are certain things in life where we, in fact, even in any job, every CEO, every

leader has to do all of them a little bit. But if they overindex on the ones that drain them of energy and they don't give themselves the experience of spending a lot of time in their genius, um, it's really bad. Yeah. It's really bad.

Burn out.

“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. Yeah, and entrepreneurs are more prone to burnout. It's like 25% of entrepreneurs are 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. Yes. 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 long entrepreneurial organization, all five of them can take it and they can look at it and

they're going to 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 literally, this is more of a productivity tool.

We didn't design it that way. We thought it was just a personal understanding inside, but we've seen that when five people that work together, each understand one another's geniuses and frustrations and competencies, they adjust in everybody gets to do more of what they love and the productivity and success goes through the roof.

And that happens, I can an hour, they look at this and go, holy, Toledo, I know what we need to do. Yeah. So let's talk about how people can take this assessment. So young and profiter, so I highly encourage you guys to check this out.

It takes 10 to 15 minutes. You can go to young and profiting.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?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, because there's, 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. Yep.

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 do you 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 attribution error is when you do something that I find annoying holla, I will attribute to your character.

I will do that. I do something that causes people to think I'm annoying. I will 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 wrong with you because that's who you are, where some people will go, gosh, that's so annoying when 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, it's to seek to understand more than to be understood. And 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 going to be bad, he 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 gosh, you're totally in the wrong job. 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 he said, I spent $25 on this darn assessment, showed it to my boss and I got promoted

Oh, he got too many people get fired from organizations where they're good cultural fits. They're just in the wrong chair.

“And it's so hard for managers to know, like, what's wrong with this person?”

But we had a CEO, Hala, who was going to fire his head of sales as 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 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 it? No, I got nothing.

He goes, I was about to let her go. She was all about implementation. She had enablement. Her staff loved her customers loved her because she was always responsible. She was a tenacity.

So she made her numbers delivered on what they said, but she didn't have an invention. And so they borrowed a guy from marketing to come work with her in three hours. They came up with a new sales strategy. And he said, I almost fired one of my best people and leaders do this 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 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. 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 in their lives than anything we've ever worked on. So it's it's crazy. It's really, really cool. I love taking it.

I'm going to have my whole team take the assessment. So again, guys, if you guys want to take the assessment, go to youngimproffeting.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 entrepreneur. So there's this famous quote from Seth Goeden, Elon Musk, no one 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's 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.

“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 manage our energy levels and suck up and do our frustrations at work or working

frustrations? 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, 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, well, 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. I'm going to go in there and do it, and I'm not going to feel bad about myself for not loving it. Like in our office here, my son works with me, he doesn't like tenacity. And so he'll go into an office and go, hey, I'm going into the TK view, guys, I got

three hours of tenacity work to do, I'm going to roll up my sleeves and do it, I'm probably going to be kind of grumpy and when I come out, I'm probably being exhausted. And it's his way of saying, it's important, I'm going to 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 people are like, what's wrong with you?

You're supposed to like do in 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 going to go push through it and at the end of it, and if you don't do it perfectly,

“you should go, yeah, probably never going to 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 this stuff, I love. Yeah, I could also imagine that it will help us just become aware that, like, hey, this

is probably something I'm going to procrastinate because I hate doing it. And let me put some boundaries on myself, let me do like a Pomodero technique and time myself to do it. Let me gamify this. Let me do something to get it done.

Exactly. And we don't need to do those things with the stuff we love. Exactly. And in fact, when we do those things with the stuff we love, it's kind of a bummer, because

Let me just enjoy my work. So it's a great, I love the way you said it's like, find ways to get through it without making yourself feel like there's something wrong with you for now, loving it.

“So how do personality traits interact with working geniuses?”

Like how is it different than personality traits? This is a great question. And we're really working on this right now. Like I said, we like my, myers, brigs and strengths finder and all those other things. Strength finders interesting.

There's so many of them. It's hard to remember. But, but your personality is the, is the noun is what you bring. So like, and like, oh, I, we use myers, brigs a lot. My myers, brigs 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 geniuses, 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 brigs type, my same personality. Like, we were extroverted and we were idealists and we're, and we like to keep our options

open. But they have a completely different working genius. They take that personality and then they actually get crap done 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 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. Because when we used to use myers brigs, we were like, so should I be in marketing if I'm

“in ENFP and we're like, well, first of all, what do you mean by being in marketing?”

And secondly, what do you love to do? Yeah. And so it's a 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, the things. 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? Yeah. I'm an ID, which is means I like innovating and discerning.

Which means I'm what's called the discriminating IDator, which means discriminating means this. Like when I write, I'm an author every 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 kind of like, that doesn't make sense, that doesn't make sense. So I don't, I have so many good friends that are your type and I love working with them. They have a hundred ideas, they're constantly coming up to them. And they'll check in with me and go, hey, can you discern this for me?

And then the discernment part, what you have in your competency is what says, hey, those are the three that you should pursue. Those other seven are okay, or these two wouldn't work. And it's like, so, 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 a band.”

So 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 going to go out and tell the world about it.

I'm like, thank you. And I'm going to tell them again and again and again because they really, so I'm what's called the discriminating ideator, which is more about the judgment than the action, if that makes sense. Interesting.

And what are some of the other pairings that you have in the assessment? Well, like, that if you're a WI, which my wife is in a close friend's webinar, which

are the first two, which is all ideator, they're called the creative dreamer.

They're just like, you know, they'll be cool. I have this idea. And you're like, yeah, but we got to go tell the world about this. They're like, oh, I don't know. And they change their mind a lot and then they just love to stay up there at 60,000 feet.

Where your galvanizing is 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 E T 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 ask me to do. And I won't stop until it's done. 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, the WI is so happy, they're like, yeah, and the E T is like, I got work to do, can we just get through this?

Or your 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 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

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. This isn't a GT meeting, which is we're going to get stuff done, or this is a WD meeting, 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 sit back and be patient.

Otherwise, people come to meetings and the E T wants to drive things to closure at 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. Yeah, I totally make sense. And I loved it. I love the fact that this assessment allows you to know more about your

co-workers. 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. And then, and you can also, you know what I love about this, Hela, 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 wonder if we should rethink this and suddenly go, that's your W, huh? And there go. And 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, 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's being too e 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. We've had a problem, you're really patient, but maybe you're being too accommodating. And that's probably your enablement. Yep.

And so rather than saying there's something wrong with you, it's like 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.

Yeah, I could imagine that that would lead to a lot more employee satisfaction and retention. People just being happier at work. Absolutely. 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 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 we don't have a role for you here to do that, 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. Like there's something wrong with you.

I mean, I will tell you, Hulla, that first job I had for two years, which was right

at a college, and it was the number one job in America. Somebody wrote a book that you're the best places to work in America, college grad. 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. 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. And probably had they known what my working, it's funny. I don't know if you know who Meg Whitman is, but she's the-- Of course. I worked at Hulla Fakert for five years.

Oh, okay.

“That's what Meg, in my first job at Bain and company, right?”

And 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 is in 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 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.

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

Yes. I already know, I'm already like, oh, I need this so-and-so-and-so to take the assessment. Because 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. And when they get seen that way and you can say to them, hey, you're not, there's nothing

to 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. Yeah, fam.

Big day breakfast actually, like, be honest, because for me, I used to be coffee and starved myself till noon. Then I had Dr. Amy Shaw on the podcast, and she said something that I won't ever forget.

And that stuck with me and that changed everything.

“Now every week day morning, I go for my 30-gram protein breakfast, and when I'm in”

a rush, I grab for fuel, black edition ready to drink. It's 35 grams of protein, 27 vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners. It's under five bucks, and the chocolate peanut butter flavor is just so dang good. A complete meal. I drink on the way to the studio, and I'm full for hours, and I do this about three times

a week. Now, I got sick a lot this winter, and so I made a decision. Dispring in summer, I'm going all in on my health. No more drinking, and a lot more fuel consistently. I'm not very good at remembering to eat a lot alone, taking my vitamins, so I've used

habits stocking to help me.

I do liquid vitamins in my coffee like B12, and my rule is if I don't have a fuel protein

in the morning, I drink my fuel at lunch. That's the daily greens, 42 vitamins and minerals and super foods, and only 25 calories. And it is absolutely delicious to taste so good. In fact, I have to hide it from my boyfriend, so it doesn't finish them all, because I need them.

Punch, protein at breakfast, multitasking my coffee, and greens at lunch, done done, and done. Hopefully, I don't get sick again this year. Fuel has a limited time offer, get 15% off with my code [email protected]/propheting, new customers only, again, that's HealHUEL.com/propheting, and thank you to Heal for supporting

the show. Yeah, I'm gang. On the show, I've sat down with Robert Greens, that's golden, and looks from Mozi, French and Ruben James, clear, so many epic epic guests. And what do all these guests have in common?

Every single one of them has a best-selling book, and every one of those books are on blank-est. Here's something I've been thinking about. With AI, everybody has access to the same answers, but the people who actually read, who absorb real ideas and think for themselves, they're the ones with the original take in

the room. AI can summarize, but it cannot replace the frameworks that you build by reading widely. That's your real edge as an entrepreneur. Blinkest turns the world's best-known fiction into 15-minute reads or lessons. Over 9,000 titles covering entrepreneurship, marketing, psychology, habits, all the things

we talk about on this show.

“I use Blinkest to go through several books a week, pull out the key insights, and then”

I decide which ones I want to read fully. Between meetings, at the gym, whenever I have 15 minutes, I'm listening to Blinkest. In the world where everybody is copying the same AI output, reading is a thing that can make you different. Grab your free trial plus an exclusive 30% discount at Blinkest.com/Proffiting.

That's Blinkest.com/Proffiting. What's up, young and profitors? When I started building YAP Media, I had to figure out everything on my own, branding, operations, finance, marketing.

Some days, it felt like I had five different jobs and a never-ending to do list.

Now, as a founder and CEO of an almost eight-figure company, I can tell you that running a business can be extremely overwhelming. What makes the biggest difference, though, is having the right platform from day one. And for millions of entrepreneurs, that platform is Shopify. Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform that helps you build run and grow your business.

You can design a beautiful online store with ready-to-use templates. Use AI tools to write product descriptions and marketing copy. You can use a to run email campaigns, manage inventory, handle shipping and returns, and so much more. Shopify lets you handle it all.

Everything lives in one dashboard, and that means less chaos and more time actually growing your business. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com/Proffiting.

Go to Shopify.com/Proffiting. 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 because we need all of them to do so. Yes, so early stages in an organization, the W and the I are really at play, and the D2 and the G a little bit, but that's the ideation phase.

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. So they come up with some idea, we can put gel in a shoe or 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 middle two are called activation, and the discernment and the galvanizing

is evaluating whether the idea is good and working with the innovator to tweak it.

they were talking about how they went from ideation, they skipped 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 product's been set, 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 rallied people around what needed to be done. So the three stages go from ideation to activation to implementation.

And that's kind of, 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, go, hey, listen, we have three weeks until this launch is, we really have to stop going back in questioning everything.

Or, hey, we're at the early phase here. And I know you want to implement things and you want to timeline, but we're not there yet.

“So come to the meeting, but sit on your hands if you have to, while we're brainstorming”

this, because we're not ready to start putting the detailed plans in place. 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?

I think it's the answer somewhere in between. 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 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. 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. Yep.

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 go, oh, this would be a cool idea. And your, the implementers are like, okay, you want us to start right now and you've got to go, no, no, no, no, I'm just ideating. Yeah, this is so true.

So I often say to people, I'm not gene right now. I'm iron because otherwise they'll run out that 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?

Totally make sense. And there's other times when you're like, okay, we should do this and be like, well, I'm not really sure. Oh, no, I'm not ideating right now. And galvanizing you, I need you to, 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

opportunity. 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? And we're doing that more and more now.

And the first thing is, and the good news about this is that 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?”

So but we have organizations where everybody in the company does their working genius. 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, 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 under team that does it. 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. 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, 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 they had nobody on the executive team with invention.

No, nobody. And it was a technology company. And you know, if they were, no, and they were frustrated for ten years, they hadn't had a new idea.

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 were all like, well, we got to make our numbers, we got to have our tight schedule. And nobody there liked to sit back and ask questions and come up with new ideas, except for one guy in the team, and he was their lawyer.

“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. 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 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 going, well, hell, I could do that.

I love that. And somebody else is going to go, you love that? Why I hate it? And they're like, well, but because I'm this, and they're going to go, well, let's change the way we're getting this done.

Yeah. So, so, there's not a lot to do there, but there is this. We have a program around, which we call certification, which is, you can take one person in an organization to 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.

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 that. I love that. So, we've had like 3,000 people get certified already, and like companies will say, we're sent in three of our people through certification, and they're going to teach everybody

in the organization how to use this. Yeah, I have to say, whenever I roll, so I'm definitely rolling this out to my organization.

Because first of all, it's so cost effective, it's $25 per, it's 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, and right, 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

“an innovator, do you have tenacity, it's something else to bond everybody to gather as well?”

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. The other thing that the 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. 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. I don't really, but, but it's not as bad as people think, but we actually had a lawyer

come to our office. I would work 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 in 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, he's, I found out that he was that guy.

“He was, I think this one works, because he was actually giving people feedback.”

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. 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 find the person that would do that. And you know who loves it?

It's employees who are getting hired, and they're like, I don't want to job, I'm going to hate. Exactly. 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 going to, they're, they're talking, they're going to get their candidates all to do it. They're staffing companies to do this now. Okay.

And then when their clients call and say, 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 taking staffing and hiring from a crap shoot, where 50% of the time a person is like, I don't know, I took this job, to one where we're getting a lot better at knowing who's going to succeed and who's not.

I'm sort of disappointed because I was so excited that I was like, okay, I'm just going

make sure they can create, and I need to make sure they have tenacity, I need those two

things. Okay. So here's a tenacity. I love it. So in EA, it's 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 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 going to 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 going to be miserable

for me because for you, you're saying you want somebody with tenacity, and you said somebody who can create. Yeah, in an invention, and they've got to get stuff done. Okay. So that's called the methodical architect. Okay. And that's very, like if I hadn't an administrative assistant, and we're hiring one for me right now. And because I'm moving to a new place, and we're getting, 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 going to 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. But I'm going to say to them, could you figure out what you think I need? Because I don't know. And that's really different. 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 any EA that has that. Yeah. 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 kind of with a new brand strategy and understands the market from a strategic standpoint? Those are two different roles. You know how often and you know, the CEO's hire ahead of marketing, and they don't even know what their working geniuses are. And they say, well, they were, they were good at marketing before. Yeah, but they did a totally different job. 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. 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? Yeah, like if there's an organization that has no tea, right? That like you look like there's five people working on somebody has to nasty. They're like, how come? We have these great ideas. We get motivated. And then

nobody, they never seem to get implemented. Or you only have one tea on your team and

your killing or your killing him. Because every time you get to the last stage, we're going to that person, like, 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 in 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 is everybody else think she might quit because we make her do too much? And they were like, oh my gosh, how did you know? 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 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 the 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, cause it's probably, if there's no enablement, I had an organization that I work with, it was, it was served churches. So they're very kind, but nobody had an enablement. And so they were like, how come nobody

helps? They're like, 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. 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. 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? So everybody takes the, there is assessment on, on an account. And then they just say printed 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

my gosh, we have no green in, in discernment or we have all 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 did was I the only inventor, but the other people by organization really hated having to come up with the idea. 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 be sure to be nice if they had invention as a genius or at least certainly as a, as a competency. So so there was a little bit more of that in

me in the atmosphere. 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. Says how great is that to realize that because what happens is then people will say things like,

like, so I don't have 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 I'll go like, I guess I'm kind of 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 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. And so it avoids judgmentalism. Now, let me tell you, if a person is really lazy, you know, I have a book called the 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 skill set.

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. Yeah. 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. Totally. I totally agree. And it's really hard to hire people. And it waste a lot of time. So if you could just sort of plug people and switch roles and role moves, like that's going to save a lot of money in time. 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 their 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 what they meant is sometimes is just that, you know, there's too many. And then, 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 re-birthed and employed by helping

them figure out their things or avoided hiring the wrong person or letting go of the wrong, I love to hear those stories. So if you would share that with me, I would love that. 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 processor? 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?

If you go on there, 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 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. Got it. Okay. So young and profiting.co/work, you guys can take the assessment individually, or you can sign up your organization. We'll make sure of it. And college, if you want, where it tablegroup.com or and you can find us on the internet and you can call us or walk you through it.

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 is a mistake to think that a level talent doesn't need to be managed. Yes. So what do we need to know about how much to manage someone and especially maybe in the context of working geniuses? Yeah. Well, I think and that's

and I love that that you asked in terms of working genius because I've been saying this for years,

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 report. So what they do is they say, well, I'm a CEO now in this person's on my leadership team. So I shouldn't have to manage them. They're an adult or they think that managing is micro-managing. And so they say, well, I don't want to micro-manage them. I trust them. But

“the truth of the matter is every person in the world 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 because I'm an ID. I hire people and I go, hey, I hired a guy recently who's an who has ET's 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 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 measurements. I want structure. I want expectations set for me. And I realize I can't manage him the way I would want to be managed. I have to manage him to to make him the best that he can be and to often CEOs abdicate responsible. They don't delegate and they don't, I say at least be a good macro manager. Know what they're working on. Know what 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. Yeah, even just like I said, 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. Yeah, you know, it's just so clear. It's really clear. And you're going to do with them. You're naturally going to go by their office and brainstorm and inspire them. 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? Exactly. The management, the enablements, stuff like, how can

I be a better enablement? Right. It's chewing glass for me. I don't like it, but I have to do it. You know what's great? Holla, when you go to them and you go, hey, you know me. I'm an IG. By the way, I want you to see this and they're going to 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 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 going to take that as a complaint. I'm going

“to 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. Holla, are you going to get more specific with us? And you're going to 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. So something that we agree upon is 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 mean 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 the conflict? It's 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. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most of the meetings are Zoom. So let's talk about that. And the hardest thing about Zoom meetings, Holla, is that

first of all, and we learned this at the beginning of COVID when I would just saw this movie

called Hot Fuzz and it was based and 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

because you're not in the same room. And after the meetings 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. So that's the thing I would say

first of all is is when we're doing the stuff on Zoom, we got to get to that place where we're

being fully human and it's harder when it's too 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 partners work in geniuses because the thing about a short meeting, it's efficient but it's not necessarily effective. And I'm a believer in effectiveness over efficiency. Yeah. Okay. And so sometimes of 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. Yeah. When a person's sitting in that meeting going, let's check in their watch and go, well I have another meeting to go to and I have real work to do. And 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, let's see it doesn't work.

I call that meetings do or we toss out every ingredient in the cupboard into one pot and screw it up and just taste bad. And the four different kinds of meetings that need to be separated are, one is what I call a check in a daily check in. And that's like a five to 10 minute like what 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? 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 you coming home? Here's like, got this meeting today. Okay. Great. The second meeting is called your weekly tactical. If you do a weekly. And this is the running the business meeting where you sit down

“and he 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. Allad Malale who ran for did it that way to green yell and red. We do that our company too. Like how are we doing on these are our five big things we're working on? How are they going? What do we need to do? It's probably an hour maybe 90 minutes. It's pretty tactical and it's focused on moving the ball

forward. Yep. 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

you. 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. 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 case study. It's the most fun you can ever have. And yet we kill that fun by having by having it in ten minute increments in between going through

our achievements. 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, they really lose their way. And so so when somebody says let's have a short meeting, I say yeah, make your, make your daily check-in short. Hey, maybe make your weekly tactical

fairly short. But never cut off a conversation that needs to be explored and worked through

it's messy. And that's, 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. It 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 doing what's, 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? 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. I think they call it their weekly meeting. And that's why people hate meetings. I'm actually really proud of my company because we do all four. You do. We do all four. So we call each other's crappy hustlers. That's our like name. I love it. 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

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 staff. I feel like we're really on track here. You got it. That is crazy. 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. Yeah. So. No wonder we're doing so great. All right, Patrick. Seriously,

“meetings are key. Yeah. 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 and 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

are young and profitors can do today to become more profiting tomorrow. Wow. So I mean, I want to give a thoughtful answer to that. You know, I think that one of the things that people don't do in their young is get very clear about who they are and what their what their personal values are. And we kind of were too opportunistic and kind of reacting to whatever's going on and actually sit down and write down like this is the person I want to be and this is what I want to 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 kind of 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. Yeah, so actually step back and think about who you

want to be in the future, your future, you like, what do you want to grow into? Yeah, absolutely.

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

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 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 when 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 lost and

feeling like, oh, yeah, yeah, everything's good. What is what it, just a big deep 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 your day and how can people mimic that? Well, I think it's everything. It's interesting that you ask that because so I have, I have this app, it's called Amen. And, and, and, and it goes through the readings of the day, so which is like seven minutes,

eight minutes of the readings, old testament, maybe Psalms and the gospel. And then it asks you series of questions. And I think in those questions it kind of gets at the four areas of prayer, which is like gratitude and like what you're grateful for, um, petitioned like what you want, what you need, um, praise, which is like, God, you're good. I mean, this is great. And then sorrow, I like, like, hey, I want to 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 grew up every time I accomplished something, I would go like,

okay, what's next? And I never felt safe just going, oh, that was wonderful. Thank you. That's great.

So gratitude is a, is a deficiency area for me. And I learned that from John Gordon. I don't know if you know John Gordon. Yes, I had him on the show. Yep. Oh, he's like one of my favorite human beings. I'm going to get to your friend. And, and the gratitude thing is so critical. So 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.

Wow. Before you get out of the cover. 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. Yeah, that's great. I'll remember that. That's fantastic. Patrick, where can everybody learn”

more about you and everything that you do? 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 working genius.com and they can get to that through your site. And that's, 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 mean a guy named Chris DeFanic to it.

year and it's every weekday. And so because a lot of people, I don't know what I want to do around

“my faith. And it's like, well, here's three minutes. 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 that's amazing. Three minute reset. How do you join it? You just go wherever

podcasts are and type in the three minute reset in my opinion. I was a podcast that you can

listen to every morning. Yeah, it's essentially a podcast with a daily three minute thing.

“Oh, cool. We'll put the link in the show notes. Again, guys, if you want to take the working”

genius assessment, go to young and profiting.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 the Young and Profiting podcast.”

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