Book SummaryThe 6 Types of Working Genius, by Patrick Lencioni

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The 6 Types of Working Genius

Patrick Lencioni’s The 6 Types of Working Genius argues that everyone possesses certain “geniuses,” or intelligence types, and that all successful teams consist of members possessing a combination of each type. By identifying which traits your team members have, you can maximize both productivity and individual fulfillment.

Lencioni is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker. In 1997, he founded the Table Group, a consultancy firm designed to coach organizations toward optimal health. Since then, Lencioni has dedicated himself to helping businesses cultivate sounder management practices and workplace happiness.

Lencioni begins the book with a fable, a common feature in his works (including _[The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary...

The 6 Types of Working Genius Summary Six Geniuses and the Phases of a Project

Lencioni explains that an intelligence type is intrinsic to the individual, meaning the types reflect what that person is naturally good at. Each intelligence helps people excel at one of six essential activities required during any project, from developing your next product to planning a family vacation to establishing a summer fundraiser for your local charity group. These are Lencioni’s names for the six intelligences as well as the descriptions we’ll use to reference them:

1. Wonder: Perceiving Opportunity
2. Invention: Innovating Solutions
3. Discernment: Vetting Ideas
4. Galvanizing: Mobilizing People
5. Enablement: Supporting
6. Tenacity: Seeing Things Through

We’ll describe each intelligence type in more detail below. For now, it’s important to understand that Lencioni argues that each individual excels in only two intelligence types, that the intelligences are mutually complementing, and that all intelligence types must be represented for a team to succeed.

Fixed Vs. Growth Mentality?

Some may argue that Lencioni’s insistence that everyone celebrate and stick to their natural geniuses—and thus leave all remaining tasks predominantly to others—fits into...

The 6 Types of Working Genius Summary Genius, Competency, and Frustration

According to Lencioni, the average individual excels in two of the six forms of intelligence. For the other four, she is competent or proficient at two, and she is frustrated or drained by two.

Proficiency means a short-term ability to perform that task. People may be able to use their proficient intelligences when the team experiences shortfalls with related tasks, but when they do so for an extended time, they become exhausted and irritated. Work quality and morale eventually suffer.

The intelligences that drain a person are those that require tasks they struggle with. If your teammates hold authority over tasks that drain them, Lencioni says it will harm their professional happiness and the work’s successful outcome. Additionally, the rest of the team may misinterpret the person’s failure as being the result of low motivation, team spirit, ability, or the like, when in reality it’s due to their being less naturally inclined to that form of labor.

Gone With Red Tape

In distinguishing between the categories of Genius, Competence, and Frustration, Lencioni highly values a supervisor’s ability to perceive different intelligences operating within her team....

The 6 Types of Working Genius Summary Mapping Genius

After determining each of your team member’s intelligence types, Lencioni encourages mapping them out. This allows you to evaluate your team’s current skillset and where improvements and/or additions are advisable.

To do this, Lencioni suggests listing each intelligence type in the order it appears in the phases of work: Perceiving Opportunity, Innovating Solutions, Vetting Ideas, Mobilizing People, Supporting, and Seeing Things Through. Alongside each, place a field with two columns. In the left-hand column, put the team members who excel in that intelligence; on the right, list those who struggle with it.

Lencioni doesn’t map team members’ intelligences here. Instead, Lencioni emphasizes that you should use the map primarily to visualize major strengths and weaknesses.

Making the Most of Maps

Lencioni asserts that using his team map is one of the most potent possible tools to engage employees with his intelligence model. As a result, it is a vital vehicle for enabling mutual understanding. Team mapping in itself is a popular implement for managers seeking to better understand their people. Forms of assessments and resulting maps are quite diverse in approach,...

The 6 Types of Working Genius Summary Genius and Overall Organizational Health

Lencioni argues that the implementation of his model, including the mapping techniques mentioned above, will lead to dramatic improvements in your team’s performance, particularly in areas of leadership, productivity, employee retention/morale, and meeting integrity.

The Benefits of Recognizing Genius

First, leadership that follows an intelligence-based approach leads far more organically; it’s better poised to tap into the resources right at its fingertips. It doesn’t shoehorn people into boilerplate job descriptions; rather, it encourages people to follow their talents instead of conventions. Lencioni identifies the following chief benefits for any organization:

• People don’t feel forced to be good at all things, all the time; this means they can focus primarily on the things at which they’re best.
• Team members have greater insights into everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. And instead of blaming one another for those gaps, they embrace them as a natural function of any team.
• Productivity and efficiency increase accordingly.

Parts of the Whole

Lencioni concludes that leaders who embrace his intelligence model not only produce teams that are more...

Shortform Exercise: Discover Genius Amongst You!

Lencioni emphasizes the importance of being able to recognize specific intelligences in yourself and those you work with. In the following exercise, you’ll get the chance to seek out these intelligences’ vital characteristics at play in your own projects, as well as potentially discover how to nurture them even more over time.

Take a few minutes and try to determine the last project you worked on collaboratively with your teammates. Which tasks or phases seemed to come most naturally to you?