The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Complete Guide for Leaders Who Want to Stop Guessing and Start Growing
- Betsy Richard
- Jul 5, 2024
- 25 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Why some people thrive in their roles and others quietly burn out — and what Patrick Lencioni's Working Genius framework reveals about the gap.
You have good people.
You know you do. You hired them. You've seen what they're capable of. But somewhere between the job description and the daily grind, something isn't adding up.
One person who seemed exceptional in the interview can't seem to gain traction. Another is quietly burning out on tasks that look straightforward on paper. A third keeps gravitating toward work that's technically "not their job" — and doing it brilliantly.
Meanwhile, you're wondering if you have the wrong people. Or if you need to hire better. Or if there's something wrong with the way you're managing.
Here's what I've learned after 30+ years in business leadership: the problem is almost never the people.
It's the fit.
Specifically, it's the mismatch between what a person is naturally wired to do and what their job actually requires them to do every day.
That mismatch is what the Six Types of Working Genius framework is designed to diagnose — and fix.
In this guide, I'll walk you through this framework: what it is, how it works, what each genius type looks like in practice, and how to use it to build a team that's productive, energized, and actually enjoying their work.
TL;DR: What you Need to Know About Working Genius
The Problem
Most teams have the right people. They're just doing the wrong work. When someone spends most of their day in their area of frustration instead of their area of genius, they burn out. Performance suffers. People leave.
The Framework
The Six Types of Working Genius identifies three categories for every person: their genius (what energizes them), their competency (what they can do but drains them), and their frustration (what depletes them entirely). The six genius types are Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity.
The Phases
All work moves through three phases — Ideation, Activation, and Implementation. The six geniuses map directly to these phases. When your team has gaps in a phase, projects stall or fall apart in predictable ways.
The Result
Teams that align people with their genius see higher productivity, fewer performance issues, dramatically less burnout, and better collaboration — without hiring a single new person.
The Catch
This isn't a "take the quiz and move on" exercise. It's a team conversation. The real value comes from understanding your team's full genius map together — so everyone can work differently, not just know themselves better.
Ready to Book a Working Genius Workshop?
If you already know you want to bring this to your team, you don't need to read the whole post. Book a complimentary call and we'll figure out whether Working Genius is the right fit for your team's specific challenges — and what the workshop would look like for your group.
For everyone who wants to understand the framework more deeply before deciding, keep reading.
What Is the Six Types of Working Genius?
The Working Genius framework was created by Patrick Lencioni — the same researcher and author who gave us The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage.
Lencioni developed this framework after making an uncomfortable discovery about himself: there were parts of his own job he genuinely hated.
Not because he was bad at them.
Not because he was lazy.
But because they required a kind of thinking and energy that was simply not natural for him.
He started exploring the idea that every person has natural gifts. Things that give them energy and bring them joy. And natural frustrations. Things that drain them no matter how hard they try.
What emerged was the Working Genius model: a framework that maps six types of working genius, organized into three phases of work that every successful project, initiative, or task moves through.
This is not a personality test. It's not measuring who you are as a person. It's not assessing your values or your character. It's mapping your natural contribution to work — specifically, which kinds of thinking and working energize you versus deplete you.
That's what makes it different from other tools you may have used.
How Working Genius Compares to Other Assessments
You may have already done some kind of assessment work with your team. DiSC. StrengthsFinder. MBTI. Enneagram. There's real value in all of these.
But they measure different things.
DiSC measures behavioral style — how you prefer to communicate, make decisions, and interact with others. It's excellent for improving team communication and understanding conflict.
StrengthsFinder measures what you're good at. It identifies your top talent themes and helps you lean into your natural strengths.
MBTI measures cognitive preference — how you take in information and make decisions.
Working Genius measures something different from all of these: which kinds of work give you energy and which kinds drain it.
You can be highly skilled at something and still find it exhausting. That's a competency, not a genius.
You can be terrible at something in your current job that would be effortless in a different context. That's not a weakness — it might be a frustration that doesn't belong in your role.
The Working Genius framework makes this distinction explicit. And that distinction changes everything about how you build teams, assign work, and understand underperformance.
The Six Types of Working Genius
All work requires six different kinds of contribution. Lencioni identified them as Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity — forming the acronym WIDGET.
Every person has two areas of genius (tasks that energize them and bring them joy), two areas of competency (activities they do well but don't enjoy), and two areas of frustration (tasks that drain them even if they're capable of doing them).
Here's what each one looks like in practice.
The Genius of Wonder
What it is: The natural ability to ponder and question the way things are — to sit with discomfort and ask "what if things were different?"
People with the Genius of Wonder are perpetually curious.
They notice problems others walk past.
They ask questions others aren't ready to ask yet.
They're not trying to solve anything yet — they're creating the conditions for solutions to be found.
What it looks like on your team: Your Wonder genius is the one who says "I don't know if this is a real problem, but does anyone else feel like we're missing something here?"
They're comfortable with ambiguity. They don't need answers immediately. They need space to explore.
In a meeting, they're often the ones asking "why" when everyone else is ready to talk about "how."
When it's missing: Teams without Wonder genius tend to be reactive. They solve the problem in front of them without asking whether it's the right problem. They optimize existing processes without questioning whether those processes should exist at all.
They stay busy moving toward the wrong destination.
What frustrates them: Implementation. Repetition. Routine. Being asked to "just execute" without space to question whether execution is the right move.
Roles that fit:Â Strategic planning, research, early-stage ideation, innovation initiatives, market analysis.
The Genius of Invention
What it is: The natural ability to create original solutions, ideas, and applications — to generate something new from the raw material of problems and possibilities.
Invention genius goes beyond brainstorming. This isn't "let me add to the list." This is the person who synthesizes everything they've heard and comes back with a genuinely novel approach.
They don't just think outside the box — they're often not sure the box exists.
What it looks like on your team: Your Invention genius is the one who emails you at 11 PM with "I've been thinking about what we discussed — what if we completely changed the model?"
They're energized by blank canvases. They get genuinely excited about problems that have no obvious solution.
They may resist following established playbooks, not because they're difficult, but because they instinctively want to improve on them.
When it's missing: Teams without Invention genius get stuck in incremental improvement.
They can refine and optimize what exists, but they struggle to create breakthrough solutions. When the market shifts or a competitor disrupts the industry, they don't have a natural innovator to help generate a response.
What frustrates them: Repetitive execution. Being asked to implement the same solution they've already implemented before. Environments where "the way we've always done it" is treated as a virtue.
Roles that fit:Â Product development, new business models, creative direction, R&D, problem-solving on novel challenges.
The Genius of Discernment
What it is: The natural ability to evaluate ideas, initiatives, and plans — to use intuition and judgment to assess what will work and what won't, even without complete information.
Discernment genius is often misunderstood as negativity. It isn't.
People with Discernment aren't poking holes — they're protecting the team from investing in things that won't work.
They have an almost instinctive sense for what's viable.
What it looks like on your team: Your Discernment genius is the one who listens to a new idea and says "I can't fully explain it yet, but something feels off about that assumption in the middle." They're usually right.
They can evaluate creative ideas without needing full data. They know which questions to ask to reveal whether something is actually sound.
When it's missing: Teams without Discernment genius can charge enthusiastically toward bad ideas.
They may be excellent at generating and activating — but without natural filtering, they launch initiatives that should have been caught at the concept stage. They learn from mistakes that didn't need to be made.
What frustrates them: Being ignored. Having their input treated as obstruction when it's actually protection. Working in environments where "positive thinking" means not questioning ideas before committing to them.
Roles that fit:Â Quality control, editorial review, strategic assessment, advisory roles, any position that requires judgment on creative or strategic work.
The Genius of Galvanizing
What it is: The natural ability to motivate and rally people around a cause, challenge, or initiative — to create the energy and momentum that gets people moving.
Galvanizing is the spark that turns a good idea into collective action. People with this genius are energized by getting others excited and engaged. They communicate naturally, persuasively, and with genuine enthusiasm.
What it looks like on your team: Your Galvanizing genius is the one who can walk out of a strategic planning session and have the whole company fired up about the new direction by end of day.
They're natural communicators. They don't have to manufacture enthusiasm — they genuinely feel it, and it's contagious.
They often step into leadership roles naturally, though not all Galvanizers want management responsibilities.
When it's missing: Great ideas die in conference rooms. Teams can have brilliant strategy and terrible execution — not because people can't do the work, but because no one created the energy and momentum to get started.
Galvanizing genius is what bridges the gap between "we decided this" and "everyone's moving."
What frustrates them: Slow, methodical work without forward momentum. Too much analysis before action. Environments where enthusiasm is treated as shallowness rather than an asset.
Roles that fit:Â Sales leadership, communications, launch initiatives, change management, any role that requires moving people toward action.
The Galvanizing Genius Is the Most Disruptive of the Six Working Geniuses
The Genius of Galvanizing is the only genius that requires other people making it the most disruptive by nature. Read The Genius of Galvanizing: The Most Disruptive Force on Your Team (And Why You Can’t Move Without It) to learn what it looks like, what each pairing means, and what your team loses without it.
The Genius of Enablement
What it is: The natural ability to provide the support, encouragement, and assistance that others need to succeed — to be genuinely responsive to the needs of people and projects.
Enablement genius is the glue of high-performing teams.
These are the people who notice when someone is stuck and offer help before being asked. They anticipate needs. They create the conditions for everyone around them to do their best work.
What it looks like on your team: Your Enablement genius is the one who somehow knows before anyone else does that two team members are in conflict, that a project is about to miss a deadline, or that a new hire needs extra support. They're not doing this because it's their job — they're doing it because they're genuinely energized by helping others succeed.
They may not push their own ideas loudly. But they make it possible for everyone else's ideas to come to life.
When it's missing: Teams without Enablement genius can feel transactional and isolated. People do their individual work but don't create synergy. Projects move slower because no one's filling the gaps between roles. New people take longer to integrate because there's no natural culture of support.
What frustrates them: Work environments that are purely transactional. Being asked to produce in isolation without any opportunity to connect and support others. Organizations where helping someone else is seen as "not your job."
Roles that fit: Customer success, team coordination, operations, HR, any support function — but also embedded in every high-performing team regardless of function.
The Genius of Tenacity
What it is: The natural ability to push projects and initiatives across the finish line — to maintain focus and drive results until the work is truly complete.
Tenacity genius is about execution and completion.
People with this genius are energized by getting things done. Not just starting — finishing.
They're the ones who close the loop, follow through, and refuse to let something die on the vine because people moved on to the next shiny initiative.
What it looks like on your team: Your Tenacity genius is the one who notices that the action items from three meetings ago haven't been completed — and quietly makes sure they happen. They're detail-oriented under pressure. They don't confuse motion with progress. They measure success by outcomes, not activity.
When it's missing: Teams without Tenacity genius have a graveyard of initiatives. They start things enthusiastically and rarely finish them. They're excellent at ideation and launch but struggle with the disciplined follow-through that turns good work into real results.
What frustrates them: Starting things that never finish. Environments where new ideas constantly replace existing commitments. Being asked to brainstorm when the real need is execution.
Roles that fit:Â Project management, operations, quality assurance, implementation, any role with clear completion metrics and accountability.
See Your Team in These Descriptions?
Most leaders do. And that recognition — "that's exactly what's happening with my team" — is usually the moment it becomes clear that this isn't just an interesting framework. It's a practical tool for fixing something real.
The Working Genius workshop is designed specifically for that next step. It can run 2-4 hours with teams of 4-15 people. Each team member takes the assessment before the session, so the workshop itself is entirely focused on the team conversation — mapping your collective genius, identifying gaps, and making real decisions about how work gets structured.
It can be a standalone engagement, or it can be the starting point for a broader consulting relationship if we discover your team needs more than role alignment.
The Three Phases of Work — And Why They Matter
Here's where Working Genius moves from interesting to transformational for a team.
Every project, initiative, or task your organization undertakes moves through three phases. Not sometimes. Always.
Phase 1: Ideation — identifying what needs to happen and why
This is where Wonder and Invention live. Wonder spots the opportunity or problem. Invention creates a solution.
Phase 2: Activation — evaluating the idea and rallying people around it
This is where Discernment and Galvanizing live. Discernment evaluates whether the idea will actually work. Galvanizing creates the momentum and energy to get people moving.
Phase 3: Implementation — executing and completing
This is where Enablement and Tenacity live. Enablement provides the support and responsiveness to keep people productive. Tenacity drives projects to actual completion.
Why this matters for your team:
When you know which phase each person thrives in, you can stop wondering why certain people disengage at certain points in a project. They're not disengaged — they've moved out of their phase.
Your Invention genius who lit up during the brainstorming session isn't being difficult when they seem checked out during implementation. They've moved into their frustration zone. That's not a character flaw — it's information about how to deploy them.
Your Tenacity genius who can't seem to contribute in early planning meetings isn't passive or uninvested. They're waiting for the work they're built for.
Understanding the phases doesn't just explain behavior — it tells you how to restructure your team's involvement across a project lifecycle so everyone is contributing in the way that energizes them most.
The Three Categories: Genius, Competency, and Frustration
When someone takes the Working Genius assessment, they don't just get their genius types. They get a full map of all six types, organized into three categories.
Your Working Genius (2 types): These are the areas that give you joy and energy.
You don't just tolerate this work — you crave it. You do it well naturally, and it leaves you feeling more energized than when you started. This is the work you'd do even if no one was watching.
Your Working Competency (2 types): These are areas where you're capable.
You can do the work and do it reasonably well. But it doesn't light you up. Over time, spending too much of your day in competency work leads to quiet burnout — the kind where people can't quite explain why they're tired, just that they are.
Your Working Frustration (2 types): These are areas where the work genuinely depletes you. Not because you're incapable — competency and frustration are entirely separate.
You might be technically skilled at something that is still a frustration for you. Spending significant time in your frustration zone leads to real burnout, decreased performance, and eventually departure.
The critical insight here:
Most performance problems that look like skill problems are actually fit problems.
When a high-performing employee starts underperforming, the instinct is to assume something changed about their ability or motivation. Sometimes that's true. But often what changed is the balance between genius and frustration in their daily work.
A promotion that moves someone from doing the work they love to managing the work they love is a classic example. They were exceptional as an individual contributor (using their genius). They're struggling as a manager (spending their days in their frustration zone). The organization interprets this as a performance problem. Working Genius reveals it as a fit problem.
Those are very different problems with very different solutions.
What Your Team's Genius Map Reveals
Here's where the real organizational work happens: not in individual self-awareness, but in mapping your team's collective genius.
When you plot every team member's genius types together, you get a picture of your team's strengths and gaps across all three phases of work.
Common patterns I see — and what they mean:
Heavy on Ideation, light on Implementation
Your team is excellent at generating ideas and terrible at finishing them. You probably have a lot of exciting initiatives and a graveyard of incomplete projects.
This isn't a motivation problem — it's a structural gap. You may need to add Tenacity genius to the team, or dramatically restructure how work is assigned.
Heavy on Implementation, light on Ideation
Your team executes brilliantly but struggles to innovate. You can optimize and iterate, but generating genuinely new approaches is painful.
When the market shifts, you may be slow to adapt. This team needs Wonder and Invention influence — either through hiring, or by bringing in outside voices at the start of initiatives.
Missing Discernment
Your team launches enthusiastically and learns from failures that didn't need to happen. You have good ideas that should have been refined before execution.
The remedy isn't more bureaucracy — it's intentionally involving someone with Discernment in the evaluation phase of every significant initiative.
Missing Galvanizing
Great strategy, poor adoption. Your team can plan but struggles to mobilize. Initiatives get announced but don't gain traction because no one is creating energy and momentum.
This shows up as apathy, but it's often a Galvanizing gap.
Illustrative example:Â Consider a seven-person leadership team where three members have Tenacity and Enablement as their genius, two have Wonder and Invention, and the remaining two have Discernment and Tenacity.
This team is likely exceptional at executing defined work but struggles with strategy — spending too much time in implementation without enough time being spent in clear strategic ideation first.
When they finally sit down for strategic planning, the tension between the Ideation geniuses (eager to explore possibilities) and the Implementation geniuses (eager to get to action) creates frustrating meetings where nothing quite gets resolved.
That's not a communication problem. It's a genius map problem.
Real Problems Working Genius Solves
Let me walk through the most common leadership challenges this framework addresses — and what the Working Genius lens reveals about each one.
"We keep starting things we don't finish."
What it looks like:Â
Your team is energized at kickoffs and exhausted by implementation. Projects stall at 70%. Accountability conversations feel hard because everyone seems genuinely invested — they're just not following through.
What Working Genius reveals:Â
You likely have a team heavy in Wonder, Invention, and Galvanizing with very little Tenacity. Everyone loves the launch. No one loves the follow-through.
And because no one hates following through out of laziness — they just find it depleting — the issue never gets resolved by "holding people accountable."
It gets resolved by either adding Tenacity genius to the team or by restructuring who owns implementation.
The fix:Â
Identify who on your team has Tenacity as a genius. That person should own project completion and closure, not just execution. Give them explicit accountability for the follow-through that others find draining.
"My best people are burning out."
What it looks like:Â
Your highest performers are increasingly disengaged. They're still doing good work, but something has shifted. They seem tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix.
What Working Genius reveals:Â
Burnout almost always has a genius-frustration imbalance at its root. When the ratio of frustration work to genius work tips too far, people deplete even when they're skilled at everything they're doing.
This is especially common after promotions, where people move from roles built around their genius into roles that require more competency and frustration work.
The fix:Â
Do a simple audit. What does this person's actual week look like, broken down by type of work? Map it against their genius profile.
If more than half their time is in their frustration zone, you have your answer — and you have an actionable path forward that doesn't require a lengthy performance improvement plan.
"My team doesn't communicate well."
What it looks like:Â
Meetings are unproductive. The same people talk every time. Others seem checked out. There's tension without anyone being able to name the source.
What Working Genius reveals:Â
Many communication breakdowns are actually phase mismatches. Your Ideation geniuses (Wonder and Invention) want to explore and question. Your Implementation geniuses (Enablement and Tenacity) want to move to action.
When they're in the same meeting without a shared framework, they experience each other as obstacles — one side thinks the other is "never satisfied" and the other thinks the first group "never thinks things through."
The fix:Â
Structure meetings by phase. Separate the exploration phase from the decision phase from the implementation phase — even within a single meeting.
When everyone knows "we're in the Wonder phase right now, no decisions yet," the Tenacity person can relax, and the Wonder person can breathe.
You'll get better thinking and better follow-through from the same people.
"I'm not sure someone is in the right role."
What it looks like:Â
A capable person who worked well in a previous role is underperforming in a new one. They're not disengaged — in fact, they seem to care deeply — but results aren't following.
What Working Genius reveals:Â
This is almost always a fit problem. The role is requiring sustained effort in the person's frustration zone.
No amount of support, coaching, or motivation changes the fundamental energy equation. The question isn't "how do we help this person perform better in this role" — it's "what would their role look like if it were built around their genius?"
The fix:Â
Before performance managing someone, do a Working Genius map of their role — not their skills, but the kinds of working activities the role requires — and compare it to their genius profile. The gap tells you everything you need to know.
Recognize Your Team in Any of These?
If two or more of those scenarios sound familiar, you already have enough information to have a useful conversation.
In a complimentary 30-60 minute call, we'll talk through what's actually happening on your team, whether Working Genius is the right tool to address it, and what a workshop would realistically look like for your group and your timeline.
No assessment required beforehand. No commitment after. Just clarity on whether this is worth pursuing — and what to do if it is.
How Working Genius Complements the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team®
Working Genius and the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team® both come from Patrick Lencioni and The Table Group, and they address different layers of team effectiveness.
Working Genius tells you how each person contributes best — the types of thinking and working that energize them versus deplete them.
Five Behaviors tells you how the team functions together — whether they have the trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and collective focus that makes great teams great.
They complement each other beautifully — and most high-performing teams benefit from both.
Here's a practical way to think about it: Working Genius reveals the genius map. Five Behaviors determines whether the team can actually use it.
You might have a team with a perfect genius map — every phase covered — but they can't leverage it because they don't have the trust to be honest about their frustrations, or the conflict skills to debate which ideas are worth pursuing. That's a Five Behaviors problem.
Conversely, you might have a team with strong trust and healthy conflict, but half of them are in the wrong seats. That's a Working Genius problem.
When you address both, you get a team where people are in the right roles and working together effectively. That combination is rare — and it's exactly what the best teams I've worked with have built.
How to Implement Working Genius With Your Team
Here's what the process actually looks like — whether you come to it through a consulting engagement or by booking a workshop directly.
Step 1: Individual Assessments
Each team member takes the Working Genius assessment before the workshop. It takes about 10-20 minutes. The result is a clear map of each person's two geniuses, two competencies, and two frustrations.
Importantly, team members don't need to discuss their results with each other before the session. The facilitated debrief is where those conversations happen — in a structured, intentional way that gets far more out of the results than informal sharing would.
Step 2: The Facilitated Workshop
Working Genius workshops often run 2-4 hours and work best with teams of 4-15 people — leadership teams, department teams, or any group that works closely together.
This is where the value is created. The workshop isn't a presentation of results or a "now you know your type" exercise. It's a structured team conversation guided by a certified facilitator who can do several things an internal leader can't easily do alone:
Map the team's collective genius across all three phases of work — showing gaps and strengths the individual results don't reveal
Navigate the uncomfortable moments that surface when someone realizes they're in the wrong role, or when a team sees clearly why certain projects always stall
Translate results into practical decisions about how work gets restructured, not just interesting observations about people's personalities
Create the safety for honest conversation in teams where those conversations haven't happened before
Without facilitation, most teams stay surface-level. They have a pleasant discussion, note the interesting patterns, and return to work doing exactly what they were doing before.
The assessment data doesn't produce change on its own. The conversation does — and that conversation requires skill to run well.
Step 3: Application
A good workshop ends with specific decisions, not just awareness. Who owns which phases of your major initiatives? Which roles need to be restructured over time? Where are the gaps that need to be filled through hiring or reassignment? What does your next project kickoff look like now that you know how each person contributes best?
Working Genius becomes most valuable when it moves from a workshop outcome to a living tool — something you reference in project planning, performance conversations, and hiring decisions.
How this fits into broader consulting:
For some teams, the Working Genius workshop is a standalone engagement — exactly what's needed, nothing more. For others, it surfaces questions that open a broader conversation: about team structure, about whether other frameworks like the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team® might address what's underneath the surface, or about whether the real issue is revenue rather than alignment.
In my business consulting work, I often recommend Working Genius after an initial diagnostic conversation — when it's clear that a team's performance challenges are rooted in fit and role alignment rather than communication style or trust. It can also work the other direction: a company that books the workshop for their leadership team often discovers they want to go deeper on what the results revealed.
Either way, the workshop is a legitimate starting point. You don't need to commit to anything beyond it to begin.
Working Genius as Part of a Broader Business Consulting Engagement
Working Genius is most powerful when it's not a standalone exercise — when it's integrated into a broader conversation about how your team is structured, how work gets assigned, and what's actually holding your business back.
In my business consulting work, I use Working Genius alongside other frameworks — DiSC for communication styles, the Five Behaviors for team cohesion — to build a complete picture of what your team needs and how to get there.
Here's what that might look like in practice: we might start with Working Genius to identify that two of your key leaders are in roles that require significant time in their frustration zones. Then we look at the Five Behaviors to understand whether the team has the trust to have an honest conversation about restructuring. Then we use DiSC to design a communication plan that actually accounts for how different people on the team receive difficult information.
That's not three separate projects. It's one integrated approach to making your team work better — starting with the tools that give us the clearest picture fastest.
When Alignment Isn't Enough
Here's something I see regularly: a team does the Working Genius work. They restructure roles. People are energized and in the right seats. Communication improves. Culture strengthens.
And revenue is still stuck.
That's a different problem.
Once your team is aligned — once you have the right people doing the right work — the next question is how to give that team a systematic approach to proactive revenue growth. One that makes selling feel like helping, builds accountability and visibility into your sales function, and creates predictable revenue year after year.
That's what Outgrow does.
Working Genius gets your people in the right seats. Outgrow gives them a proven system to drive revenue from those seats. The two work together naturally — especially because Outgrow's framework accounts for the reality that not everyone on your customer-facing team thinks about selling the same way.
If you've done the team development work and revenue is still the missing piece, that's worth a direct conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions About Working Genius
What exactly is the Working Genius assessment, and how is it different from DiSC or StrengthsFinder?
Working Genius identifies which kinds of working activities give you energy (genius), which you can do but find draining (competency), and which deplete you regardless of skill (frustration).
DiSC measures behavioral and communication styles.
StrengthsFinder measures what you're naturally talented at.
These are related but distinct: you can be highly skilled at something that is still a frustration for you — that's the key distinction Working Genius captures. All three can be valuable; they measure different things.
How long does the assessment take?
The individual assessment takes 10-20 minutes. The more significant time investment is the team debrief — typically two to three hours for a leadership team — where the real application work happens.
Can someone have more than two working geniuses?
No — the model identifies exactly two areas of genius, two of competency, and two of frustration for each person. Most people find this surprisingly accurate.
The forced ranking mirrors the reality that you can't be in your genius zone all the time, and that not all types of work feel equal.
What if two people on my team have the same geniuses?
That's common and not a problem on its own — it means you have depth in those areas. The more important question is whether your team has gaps in certain phases of work. Two people with the same genius reinforce each other's strengths. The risk is if they share frustration zones and there's no one on the team with genius in those areas.
What if someone's genius doesn't match their role?
This is one of the most important conversations Working Genius creates — and also one of the most uncomfortable. A mismatch between genius and role doesn't necessarily require a full job change. An intentional realignment solve the mismatch. It's a reason to have an honest conversation about how to restructure work over time, what parts of the role can shift or be redistributed, and whether there's a better fit somewhere in the organization.
Some misalignments are small and manageable. Others are significant enough that you're asking someone to spend most of their day in their frustration zone — which is unsustainable for them and for the business.
How often should we revisit Working Genius?
The genius profile itself doesn't typically change significantly over time — unlike skills, genius is fairly stable. That said, I recommend a refresh session (often at 30, 60, and 90 days after the workshop) to review what has changed, why has stuck, and what still needs attention.
Teams evolve. Initiatives shift. And without deliberate follow-through, insights from the workshop may fade.
I recommend revisiting the team map or scheduling a refresh session whenever your team changes significantly (new members, role changes, major organizational shift) or whenever you're planning a new initiative and want to think deliberately about how to structure team involvement.
How do I explain Working Genius to skeptical team members?
Lead with the practical business problem: "We want to understand how to structure work so everyone's doing more of what they're best at, and we're not asking people to sustain energy in areas that deplete them."
Avoid framing it as a psychological exercise. Most skeptics engage when they realize this is about work structure, not self-help.
What's the difference between Working Genius and Working Frustration? Can someone be good at their frustration?
Absolutely — and this is the most important distinction the model makes. Frustration is not about ability. It's about energy. You can be technically skilled at your frustration and still find it draining every single time.
The distinction matters enormously for performance management: before assuming someone has a skill gap, explore whether they have a genius-frustration mismatch. The solutions are completely different.
How much does it cost to implement Working Genius with a team?
The individual assessment fee is modest ($25 through workinggenius.com). The more significant investment is in facilitation. I work with teams on Working Genius as part of broader business consulting engagements; the investment varies based on team size, scope, and what else we're addressing.
What I can tell you from experience: the cost of having the wrong people in the wrong seats — in turnover, lost productivity, and missed results — almost always far exceeds the cost of figuring out the fit problem with intention.
Can my team do Working Genius without a facilitator?
Each person can take the individual assessment independently for $25 at workinggenius.com. That gives you self-awareness — which has real value. You'll understand your own genius and frustration zones, and you can share results informally with your team.
What you won't get is the facilitated team debrief that produces actual change.
Here's why that matters: the individual results aren't the product. The collective map is. Seeing your team's genius distribution across all three phases of work — and having an honest conversation about what that means for how you've been structuring roles and initiatives — requires someone who can read that map, spot the patterns, and guide the team through the uncomfortable moments that surface when the data reflects something people haven't said out loud yet.
Most teams that run their own debrief end up with a pleasant discussion and no real follow-through. Not because they aren't capable — because team members can't easily facilitate the conversation they're also part of. And because without experience running this process, it's hard to know when to push through discomfort versus when to move on.
The $25 assessment is the starting point, not the destination. The workshop is where the work happens.
Build a Team Where Everyone Can Thrive
The goal of Working Genius isn't a perfect team. It's a self-aware team — one that understands how each person contributes best, where the gaps are, and how to structure work accordingly.
When you get that right, something shifts. People stop dreading certain parts of their job and start gravitating toward the work they were built for.
Performance problems that seemed like attitude or motivation issues reveal themselves as fit problems with practical solutions. And the energy in your organization starts pointing in the same direction.
As a business consultant and certified Working Genius facilitator, I've guided dozens of teams through this framework. The conversations it creates — honest, practical, and often overdue — are consistently among the most valuable work I do with leadership teams.
You know your business better than anyone. What Working Genius gives you is a clearer picture of the people inside it — and a practical path to getting more out of the team you already have.
Ready to Find Out If Working Genius Is Right for Your Team?
Every team I work with comes to this conversation differently. Some leaders have heard about Working Genius and want a facilitator to bring it to their team.
Others come to me first for consulting, and Working Genius is what I recommend after we've talked through what's actually happening.
Either way, the starting point is the same: a complimentary 30-60 minute call where we figure out what your team actually needs.
In that conversation, we'll cover:
✓ What challenges you're experiencing and whether Working Genius addresses them directly
✓ What the workshop would look like for your team size and situation — including timeline, format, and what to expect
✓ Whether Working Genius alone makes sense or whether it's one piece of a larger picture
✓ What other options might be a better fit if this isn't the right tool for where you are right now
You'll walk away with clarity — and something actionable — whether we end up working together or not.
Call (337) 278-8932 or email betsycrichard@gmail.com to get started.
Your team is capable of more than they're currently producing. Let's figure out what's in the way.
Betsy Richard is a business consultant and certified Working Genius facilitator based in Lafayette, Louisiana. She helps B2B companies build high-performing teams through Working Genius, the Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team®, DiSC, and the Outgrow sales framework. She works with companies across the United States, both in person and virtually.