The Working Genius Assessment

Working Genius: How a Small Advisory Team Assigns Work

Two six-person teams can produce very different amounts, and the difference is rarely effort. It is usually assignment - who gets handed which kind of work, and which kind nobody on the team is suited to at all. Working Genius, developed by Patrick Lencioni, names the six kinds of work and shows you where your team stalls. The model is industry-neutral; the examples here are drawn from advisory firms.

The gap between busy and productive

Small teams stall in predictable places. Ideas get generated and never assessed. Decisions get made and nobody carries them to the rest of the firm. Projects get most of the way done and sit there. Each of those is a missing kind of work, not a missing person. Working Genius splits work into six types and shows which ones your team performs naturally, which ones drain people, and which ones are simply absent. Once the gaps are visible, the fix is usually reassignment rather than hiring. That is a relief on a team where adding Team Headcount is a real decision, not a rounding error.

Running the assessment as a team, not a quiz

Individual results are interesting. Team results are useful. Everyone takes the assessment, then you map the whole team on one page and read what the map says: two people whose genius is finishing and nobody who evaluates, three creators and no one to build momentum, an owner whose genius sits in the early types trying to force the late ones. The conversation that follows is the point, and it has to stay about work assignment rather than sliding into personality talk. You leave with specific changes to who does what, starting with whoever is currently carrying work that drains them.

What it changes about meetings and handoffs

Most friction on a small team lives in handoffs, and Working Genius gives you language for them. You know who to bring in when an idea needs pressure-testing before it reaches the whole firm, who will actually get a rollout across the line, and who should be asked to support rather than lead. Meetings tend to get shorter when the right people are present for the right part. It also lowers the temperature on old complaints - the colleague who seemed careless was doing evaluation work he has no genius for, and the fix is reassignment rather than a talk about attitude.

The Assessment

The 6 Types of Working Genius

Wonder

Wonder: the person who asks what we are missing

Wonder ponders the bigger picture and identifies the need for change. On a small team it is often the owner, and it is the first thing to disappear when the calendar fills. Somebody asking whether the service model still fits the clients you are actually winning is doing real work, even when it produces no deliverable that week. If nobody on your map holds Wonder, the team will get very efficient at the wrong things.

Invention

Invention: new answers, not just new activity

Invention generates original ideas and creative solutions to the problems Wonder surfaced. This is the type most often mistaken for the whole job of leadership. A team heavy on Invention produces more initiatives than it can finish, and a smaller firm can only carry a few at once. A team with none of it copies whatever the last conference suggested. You want it present, and you want it downstream of a real question.

Discernment

Discernment: the judgment call before commitment

Discernment uses instinct and pattern recognition to assess ideas and give honest feedback. It is often the thinnest type on a small team, because it reads as negativity and gets trained out of people early. Without it, every idea either gets built or gets ignored and nobody can say why. With it, you kill the wrong initiative inside a meeting instead of inside a quarter. Ask who on your team is allowed to say no.

Galvanizing

Galvanizing: getting the firm to actually move

Galvanizing rallies people around an idea and generates momentum for action. In an advisor firm this is the difference between a decision announced and a decision adopted. A changed service model, a new operations process, a different way of handling New Clients - none of it lands because it was correct. It lands because somebody kept talking about it until the team moved. Without Galvanizing, your good decisions die quietly.

Enablement

Enablement: the reason things get done at all

Enablement provides the responsive support a team needs to move ideas into reality. It is the most invisible genius and the most exploited. On small teams one person usually carries all of it, says yes to everything, and becomes the constraint on every project at once. Naming it changes how you protect that person's time. It also stops you mistaking willingness for capacity when you decide who takes the next initiative.

Tenacity

Tenacity: nothing falls through the cracks

Tenacity pushes projects to completion and makes sure nothing falls through the cracks. Teams without it accumulate half-finished work that quietly taxes everyone. Teams with too much of it finish things nobody should have started, which is why Discernment upstream matters so much. On the map, find who closes loops and stop handing them work that needs open-ended exploration. Give them the last mile and get out of the way.

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Testimonials

Clients below are describing Scaling Up engagements with Erik rather than Working Genius facilitation specifically.

“If you're looking to truly scale and grow your business, Erik at Level 10 Coaching is the answer. His hands-on approach helped me to develop and communicate my vision, evolve my leadership team, initiate consistent meeting rhythms, establish KPIs for each department, and so much more. His guidance, partnership, and accountability assisted me in having the best year on record and now I have a clear path on the future growth I want to achieve.”

Bob Horne

CEO, Nuventure Financial Group

“In my 23 years in business, I've participated in 8–10 different coaching programs. Hands down, Scaling Up has been the most impactful by far. The framework is systematic, easy to understand, and—most importantly—actually gets implemented. Over the past 12 months, we've experienced tremendous growth by applying Scaling Up, and it's brought real clarity, alignment, and focus to our team.”

Ed Cox

Founder & Principal, Magnolia Wealth

FAQ

Common questions

What are the six types of Working Genius?

Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity. Developed by Patrick Lencioni, the model splits any project into those six kinds of work, in that order: asking the question, generating the idea, assessing it, rallying people, supporting the effort, and finishing. Each person has two types that energize them, two they are competent in, and two that drain them. A team map shows which of the six your group covers and which one is missing.

Can a team of six people cover all the Working Genius types?

Usually yes, but not evenly, and coverage is not the same as capacity. A group that size often has every type represented while one person carries two of them alone. The map tells you where you are thin, where one person is a single point of failure, and which type is genuinely absent. Sometimes that leads to a hire. More often it leads to reassigning work people are already doing badly because it drains them.

Is Working Genius a personality test we should use for hiring?

No. It describes the kinds of work that energize someone, not who they are, and it is not built to screen candidates. Used well, it changes how you assign work on the team you already have and how you describe a role you are about to open - what the seat mostly requires, day to day. Used badly, it becomes a label people hide behind. The discipline is to keep the conversation on the work, not on the type.

Get Started

Map your team before you add to it

Bring your leadership team and a list of the work that keeps stalling. The map is the input; the reassignments are the output.

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