 Well, welcome back to the show Patrick. We're so excited to have you to talk about your latest book, the six types of working genius. Johnny and I took the assessment. We're going to dig into this new way of looking at work, how to understand your gifts, your frustrations and your team. I am so excited to be here. It's been a number of years. And and I've become just more charming. So I know that I'm ready to come back on, I think you're in the right place. I love debriefing people's results because it's so fun to watch the light bulbs go off. So this is going to be a blast. Yeah, and Johnny and I have taken a lot of assessments over the years and we love to figure out how to work together better over the last 15 years, there's been ups and downs for sure. So we're excited to share our results with you. But I love to start with just how this model came about for you. Yeah, it was by accident. Completely. I had had my own company for 23 years. And working with my friends in a field that I really love. So how can I be go wrong with that, right? But I would come to work, excited to come to work. And then I'd find myself grumpy. And I didn't know why and I thought what is wrong with me. And one day, it was after the shutdown, about two months later, we were in the office, I was doing a webinar with somebody and I was excited, then I had to do another webinar with somebody and I was grumpy. And then I came up with an idea for a podcast and I was excited. And the woman next to me said, Why are you like that? And she wasn't like, you freak, why are you like that? She was like, what makes you happy? How do you go back and forth? And I said, I don't know. But I want to figure it out because this this is puzzling me. And over the next four hours, I swear I blacked out. And I woke up with my people around me and I had six circles on a whiteboard. And I had said, Oh, there's six different kinds of work. And I'm spending way too much time in the wrong one. From that, which was just me trying to solve a problem for myself. Other people saw the whiteboard I took I showed it to my wife, people were using it with consulting, they were talking to other people and people like this is actually changing my viewpoint of everything. So we decided a few of my colleagues, we would put us an assessment together and figure out if this worked. And it's gone crazy. So so here we are. The book hasn't even come out yet. But we launched the assessment less than two years ago, and well over a quarter of a million people have taken it. And the the feedback we're getting is better than anything I've ever done in my career. So it's nuts. That's got to feel good. Thank God. Yeah. Let's talk about the model itself and what these six characteristics are, because I know Johnny and I were comparing notes and I definitely see Johnny score and he sees my score. So I'm excited to unpack it but walk us through the model first. So basically it goes like this, there's six different activities or skills involved in any kind of work. And whether you're starting a company or designing a podcast or planning a family vacation or launching a new program. There's six different things that are necessary. And of those six, any individual only has two that are what we would call their working genius is where they get joy and energy and they're naturally good at it. They could do it all day and go what a great day that was two of those six though, or on the other end, which are called your working frustrations. And if you spent three hours in a row doing that, you're going to be exhausted, because it drains you of joy and energy. And then two fall in the middle where it doesn't really feed you that much, but you could do it for a while and be okay at it. But it's not your thing. If you don't know which of those six are your geniuses, your competencies or your frustrations, having a great job and a great career is kind of a crapshoot. Now, the only other thing I'd say is in addition to applying it to ourselves as individuals, and you know, I've done the Myers-Briggs and Strengths Finder and all these other things, which I love them disk, I think they're all great. But this is the one that gets to the heart of like, what do I actually like to do? What tasks bring me joy and energy? So within minutes of seeing the results, you can go, Oh, no wonder I failed at that job. And no wonder I love doing that. And as a result of that, when a team takes this and looks at their results, they look at one another and go, Hey, you hate doing that. I love doing that. Why don't I do that for you? And you can do this for me. Teams are reorganizing in minutes when they look at this and the leaders of the teams are like, This is great. You're going to be happier. She's going to be happier. We're going to get more done. I wish I'd have known this 10 years ago. So that's kind of the overview. Do you want me to take you through the actual six different kinds? Yeah, I just want to unpack something that you shared there because I it's early enough in the episode. I don't want people to tune out just thinking about work as in my J O B. And I know there's a lot of frustration around that. So you say work, planning a vacation, you know, all of these skills come into play and so many other facets of our life, not just our job. So as we go through them, I just want the audience to keep that in mind because this is going to make planning that vacation more fun, buying a house more fun, whatever those tasks that you've been weighing on procrastinating on. Once you understand this, you're going to bring a lot more energy and enthusiasm to the things you actually enjoyed doing. My wife and I are married. That's a I think that was a point that I wife and I are married. You know, I'm brilliant. Most of what we do is kind of work. I mean, rarely do we just sit around and go, isn't it great? We're like getting stuff done as a result of that. That is work related and we frustrate each other and we did for years. And when we finally figured out working genius, we were like, Oh my gosh, no wonder because there are certain things that neither of us like to do. And we always argue about that. And now we're like, Oh my gosh, we need to outsource that we need to find somebody to help us because we both stink at that. And you're like, Why don't you do it? Well, why don't you do it? Everything involves work, work and do an activity with your friends being in a band. You know what I mean? Whatever you do is work and people go about it in different ways and we need each other. So here's the six different kinds of work. The first one, the first working genius is called wonder. Okay, most people don't even think this is a working genius. This is up at 50,000 feet, by the way. And this is somebody that loves to naturally my wife does this loves to sit around and ponder things and think about things and ask questions like, why are things like that? Is this really the best it can be? Is there another way to do this? That is an absolute genius. God gave some people the ability to be great at that and other people never do it. Johnny's blushing. That per hour conversation before this guy started, I was talking about a lot of questions that I was pondering as of lately through out the last few years. Because that is the natural state that I'm constantly and asking questions, looking for answers, pondering it in my own life. And I'll go out on a run and then I will come back and like, AJ, I got, I got some ideas. I got to run by. Yeah, I got to be sitting down for this conversation. I'm going to tell you something. I was walking out of the house today. She and I were exercising and praying and talking. And I was walking out of the room and she goes, Oh, wait, wait. Hey, I have a question for you. And I said, Hey, is this one of those wonder things? Because if it is probably do it later, because I got to go. She was like, Yeah, it is. And so, okay, we'll talk about it later. Because you're not always in the right time to wonder. But it's critical in every activity. Absolutely. So most people that have this as a genius are used to people saying like, why are you still asking questions? Why don't you just let that go? And it's like, because I'm a wonder and it's what I do. Now, it's also okay to say, okay, I can set my wonder aside for a moment and do what's necessary. So the next one after wonder, by the way, I have to tell you guys something. I worked with an executive team of a multi billion dollar software company. They had been behind the market for literally 10 years. They were selling old products, making enough money doing that. But they were so frustrated. Everybody said, You never innovate. I took the executive team through this right after it came out almost two years ago. They got the results back in 10 minutes. The CFO said, Well, here's our problem right here. And somebody said, What? He goes, None of us wonder. We have no wonders on our team. In fact, almost everybody has it as they're working frustration. So not only do we not do it, we hate it when other people do it. And the CFO said, If we don't learn to wonder or bring somebody on the team that can help us do that and start asking questions like, Is this really the best our product can be? What are customers want? Is the market going someplace? We don't know. They were always coming into a room with a list of details and things to finish. So they were cranking, but they were never stepping back and wondering. And they said, This is our problem. So wonder is necessary. Somebody has to say, Hey, is it time to move? Or should we should we do this differently? Amy, the woman in my team said, Why are you like that? Pat, she didn't have an answer, but she asked the question. And that's how all this came about. Now, then comes my favorite one, which is the second genius, which is called invention. There are people who wake up every morning and love to come up with new ideas, even if it's not necessary. That's what I do. And it's it's a God given talent. And it's not more important than the others. People think that inventors are gene, everybody's a genius, but I like to come up with new ideas. And so I have a ton of them. And anytime somebody comes to me with a problem, I love to solve it. And I love to do it in some unique novel way. And I like not having a lot of context. It's like, Hey, let me just take a shot at that. So invention is really important. And these first to wonder and invention are what's called ideation. This is where new ideas come from. So that's the first to wonder and invention. But you can't stop there because after invention comes the next one, which is called discernment. This is people that have good gut feel instincts, intuition, they're good at pattern recognition and what you call integrative thinking. It's not based on expertise, specific knowledge or data, they just have a good gut. Tracy, a woman in our office, who I've worked with forever, she said even as a child, people would come to her and ask her for advice. And my wife will say to me it, I'll say to my wife, Hey, should we write refinance our home? Or do you think we should go on vacation here? Or do you think this looks good at what I'm wearing? And she'll say the same thing no matter what I ask her, ask Tracy, Tracy has great instincts. And everybody knows it. And it's one of those skills. It's a it's a true talent. When an inventor comes up with a new idea, you take it to somebody with great discernment, and they're they can immediately look at it and go, I think this is really great. This is really promising or oh, my gut tells me there's a whole bunch of problems here and they are good at giving feedback and vetting an idea and helping tweak it. And so the inventor and the discerner talk back and forth. Well, if you don't know that's your skill, we had a guy write to us and say, I thought my wife didn't like me. And we were like, what? And he goes, I'm really mean it. He laughed. He goes, he because we finally talked to me said, I thought she kind of hated me. We were like, why? He goes, I come up with new ideas all the time. And every time I do, she tells me what's wrong with it. I thought she was just trying to bust my, you know, whatever. On their anniversary, they took the assessment. She was a discerner. He was an inventor. And she said, no, that's how I help you, honey. And he was like, so you don't, you just don't want to crush my dreams. He goes, no, I want to make sure that would actually work. And he said, that's the day they went from thinking we were working against each other to we were actually just doing what we're naturally best at. Crazy. So discernment is the third. And I feel that in my own relationship and a little bit with Johnny, too, we'll get into the results here. So after that comes galvanizing. That's some people love this. I don't and I was doing this almost every day at work. And that's how this whole thing came about. I was frustrated because every day I'd come in work ready to invent. And I was constantly galvanizing. Galvanizing is people who wake up in the morning and love to rally the troops, keep them pushed forward, keep inspiring them, reminding them, Hey, let's do it. Come on, we can do it. Now I can do it once maybe twice. But I don't love doing it. I like to move on to the next thing. And there are people there galvanizers out there that just love that process. And it is an absolute inherent God given genius. And some and it's like their best thing in the world to do one man's trash is another man's treasure. And so when we discovered this model, I realized there was a guy on my team who loved galvanizing. And I said, Hey, Cody, you're the new chief galvanizing officer. And he was like, you're kidding, you'd let me do that. I don't think I've earned the right to do that. I said, earn the right. You're good at it. And you like it. My job satisfaction went up. His went up. We get more done in less time than we ever have. Because we realized just because I was the leader of the company didn't mean I had to be the soul galvanizer I could allow him to live into his genius was great galvanizing. Those middle two we call activation. That's how you take the ideation and figure out is this the right thing? And how do we get people on board? The last two are called implementation. And that is the next genius is enablement. Now I know people we struggled with this word because people said, Well, that sounds like drug addiction or alcoholism. We're like, no, enabling somebody to do something good is really good. And there's some people that are naturally good at hearing somebody say, I really want to do this. And they say, Oh, let me help you. What do you need? How can I be of assistance to you? It's not because they're nice. It's not because they're easily manipulated. People that have enablement as a genius tend to think, Well, it's not a genius. I'm just helpful. It's like, no, no, some people wake up every morning and say, if somebody would just ask me to help them, I would be the happiest person in the world. Let me know what you need. And I will do it. I'll probably do a little bit more. I'll look around the corner for you and I'll anticipate your needs. And they just naturally do it. I will tell you this, I do not have this as a genius. And I feel guilty like, Well, am I not a nice person? No, I love to help people. But I'm not good at helping them on their terms. I like to help them in the way that I'm good at. So my wife says, Hey, Pat, I want you to help me reorganize the garage this weekend or to empty the garage. And it kills me. And I'm like, Okay, first of all, tell me why you want to do that. And she's like, No, no, no, no, no, no, you don't get to invent anything. I said, Well, what's your system? She goes, No, no, no, I have, I want you to stand in the corner when I hand you something I want you to carry it where I tell you. And that is crushing to me. She has friends. They're like, I'll do whatever you want. I just want to hang out. I'll do whatever you asked me to do. Now I should say this, though, everybody has to do things they don't love sometimes. So sometimes I just got to stand in the corner and do what she asked me to do. None of us get to go to work or be at home and do things that we don't love. But we don't want to put ourselves in a position to do it a lot. We certainly don't want to be in a position to live in our frustrations, because that leads to burnout, really difficult things in life. And God did not make us to be miserable in our work or in our lives. He gave us talent so we could use them. It's wonderful. And they're all needed. They're all needed. So the last, the last genius is beyond enablement. It's one thing to want to help people. It's another thing to want to finish things. This is called tenacity. I haven't have none of this. These are people that wake up in the morning and say, please let me finish something. I want to push through obstacles. I want to wrestle things to the ground. I want to prove that it can be done and I want to make I want to do it on time. I want to meet the standards. I want to say yes, we finished. I've written 12 or 13 books. I don't know how many. And I get about halfway through it and I start to lose interest. And I give it to Tracy, my editor, who has great discernment and also likes to finish things. And she goes, yeah, the ending is terrible. Get back in that room. I'm not letting you out until you finish. If people like the end of my books, they can thank Tracy because she doesn't let me move on to the next thing, which I'm always ready to do. So it goes like this, wonder at a high level, asking the question, invention, solving the problem in a unique way, discernment, evaluating it and making sure it's right, galvanizing, getting people on board, enabling, coming alongside and helping and tenacity finishing. There is not a project in the world doesn't need all of those things. All human beings have talents that are necessary. Find out what they are so you can do the things you're meant to do and your success and your joy will be greater than ever. It really works. So let's talk about you guys. So it's so funny, even as you share these stories and looking now at how Johnny and I work together and some of the team members we've brought on what's funny is both Johnny and I in our working genius are high in galvanizing. And I think that's just a product of being in business for 15 years, you have to be constantly rallying the troops and taking all these turns and new paths. And it's always just getting people on board. And Johnny and I are always in sink in that way. So that one was not so surprising to me. You know something else? Your podcast is not just like brain candy. You're actually want people to get better. You talk about self development and psychology and these things. You guys are galvanizing people like, come on, live this life, do better. Some podcasts are just like, Hey, this is interesting. I don't know what you're going to do with it, but that's fine. But yours is not just entertainment. It's you actually want people to get better. And that's what a galvanizer's do. Yeah, and that's why this podcast isn't for everyone because a lot of the frustrates Johnny and I are exactly that. When we feel like we're sharing all these great answers and allowing people to take the risks and galvanizing them in a way to move towards their goals and then they come up with excuses. They don't want to do it. So that's also the frustration on the other end. Yes, galvanizers are they want to blow through those excuses and get people to do the right thing. And if people don't want that, it's a galvanizer's frustration for sure. If I'm doing on a coaching call, and there is excuses on that call, I see them, I call them out. I'm like, let's get let's move beyond this. This is this is what's stopping you and any hesitation, because for a lot of people, removing that excuse means they're going to have to change or there's a there's a fear of success. Well, what what happens if I do this and it works? Then what do I do? For me, that's like, we got to get rid of this excuse and you got to come along. And when they hold on to that excuse, it just infuriates me because I'm like, everything that you want is on the other side of this. Now, when they blow through that obstacle and they take your advice, so you're probably like the most encouraging person ever like yes. Oh, absolutely. Like, isn't this great? Oh, it's the best feeling. I think for for everybody who blows past those excuses, when you get to a why didn't I do that earlier? Right? Why why did I put up this fight for so long? And when I got involved in self development in my late 20s, I realized that the only reason I wasn't where I wanted to be or any of the troubles that I was in were all my own manmade troubles. And once I recognized that, I was like, I do not want to deal with limiting beliefs or excuses ever again. And so a lot of the work that we have done and put together were processes for people of self analysis to understand what those barriers look like. That's fantastic. Man, there's so much we could have a five hour podcast right now. Absolutely. So what are your second because I can there's so many things on my next book is going to be over. We'll talk about that later. But but this book hasn't even come out. And people in my office like stop it, you don't need to start writing the next one. But that's how I am. But so yours, what are your secondary letters because the pairing of the genius really matters. So you're both galvanizers. What are your what are your other geniuses? So Johnny, obviously, we talked about was wonder wonder galvanize the rarest type, by the way, so far the WG together, the wonder galvanizer. Yeah, look at that. That makes a lot of sense. I'm discernment. Oh, so you're a DG. So you're okay, got it. So Johnny, what you're called is Matt, my my engineer and my son who helped develop the tool. Johnny, you're the philosophical motivator. That nails it. Is that nuts? Based on the conversation we had before the podcast, the philosophical motivator. That is so funny. I mean, and there would be probably so many of my friends are like, Well, you just nailed Johnny, because a lot of them can even deal with a conversation with me. If we're going to a bar and having a couple drinks, oh, you wait, we're going to go to we're going to be on another planet in discussion and in conversation really quick. And they're like, I'm just looking for some light. I want to watch a reality TV show. Johnny's taking you on a philosophical journey and you're coming with him because he's galvanizing it. Oh, yeah. AJ, you're the intuitive activator, which means this. It's like, Okay, that's enough information. This is the right thing to do. Let's just do it. I don't need a whole bunch of data. My gut tells me this is the right thing. Let's go. That might be your thing. Let's do it. Let's move. I agree wholeheartedly. Even what is coming up from this morning's conversation with my wife. So we were walking our dog. And we're, as I was telling you earlier, we're going to go on a little bit of a longer travel. This is the first time both of us have been able to work fully remote. So we're going to travel for a couple months. And I guarantee you when my wife takes the assessment, she's high on wonder. So we're on this walk and I'm I'm already I'm packed. I'm ready to go. I'm so excited for this trip. And she's like, What? What is our day in Paris going to look like? What exactly are we? And I'm just like, I don't even have time for your wonder right now. Like I got boxes. We're packing. We're ready to go. Like I'm already there. And she's in this wonder stage going through this trip. So that's why I was saying earlier, like this work that we do, it's all around us in everything that we want in life. There's work towards those goals. And when you understand where your genius is, what makes reaching those goals a lot more fun, exciting, and there's that now clear way of how you operate. So I think for a lot who are listening to this, if you just think about your personal relationships, your romantic relationships, man, how you communicate with your partner, I feel like this is the next version of love languages, you know something it and one of the things that's really important is this helps us avoid judgment and guilt. Because what we do is we say like, boy, one of the my favorite things you guys that happens through this work, I can't tell you how many people have leaders have called us and said I was about to fire somebody. And then we did their working genius. And I realized, oh, no, they're a great fit for the company. I just have been the wrong role. I was about to lose a great person. And in our relationships, like my wife and I, neither of us have tenacity. It's in our working frustration. So not only do we not have it as a genius, we hate it. Finishing things, not good. We have four sons and a household to run. Can you imagine what it's like to have no tenacity? One day I came home. She she loves this story now she used to get mad at me when I told it. And I came home from work. And I went inside and the lights were off. And I was like, hey, the power in the neighborhood, I think, went out. And she said, oh, no, no, the neighborhood, they have power. Wait a second. Oh, yeah, they do. I looked out the window. So what's going with ours? Our lights aren't it? She goes, yeah, yeah, they cut off our power. Like, why did they do that? She goes, yeah, we and she's in charge of the bills, which is unfortunate for her. I forgot to pay the bill. And I was like, don't they usually send you a notice before they Oh, they send you three notices, she said, set the bill aside, procrastinated. And I used to get frustrated at her. What a what a jerk I was. When we did this assessment, I was like, oh, you don't have tea. I don't have tea. I'm asking you to do things I hate. I need to have a little bit more grace. And then we can actually solve the problem. And literally, earlier this week, we brought in somebody who's going to be our accountability assistant. And she's going to talk to Laura every morning, like, what do you need to do today? And Laura's going to call her at the end of the day and say, what did you get done today? And she's not going to take excuses. I don't have to do that. Laura said, I want somebody to hold me accountable. So anyway, the point is that's work living with somebody and being married to somebody and getting anything done is work. So it applies to all of those different things. Running a household is definitely work. Keeping the lights on, that is work. You know, you should probably before you get married, you should probably like do some task. Well, you should take this assessment and learn what you are. That's why we priced it ridiculously low. Dave, Dave Ramsey is a financial guru, you know, and he's a friend of ours. And when he did this, and he was like, Pat, you get charged way too little for this. You could have charged so much more. But we don't want this to be one of those corporate tools that people have to spend hundreds of dollars on. For 25 bucks, we want a junior in college to go do this. We want a family to give it to their kids and themselves so they can work better together. So when you do this, then you can actually plan how we're going to run our home together. Because when a marriage breaks up because the work is hard, it's terrible. I see this even in the communication patterns, you know, outside of just the actual results in the work. But the things that might be your biggest frustration with your spouse, significant other, might just be again them working in their frustration too much and not really finding that working genius. You know something? I'm going to tell you one more quick story. So you guys are, Johnny, you now live in Florida. AJ, you're figuring out where you're going to move. We're trying to get out of California. So a few years ago, we bought a house in Boise. The day it closed, my wife turned to me and said, maybe we should have moved to Tennessee. And I was like, I'm just wondering. It's just a wonder thing. I'm wondering. And I was like, okay, probably not the best time to hear that W, though, we just signed the papers. We laugh about things that we used to get frustrated about. Exactly. Now we could bring some laughter to these things, these miscommunications that we were having otherwise. And I know as Johnny and I are going to our results, we're having some laughs to ourselves as well. So for me, my working competency is enablement and invention. So the enablement piece. I love getting team members towards those goals. It fires me up. I was just talking about this last night in my men's group. I love helping people help themselves reach those goals more than reaching my own goals. Like I will set aside my own to help someone else get there faster. And when people come to you for advice, you're like, oh, I love giving you advice. So happy. Yeah. Johnny, what are your working competencies? Invention and tenacity. Ah, thank God that one of you has tenacity in your working. I was going to say, we'd be in a lot of trouble. It's really funny about that because there's this saying when it certainly an entrepreneurial work done is better than perfect. And the minute I heard that, I'm like, oh, well, I'm gold because it will get done. But it's certainly not going to be perfect. And sometimes that drives AJ nuts, certainly like grammar and things like that. Or it's not my strong suit, but I'll I'll move it forward. This project will get done. It may not be pretty, but it's going to get done. And I the minute I saw that, I was laughing and understanding that there has been times in the past where AJ has mentioned that he's moving on to the next project. He like he's hoping it's getting done somewhere else because him working on something and trying to push it through just drives him crazy. And so that is something that he has said in the past. And of course, and taking this test, it's, it's now glaring, right? Yeah, it's glad that's I love when people go, Oh, there it is. This makes total sense. You know, he's ready to move on. Well, I've kind of helped that person. Well, you got to finish. It's like, Oh, do I really? It's like, yes, I say to my wife, if something's worth doing, it's worth doing half ass. In other words, it doesn't have to be perfect. Just finish. Just get it done. Just get it done. Thank God, Johnny has that finished mindset because I'm, I'm in my invention. And then all of a sudden I've found with through discernment, okay, this is the solution. And now we're running in this other direction. And Johnny's like, in his wonder like, Hey, I've tried to finish this thing over here that we started last month. Can you slow down a little bit? Cut me some slack. So Johnny, does that mean you're you're working frustrations in our DNA? Yes. And what are yours in AJ? They would be wonder and tenacity. So that's what I was saying that that walk this morning with my wife and the wonder around what we're exactly we're going to be doing in Paris each every day. I'm like, we're going to figure it out. We're there. And it's going to be amazing because it's not LA. I don't need to wonder about it. I know it's going to be fantastic. So that wonder, like that's a frustration. When Johnny goes in his wonder train, I'm like, All right, I got a meeting after this. Like I gave you 30 minutes of wonder. We're we're at 36 minutes here. I need his discernment when it comes to wonders. I'm like, yo, I got to buy off these ideas off you because they're driving me nuts. And I need someone to bring me down earth here. And so I'm like, All right, well, let's hear it. And I'm like, Here's what I got. Here's what I here's what I'll discern all day. Yeah, just start chopping it up. And I'm fine with that. I need that feedback. That's key. You're self aware. People say, What's the best type for this job or that job? It's like the self aware person who knows that they need other people. And Johnny, you not having discernment is not a problem because you'll go, Oh, I should run that by AJ, because that's one of his geniuses. But when we we resent people like, Why do you? Why do you evaluate my ideas? Because I'm good at it. Why are you always coming up with new ideas? Because I'm good at it. It's a totally different thing. Once he discerns something, he'll be like, That's not going to work. Here's why I'm out the window. I can move on. But if I don't have that, I'm just stewing on it. And it will go on. And I have an open pages thing in my phone, where I just write whatever I'm thinking it's a stream of consciousness. It's just allows me to put what's in my mind on paper so I can choose the words that I'm using to describe an experience or thought. And then it's just like, I then I got to flesh it out. And then like, AJ, I got to talk to you. I got to say, it's like, no, that's not going to work. And with that, with the low enablement, I just let him go go off, like you need some time on your own, go off on your own, wonder about it. And then come back to me when we're ready to enable and I'll I'll fire away and I'll get the team moving and you're not tolerating him. You're actually encouraging him and letting him do what he's great at. You know, we never had words for these, but 15 years exactly pattern recognition. I'm like, you know what, Johnny's better off noodling on that. I'll take the team meeting. I'll work on the enablement. You come back when you have something you want to run by me. And I'll tell you thumbs up. It's great. And then I will feed off of Johnny's tenacity of like, Hey, AJ, like we started this thing a month ago and you got me fired up and I'm ready to go like, let's just get it done. Now I'm guessing that on your team somewhere, there's somebody that has tenacity as a working genius. Yes. And it's probably a person who you always worry about. Oh, no, I don't want to crush her or him by burning them out. They take on everything. Yes. In fact, I've had to chat quite a bit with Michael of like, please be honest with me, because you love to just finish things. And he will often stack his plate to the rafters with things to finish. And then we struggle because we're like, I thought you were doing OK. And he's like, well, actually, you guys created six other open loops that I've been working on furiously to close. You forgot about those. And I'm working on those and I'm taking on this next thing. Exactly. They in fact, because that's their genius to get things done. And so they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And often you don't know when you're about to burn them out until they're on the verge. And it's really important. I once I once looked at a team's working genius page. And there was only one person, this woman on this team of 15, which is bigger than a team really. And I said, she's your only person with tenacity. Now, I don't know, Laura, it was a zoom call. I didn't even look up. I said, but my guess is that you're always worried she's going to quit. And she's probably burned out. And they just started laughing like I just read their minds. And this woman was like, how did you know? And it's like, it has to be because so much rolls down to you. And so it's so great to be able to see that and say, let's not crush our tenacity person. Because it's a linchpin. You know, everything you talked about earlier, like getting these these projects done and across the finish line, have another brainstorm session and be more inventive and and Johnny to go off and wonder. But at the end of the day, if these tasks aren't getting completed, if these projects aren't actually being finished, then the whole team burns out, right? It's not just that one person. Exactly. And by the way, the thought of Mike leaving is pretty, pretty crushing, right? Oh, absolutely. Right. Here's a here's a very practical tip. When you're doing any kind of work, even when you're just in a conversation, it's a meeting or a conversation. It's good to go. Hey, where are we right now in this process? And it's like, oh, we're still in wondering an invention phase. Oh, OK, good. Or it's like, oh, we're about we're three days away from implementation. We don't have any room for W ID. We're in GT face. And even those of us who don't have those geniuses can go, oh, OK, so if I go to that meeting and I throw out a new idea, I'm going to piss you off. I can hold that in. But otherwise, we show up and we just do what we naturally do. So if you kind of know, this is the context of this conversation or this discussion, you can actually apply yourself intentionally rather than just showing up and being what you do naturally and wondering why people aren't loving it. Well, that's why I love the visualization on the cover and throughout the book of the gears, right? Because these have to work together. You can't just be cranking one gear wildly and not seeing the impact on these other areas. So when you actually start to break it down of like, hey, there's a time and a place for wonder, Johnny. And this meeting right here, right this second, not the best time. You know, it was my wife who came up with the idea of the gears. She's a wonderer inventor. And we showed it to her and she's like, those circles, why shouldn't they be gears because they actually impact with one another? We're like, brilliant. What I want to talk about here, because we get this a lot around assessments, you know, people will get their score back. And oftentimes, especially in our audience, they get hyper self critical, and they don't know how to actually take those results and work them. So is this something where we should be working to improve what our frustrations are? Is this something that we should be avoiding and only working in our genius? Like how do we actually take these and especially for those in our audience who aren't in a leadership role? You know, Johnny, I are very fortunate in running the company that we can very quickly hand things off, move on, find our genius and just love life. But I know from our audience and the feedback we've got that some aren't in those roles yet in their career. And now you have this great score. So they've taken the assessment. What do we actually do with these results? So the beauty of this assessment more than any and we've used Myers-Briggs and everything else for years, we even integrated some of our other products around teamwork with Myers-Briggs and disk. So I'm not I love all these tools. But this is the this is the one that has the shortest distance from seeing the results and knowing what to do. It's literally minutes that you see that. And because it makes so much sense and it's about getting work done. So here's what I would say, do not try to be great at your frustrations. No, do not because if you're not built for that. Now, learn how to hack do a little life hack on your frustrations. Like my son Matthew doesn't have tenacity, but he has he's 24 years old. He's been at a college a couple years. We have to give him work that requires tenacity. So he'll literally go I'm going in the conference room for two hours. I'm gonna it's my tea cave. And I'm gonna come out in two hours. I'm just gonna like burn through this. Knowing that he can say that he's not guilty about the fact he doesn't have tenacity, and that he's gonna go grind it out, allows him to do it, and not feel bad and not feel like he's failing. If we gave him a job though that was all that, we would be inviting him to hell, right, to work hell. So so that what I would say is don't try to get great at what you're bad at. Just know when you're doing it. So you don't put a lot of guilt on yourself like, Oh, I'm such a my first job out of college, I had the number one job in America and a management consulting firm. There was a book written that year. This company is the best place to work in America in this job. I got the job that interviewing practices, I think. And I was miserable for two years. And I was not wildly successful, I will say it was a real, and I felt guilty for years. Like I thought I was lazy, and I wasn't very smart. How come these guys around me are outperforming me? And it's just a struggle. I look at my working genius now and I like, that was the worst job in the world for me. Had I understood what they were really wanting me to do. I would have said, Oh, yeah, this is going to drive me crazy. And I want less people to feel guilty. And to feel like to judge themselves. And I want them to stop judging other people too and saying, Oh, you're lazy, and you're just not very bright, or you don't care. It's like, no, no, their geniuses, it really helps. So I would say to people, no, do not go out and say, I'm going to be great at the two things I'm worst at, say I'm going to let people know what I'm great at, know what I'm decent at and what I'm terrible at. And when they asked me to do things I'm terrible at, in short bursts, I will grind through that and let them know that I'm going to do the best I can in an area that's hard for me. I love that because I feel like such a big part of all of this. And especially when you came on last and talked about your other book that we love so much, The Five Disfunctions of a Team, this emotional intelligence piece is just so important. And it's often missing in these environments where there's this burnout, where is this frustration? And it's not just the self awareness, self awareness is great, but it's also the self compassion. So once you recognize those strengths and weaknesses and saying, you know what, like I could be compassionate around the fact that I'm just not tenacious. That's not me. I will block myself off. I'll create two hours or I'm going to force myself to do it. But then after those two hours, I'm going to be compassionate to myself knowing that I put myself in a burnout state. I put myself in a place that is great frustration for me. And I think so often we we are quick to be self awareness and like focus on self awareness, like, oh, great, I know these strengths and weaknesses, then we get really excited when we can read other people. And we go, Oh, I can put you in that box. And I can tell you're a DG and I can tell Johnny's a WG. And we love that side of things. But we're not always good at taking these and practically using them in our life to create that work environment for ourselves and others to be most successful. Self compassion is far more if you stop it self awareness. Now you just know why you're you're feeling bad about yourself sometimes. But you have to go no, I'm actually supposed to celebrate who I am. And that's not a sixth grade poster for like that's that's reality. We had pastors, a couple of pastors called us up after this came out and they took it. And one guy said I felt like a fraud for 20 years, because I couldn't write a homily or a sermon to save my life. And I thought, how, how dare I be a pastor if I can't come up with a good talk? He did this, he realized I have no WRI. And I said, Well, what do you have? And he told me, I said, So you're probably a great counselor, right? And you probably are really good at working with your staff. He goes, Oh, I love that. I'm like, you can't have all of these. So he said, Okay, now I can borrow somebody with WNI to help me write my homilies. I'm not going to feel guilty about that anymore. And there's other pastors who say, Man, I give a great homily, I don't like to do counseling. And I look at their, their working genius, I'm like, Yeah, that's how God made you. So why don't you organize your work to the greatest extent possible to lean into your geniuses? And it changes everything. Now, in a situation where you are maybe the only one who's taken this assessment, how can you work this to your advantage without forcing other team members to go through the assessment if they're not willing to just share your results with others. Just sit down and go, I want you to see what I've discovered about myself. So we had a guy call us and he said he was going into a performance review and he knew it was going to be bad. He hadn't had a good period. He was struggling in his job. He didn't know what was going to happen. He was dreading it. He took this darn thing two days before. And he just brought the results and he said, Hey, boss, before we go through my performance review, can you just take a look at this? I want to show you this to you. And he looked at it and he said, Oh, well, crap, you're in the wrong job. I was about to ding you for all this stuff and you don't like any of that stuff. And then he said, you know, we have this other job that we need that you would be great for. And instead of him getting ripped on, they actually changed his job. He said, I got promoted instead of corrected or fired because my boss just wanted to see who I was. And I think 90% of the bosses out there would love to know what their people are so they can actually utilize them better and make them happier. Yeah, every once while there's a boss that's going to say, Oh, I don't care, just do your job. But most bosses know that that's not a good way to go about doing things. You guys would love the people that work for you to be able to use their geniuses as much as possible. So I say really, that's a great way to take advantage of this is to share it with the people who can help you flex have be flexible. And I think the other part that's often missing from that perspective is most companies, there is mobility within the company to find that right role. If you're willing to share this assessment of these results and showcase for them, what those strengths and weaknesses are, I think so often in that environment, we're afraid to show our weaknesses. And we try to really just focus on looking like we're strong in every area because we're concerned, maybe this isn't the right role. And we get in that exact place you're talking about a burnout and faking it and being in the wrong fit. And most companies right now, especially and I'd love to talk about this in a minute, where we are currently in the job force, most companies are not ready to lose people. They're not looking to kick people out the door, because the cost of hiring and training up someone else and going through that process right now, with a job market as it is, is not something that a lot of solid sound companies want to do. So if you come in with this assessment and say, Hey, these are my strengths. These are the areas that I feel I really excel. Exactly that the light bulb can go off of like, Hey, there's this opening in another department. We haven't even posted on online. No one else knows about it. It's only internal. Why don't we go ahead and set you up with a discussion with that manager or that leader on that team. And you would find not only that you're now working in your genius, but you also haven't had to go out into the open market and try to come up with the resume and all this other stuff, which a lot of the discussion that we're hearing from our clients is this burnout and this concept of quiet quitting. Now I talked about this on a previous episode. So many leaders are now talking about it. I'm in masterminds of their entrepreneurs who have teams are worried about it. Everyone's concerned about quiet quitting. We heard Mark Zuckerberg and Apple bringing back in the office because of this nervousness around remote work and quiet quitting. And I just think it's a symptom of a much bigger trend where we're not assessing our talent and putting them in the right seat. So they're not working in their genius. They're working in their frustration. We're forcing them to work in their frustration and then we as leaders are frustrated. We're seeing a lot of activism and a lot of these companies. And so when you're supposed to be brought in for a certain job to be making products to make products better. But yet there's this now external thing on having to make it mean something in a in political terms. It's interfering with your working genius. It's interfering with the culture at work. And it's just making everybody miserable. So again, quiet quitting is the easy thing to do. But it's like, well, I'm just going to try to figure out how to step back, continue to get paid and not engage with what's going on around here. Yeah, you know, this great resignation that people talk about the quiet quitting quitting and staying, you know, it's much better to have somebody quit your organization than quit and stay. So Apple's going through this right now. And they're like, well, people don't want to come back to work three days a week. And so the whole conversation is around how much do they have to work or show up, which is so wrong. Take a person that's unhappy in their job and have them work less is not going to make them happier. What we need to do is say, what's the real problem here? Find a way for them to be totally engaged. And the idea of how much am I working and do I have to drive there is going to become so secondary tertiary, you know, but right now, when we have people in the wrong roles, yeah, they're going to talk about what are my perks, what are my benefits, what are my and people default back to salary. And while I believe everybody needs to make enough money to live their lives, that's a really low on the total. But what people really want is to do the kind of work that gives them joy and energy and the companies that do that. Well, here's the other thing that's going on. If you have 10 people and you want to improve productivity, we think, well, we're going to have to hire four more. First, get those 10 really productive, figure out what they should be doing, reorganize. I mean, we literally are getting twice as much work done in half the time. I mean, that sounds like maybe it's in the same amount of time because people are working in their geniuses where we could have hired four more people and we'd have had just as much frustration and just more people. So start with, are we really tapping into a person's motivations? And once you get there, then you can figure out what other resources you really need. I love that viewpoint and I feel, unfortunately, again, the conversation gets so focused on the productivity and then the earnings tied to productivity, whether it's from the shareholder value that's created out of that productivity or whether it's to take home paycheck and we're focusing on the wrong variables inside the team and there are top down pressures for performance. And oftentimes those performance metrics that we're using don't even tap into anyone's working genius as we just discussed. Think about listening to this. Yeah. How many of you have had a performance review on any of the things that we just discussed your ability to discern when you're galvanizing when you're getting people together. And unfortunately, a lot of people are feeling right now. Like this is my hidden genius. Why can't my boss, my team see me for who I am? And then you remove the in office interaction and now we're doing it all over Zoom where we feel even less seen. And of course, quiet quitting makes sense. Of course, the great resignation makes sense. It's like no one's recognizing my genius. I'm the galvanizer. I'm getting everyone on board. But in my performance review, well, I heard the numbers were down. So now we got to start tightening our belt. But wait a second. I've been the one leading the charge of getting people on board of these great ideas that you're coming up with AJ and Johnny, you're coming up with in your wonder. So I feel that that once you understand from an assessment point of view, and you can share this and communicate it with your team, what your genius is. And if they don't respect it, if they don't want to use it to their advantage, either, then leave, then it's crystal clear. I'm really glad for some a few things that came about in the last couple years. And that's there's a little bit more flexibility. We there are things that I can get done that I didn't do before using zoom and being that. But this is not an excuse for people not having to come into work. We are meant to work together. And so yeah, maybe a person could have more flexibility at work four days a week here there. But if a person has no interest in coming to the office, even if they're in their genius, letting them go is going to increase productivity. And so I think there's probably a certain percentage of these people at Apple, who Apple just needs to go, yeah, we'll miss you. And other people go, I'm so glad you did that because there's a lot of other people that want to reengage. But if they're surrounded by people like the activism, oh, this is not fair. Then we're just we're all losing. Yeah. And I certainly I have, we have remote team, fully remote team. And there are certain roles in any company that can be done fully remote. And when you find that role and your genius fits in that seat, I'm super happy as a leader to allow that. But in a lot of situations, we're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and we're forcing people into positions where they're just constantly in their working frustration. And it's no surprise that the most common complaint we hear is burnout. When we are coaching our clients, and they're saying, Hey, I feel like I'm doing a great job, but I'm forced to do 80 plus percent of my job on things that I could care less about that I'm not good at. And now I'm being recognized for not being good at them. And I feel oftentimes like if I just had a different stake, or if I just had a different role, or if I was able to participate with other team members, I could make a difference. But leaders aren't having that conversation. Right. And a lot of them just don't have the context for it. They think if they ask somebody like, So what would you like to be doing? Everybody's going to say, nothing and having fun. No, everybody wants to live in these areas. So you could go over this with somebody, go, How could we tweak your job so that you felt better and could get more done? Most leaders are going to want that. I really do think if most leaders saw this, they go, Oh, I'd be glad when Cody took on more galvanizing, I could take on more of his invention. I was like, this is the best thing for everybody. So I really think that when people see their results, they're going to go, Oh, I see a massive win-win here. Or as they said on the office, a win-win-win. The triple win. The triple win. It's so great to have you back. We love asking every guess what their X factor is, what makes you unique and extraordinary. I think we tapped into some of your working genius. But what do you think your X factor is? Oh, gosh, I think it is like idealism, like I think when I see some, I think we can actually, you can do that, or we can do that. It's like a little bit of, I think if I were ever a saint, I'd be the patron saint of the ignorant, because I really love like going, it's all right if I don't know that. Let's try it anyway. So I think it's probably a little naivety and passion and idealism. Thank you for stopping by. We're excited to get the assessment in more hands and cure a lot of the burnout and frustration that we're hearing from our clients and those who aren't working in their zone of genius. Well, this has been a blast because you, the three of us have been able to live in and interact in our geniuses for the last hour and a half. And so it's been a blast. God bless you guys.