July 27, 2026
You're good at your job. Other people say so, and you can feel it yourself. And still, some days you come home empty, without being able to point at what exactly was so heavy about it.
That isn't a matter of too little discipline or the wrong attitude. Skill and energy are two different things, and the 6 Types of Working Genius was built to make exactly that difference visible. What I find so valuable about it: it gives you words for something you already felt but could never explain. Why one meeting gives you energy and the next one drains you. Why a colleague keeps putting off a task that comes easily to you.
Once a team can name that together, something shifts. You get a shared language for talking about how you work. You can see where the energy sits and where the friction starts. And you can put each other to work more deliberately, without it turning into a judgement about who someone is. That last part is the heart of it for me: this isn't about right or wrong, and it isn't about who's trying harder.
Below, the foundation of the model: where it comes from, how the six types work, and what you actually do with it.
Working Genius doesn't measure who you are. It measures where work gives you energy and where it leaks away, in the process of getting something done.
That's a different starting point from MBTI, DISC or the Enneagram. Those tell you something about your personality, your preferences, the way you communicate. Working Genius tells you something about your work: which kinds of tasks feed you and which ones drain you.
Back to that distinction between energy and skill: being good at something and still ending up depleted by it isn't strange, and it isn't a weakness. It's information. That same distinction is what stops someone who leaves a task sitting from being written off as lazy or unmotivated.
The model comes from Patrick Lencioni (The Table Group), known for The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He lays it out in The 6 Types of Working Genius (2022), told as a fable about entrepreneur Bull Brooks, who works out why some work energises him and other work wears him down.
Everyone has two geniuses that generate energy. Together the six form a cycle, from a first question to a finished result.
Wonder. Sees untapped potential and asks the question nobody else is asking. In love with the problem, not the solution.
Invention. Generates new ideas. Happiest starting from a blank page, creating something out of nothing.
Discernment. Judges whether an idea will work, by instinct. Senses what holds up, even without proof.
Galvanizing. Rallies people around an idea. Creates energy and momentum in the group.
Enablement. Anticipates what's needed and supports the execution. The glue of the team.
Tenacity. Drives tasks to completion. Task-focused and results-driven. Actually finishes it.
None of the six is better than the others. All six are needed somewhere, and a team missing one will notice.
Your six scores sort into three bands of two.
Working Genius — your top two. This is where your energy and your fulfilment live, even when the work is objectively hard. This is where you'd rather spend your time.
Working Competency — your middle two. You can handle these perfectly well, and nobody looking at the result would guess it wasn't your favourite work. They just don't give much energy back. In limited doses, this is sustainable.
Working Frustration — your bottom two. Work here drains you, however good at it you are. Working structurally in your Working Frustration is a direct route to burnout.
That last sentence is exactly why this model goes further than a nice insight. When someone spends months on work that falls in their Frustration, the missing results aren't a matter of attitude. It's exhaustion being explained in the wrong place.
The six geniuses aren't arranged at random. They belong to three stages every project moves through:
Ideation — spotting a need and coming up with an idea to meet it. Driven by Wonder and Invention.
Activation — assessing whether the idea is workable and building momentum behind it. Driven by Discernment and Galvanizing.
Implementation — actually getting the idea done and confirming it delivers. Driven by Enablement and Tenacity.
Activation, according to The Table Group, is the stage teams most often skip or under-resource. An idea that's good on paper still needs someone to pressure-test it and someone else to build buy-in. Without those two steps, a good plan stays a plan.
If your team keeps stalling at the same point in every project, that's rarely bad luck. Usually the energy for that stage simply isn't there.
There's a second line running through the model. Three geniuses are responsive: they react to what's happening around them. Wonder notices what isn't working, Discernment responds to someone else's idea, Enablement responds to a request for help.
The other three are disruptive: they provoke change themselves. Invention comes up with a new way, Galvanizing gets people moving, Tenacity pushes on pace and standards until something is finished.
A team with only responsive energy keeps asking questions and accommodating, but never forces a change. A team with only disruptive energy changes things that didn't need changing. You need both, and it helps to know which way your team leans.
An individual result is useful, but the real value shows up once a team lays its results side by side. That's the Team Map: everyone's geniuses and frustrations in one view.
Two things usually stand out. A gap: a genius almost nobody holds, which means the team will struggle at that point in every project. And an excess: a genius nearly everyone holds, which crowds out the stages the team is thin on. A team full of Wonder and Invention generates ideas effortlessly and has little Tenacity to finish them.
What the map mostly does is redefine a stalled project. Not as someone's personal failure, but as a structural gap in how the team is composed. That's an easier conversation to have, and an easier problem to fix.
The result comes from a 42-question assessment, about ten minutes, taken at WorkingGenius.com. The short run time is deliberate: the point is that you can use the results in a single conversation, not that you have to study them for weeks first.
Does your result not quite land? That happens, and The Table Group publishes a worksheet for it, where you go through each type and decide whether it gives you energy, whether you can do it but it would eventually drain you, or whether it frustrates you outright. The question you keep asking yourself is the same one throughout: where do I get energy, not where am I skilled.
Once you know this, about yourself and about each other, something concrete changes in how you work together:
What it doesn't do: put people in boxes, or hand anyone an excuse to dodge tasks. Your Working Frustration is sometimes just your job. The difference is that you know why it's heavy, and you can dose it instead of holding it against yourself.
Curious what your two strongest geniuses are, or where the friction sits in your team? That starts with the assessment, or simply with a conversation about it.
Source: Patrick Lencioni, The 6 Types of Working Genius (The Table Group, 2022). Descriptions of the six geniuses based on zestalenten.nl.
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