August 10, 2026
Two vacancies with the same job title can be very different work. At one company, "phone sales" means calling for volume all day. At another, it means building a single client relationship over three years. If you hire on the title rather than the tasks, you regularly end up with someone who can handle the work fine and still runs empty doing it.
In Patrick Lencioni's 6 Types of Working Genius model, work moves through six steps: Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement and Tenacity. Everyone has two that give energy (Working Genius) and two that cost energy (Working Frustration). So capability and energy aren't the same thing: you can be good at something and still run empty doing it.
Don't start with the job description. Start with the tasks the person will actually do, the most important and most frequent first.
| Task in the role | Genius the task calls for |
|---|---|
| Noticing that the market or demand is shifting | Wonder |
| Coming up with an approach where nothing exists yet | Invention |
| Getting to a client's real question | Discernment |
| Getting people moving around a plan | Galvanizing |
| Supporting colleagues once something is up and running | Enablement |
| Hitting the same call volume every day | Tenacity |
Then you make two choices: which geniuses should be in the candidate's top two, and which genius must not be in their bottom two. A role that runs on Galvanizing doesn't go to someone for whom Galvanizing is a Working Frustration.
In hiring, you usually can't make the assessment mandatory. What you can do is be honest about what the role asks for day to day, so a candidate can judge for themselves whether it fits.
Source: Patrick Lencioni, The 6 Types of Working Genius (The Table Group, 2022) and the official Working Genius hiring guide.
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