September 24, 2026
Your team map shows the gap straight away: no one has, say, Tenacity in their top two. The obvious advice is to bring in a colleague who does have it. But on a small team that colleague sometimes just isn't there, and the deadline won't wait for the next vacancy.
Patrick Lencioni's Working Genius model divides work into six core activities, spread across three stages: Ideation, Activation and Implementation. When a genius is missing, the work keeps stalling at exactly that point. Borrowing a genius is still the first choice. For when that isn't possible, there's a tool to take the step anyway, on discipline rather than natural energy.
| Missing genius | What you do as a team |
|---|---|
| Wonder | Slow down. Ask: what problem are we actually solving? Don't jump straight to solutions. |
| Invention | Reason back from the result you want. Ask "what if" questions and leave out "can't" and "must". |
| Discernment | Agree beforehand what you'll base the decision on. Think each idea through to its consequences. |
| Galvanizing | Name what's at stake and why it matters. Keep bringing the conversation back to the main goal. |
| Enablement | Think about who this affects and what they need. Actively ask how people are doing. |
| Tenacity | Ask: who, what, how much, when? Agree on achievable milestones and hold each other to them. |
This comes from The Table Group's official guide, so use it as a handy checklist. Another option is to use AI to compensate for missing geniuses. I'll be writing a blog about that soon.
Source: Patrick Lencioni, The 6 Types of Working Genius (The Table Group, 2022); The Table Group, "Activate a Missing Genius" (facilitator guide, 2024).
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