The genius of wonder

The Genius of Wonder

Author and business leader, Patrick Lencioni, developed the 6 Types of Working Genius concept to help people discover their natural gifts and thrive in their work and life. You may know him from his best selling leadership book, titled The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Per their website, Working Genius identifies the six fundamental activities that are required for any type of work and provides a simple framework for how work gets done.

The framework helps people understand why they feel frustrated, underutilized or misunderstood at work, indicating that far too many teams experience failure, feel stuck or are confused because they don't know how to tap into the people around them.

The framework helps to change the way people think about their work and the teams around them.

According to the framework, there are 6 fundamental types of genius:

The model indicates that most people have 2 top types in which they thrive, while there are typically 2 others that drain them.

❓️ Do you have an idea of which two best represent you?

One of my my geniuses is 💡 Wonder.

It didn't take me long to figure this out.

If you've ever had a conversation with me or looked at any of my writing, many times you'll hear me say or write "I wonder..."

Or “I don’t have the answers, just a lot of questions…”

For as much as I have come to embrace this about myself (and it’s taking a lot of struggle to get here), it hasn’t always been embraced by places I've worked or people with whom I’ve worked particularly the psychologically unsafe ones. It's led to some poor work experiences that still impact me today. Side note: Workplace trauma is under-discussed, but deeply rooted in the toxicity of poor leadership and psychologically unsafe behavior).

I question things. I'm curious. I wonder.

And, instead of seeing it as a gift, or a ‘genius’ if you will, it gets labeled as problematic.

Or, I get labeled as the problem instead of others objectively seeing the problem, because I question the status quo, or see the possibility.

We do this in healthcare, too. Using labels such as “non-compliant”, “drug seeker”, “frequent flyer” and so many more, label a patient as the problem instead of objectively seeing the problem and working together toward a solution.

This is likely an unpopular opinion, but it is one of the reasons why I dislike the sentiment “don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions”.

Now, of course, it can be discouraging to repeatedly listen to someone complain about the same things over and over and never do anything about it. I’m not advocating for that.

But, have we ever taken the time to consider (as noted above with the 6 types of working genius), perhaps someone’s natural gifting is not to see solutions, but rather to deeply identify real problems and bring them to the surface so solutions can be developed collaboratively from it?

Is a half-baked solution better than a fully identified problem or vice versa?

Perhaps we need to spend more time understanding our own strengths and weaknesses before projecting them on others through a reductionist view.

We are all different. And that can be a good thing. Diversity of thought is underrated and I would argue, that diversity of strengths and how we use them to our fullest advantage together, is too.

So, in typical wondering fashion, I don’t have answers, just a lot of questions.

Here's what I wonder most:

How much differently would we approach actual problems?

How much differently would be treat each other?

How much more honesty and truth would we share?

How much safer would we feel?

How much more empathy would we share?

What if we started seeing each other as colleagues instead of adversaries?

What if we stopped competing and started collaborating?

What if we stopped focusing on being liked and started focusing on being respected?

What if we stopped blaming and shaming and started empathizing?

What if we stopped wanting to be right and started focusing on getting it right?

What if we stopped seeing our differences and started seeing or common ground?

What if we stopped dehumanizing each other and started returning to common humanity?

What if…

I wonder…

What do you wonder?

I’d love to know.

Engage in the comments below and tell me your thoughts.

And thanks for wondering along with me, friend.

Leaving you with a passage from the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s book Letters to a Young Poet about the importance of curiosity.

💜

In humanity,

Amy