25 Ways to Build a Working Genius Culture That Actually Sticks

Most organisations run the Working Genius session, get the debrief, and then watch the insights dissolve within three weeks.

The model makes perfect sense in the room. People recognise themselves. The team nods at the pairings. Someone makes a joke about finally understanding why they hate certain meetings. Then everyone goes back to work, the old patterns reassert themselves, and six months later the only evidence the session ever happened is a poster on the wall and a vague memory that someone was Wonder and Invention.

Building a Working Genius culture is not about running the session well. It is about what happens in the 90 days after the session, when the excitement fades and the question becomes whether this framework will actually change how your team works or whether it will join the pile of things that sounded good at the offsite but never quite landed. The Working Genius implementation guide covers the full model. This is how you make the culture shift actually stick.

LEADERSHIP POSITIONING

The Working Genius framework only becomes a culture when the leader treats it as the operating system, not the offsite topic. If you run the session and then never mention it again, the team learns that it was an event. If you reference it daily, assign work through it, and name what you see in real time, the team learns that it is how decisions get made here. The first five moves below position the leader as the person who will not let this fade.

1. Name Your Own Working Geniuses Out Loud in the First Team Meeting After the Session

The framework does not stick unless the leader goes first. Most leaders run the Working Genius session, get their own results, and then never mention their pairing again in front of the team. The team notices. If the leader does not reference their own Geniuses, the implicit message is that this was interesting theory but not something that shapes how we actually operate.

Start here: In your first team meeting after the Working Genius session, name your two Geniuses and your two Frustrations out loud. Be specific. Tell the team what kind of work energises you and what kind of work drains you. Then tell them what you are going to start doing differently as a result.

The specificity matters because generic statements do not create permission. Saying "I am Wonder and Invention" is not enough. Saying "I am Wonder and Invention, which means I love starting new projects but I lose energy fast when we are in detailed implementation, so I am going to hand more of the follow-through work to the people whose Genius is Tenacity" gives the team a model for how to talk about their own Geniuses without it sounding like an excuse.

• Name your two Geniuses and explain what kind of work lights you up

• Name your two Frustrations and admit what drains you

• Describe one specific change you are making to how you work as a result

• Invite the team to hold you accountable to working more in your Geniuses

The leader who admits their Frustrations in public gives the rest of the team permission to do the same. The leader who only talks about Geniuses in the abstract accidentally reinforces the idea that admitting you hate certain work is weakness. This is the opposite of what you want. A Working Genius culture is one where people can name their Frustrations without fear and trust that the team will reorganise the work accordingly.

2. Reference Working Genius Language in Every Major Decision for the Next 30 Days

Language becomes culture when it gets used daily, not occasionally. If you only mention Working Genius in quarterly reviews or annual planning sessions, it stays theoretical. The team treats it as something we talk about sometimes, not something we use to make decisions. The 30 days after the Working Genius session are the window where the language either becomes normal or it does not.

The mechanism here is repetition in context. Every time you make a staffing decision, assign a project, or debrief a meeting, use Working Genius language to explain the reasoning. The team needs to hear you say "I am putting Sarah on this project because it needs someone with Discernment and Galvanising, and that is her pairing" at least ten times before they start using the same language themselves.

Most leaders make one of two mistakes: They either assume the team will adopt the language automatically after the session, or they overcorrect and turn every conversation into a Working Genius lecture. Neither works. The first approach produces silence. The second produces eye rolls. What works is casual, consistent reference in real decisions.

Practical examples of how to weave the language in:

• In a project kickoff meeting, say "This project is going to need a lot of Wonder at the start and a lot of Tenacity at the end, so let's make sure we have both on the team."

• When someone is visibly frustrated in a task, ask "Is this work sitting in your Frustration zone?" and use their answer to reassign the work.

• In a debrief after a difficult meeting, name what was missing in Working Genius terms: "We had great Discernment in that room but no Galvanising, which is why we identified the problem but could not get momentum on the solution."

• When you delegate a task, explain why you are giving it to this specific person using their Geniuses: "I am giving this to you because it is a Wonder and Invention task and that is where you do your best work."

The goal is not to turn every sentence into a Working Genius sentence. The goal is to use the framework often enough that the team sees it as the lens through which work gets assigned, not an optional add-on.

3. Add Working Genius Pairings to the Organisational Chart or Team Directory

Culture is shaped by what gets written down. If your organisational chart lists names, titles, and contact details but not Working Genius pairings, you are signaling that the pairings are nice-to-know information, not load-bearing. If you add the pairings to the chart, you signal that this is now part of how we identify who does what.

This move works because it removes the friction from using the framework. When someone is staffing a project and they need to know who has Discernment and Galvanising, they should not have to dig through old session notes or ask around. They should be able to open the team directory, scan the pairings, and make the decision in 30 seconds.

Where to add the pairings:

• Next to each name on the internal organisational chart

• In the team directory or intranet profile for each person

• In email signatures as a single line under the title

• On the door placard or desk nameplate if your organisation uses physical markers

Some leaders resist this because it feels like over-indexing on a single framework. The concern is that if you write it down everywhere, people will think it is the only thing that matters. This concern is backwards. The frameworks that do not get written down are the ones that fade. The frameworks that get embedded in the visible systems are the ones that shape daily decisions.

One warning: Do not add the pairings to external-facing materials like your website bios or LinkedIn profiles unless your organisation has fully committed to making Working Genius part of your public identity. The pairings are an internal operating system. They help your team work better together. They do not necessarily help your clients or stakeholders understand what you do, and adding them externally before the culture is solid internally creates confusion.

4. Build Working Genius Pairings Into Your Hiring and Onboarding Process

If new hires do not learn the Working Genius framework in their first week, they will spend months trying to decode why certain people get certain work and others do not. They will misread it as favouritism or unclear role boundaries when the actual reason is that your team is assigning work based on Geniuses. Bringing new people into the language early removes that confusion and speeds up their integration.

The best time to introduce Working Genius is in the final interview or the onboarding week, depending on how formal your hiring process is. If you bring it up too early, it feels like a personality test that might be used to screen people out, which creates the wrong dynamic. If you wait too long, the new hire has already formed their mental model of how the team works, and retrofitting the framework onto that model is harder than starting with it.

Hiring stage: In the final interview, explain that your team uses the Working Genius model to assign work and ask the candidate if they have come across it before. If they have not, give them a two-minute summary and let them know they will do the full assessment in their first week. If they have, ask them what their pairing is and how they have seen it play out in previous roles. This does two things. It gives you insight into how self-aware they are about their strengths, and it signals to them that this is an organisation that cares about putting people in work that energises them.

Onboarding stage: In the first week, have the new hire complete the Working Genius assessment and then schedule a 30-minute one-on-one to debrief their results. Do not delegate this to HR or a peer. The direct manager should run the debrief because the conversation is not just about understanding the pairing. It is about explaining how the team will use the pairing to shape what work the new hire gets assigned.

Key onboarding questions to ask during the debrief:

• What surprises you about your pairing?

• When have you been happiest in a role, and does that match your Geniuses?

• When have you been most drained, and does that match your Frustrations?

• What kind of work are you hoping to do more of in this role?

• What kind of work are you hoping to do less of?

The onboarding debrief is also the moment to explain how other people on the team use their pairings. Walk the new hire through two or three examples of how the team has recently assigned work based on Geniuses. Make it concrete. Show them the pattern so they can recognise it when it happens to them.

5. Run a Monthly Working Genius Audit in Your Leadership Team Meetings

Most teams run the Working Genius session, make a few initial changes, and then never revisit whether those changes are actually working. The framework becomes static. People remember their pairings but the team stops adjusting based on them. A monthly audit keeps the framework active by forcing the leadership team to ask whether work is still landing in the right Genius zones or whether drift has started to happen.

The audit does not need to be long. Ten minutes at the end of a monthly leadership meeting is enough. The question you are asking is simple: Over the last 30 days, where did we assign work that landed in someone's Frustration zone, and what can we do differently next month?

Audit structure: Go around the table and have each person name one task or project they worked on in the last month that sat in their Frustration zone. Do not make this a confessional. Make it a diagnostic. The goal is not to shame anyone for being in the wrong work. The goal is to identify patterns so the team can redistribute the work before resentment builds.

After everyone has named one Frustration-zone task, ask the follow-up question: Could this task have been reassigned to someone whose Genius it is? If the answer is yes, reassign it. If the answer is no because no one on the team has the right Genius for this work, then you have just identified a staffing gap or a need to bring in external support.

What the audit surfaces over time:

• Chronic misalignment where someone is consistently working outside their Geniuses because the role was defined badly

• Seasonal misalignment where certain phases of a project require Geniuses that are underrepresented on the team

• Unspoken resentment where someone has been doing work they hate for months but has not said anything because they thought it was just part of the job

• Structural gaps where entire categories of work have no natural owner because the team lacks a certain Genius pairing

The monthly audit works because it treats Working Genius as a living system that needs maintenance, not a static map that gets drawn once and never updated. Teams drift. Roles evolve. New projects create new demands. The audit catches the drift before it turns into burnout.

OPERATIONAL INTEGRATION

Talking about Working Genius is not the same as building it into how work actually gets assigned, tracked, and completed. The next five moves shift the framework from language into operations. These are the changes that make Working Genius the default way your team organises projects, not an optional lens people remember to use sometimes.

6. Tag Every Major Project with the Geniuses It Will Require Before You Staff It

Most project failures do not happen because the team lacked skill. They happen because the team lacked the right mix of Geniuses for the type of work the project demanded. A project that needs Wonder and Discernment at the front end but gets staffed with Enablement and Tenacity will produce a beautifully executed version of the wrong idea. A project that needs Galvanising and Enablement to cross the finish line but only has Wonder and Invention people will generate brilliant ideas that never ship.

Tagging the project before you staff it forces you to think about what kind of work the project actually is before you assign it to whoever happens to be available. This is a sequencing shift. Most leaders staff first and adjust later. The Working Genius approach is to define the work first and then find the people whose Geniuses match.

How to tag a project: Before you assign anyone to a new project, write down the six Working Geniuses in order of how much the project will demand each one. You do not need precise percentages. You need a rough rank. A product launch might look like this: Galvanising, Enablement, Discernment, Tenacity, Wonder, Invention. A research initiative might look like this: Wonder, Discernment, Invention, Tenacity, Enablement, Galvanising.

Once you have the rank, look at your team and ask: Do we have people whose Geniuses match the top three on this list? If yes, staff them. If no, you have three options. Bring in external support whose Geniuses match. Reassign the project to a different team. Or proceed with the wrong Genius mix and accept that the project will be harder than it needs to be.

Common staffing mistakes this prevents:

• Putting a Wonder-Invention person in charge of a project that is 80 percent Tenacity and Enablement work

• Staffing an innovation project entirely with Discernment-Galvanising people who will critique every idea before it has room to develop

• Assigning a Discernment person to lead a project that needs someone to rally the team and drive momentum, then wondering why the project stalls

• Giving all the strategic projects to the same two people because they are good at everything, when the real reason they are good at everything is that their Geniuses happen to match the kinds of projects you run most often

Tagging also makes it easier to explain staffing decisions to the team. When someone asks why they did not get assigned to a high-profile project, you can point to the Genius requirements and show them that the project needed Discernment and Enablement and their pairing is Wonder and Invention. It removes the subjectivity and turns the conversation into a fit question, not a favouritism question.

7. Redesign Recurring Meetings Around the Genius Phases They Serve

Meetings fail when they try to do too many things at once. A meeting that tries to generate ideas, evaluate ideas, make decisions, assign tasks, and rally commitment in 60 minutes will do all five poorly. The Working Genius framework gives you a way to separate meetings by type so each one has a clear Genius focus.

The six Geniuses map to six kinds of meetings. Wonder meetings are for identifying problems and asking questions. Invention meetings are for generating solutions. Discernment meetings are for evaluating options. Galvanising meetings are for making decisions and building commitment. Enablement meetings are for planning execution. Tenacity meetings are for tracking progress and removing blockers.

Redesign your recurring meetings using this map: Look at your weekly or monthly meeting schedule and identify what Genius each meeting is actually trying to serve. If a meeting is trying to serve more than two Geniuses, split it into separate meetings or separate phases within the meeting. If a meeting has no clear Genius focus, cancel it.

Example redesign for a leadership team:

• Monday morning: Wonder and Discernment meeting. Identify the biggest problems the team is facing and evaluate which ones are worth solving this week. No solution generation. No decision-making. Just problem identification and prioritisation.

• Tuesday afternoon: Invention meeting. Generate solutions for the prioritised problems from Monday. Encourage wild ideas. Defer judgment. The only rule is that solutions must be specific enough to evaluate.

• Wednesday morning: Discernment and Galvanising meeting. Evaluate the solutions from Tuesday and make decisions on which ones to pursue. This is where you say yes or no, not where you generate more options.

• Thursday morning: Enablement meeting. Plan the execution for the decisions made Wednesday. Who does what by when. What resources are needed. What dependencies exist. Pure logistics.

• Friday morning: Tenacity meeting. Review progress on active projects. Surface blockers. Reassign work if someone is stuck. This is not a status update meeting. This is a problem-solving meeting for things that are off track.

The redesign works because it gives people with different Geniuses a reason to show up fully in different meetings. A person whose Genius is Tenacity will tune out in a Wonder meeting because the conversation does not need their skillset. But if you tell them the Tenacity meeting is Friday and that is where their Genius is essential, they will come prepared and engaged.

8. Create a Team Dashboard That Tracks Who Is Working in Their Genius and Who Is Not

What gets measured gets managed. If you do not track whether people are working in their Geniuses, the team will drift back toward assigning work based on availability rather than fit. A simple visual dashboard that shows Genius alignment at a glance makes it harder for that drift to happen unnoticed.

The dashboard does not need to be complex. A shared spreadsheet or a section in your project management tool is enough. The key is that it needs to be visible to the whole team and updated regularly so people can see the pattern.

Dashboard structure: List every active project or major responsibility on the left. List every team member across the top. In each cell, mark whether that person's involvement in that project aligns with their Geniuses, sits in their Competency, or falls into their Frustration. Use a simple colour code: green for Genius alignment, yellow for Competency, red for Frustration.

What the dashboard reveals:

• Who is spending too much time in their Frustration zone and is at risk of burnout

• Who is underutilised because their Geniuses are not getting tapped

• Which projects are staffed badly and need to be restaffed

• Which Geniuses are overrepresented on your team and which are underrepresented

The dashboard works best when you review it monthly in the leadership team meeting or the Working Genius audit described earlier. Do not use it as a performance management tool. Use it as a staffing diagnostic. If someone has three red cells, the question is not "Why are you bad at this work?" The question is "Why are we asking you to do this work in the first place?"

Implementation tip: Start by tracking only the top five or six biggest projects or responsibilities per person. If you try to track every task, the dashboard becomes unmanageable and people stop updating it. Focus on the work that takes up 60 to 80 percent of each person's time. That is where misalignment does the most damage.

9. Assign a Working Genius Champion to Each Major Project Team

Large projects need someone whose job is to notice when the team is working outside their Geniuses and to call it out before it becomes a problem. This is not the project manager's job. The project manager is focused on deadlines, deliverables, and dependencies. The Working Genius champion is focused on whether the right people are doing the right work at the right time.

The champion does not need to be senior. They need to be someone who understands the framework well enough to recognise when the team is stuck because the wrong Genius is leading a phase, and someone who is willing to name that misalignment in front of the group without making it personal.

The champion's role: Sit in on major project meetings and watch for three patterns. First, are the people speaking up in this meeting the people whose Geniuses match the phase of work the project is in? If the project is in the Discernment phase but the Wonder people are dominating the conversation, the champion flags it. Second, is the team asking someone to do work that sits in their Frustration zone? If yes, the champion suggests a reassignment. Third, is the team skipping a Genius phase entirely? If the project jumped from Invention to Enablement without a Discernment or Galvanising conversation, the champion calls a pause and inserts the missing phase.

When to deploy a champion: You do not need a champion on every project. You need one on projects that are strategic, cross-functional, or high-risk. Small projects with clear owners and tight scopes do not need this layer. Large projects with ambiguous ownership and shifting priorities do.

Common objections and responses:

• Objection: This feels like adding bureaucracy. Response: Bureaucracy is process without purpose. A champion removes friction by catching misalignment early, which saves time in the long run.

• Objection: People will resent being told they are in the wrong Genius zone. Response: Only if the conversation is framed as criticism. The champion is not saying you are bad at this work. They are saying this work is not your Genius and someone else would do it faster and with less energy drain.

• Objection: We do not have capacity to add another role to project teams. Response: The champion is not a full-time role. It is a 10-minute check-in at the start of each project meeting. The time cost is negligible. The cost of misalignment is not.

The champion model works best when the role rotates across the team over time. This spreads the expertise and prevents any one person from being seen as the Working Genius police. It also gives more people practice in noticing the patterns, which deepens the culture.

10. Build Genius-Based Pairing Into Delegation Decisions

Delegation fails most often when the person delegating assigns work based on availability rather than Genius fit. The task gets done, but it takes longer than it should, the quality is lower than expected, and the person doing the work resents it because it drained them. Genius-based delegation fixes this by making fit the first filter, not the last one.

The shift here is in how you think about your team's capacity. Most leaders look at their task list, look at who has time, and delegate to whoever is least busy. The Working Genius approach is to look at the task, identify what Genius it requires, and delegate to whoever has that Genius, even if it means waiting a few days for them to have capacity.

Delegation decision tree: Before you delegate a task, answer three questions. First, what Genius does this task require? Second, who on my team has that Genius? Third, do they have capacity in the next two weeks? If yes to all three, delegate it. If no to the second question, either do it yourself, bring in external support, or accept that the task will be done less well by someone working in their Competency or Frustration.

What this prevents: You stop accidentally burning out your most capable people by giving them every hard task regardless of whether it matches their Geniuses. You stop underutilising people whose Geniuses do not match the tasks you tend to delegate most often. You stop creating resentment by asking people to do work they hate without acknowledging that it is outside their Genius zone.

Practical delegation patterns by Genius:

• Wonder: Delegate problem identification, research, needs assessment, and question framing.

• Invention: Delegate brainstorming, solution design, creative concepts, and new process development.

• Discernment: Delegate evaluation, decision support, risk assessment, and quality review.

• Galvanising: Delegate stakeholder engagement, decision-making, team rallying, and momentum building.

• Enablement: Delegate planning, coordination, resource allocation, and execution support.

• Tenacity: Delegate follow-through, progress tracking, detail work, and completion tasks.

The delegation tree also helps you explain why you are giving a task to one person and not another. When someone asks why they did not get assigned to a project, you can point to the Genius requirements and show them that the task required Enablement and their Genius is Wonder. It removes the perception of favouritism and turns the conversation into a fit question.

TEAM DYNAMICS

The next set of moves focuses on how Working Genius changes the way your team communicates, resolves conflict, and handles difficult conversations. These are the shifts that make the framework feel like culture rather than just a tool.

11. Use Working Genius Language to Depersonalise Conflict

Conflict becomes personal when people interpret disagreement as criticism. Someone pushes back on an idea and the person who suggested the idea hears "You are not smart enough." Someone questions whether a project is worth the effort and the person leading the project hears "You are not capable." The Working Genius framework gives you a way to reframe that conflict as a Genius mismatch rather than a personal attack.

The shift here is in how you name what is happening in the room. When two people are clashing, pause the conversation and ask: Is this a Genius conflict? Are we hearing from someone whose Genius is Discernment and someone whose Genius is Wonder, and they are both doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing?

Common Genius conflicts and how to name them:

• Wonder versus Galvanising: Wonder wants to ask more questions. Galvanising wants to make a decision and move. Neither is wrong. You need both. But if the Wonder person keeps asking questions after the Galvanising person has already decided, it feels like obstruction.

• Invention versus Discernment: Invention wants to generate options. Discernment wants to evaluate them. If Discernment evaluates too early, Invention shuts down. If Invention generates too long, Discernment gets frustrated.

• Discernment versus Enablement: Discernment sees the risks. Enablement sees the plan. Discernment will always find problems. Enablement will always want to proceed. The conflict is not personal. It is structural.

• Galvanising versus Tenacity: Galvanising wants to start the next thing. Tenacity wants to finish the current thing. If Galvanising moves too fast, Tenacity feels abandoned. If Tenacity slows down too much, Galvanising feels stuck.

When you name the conflict as a Genius mismatch, both people can step back and recognise that the other person is not being difficult. They are being themselves. The Wonder person is not trying to derail the project by asking questions. They are doing what Wonder people do, which is notice gaps and surface unknowns. The Discernment person is not being negative. They are doing what Discernment people do, which is assess risk and protect quality.

How to depersonalise in real time: When you see a Genius conflict starting, interrupt and say: "I think we are seeing a Wonder-Galvanising conflict here. [Name] is asking great questions because that is their Genius, and [Name] is ready to move because that is their Genius. We need both. Let's give Wonder two more minutes to surface concerns, and then we will make a decision."

This only works if you do it consistently. If you name Genius conflicts once and then never again, people will think it was a one-off. If you name them every time you see them for the first three months, the team starts naming them without you.

12. Teach the Team to Self-Identify When They Are in Their Frustration Zone

Most people do not realise they are working in their Frustration zone until they are already burnt out. They just know they are tired, resentful, or questioning whether they are in the right role. The Working Genius framework gives them language to name the problem earlier, before it turns into a performance issue or an exit conversation.

The shift here is teaching people to notice their own energy patterns and to speak up when they are consistently being asked to do work that drains them. This requires psychological safety. If people think that admitting they hate certain work will be seen as weakness or lack of commitment, they will stay silent. If they think that naming their Frustration zone will lead to the work being reassigned, they will speak up.

How to create the conditions for self-identification: In team meetings, model the behaviour yourself. When you are working in your Frustration zone, say so out loud. "I have been doing a lot of Tenacity work this week and it is draining me. I need to hand some of this off to someone whose Genius it is." When someone else admits they are in their Frustration zone, respond with curiosity, not judgment. Ask: "How long have you been feeling this way? What work specifically is draining you? Who on the team has the Genius for that work so we can reassign it?"

Warning signs that someone is in their Frustration zone:

• Tasks that should take two hours are taking six hours

• Work quality is declining even though the person is capable

• The person is procrastinating on tasks they used to complete quickly

• The person is visibly drained after certain kinds of work but energised after others

• The person is expressing doubt about their fit in the role even though their performance has been strong historically

The goal is not to eliminate all Frustration-zone work. Every role has some. The goal is to keep Frustration-zone work below 20 percent of someone's total workload. When it creeps above that threshold, performance suffers and retention risk climbs.

13. Run a Working Genius Retrospective After Every Major Project

Most project retrospectives focus on what went well and what could be improved. The questions are generic: What should we start doing? What should we stop doing? What should we keep doing? These questions produce generic answers. A Working Genius retrospective asks different questions and surfaces different insights.

The Working Genius retrospective asks: At each phase of the project, did we have the right Geniuses leading? Where did we have Genius gaps? Where did we ask people to work in their Frustration zones? What would we staff differently next time?

Retrospective structure: Map the project against the six Geniuses in sequence. Wonder: Did we spend enough time identifying the real problem or did we jump to solutions too fast? Invention: Did we generate enough options or did we settle for the first idea? Discernment: Did we evaluate the options rigorously or did we skip straight to execution? Galvanising: Did we build real commitment or did people nod in the meeting and ignore the decision later? Enablement: Did we plan the execution well or did we underestimate what it would take? Tenacity: Did we follow through to completion or did the project fizzle at 80 percent done?

For each phase, ask: Who was leading this phase? Was it someone whose Genius matched the phase? If not, what was the cost?

Common retrospective insights:

• We had no one with Wonder on the project team, so we solved the wrong problem beautifully

• We had three people with Discernment and no one with Invention, so we critiqued every idea before it had room to develop

• We had strong Galvanising at the start but no Tenacity at the end, so the project launched with momentum and died in follow-through

• We asked our best Enablement person to lead the Wonder phase, which drained them and slowed the project

The retrospective works because it gives the team a shared vocabulary for naming what went wrong without blaming individuals. You are not saying the project failed because this person is bad at their job. You are saying the project struggled because we asked someone whose Genius is Tenacity to lead a phase that needed Wonder.

14. Create a Team Agreement on How to Handle Genius Gaps

Every team has Genius gaps. Some Geniuses are overrepresented. Others are underrepresented or missing entirely. The question is not whether you have gaps. The question is whether your team has agreed in advance on how to handle them.

A team agreement removes the ambiguity. It answers the question: When we have a project that requires a Genius we do not have on the team, what do we do? Without the agreement, the default is usually to assign the work to whoever is available and hope for the best. With the agreement, the team has three clear options: bring in external support, train someone to develop Competency in that Genius, or redesign the project to minimise the need for the missing Genius.

How to build the agreement: In a team meeting, map your team's Geniuses on a whiteboard. List the six Geniuses down the left side. Next to each one, write the names of everyone on the team who has that Genius. Then ask: Which Geniuses do we have in abundance? Which do we have only one or two of? Which do we have none of?

Once the map is visible, ask the team: When a project needs a Genius we do not have, what is our default response? Capture three options and agree on a decision tree.

Sample decision tree:

• Option one: If the project is strategic and the missing Genius is critical, bring in external support (contractor, consultant, or advisor).

• Option two: If the project is important but not urgent, assign it to someone whose Competency includes that Genius and give them extra time.

• Option three: If the project is low stakes, redesign it to reduce the need for the missing Genius.

The agreement prevents two common failure modes. First, it prevents the team from unconsciously avoiding projects that require underrepresented Geniuses, which limits what the organisation can do. Second, it prevents the team from burning out the one person who has a rare Genius by giving them every project that requires it.

15. Use Working Genius as the Framework for Career Development Conversations

Most career development conversations are structured around job titles and promotion paths. The employee says where they want to go and the manager helps them build a plan to get there. This model works for people who want to climb a ladder. It fails for people who want to do more of the work they love and less of the work they hate, regardless of title.

The Working Genius framework gives you a way to structure career conversations around energy and fit, not just advancement. The question becomes: How can we shape your role so you spend more time in your Geniuses and less time in your Frustrations?

Career conversation structure: Start by asking the person to describe a week where they felt fully energised at work. What were they working on? What kind of problems were they solving? What meetings did they leave feeling lit up? Then ask them to describe a week where they felt drained. Same questions. The answers will map almost perfectly to their Geniuses and Frustrations.

Once you have that map, ask: Over the next 12 months, what would it look like to shift 10 to 20 percent more of your work into your Genius zone? What tasks would you hand off? What tasks would you take on? Who else on the team could absorb the work you want to hand off?

This reframes development: Development is not just about learning new skills or moving up. It is about redesigning your role to align with your natural wiring. For some people, that means taking on more leadership responsibility. For others, it means becoming the team's go-to expert in a specific Genius. Both are legitimate development paths.

Common career conversation outcomes:

• Someone realises they do not actually want the promotion they thought they wanted because the new role would pull them out of their Geniuses

• Someone realises they are in the wrong role entirely and the conversation shifts to finding a different seat on the team

• Someone identifies a specific skill gap in a Competency area and you build a training plan to develop it

• Someone negotiates a role redesign that keeps the same title but shifts the task mix to align better with their Geniuses

The Working Genius career conversation works because it gives people language to ask for what they need without sounding like they are complaining or being difficult. They are not saying they hate their job. They are saying their job has drifted away from their Geniuses and they want help realigning it.

REINFORCEMENT SYSTEMS

The final set of moves embeds Working Genius into the systems that shape behaviour over time. These are the changes that make the framework feel inevitable rather than optional.

16. Add Working Genius Alignment to Performance Review Criteria

If performance reviews measure output without measuring whether someone is working in their Geniuses, you are incentivising people to stay in misaligned roles. Someone can be hitting their KPIs while spending 60 percent of their time in their Frustration zone. The output looks fine. The person is quietly burning out.

Adding Genius alignment to the review criteria signals that the organisation cares not just about what gets done but about how sustainably it gets done. The question becomes: Are you working in your Geniuses most of the time, or are you grinding through work that drains you?

How to add it to the review: Include a section in the performance review template that asks: Over the last six months, what percentage of your work has aligned with your Geniuses? What percentage has fallen into your Frustration zones? If the Frustration-zone work is above 20 percent, what changes can we make in the next six months to reduce it?

This is not a punitive question. You are not penalising someone for being in their Frustration zone. You are diagnosing whether the role is set up correctly. If someone consistently reports high Frustration-zone work, the role needs to be redesigned or the person needs to be moved to a different role.

Manager's role in the review: The manager's job is to use the Working Genius data to identify misalignment early. If someone has been working in their Frustration zone for two consecutive reviews, that is not a performance problem. That is a staffing problem. The manager either reassigns work, brings in support, or helps the person transition to a role that fits better.

What this prevents: It prevents high performers from quietly suffering because they are good at work they hate. It prevents low performers from being labelled as underperformers when the real issue is that they are in the wrong role. It prevents turnover driven by misalignment that could have been caught and fixed in a review conversation.

17. Celebrate Public Examples of People Working in Their Geniuses

What gets celebrated gets repeated. If you only celebrate outcomes, people will optimise for outcomes regardless of how much the work drains them. If you celebrate people working in their Geniuses and producing great outcomes because of it, people will start to see Genius alignment as a competitive advantage, not a nice-to-have.

The celebration does not need to be elaborate. A mention in a team meeting is enough. The key is specificity. Do not say "Great job on the project." Say "Great job on the project, and I want to call out that this worked because we staffed it with people whose Geniuses matched the work. Sarah's Discernment helped us avoid three major risks. Mike's Tenacity kept us on track through the messy middle. This is what happens when we get the Genius alignment right."

Where to celebrate:

• In weekly team meetings when a project wraps

• In company-wide updates when a major initiative succeeds

• In one-on-one check-ins when someone delivers exceptional work

• In performance reviews as evidence of what working in your Genius produces

Why this works: People learn culture through stories. The story you tell about why a project succeeded shapes what people believe matters. If the story is "We succeeded because everyone worked really hard," people learn that effort matters. If the story is "We succeeded because we staffed the project with the right Geniuses in the right phases," people learn that Genius alignment matters.

Celebration also gives the team permission to talk about Working Genius without it feeling forced. When the leader names Geniuses publicly, it becomes normal for everyone else to name them too.

18. Build a Working Genius Library of Past Project Examples

New team members need to see what good Genius alignment looks like in practice. A library of past project examples gives them a reference point. The library does not need to be formal. A shared folder with short case studies is enough.

Case study structure: For each project, capture four things. First, what was the project? Second, what Geniuses did the project require? Third, who was on the team and what were their Geniuses? Fourth, what worked and what did not?

The library works because it removes the abstraction. Instead of explaining the concept of Genius alignment in theory, you show someone three real examples of projects that succeeded because the team got the alignment right and two examples of projects that struggled because they did not.

When to use the library:

• In onboarding to show new hires how the team uses Working Genius

• In project planning to help the team see patterns in what kinds of Genius mixes work for different project types

• In retrospectives to compare the current project to past projects and identify what to replicate or avoid

• In hiring conversations to explain how the team thinks about Genius-based staffing

The library also creates accountability. If a project struggles and the retrospective reveals a Genius misalignment, you add it to the library as a learning example. Over time, the library becomes a record of the team's pattern recognition. You start to see that certain project types always need certain Genius combinations, and you stop making the same staffing mistakes repeatedly.

19. Run an Annual Working Genius Recalibration Session

Roles change. Responsibilities shift. People grow. A Working Genius pairing that was accurate two years ago might not be accurate today, either because the person has developed new Competencies or because the role has drifted into work that no longer matches their Geniuses.

An annual recalibration session gives the team a chance to reassess whether the original pairings still fit. The session does not mean people retake the full assessment every year. It means you sit down as a team and ask: Does your pairing still feel accurate? Has your role changed in a way that puts you in your Frustration zone more often? Do we need to adjust how we are using your Geniuses?

Recalibration session structure: Give everyone 15 minutes to reflect on two questions before the session. First, over the last 12 months, when have you felt most energised at work? Second, when have you felt most drained? Then go around the room and have each person share their answers. As each person shares, the rest of the team listens for patterns. Is this person describing work that matches their Geniuses or work that does not?

After everyone has shared, ask: Based on what we just heard, do we need to make any role adjustments? Are there tasks that need to be reassigned? Are there people who need more space to work in their Geniuses?

What the recalibration surfaces:

• Someone whose role has drifted so far from their Geniuses that they are at risk of leaving

• Someone whose Geniuses are being underutilised because the team has not adjusted to a new project mix

• Someone who has developed a new Competency and is ready to take on work they would have declined a year ago

• A structural gap where the team used to have a certain Genius represented and no longer does

The recalibration session also reinforces that Working Genius is not a static map. It is a living system that needs regular maintenance. The session gives the team permission to say: What worked last year is not working this year, and we need to adjust.

20. Link Genius Alignment to Retention Conversations

Exit interviews reveal that most people leave because they were in the wrong work, not because they were in the wrong organisation. The work drained them, frustrated them, or made them question whether they were in the right career. The organisation failed to notice or failed to act.

Working Genius gives you a way to catch retention risks before they turn into resignations. If someone is consistently working in their Frustration zone, they are a retention risk. The question is whether you notice it and do something about it before they start looking for other jobs.

Retention conversation structure: In quarterly one-on-ones, ask: What percentage of your work right now aligns with your Geniuses? If the answer is below 60 percent, dig deeper. What work is draining you? How long has this been true? What would need to change for you to feel more aligned?

The key is to treat this as a diagnostic, not a performance conversation. You are not asking because you think they are underperforming. You are asking because you want to keep them and you know that misalignment leads to attrition.

Common retention conversation outcomes:

• The person admits they have been thinking about leaving because the work no longer fits

• You discover a task or project that can be reassigned immediately and the person's energy improves within weeks

• You realise the role has fundamentally changed and the person needs to move to a different seat or the role needs to be split

• The person realises the misalignment is temporary (due to a short-term project) and commits to staying once the project wraps

Linking Genius alignment to retention conversations makes it clear that the organisation is willing to redesign roles to keep good people. Most organisations say they value their people. This is how you prove it.

SCALING ACROSS THE ORGANISATION

Once Working Genius is embedded in one team, the question becomes how to scale it across the organisation without it feeling like a top-down mandate. These moves create the conditions for organic spread.

21. Train Internal Facilitators to Run Working Genius Sessions

If the only person who can run a Working Genius session is an external facilitator, the framework will not scale. You need people inside the organisation who can introduce the model to new teams, run debriefs, and coach managers on how to use it daily.

Training internal facilitators does two things. First, it removes the bottleneck. If a new team wants to learn Working Genius, they do not need to wait for budget approval or scheduling availability. They can work with an internal facilitator and get started within a week. Second, it builds internal expertise. The facilitators become the go-to people for Working Genius questions, which means the framework stays alive even when the original champion leaves.

Who to train as facilitators: Look for people who meet three criteria. First, they understand the Working Genius framework deeply and use it in their own work. Second, they have credibility across the organisation, which means people will trust them to run a session. Third, they have the facilitation skill to hold a room, manage conflict, and keep a conversation on track.

Facilitator training structure: Send internal facilitators through the official Working Genius certification programme if budget allows, or run an internal train-the-trainer session if not. The key is that facilitators need practice running sessions before they do it with a real team. Have them co-facilitate with an experienced facilitator for their first two or three sessions, then let them run sessions solo.

What internal facilitators need to succeed:

• Access to the Working Genius assessment for new team members

• A facilitation guide that walks through how to run the session and debrief the results

• A library of case studies and examples they can pull from when explaining the framework

• A peer group of other facilitators they can debrief with and learn from

Internal facilitators also need permission to say no. If a team is not ready for Working Genius because the leader is not committed or the team does not have the psychological safety to be honest about Frustrations, the facilitator should be able to decline and explain why.

22. Create a Working Genius Peer Learning Group for Managers

Managers need support from other managers who are trying to embed the same framework. A peer learning group gives them a place to ask questions, share what is working, and troubleshoot what is not.

The group does not need to be large. Six to ten managers is enough. The format is simple: a monthly one-hour meeting where each manager shares one challenge they are facing with Working Genius implementation and the group helps them solve it.

Peer learning group structure:

• Round one: Each manager shares one thing that worked well in the last month (a successful Genius-based reassignment, a great retrospective, a team member who spoke up about being in their Frustration zone).

• Round two: Each manager shares one thing they are stuck on (a team member who resists the framework, a project that failed despite good Genius alignment, uncertainty about how to handle a Genius gap).

• Round three: The group picks the two or three stickiest problems and spends the rest of the time workshopping solutions.

Why peer learning works: Managers trust other managers more than they trust leadership or external consultants. If a peer says "I tried this and it worked," that carries more weight than a case study or a blog post. The group also creates social accountability. If you committed to trying something in the last meeting and you show up a month later having not done it, the group will notice.

The peer learning group also surfaces patterns that leadership might not see. If three different managers report the same obstacle, that is a signal that the obstacle is structural, not individual. Leadership can then address the structural issue rather than treating it as three separate problems.

23. Make Working Genius Pairing Visible in Internal Communication

Culture spreads through repetition. If Working Genius language only shows up in formal meetings, it stays formal. If it shows up in email signatures, Slack profiles, and casual conversation, it becomes part of how the team talks.

The move here is to make Genius pairings visible everywhere so people cannot forget them. The more often someone sees their own pairing and other people's pairings, the more likely they are to use the framework when making decisions.

Where to make pairings visible:

• Email signatures: Add your pairing as a single line under your title

• Slack or Teams profiles: Include your pairing in the "What I do" section

• Meeting agendas: When listing attendees, include their pairings next to their names

• Project briefs: When describing the team, list each person's Genius alongside their role

• Internal newsletters: When introducing new hires, include their Genius pairing in the bio

Visibility also reduces the friction of using the framework. If someone is staffing a project and they need to find who has Discernment, they should not need to dig through old files. They should be able to scan the team directory or the org chart and find it in ten seconds.

One caution: Do not make pairings visible externally unless the organisation has fully committed to Working Genius as part of its public identity. Clients and stakeholders do not need to know your internal operating system. Visible pairings are for internal use.

24. Tie Budget Allocation to Genius-Based Staffing Decisions

If projects get funded without anyone asking whether the team has the right Geniuses to execute, Genius alignment will always lose to speed and availability. The team will default to staffing whoever is free, and Genius-based staffing will remain aspirational.

Tying budget allocation to Genius staffing creates a forcing function. Before a project gets funded, someone has to answer: What Geniuses does this project require, and do we have them on the team? If the answer is no, the project either gets restaffed, delayed, or canceled.

How to implement this: Add a Genius alignment section to your project approval template. When a leader requests budget for a project, they need to include two things. First, a map of what Geniuses the project will require at each phase. Second, a list of who will be on the team and whether their Geniuses match the project requirements.

If there is a Genius gap, the approver asks: How will you fill this gap? The options are to bring in external support, reassign someone from another project, or delay the project until the right people are available.

What this prevents:

• It prevents projects from being approved without thinking through staffing

• It prevents the pattern where projects get greenlit based on enthusiasm but fail in execution because the team lacked the right Genius mix

• It prevents the one or two people with high-demand Geniuses from being overallocated across too many projects

25. Document and Share Working Genius Success Stories Across the Organisation

The fastest way to spread a new culture is to show people what success looks like. If teams hear that another team is using Working Genius and getting better results, they will want to try it. If they never hear about it, they will assume it is just another framework that came and went.

Documenting success stories does not mean creating formal case studies with executive summaries and appendices. It means capturing the story in a way that travels: a two-minute video, a one-page write-up, or a five-minute presentation in an all-hands meeting.

Success story structure: Every story should answer four questions. First, what was the problem? Second, how did Working Genius help solve it? Third, what changed as a result? Fourth, what advice would you give another team trying the same thing?

Where to share success stories:

• In company-wide meetings when a project wraps successfully

• In internal newsletters or Slack channels dedicated to wins

• In leadership meetings when discussing what is working across teams

• In onboarding materials to show new hires how the organisation uses the framework

What makes a good success story: Specificity. A story that says "We used Working Genius and the project went better" teaches nothing. A story that says "We realised our product launch team had three people with Discernment and no one with Galvanising, so we brought in someone from sales whose Genius is Galvanising and the launch went from stalled to shipped in four weeks" teaches everything.

Success stories also create social proof. If people see that other teams are using Working Genius and getting results, they stop seeing it as the leader's pet project and start seeing it as the way the organisation operates.

Building a Working Genius culture is not about running the session and hoping the insights stick. It is about embedding the framework into how you staff projects, run meetings, handle conflict, develop people, and celebrate success. The organisations that do this well are the ones where, six months after the session, someone new joins the team and assumes Working Genius has always been how things work here. That is when you know the culture has shifted. If you want to understand how other teams have made this work, the 21 practical steps after a Working Genius session is worth reading alongside this.

Your next step is to pick three moves from this list and implement them in the next 30 days. Not all 25. Just three. The moves that will make the biggest difference for your team right now. If you need help identifying which three or how to sequence them, reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org.