25 Ways to Get Leadership Buy-In for Working Genius

You know Working Genius could solve the performance gaps, the misaligned hiring, and the unresolved tension sitting in every leadership meeting.

The problem is not whether the framework works. The problem is getting the people who hold the budget to believe it will work for your organisation. Leadership has heard promises before. They have sat through the offsite that produced nothing. They have paid for the assessment that sits in a drawer. They are not against investing in the team. They are against investing in something that does not deliver.

Here is the truth most people miss. Leadership does not resist Working Genius because they doubt the model. They resist it because they doubt the implementation, they doubt the timing, and they are not yet convinced that this is the answer to the specific problem keeping them up at night.

This post gives you 25 specific, actionable ways to get buy-in for Working Genius from the leadership team that controls the decision.

FRAME THE PROBLEM BEFORE YOU INTRODUCE THE SOLUTION

Leadership will not invest in a solution until they feel the cost of the problem. The first cluster of tactics focuses on making the current pain visible, specific, and impossible to ignore. If you introduce Working Genius before leadership has named the dysfunction it addresses, the framework sounds like theory. If you name the dysfunction first and let them feel it, the framework sounds like relief.

1. Name the Pattern You Keep Seeing in Leadership Meetings

Leadership teams live inside their own patterns and rarely step back far enough to see them. Your job is to name what everyone feels but nobody has said out loud. The meeting that runs two hours with no decision. The project that stalls because nobody knows who owns the next step. The talented hire who never quite fits.

Start with observed behavior, not opinion. Walk into the next one-on-one with your CEO or principal and say this: "I have noticed that we keep revisiting the same three decisions. We talk about them, we agree on a direction, and two weeks later we are back at the start. I think we have a structural problem, not a people problem." That single observation creates permission to explore what is underneath.

What Most People Do	What Actually Works
Pitch the framework and hope leadership sees the value	Name the dysfunction first and let leadership feel the cost before you mention a solution
Send a summary of the Working Genius model in an email	Book a 15-minute conversation to surface one specific pattern they already recognise

Leadership will say yes to Working Genius when they believe it solves a problem they already own. Until they own the problem, the framework is just another idea competing for budget and attention.

The pattern you name does not need to be catastrophic. It needs to be specific, recurring, and expensive in terms of time, energy, or missed opportunity. The principal who keeps losing deputy principals two years into their tenure. The CEO whose strategy sessions produce documents but no momentum. The exec team that agrees in the room and fragments the moment they leave it.

2. Quantify the Cost of the Current Dysfunction

Leadership responds to problems they can measure. The dysfunction you named in the first tactic becomes urgent the moment you attach a number to it. If the leadership team spends three hours per week in meetings that produce no decision, that is 156 hours per year. If your organisation pays senior leaders an average of 150 dollars per hour, you just identified 23,400 dollars in wasted meeting time annually.

Do the math on the patterns you are seeing. How many hours does your team spend redoing work because responsibilities were unclear? How much does it cost to replace a senior hire who leaves within 18 months? What is the dollar value of the strategic project that has been stuck for six months because nobody owns activation?

• Track one recurring meeting over four weeks and count how many decisions get made versus how many get revisited

• Calculate turnover cost for roles where people consistently leave within two years

• Estimate hours spent per month on work that gets redone, reworked, or abandoned

• Add the salary cost of senior leaders attending meetings that produce no outcome

Leadership operates in budget cycles and ROI conversations. The moment you translate team dysfunction into a measurable cost, you move the conversation from "this might be nice" to "we cannot afford to ignore this." Working Genius stops being a professional development line item and starts being a retention strategy, an efficiency gain, or a leadership team repair.

Do not inflate the numbers. Use conservative estimates. If you say the problem costs 50,000 dollars and leadership smells exaggeration, you lose credibility. If you say it costs 18,000 dollars and you can walk them through the calculation, you build trust.

3. Surface the Problem Leadership Already Knows They Have

Every leadership team has one problem they talk about privately and avoid publicly. The two senior people who cannot work together. The strategy that everyone knows will not get executed. The cultural value the organisation claims but does not live. Your fastest path to buy-in is identifying that problem and positioning Working Genius as the tool that makes the hard conversation possible.

This requires you to know what leadership is privately worried about. If you are not in the room where those conversations happen, you need to create a reason to be. Book time with your CEO, your principal, or your board chair and ask this question directly: "If you could fix one thing about how this leadership team works together, what would it be?"

The answer they give you is the entry point for Working Genius.

If they say the team avoids conflict, Working Genius gives you language to talk about why some people are wired to push back and others are wired to smooth over. If they say execution is weak, Working Genius shows you which people have tenacity in their DNA and which people were never built to carry a project across the line. If they say hiring feels like a gamble, Working Genius becomes the filter that predicts fit before you make the offer.

Quick win approach: Ask the question in your next one-on-one and write down the exact words they use. When you pitch Working Genius two weeks later, open with those exact words reflected back.

Full build approach: Run informal conversations with three or four senior leaders over a month. Map the common threads. Build your Working Genius pitch around the problem all of them named.

Leadership does not need another framework. They need the framework that solves the specific thing keeping them awake at 3am. Surface that thing first. Attach Working Genius to it second.

4. Show Them the Meeting After the Meeting

There is the meeting where decisions get made, and there is the meeting after the meeting where people say what they really think. Leadership sees the first one. They rarely see the second. Your job is to make the second meeting visible without betraying trust or creating a culture of surveillance.

Try this. After the next leadership meeting, pay attention to the hallway conversations, the Slack threads, the one-on-ones that happen within two hours of the meeting ending. What are people saying? What concerns are surfacing that were not voiced in the room? What commitments are already unraveling?

Write it down as a pattern, not as gossip. Walk into your next conversation with leadership and say this: "I have noticed that after our leadership meetings, there is a second conversation happening. People leave the room aligned, but within 24 hours I am hearing doubt, confusion, or quiet disagreement. I think we have a trust problem or a clarity problem, and I do not think we can strategy our way out of it."

If leadership says: "Who said what?" you have framed it wrong. The goal is not to name individuals. The goal is to name the system.

If leadership says: "That is just how teams work," you push back gently and say: "It does not have to be."

If leadership says: "What do you think we should do?" you have just opened the door to introduce Working Genius.

The meeting after the meeting exists because people do not feel safe, clear, or energised by the work they have been assigned. Working Genius fixes all three. It creates language for people to name what drains them without sounding like they are complaining. It creates clarity about who should own what based on wiring, not hierarchy. It creates safety because the framework is the third party in the room, which means the feedback is about the model, not about the person.

5. Position Working Genius as the Answer to a Problem They Have Already Named

Leadership will fund what they have already identified as urgent. Your job is not to create a new priority. Your job is to connect Working Genius to a priority that already has momentum, budget, and executive attention.

Look at the current strategic plan, the board priorities, the CEO's goals for the year. What is already on the list? Improve staff retention. Strengthen the leadership pipeline. Increase execution speed. Build a high-performance culture. Every one of these priorities has a Working Genius solution embedded inside it.

Here is how you make the connection:

If the priority is retention: Position Working Genius as a tool that helps people find energising work inside their current role, which is the number one factor in whether they stay or leave.

If the priority is leadership pipeline: Position Working Genius as the assessment that predicts who is wired for leadership and who is wired for high-level execution, so you stop promoting great doers into management roles they hate.

If the priority is execution speed: Position Working Genius as the framework that shows you which people should own ideation and which people should own activation, so projects stop stalling in the gap between the two.

If the priority is culture: Position Working Genius as the shared language that eliminates the "lazy" and "difficult" labels and replaces them with "this person is wired for discernment, not tenacity."

Do not create a separate initiative. Embed Working Genius inside the work leadership has already committed to. The conversation shifts from "should we invest in this new thing" to "this is how we deliver on the thing we already said matters."

PROVE THE FRAMEWORK WORKS BEFORE YOU ASK FOR FULL INVESTMENT

Leadership does not need to believe in Working Genius theoretically. They need to see it work in their context with their people. The second cluster of tactics focuses on creating proof inside your organisation before you ask for enterprise-wide rollout. Small wins build credibility. Credibility builds budget.

6. Run a Pilot With Your Own Team First

The fastest way to prove Working Genius works is to run it with the team you already control. If you lead a department, a grade level, a functional area, or a project team, you have everything you need to pilot the framework without asking permission from leadership.

Buy the assessments for your team out of your own professional development budget. Run the debrief session yourself if you are a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, or bring in someone who is. Track what changes over 90 days. Then walk the results into the leadership meeting.

What to track during the pilot:

• How many hours per week the team was spending in meetings before Working Genius, and how many after

• How many projects were stalled or stuck in the 90 days before the pilot, and how many completed in the 90 days after

• Qualitative feedback from team members about clarity, energy, and alignment

• One specific example of a decision or project that worked better because you used Working Genius to assign ownership

Leadership will ask: did it work? You need to answer with specifics, not impressions. "The team feels better" is not compelling. "We cut our weekly meeting load by three hours and shipped two projects that had been stuck for four months" is compelling.

The pilot also de-risks the decision for leadership. They are not betting on a theory. They are scaling something that already worked. If you can show measurable improvement in your own team, the question stops being "should we try this" and starts being "why have we not rolled this out everywhere."

7. Let Leadership Take the Assessment Themselves

The single fastest way to shift a sceptical leader into a curious one is to let them see their own Working Genius profile. The framework stops being abstract the moment it names something true about how they are wired. You do not need to run a full team session. You just need to get the Working Genius assessment in front of them.

Try this approach. Book a one-on-one with your CEO, principal, or board chair. Say this: "I have been exploring a framework called Working Genius that helps people identify the type of work that energises them versus the type that drains them. I took the assessment myself and it was unnervingly accurate. Would you be open to taking it? It is six minutes. I will pay for it. I think it might explain some of the patterns we have been talking about."

Most leaders will say yes. Curiosity about themselves almost always wins. Once they take the assessment, debrief it with them. Walk through their two geniuses and their two frustrations. Ask them whether it matches their experience. Ask them to think about the last project that energised them and the last one that drained them, and see whether the pattern holds.

What happens next is predictable. The leader starts using Working Genius language to describe their own team. They start wondering whether the person struggling in their role has a genius mismatch. They start asking whether the leadership team has enough tenacity or too much discernment. You have just turned them into an internal champion without ever asking them to fund anything.

Critical move: Do not debrief their assessment in front of others until they give permission. The goal is insight, not exposure. If they feel like you used the framework to diagnose them publicly, you lose trust. If they feel like you gave them a private tool that helped them understand themselves, you build trust.

8. Use Working Genius Language in Everyday Conversations

You do not need formal buy-in to start using the framework. You just need to start speaking the language in the conversations you are already having. The more leadership hears Working Genius terms in context, the more familiar and useful the framework becomes.

When a project stalls, stop saying "we need someone to own this" and start saying "we need someone whose genius is tenacity to carry this across the line." When a strategy session produces fifteen ideas and no decisions, stop saying "we need to be more focused" and start saying "we have a room full of wonder and invention, and nobody with discernment to filter it."

Here is what this sounds like in practice:

In a hiring conversation: "I think we are looking for someone whose genius is galvanising. We have plenty of people who can execute the plan. We need someone who can get the team energised about it."

In a performance review: "I do not think this person is underperforming. I think they are in a role that requires tenacity and their genius is invention. We keep asking them to finish things when they are wired to start things."

In a leadership debrief: "That meeting felt stuck because we had three people with discernment and nobody with enablement. Everyone could see the problems. Nobody could build the solution."

You are not pitching the framework. You are using it as the interpretive lens for the problems leadership is already trying to solve. Over time, leadership stops hearing Working Genius as a new thing you want to try and starts hearing it as the explanation for what is already happening.

Warning: Do not use the language as a weapon. If you say "the problem is you have a frustration in tenacity" in a way that sounds like blame, you create resistance. If you say "I wonder if this project needs someone wired differently than the person currently holding it," you create curiosity.

9. Share a Story From Another Organisation That Mirrors Theirs

Leadership responds to proof that feels relevant. A case study from a Fortune 500 company does not move a school principal. A story from another school does. Your job is to find an organisation similar to yours that used Working Genius and can speak to the results.

Reach out to other Certified Working Genius Facilitators and ask whether they have worked with an organisation in your sector. Ask whether their client would be willing to take a 20-minute call with your leadership to share what changed. Most leaders who have seen Working Genius work are happy to talk about it.

Set up the call this way. Say to your CEO or principal: "I know you are evaluating whether to invest in Working Genius. I found a principal in Melbourne who rolled it out across their school last year. Would you be open to a 20-minute call with them to hear what actually happened?" The answer is almost always yes.

What leadership wants to hear on that call:

• Did it actually work or was it just another professional development exercise that faded?

• How long did implementation take and how much leadership time did it require?

• What resistance did you hit and how did you handle it?

• If you could do it again, what would you do differently?

• Would you do it again?

The peer conversation does something you cannot do. It removes the perception that you are advocating for a pet project. When another leader says "this solved our hiring problem" or "this cut our leadership team conflict in half," your CEO hears it as testimony, not sales pitch.

If you cannot find a peer organisation, use a written case study. But make sure the case study mirrors your context. A school leader will not see themselves in a tech startup story. A nonprofit CEO will not connect with a corporate case study. Relevance is more important than impressiveness.

10. Offer to Facilitate a Single Session as a Trial

Leadership rarely commits to a full rollout without seeing the framework in action first. Offer to run a Working Genius workshop with the leadership team as a trial. No long-term commitment. No enterprise license. Just one session to see whether the framework resonates.

Position the trial session this way: "I would like to run a 90-minute Working Genius session with the leadership team. Everyone takes the assessment beforehand. We spend the session mapping the team, identifying gaps, and talking about how this explains some of the patterns we have been seeing. If it is useful, we talk about next steps. If it is not, we spent 90 minutes and learned something. Are you open to that?"

What makes this offer low-risk for leadership: It is one session, not a six-month programme. It is focused on the leadership team, not the whole organisation. It produces immediate insight, not a delayed payoff. It gives them a chance to experience the framework firsthand before deciding whether to scale it.

What to do in the trial session:

• Start by mapping the leadership team's collective geniuses on a whiteboard or screen

• Name the gaps immediately (if you have no one with tenacity, say so)

• Walk through two or three real examples where Working Genius explains a current challenge

• Give each person five minutes to reflect on their own profile and whether it matches their experience

• End with one specific recommendation about how the team could reorganise responsibilities based on geniuses

If the trial session lands, you will know within 48 hours. Leadership will start using the language. They will ask about rolling it out to the next layer. They will want to revisit a hiring decision or a project assignment through the Working Genius lens. You do not need to ask for buy-in at that point. You just need to say: "If you want to keep going, here is what the next step looks like."

TRANSLATE WORKING GENIUS INTO LEADERSHIP'S LANGUAGE

Leadership will not fund a people development tool. They will fund a retention strategy, a hiring system, or an execution accelerator. The third cluster of tactics focuses on reframing Working Genius in the language leadership already uses to evaluate investment. You are not changing what the framework is. You are changing how you describe what it does.

11. Position It as a Retention Strategy, Not a Development Tool

Leadership knows that replacing a senior hire costs between one and two times that person's annual salary. They know that turnover disrupts momentum, demoralises teams, and eats leadership time. If you can position Working Genius as the tool that keeps good people from leaving, you move the conversation from professional development to business continuity.

The research is clear. People leave roles when the work drains them, even if the pay is good and the organisation is strong. They stay in roles where the work energises them, even when they could earn more elsewhere. Working Genius is the diagnostic that shows you whether someone is in energising work or draining work before they start looking for the exit.

Frame it this way in your pitch: "We keep losing good people 18 months into their tenure. Exit interviews say they are leaving for growth opportunities, but I think we are putting talented people in roles that drain them. Working Genius shows us how to redesign roles around people's wiring so they stay engaged. If it keeps two senior people from leaving this year, it pays for itself."

Leadership will ask: how do you know it works for retention? Have an answer ready. Talk to organisations that have used Working Genius and ask them whether turnover changed. Track retention in the team where you ran the pilot. Build the case with data, not hope.

What this reframe does: It turns Working Genius from a cost into an investment with measurable ROI. Leadership stops comparing it to other professional development programmes and starts comparing it to recruitment costs, onboarding time, and institutional knowledge loss.

12. Frame It as a Hiring Filter That Predicts Fit

Every leadership team has made a hiring mistake. The talented person who interviewed brilliantly but never quite fit the role. The internal promotion that seemed obvious but failed within a year. The expensive external hire who delivered on skills but created friction on the team. Working Genius is the tool that predicts these misfits before you make the offer.

When you know a role requires someone with genius in tenacity and discernment, you can filter candidates accordingly. When you know your team is missing someone with genius in galvanising, you can hire for that gap intentionally. When you know a high-performing individual contributor has a frustration in enablement, you stop promoting them into a management role that requires it.

For a deep dive on this approach, see Working Genius for hiring.

Position it this way: "We have a 60 percent success rate on senior hires. Four out of ten do not work out. I think we are hiring for skills and experience but not for wiring. Working Genius gives us a filter we can use before we make the offer. If it improves our hiring success rate by 20 percent, we save six figures in rehiring costs over two years."

What leadership needs to hear:

The assessment is fast. Six minutes. You can ask finalists to complete it as part of the interview process without adding significant time or friction.

The results are predictive. A candidate's Working Genius profile tells you whether they will thrive in the role or quietly suffer through it.

It works alongside other hiring tools. You are not replacing reference checks or skills assessments. You are adding a wiring filter that those tools do not capture.

Critical nuance: Do not position Working Genius as the only hiring filter. Leadership will rightly push back if you suggest it replaces experience, skill evaluation, or cultural fit conversations. Position it as the missing piece that explains why two equally qualified candidates perform completely differently in the same role.

13. Connect It to a Current Strategic Priority

Leadership has already committed budget and attention to three or four strategic priorities this year. Your job is to show them how Working Genius accelerates the thing they already said matters. You are not asking for a new priority. You are offering a tool that delivers on an existing one.

Look at the current strategic plan. If one of the priorities is "build a culture of accountability," Working Genius is the framework that shows you who is wired for tenacity and who is not, so you stop assigning accountability to people who will never own it. If the priority is "improve cross-functional collaboration," Working Genius is the tool that explains why two departments keep talking past each other.

Here is the script: "One of our strategic priorities this year is improving execution speed. I think Working Genius is the tool that gets us there. It shows us who should own activation, who should own tenacity, and who should step out of the execution phase entirely because their genius is in the ideation phase. If we map the team and realign responsibilities accordingly, we can cut project delivery time without adding headcount."

What this approach does: It eliminates the perception that Working Genius is a distraction from the real work. It positions the framework as the engine that powers the real work. Leadership stops asking "should we do this" and starts asking "why have we not done this already."

14. Show Them the Cost of Misalignment

Every organisation has someone talented sitting in the wrong role. The strategic thinker buried in operational execution. The activator stuck in long-term planning. The person with genius in invention being asked to sustain systems. Leadership knows these mismatches exist. They do not always know how much those mismatches cost.

Walk leadership through the math. If a senior leader is spending 60 percent of their time in work that drains them, you are paying full salary for 40 percent output. If a high-potential hire is in a role that does not match their wiring, they are either underperforming or looking for the exit. If your best executor is leading strategy sessions, you are wasting their genius and getting mediocre strategy.

Try this exercise with leadership: Ask them to list the five most important roles in the organisation. For each role, ask them to name the core activities that role requires. Then ask them whether the person currently in that role is wired for those activities or fighting against their wiring to deliver them.

The answers will surface the misalignment immediately.

Once leadership sees the cost, frame Working Genius as the tool that fixes it. "We have three senior people in roles that drain them. Working Genius shows us how to redesign those roles or move those people into work that energises them. If we fix the misalignment, we get better performance without hiring anyone new."

What leadership hears: This is not about adding resources. This is about using the resources we already have more effectively. That is a much easier budget conversation than asking for three new hires.

15. Translate It Into Productivity Gains Leadership Can Measure

Leadership operates in metrics. Revenue, retention, efficiency, output, time to completion. If you want buy-in, translate Working Genius into the metrics leadership already tracks. The framework is not fluffy people development. It is a productivity tool that shows up in measurable performance.

When you align people with their geniuses, projects move faster because people are working in their zone of natural energy instead of forcing themselves through work that drains them. Meetings shorten because you stop inviting people whose genius is not needed in that conversation. Decisions improve because you have the right mix of invention, discernment, and galvanising in the room.

Here is how to quantify it:

Track meeting efficiency. Measure hours spent in meetings per week before and after Working Genius implementation. A 10 percent reduction in meeting time for a 20-person leadership team saves 100+ hours per year.

Track project velocity. Measure the average time to complete a strategic project before and after you start assigning ownership based on Working Genius. If projects that used to take six months now take four, that is a 33 percent efficiency gain.

Track decision quality. This one is harder to measure but still trackable. Count how many decisions get revisited or reversed within 90 days. If that number drops after you start using Working Genius to ensure discernment is in the room, you have measurable improvement.

Leadership will fund what they can measure. Give them the numbers. Show them the baseline. Show them the improvement. Let the data make the case.

REMOVE THE PERCEIVED RISK FROM THE DECISION

Leadership hesitates to invest in Working Genius not because they think it will not work, but because they are not sure it will work in their context with their constraints. The fourth cluster of tactics focuses on de-risking the decision by addressing the unspoken concerns leadership has before they voice them.

16. Address the "Another Framework" Objection Before They Raise It

Leadership has seen frameworks come and go. They have paid for the personality assessment that everyone took and nobody referenced again. They have sat through the offsite that produced a poster on the wall and no behaviour change. When you introduce Working Genius, their silent question is: how is this different from the last thing we tried?

Do not wait for them to ask. Name the objection yourself and answer it in your pitch. Try this framing: "I know we have tried frameworks before and they have not stuck. Here is why Working Genius is different. It is fast. It is immediately applicable. It does not require people to remember four-letter codes or colour categories. It gives you language you can use in the meeting you are having today, not in six months after a certification programme."

What makes Working Genius different from other frameworks:

• The assessment takes six minutes, not 45

• The language is simple and memorable (genius, competency, frustration)

• The application is immediate (you can use it in hiring, role design, and project assignment the same week)

• The framework was built for teams, not individuals, so it drives collaboration rather than self-awareness alone

If leadership says: "We already use DISC" or "Everyone here knows their Enneagram number," do not position Working Genius as a replacement. Position it as complementary. "DISC tells you how someone communicates. Working Genius tells you what type of work energises them. You need both."

The goal is not to win the framework debate. The goal is to show leadership that Working Genius solves a problem the other tools do not address.

17. Offer a Staged Rollout Instead of an All-In Commitment

Leadership hesitates when the ask feels too big. If you walk in asking for enterprise-wide rollout, full facilitation, and a 12-month engagement, you trigger budget anxiety and implementation overwhelm. If you walk in with a staged plan that lets them test, learn, and scale at their own pace, you lower the barrier to yes.

Try this structure. Propose three stages with clear decision points between them.

Stage 1: Leadership team only. Everyone takes the assessment. You run one 90-minute session. Leadership decides whether to continue based on that session.

Stage 2: Next layer of leaders (department heads, principals, senior managers). Same process. Track what changes over 90 days.

Stage 3: Full organisational rollout. By this point leadership has seen it work twice and the decision is obvious.

What this approach does: It removes the all-or-nothing pressure. Leadership does not have to commit to the full investment upfront. They commit to stage one. If stage one works, stage two is easy. If stage one does not work, you spent the cost of one session and learned something valuable.

Frame it this way: "I am not asking you to commit to a full rollout today. I am asking you to pilot it with the leadership team. If it works, we scale it. If it does not, we stop. The only cost is one session and the assessment fees for twelve people."

18. Show Them What Good Implementation Looks Like

Leadership worries about execution risk. They have seen good ideas fail because the organisation could not implement them well. If you want buy-in, show them what successful Working Genius implementation looks like in practice. Walk them through the roadmap so they can see the work, the timeline, and the leadership time required.

A realistic 90-day implementation plan looks like this:

Week 1: Leadership team takes the assessment and completes the debrief session. Leadership commits to using Working Genius language in the next three leadership meetings.

Weeks 2 to 4: Leadership identifies one role, one project, or one hiring decision where they will apply Working Genius as a test case.

Weeks 5 to 8: Next layer of leaders takes the assessment. Department heads or senior managers complete their debrief sessions.

Weeks 9 to 12: Leadership reviews what changed. They decide whether to scale to the full organisation or pause.

What leadership needs to know: This does not require a full-time project manager. It does not require pulling people off their day jobs for weeks at a time. It requires one facilitated session per team, followed by leaders actively using the framework in the decisions they are already making.

The risk leadership fears is disruption. Show them a plan that integrates into existing rhythms rather than creating new ones. Working Genius does not add meetings. It changes how you run the meetings you already have.

19. Name the Facilitator You Will Use and Why They Are the Right Fit

Leadership wants to know who will be in the room. If you are a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, name your certification and your experience. If you are bringing in an external facilitator, tell leadership why you chose that person and what makes them the right fit for your organisation.

Try this framing: "I am a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and I have run this framework with three teams in the last 18 months. I know our culture. I know the dynamics. I can run the sessions internally." Or: "I am bringing in a facilitator who works specifically with schools. They have run Working Genius with 40 schools across Australia and they understand the unique pressures principals face."

What leadership is quietly evaluating: Is this person credible? Do they understand our world? Will they be able to handle the strong personalities in the room? Will they waste our time with generic content or will they customise it to our reality?

If you are facilitating internally, leadership will ask: do you have the skill to run this well? Be honest. If you are new to facilitation, say so, and explain why you are still the right person. "I am early in my facilitation practice, but I know this team better than any external person could. I will bring in a co-facilitator for the first session to ensure it lands well."

If you are bringing in an external facilitator, leadership will ask: why do we need to pay someone when you could do it? Have an answer. "An external facilitator brings objectivity. They can name dynamics I cannot name because I am inside them. They also bring pattern recognition from working with dozens of teams, which I do not have yet."

The goal is not to oversell. The goal is to remove the concern that this will be poorly executed or led by someone who does not understand the context.

20. Give Leadership a Clear Picture of What Happens After the Session

The session itself is not the win. The win is what changes in the 90 days after. Leadership knows this. They have sat through plenty of sessions that felt valuable in the moment and produced nothing lasting. If you want buy-in, show them what happens after the debrief.

Here is what post-session integration looks like (see also practical steps after your Working Genius session):

• Leadership references Working Genius in the next project assignment conversation (who has the genius we need for this work)

• The team uses Working Genius language in the next hiring debrief (this candidate has strong discernment but we need someone with tenacity)

• Someone on the leadership team redesigns their role to spend more time in their geniuses and less in their frustrations

• A stalled project gets unstuck because you reassign ownership to someone whose genius matches the phase the project is in

Leadership will ask: how do we make sure it does not fade? Give them a sustainability plan. Monthly check-ins where the leadership team audits one decision through the Working Genius lens. A standing agenda item in leadership meetings: what is one way we used Working Genius this month? A quarterly review of role design to ensure people are still aligned with their geniuses.

The plan does not need to be elaborate. It needs to be realistic and embedded in existing rhythms. Leadership will fund something they believe will last. They will not fund something that requires heroic ongoing effort to sustain.

LEVERAGE PROOF POINTS LEADERSHIP CANNOT IGNORE

Leadership responds to evidence. The fifth cluster of tactics focuses on surfacing proof that Working Genius works, not in theory but in practice with organisations similar to yours. Social proof, data, and peer testimony move the conversation from "interesting idea" to "we should do this."

21. Share Specific Results From Similar Organisations

Leadership wants to know whether Working Genius has worked for organisations that look like theirs. A corporate case study will not move a school principal. A school case study will not move a nonprofit CEO. Your job is to find proof points that mirror your context as closely as possible.

Reach out to Certified Working Genius Facilitators who work in your sector. Ask them for client examples. Ask whether their clients would be willing to share results. Build a one-page summary of three organisations similar to yours that used Working Genius and can name what changed.

What to include in the summary:

• Organisation type and size (independent school, 450 students, 60 staff)

• The problem they were trying to solve (turnover, misaligned leadership team, execution gaps)

• What they implemented (leadership team session, full staff rollout, hiring filter)

• What changed in 90 days (three measurable outcomes)

• Whether they would do it again

Hand this summary to leadership and say: "These three schools are similar to us in size and structure. They all used Working Genius to solve problems we are currently facing. Here is what happened." Let the results speak.

If you cannot find organisations in your exact sector, find organisations facing the same problem. A nonprofit struggling with execution and a school struggling with execution have more in common than a school dealing with execution and a school dealing with culture. Match the problem, not just the sector.

22. Use Data From the Working Genius Research Base

Leadership trusts frameworks that have been tested and validated. Working Genius is backed by Patrick Lencioni's decades of organisational research and has been used by thousands of teams globally. You do not need to conduct your own research. You just need to reference the research that already exists.

When you pitch Working Genius, include two or three data points that establish credibility. Try these:

• Working Genius has been used by over 1,000 organisations across six continents

• The framework is built on Patrick Lencioni's research into team dysfunction and productivity, which has shaped leadership practice for 20 years

• Organisations using Working Genius report measurable improvements in role clarity, project velocity, and team cohesion within 90 days

Do not oversell the research. Leadership can smell exaggeration. Use conservative, verifiable claims. If you say "87 percent of organisations report improvement" and leadership asks for the source and you do not have it, you lose credibility.

If leadership asks for peer-reviewed studies or academic validation, be honest. Working Genius is a practitioner framework, not an academic one. It is built on observed patterns in teams, not laboratory research. That does not make it less valid. It makes it more applicable to the real-world problems leadership is trying to solve.

23. Reference Organisations Leadership Already Respects

Leadership pays attention when organisations they admire are doing something. If a school they respect is using Working Genius, that matters more than a hundred generic testimonials. If a company they follow has embedded the framework into hiring, that moves the needle.

Do the research. Find out which organisations, leaders, or networks your leadership team respects. Then find out whether any of those organisations are using Working Genius. If they are, mention it.

Try this framing: "I noticed that Brisbane Grammar rolled out Working Genius across their entire leadership team last year. I know you have referenced their approach to staff development before. I think that is worth paying attention to."

You are not name-dropping. You are showing leadership that the organisations they benchmark against are already doing this. That shifts the question from "should we try this new thing" to "why are we not doing what the best organisations are already doing."

If you cannot find a direct connection, create one. Ask your network. Post in a Working Genius facilitator group. Ask whether anyone has worked with an organisation your leadership respects. Most facilitators are happy to make the connection.

24. Let Someone Else Make the Pitch

Sometimes the most effective pitch is the one you do not make. If you have been advocating for Working Genius internally and leadership is still hesitant, bring in a peer voice. A principal who has used the framework. A CEO who has rolled it out. A Certified Working Genius Facilitator who works in your sector.

Set up a 20-minute call between that person and your leadership team. Let them tell the story. Let them answer the questions. Let them make the case you have been making, but from the position of someone who has already lived it.

What leadership hears differently when a peer says it: This is not theory. This is testimony. The person on the other end of the call is not selling anything. They are sharing what worked. That credibility gap you have been fighting disappears.

Frame the call this way: "I know you have questions about whether Working Genius is worth the investment. I found a principal in Sydney who rolled it out two years ago. Would you be open to a short call with them to hear what they learned?" Most leaders will say yes.

Brief the peer beforehand. Tell them what concerns your leadership has. Tell them what questions are likely to come up. Let them prepare so the call is useful, not generic.

25. Position Yourself as the Internal Champion Who Will Own Implementation

Leadership hesitates when they are not sure who will carry the work. If Working Genius feels like one more thing landing on their desk, they will delay the decision. If you position yourself as the person who will own implementation, coordinate facilitation, and ensure follow-through, you remove a massive barrier to yes.

Try this framing: "If we move forward with Working Genius, I will own the implementation. I will coordinate the sessions. I will track the outcomes. I will make sure this does not become another thing you have to manage. You just need to show up for the debrief and decide whether we scale it."

What leadership hears: This is not going to create more work for me. Someone I trust is taking ownership. I can say yes without worrying about execution risk.

Critical move: Only make this offer if you can actually deliver. If you commit to owning implementation and then drop it because you are too busy, you lose credibility permanently. Make sure you have the capacity, the mandate, and the skill to follow through before you make the promise.

If you are not the right person to own it, name who is. "I think we should move forward with Working Genius, and I think the right person to own implementation is our head of people and culture. They have the relationships, the time, and the credibility to make this work. I will support them, but they should lead it."

Leadership will fund what they believe will get executed well. Show them who will execute it and how, and the budget conversation becomes much simpler.

Working Genius is not a hard sell if you frame it correctly. Leadership does not resist the framework. They resist unclear value, uncertain outcomes, and the perception that this is one more initiative competing for time and attention. Your job is to remove those barriers one conversation at a time.

The tactics in this post work because they meet leadership where they are. They start with the problem leadership already feels. They build proof in small steps. They translate the framework into the language and metrics leadership already uses. They de-risk the decision by offering pilots, staged rollouts, and clear ownership. And they position Working Genius not as a new priority, but as the tool that accelerates the priorities leadership has already named.

Your next step is simple. Pick three tactics from this list that match where your leadership currently is in their thinking. If they do not know the problem exists yet, start with tactics one through five. If they know the problem but doubt the solution, jump to tactics six through ten. If they believe it might work but are worried about cost or execution, focus on tactics sixteen through twenty. Do not try to use all 25 at once. Use the ones that remove the specific barrier standing between you and buy-in right now.

For a complete guide to rolling out the framework once you have the green light, see the Working Genius implementation guide.

If you need help thinking through which tactics fit your context, reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org.