25 Steps to Take the Working Genius Assessment in Australia and New Zealand

If you have ever tried to buy a team assessment tool from a US-based platform while sitting in Brisbane or Auckland, you know the small frustrations add up fast.

The Working Genius assessment is available in Australia and New Zealand, but the process is not as simple as clicking a link and handing out logins. Payment can be clunky. Team setup requires a few steps most leaders skip. The real value sits in the debrief conversation, and that only works if the setup is done properly from the start.

I put together this list because I have watched too many leaders rush the front end, then wonder why their team treats the results as just another personality test that gets filed and forgotten. The assessment itself is excellent. The path to getting your Australian or New Zealand team through it properly is less obvious than it should be.

Your next step is to work through the 25 items below, in order, before you send a single invite link to your leadership team.

BEFORE YOU START

These first steps happen before you touch the Working Genius platform. Most leaders skip straight to purchasing without confirming a few foundational pieces, and the entire process suffers as a result.

1. Confirm you understand what Working Genius actually measures

Working Genius is not a personality assessment. It measures the six types of work that happen inside every project, and it tells you which types energise you and which types drain you. The six types are Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanising, Enablement, and Tenacity. You will have two Geniuses, two Competencies, and two Frustrations.

The distinction matters because leaders often treat it like a strengths finder. It is not about what you are good at. It is about what kind of work fills your energy and what kind of work depletes it, regardless of skill. A leader can be excellent at Tenacity work and still find it draining. That is the insight most assessments miss.

Wonder asks the question: is there a better way?

Invention answers the question with ideas and solutions.

Discernment evaluates whether the idea is the right one.

Galvanising rallies people around the idea.

Enablement provides the support and resources to execute.

Tenacity pushes the work across the finish line.

If your team does not understand this going in, they will answer the questions based on what they think you want to hear, or based on what they believe they should be good at. The assessment loses accuracy the moment someone starts performing their answers.

Key point: Working Genius does not tell you what you are capable of doing. It tells you what kind of work you should be doing if you want to stay energised, engaged, and effective over the long term. Set that expectation before anyone opens the assessment link.

2. Decide whether you are assessing individuals or running a team process

You can buy Working Genius assessments for individual leaders who want personal insight. You can also run it as a team diagnostic. The two paths require different setups, different pricing, and different follow-through.

Individual path: A single leader buys their own assessment, completes it, reads the report, and uses the insights to audit their own calendar and delegation patterns. This works well for a principal who wants to understand why certain parts of their role drain them, or a CEO trying to figure out why they keep micromanaging Tenacity work when they should be handing it off.

Team path: The senior leader buys assessments for their entire leadership team, everyone completes it within the same window, and the team debriefs together in a facilitated session. This is where the real power sits, because the conversation shifts from individual insight to team design. You start to see why certain projects stall, why certain people clash, and why some types of work never get the energy they need.

If you are running a team process, do not scatter the assessments across three months. Everyone completes it within the same two-week window, and you debrief within a week of the last person finishing. The insights are perishable. If you wait too long between completion and conversation, the energy drops and the debrief feels like an academic exercise instead of a live diagnosis.

Most Australian school leadership teams and nonprofit exec teams should take the team path. The individual path works for solo reflection, but the breakthroughs happen when the whole team sees their collective map at once.

3. Check whether your organisation has already purchased Working Genius licences

Some larger Australian school networks, dioceses, and nonprofit umbrellas have already purchased bulk licences for their member organisations. Before you buy anything, check with your head office, your network director, or your diocese education team.

I have seen three different principals from the same network each buy their own team assessments, only to discover later that their central office had already secured licences they could have accessed for free. That is frustrating for everyone.

Quick check process: Email your HR lead, your network contact, or your governance team with a single question: “Does our organisation already have access to Working Genius assessments?” If the answer is yes, ask for the contact details of the person managing the licences and the process for accessing them. If the answer is no, proceed with your own purchase.

This also applies to consultancy firms and larger corporates. If your organisation has a learning and development budget or a leadership development programme manager, they may have already secured licences as part of a broader assessment suite.

PURCHASING AND PAYMENT

The Working Genius platform accepts payment from Australian and New Zealand accounts, but the process is smoother if you know a few things before you start entering card details.

4. Go directly to the official Working Genius website

The only official platform for purchasing and taking the Working Genius assessment is workinggenius.com. Do not purchase from third-party resellers, LinkedIn ads that promise discounted bulk pricing, or affiliate sites that bundle it with other tools. The assessment must be completed on the official platform for the results to be valid and for you to receive proper support if something breaks.

Australian and New Zealand users can access the platform without restriction. There is no geo-block. The site works the same way it does for US-based users. You create an account, purchase the number of assessments you need, and distribute the links to your team.

If you are working with a Certified Working Genius Facilitator based in Australia, they may offer to handle the purchasing and distribution on your behalf as part of a facilitation package. That is fine, but confirm upfront whether the cost of the assessments is included in their fee or billed separately.

5. Understand the pricing structure before you add to cart

As of early 2026, individual Working Genius assessments are priced at USD $25 per person when purchased directly from the platform. Bulk pricing is available for organisations purchasing 20 or more assessments at once, dropping the per-person cost slightly.

Currency and payment method: The platform prices in US dollars. Your Australian or New Zealand credit card will process the transaction, and your bank will apply the current exchange rate plus any international transaction fees your card issuer charges. If your card charges a 2 to 3 percent international fee, factor that into your budget when calculating total cost per head.

For a 10-person leadership team, expect to pay approximately AUD $400 to $450 depending on exchange rates and card fees.

For a 25-person extended leadership group, expect approximately AUD $950 to $1,100.

Bulk pricing for 50 or more assessments should be confirmed directly with the Working Genius support team before purchasing.

Budget tip: If you are submitting this purchase through your organisation's finance team, include a 5 percent buffer in your budget request to account for exchange rate fluctuation between approval and purchase. Nothing derails a team process faster than finding out mid-rollout that your budget was $50 short and finance will not release the payment.

6. Confirm whether your organisation requires GST documentation

The Working Genius platform is a US-based service. GST does not apply to the purchase in the way it would for a locally-provided service, but some Australian finance teams will still ask for documentation that confirms the supplier's location and the nature of the service.

If your finance team requires a tax invoice: The platform provides an automated receipt after purchase. That receipt will show the transaction in USD, the supplier name, and the service description. Most Australian organisations accept this as sufficient documentation for processing payment and recording the expense.

If your finance team pushes back and asks for an Australian tax invoice, you will need to explain that this is a digital service purchased from a US provider, and that GST does not apply to the transaction under the standard rules for imported digital services below the registration threshold. That conversation goes more smoothly if you have the receipt ready and can show them exactly what the platform provides.

Nonprofit and school-specific note: Some Australian nonprofits and independent schools have purchasing policies that require all vendor payments to go through a formal purchase order process. If that applies to your organisation, initiate the PO request at least two weeks before you want to roll out the assessment. The platform does not accept purchase orders directly, so your finance team will need to process it as a credit card purchase against an approved PO.

7. Use a corporate card if your organisation requires centralised payment records

If you are purchasing on behalf of your organisation and plan to claim reimbursement, check whether your finance team prefers you to use a corporate card or your personal card. Some organisations have policies that require all professional development and assessment purchases to go through a corporate account for audit and reporting purposes.

The cleanest path: Use a corporate credit card, complete the purchase, and forward the automated receipt to your finance team immediately after the transaction. This creates a clean paper trail and removes any reimbursement delay on your end.

If your organisation does not issue corporate cards and you are using a personal card, screenshot the receipt the moment it arrives in your inbox and submit your reimbursement claim the same day. The longer you wait, the more likely the receipt gets buried and your finance team has to chase you for documentation three weeks later.

ACCOUNT SETUP AND TEAM MANAGEMENT

Once payment clears, you need to set up your account and prepare to distribute assessment links to your team. This is where most leaders rush, and it costs them clarity later.

8. Create your account using your work email address

When you create your Working Genius account, use your work email address, not a personal Gmail or Outlook account. This matters for three reasons.

Reason one: If you leave the organisation or transition to a new role, the account and all associated team data remain accessible to your successor if it is tied to a work email that can be forwarded or reassigned. If it is tied to your personal email, the organisation loses access to the historical data the moment you leave.

Reason two: Your team members will receive assessment invitations and reminder emails from the platform. If those emails come from an account registered to your work address, they are far more likely to trust the link and complete the assessment promptly. If the invitation comes from a personal email address, especially one they do not recognise, some team members will hesitate or delete it assuming it is spam.

Reason three: Some Australian organisations have email security filters that flag or block emails from unrecognised personal domains. A work email address reduces the chance that your team's IT system intercepts the invitation before it reaches their inbox.

Set your password to something you will remember six months from now. You will need to log back into this account when you run your next team process or when a new team member joins and needs to complete the assessment. If you use a random string you have to reset every time, you add unnecessary friction to a process that should be simple.

9. Add your team members to the platform one at a time or via bulk upload

The Working Genius platform allows you to add team members individually by entering their name and email address, or you can upload a CSV file if you are rolling this out to a larger group. For most Australian leadership teams of 6 to 15 people, individual entry is faster and less error-prone.

Individual entry process: Log into your account, navigate to the team management section, click “Add Team Member,” and enter their first name, last name, and work email address. The platform will generate a unique assessment link for that person and send it to their inbox immediately, or you can choose to send it manually later.

Bulk upload process: If you are adding 20 or more people, prepare a CSV file with three columns: first name, last name, and email address. Upload the file through the bulk import tool. The platform will process the file and generate individual links for each person. Double-check the file for typos before uploading. A single mistyped email address means one person never receives their link, and you will not discover the error until they ask why they have not been invited.

Common mistake: Leaders add their entire team to the platform, let the system send the invitations immediately, and then realise they have not briefed the team on what Working Genius is or why they are being asked to complete it. The team sees an unexpected email from an unfamiliar platform, ignores it, and the completion rate stalls at 40 percent. Do not send the invitations until you have completed the next step.

10. Brief your team on what Working Genius is before sending assessment links

Your team needs context before they receive the invitation email. If the first time they hear about Working Genius is when a link appears in their inbox, half of them will assume it is optional and the other half will assume it is HR-mandated busywork.

The briefing should happen in a team meeting, not via email. You need three minutes. Open with a single sentence explanation of what Working Genius measures. Explain that it identifies which types of work energise you and which types drain you, and that the team will use the results to have a conversation about how work is currently distributed and whether the right people are doing the right types of tasks.

What to say: “We are going to complete the Working Genius assessment as a team over the next two weeks. It takes about 10 minutes. It is not a personality test. It measures the six types of work that happen in every project, and it tells you which types give you energy and which types drain you. We will debrief the results together in a session on [specific date], and we will use what we learn to look at how we are distributing work across the team and whether we need to make some changes. The assessment link will hit your inbox this afternoon. Please complete it by [specific deadline].”

Then stop talking. Do not oversell it. Do not tell them it will change their lives. Do not promise that it will solve every team dysfunction. Just give them the context, the timeline, and the expectation that everyone completes it before the debrief date.

If someone asks whether their results will be shared with the group, tell them yes. The entire point of the team process is that everyone sees everyone else's results so the team can have an honest conversation about work distribution. If someone is not comfortable with that, they should tell you now, not after they complete the assessment.

11. Set a clear completion deadline and communicate it twice

The assessment takes 10 minutes to complete. There is no legitimate reason for someone to miss the deadline unless they are on extended leave. Set the deadline for two weeks after you send the invitations, and communicate it twice: once when you send the links, and once as a reminder three days before the deadline.

First communication: “Your Working Genius assessment link is in your inbox. Please complete it by 5pm on Friday, March 14. It takes 10 minutes. If you do not receive the email by the end of today, let me know and I will resend it.”

Second communication: “Reminder: Working Genius assessments are due this Friday at 5pm. If you have already completed yours, thank you. If not, please prioritise it before the weekend. We need 100 percent completion to make the debrief session worthwhile.”

Do not extend the deadline unless someone is on approved leave. If you set a deadline and then let it slide because three people have not finished, you train the team to ignore the next deadline you set. If someone misses the deadline without a valid reason, follow up individually and ask them to complete it that day. If they still do not, you have a bigger problem than Working Genius.

The debrief session only works if everyone has completed the assessment before they walk into the room. If two people finish it the morning of the session, they will not have had time to read their own report properly, let alone think about what it means for how they work with the rest of the team.

12. Track completion rates inside your account dashboard

The Working Genius platform shows you in real time who has completed the assessment and who has not. Log into your account dashboard at least once every three days during the completion window and check the status.

You will see three categories of team members: those who have completed the assessment, those who have opened the link but not finished, and those who have not opened the link at all. The third category is the one that needs your attention.

If someone has not opened the link five days after you sent it, reach out individually. Do not send a group reminder hoping they will see it and respond. Send a direct message: “I noticed you have not opened your Working Genius assessment link yet. Can you complete it by end of week? Let me know if you did not receive the email and I will resend it.”

Common issue: The invitation email lands in their spam folder or gets blocked by their organisation's email filter. If someone says they never received it, do not assume they are lying or stalling. Log into your account, regenerate their unique link, and send it to them directly via a separate email or a messaging app. Problem solved in 30 seconds.

If someone has opened the link but not completed the assessment, they have likely started it, got interrupted, and forgot to come back. Send a reminder: “I can see you started the Working Genius assessment but have not finished it yet. It saves your progress, so you can pick up where you left off. Can you knock it out today?”

COMPLETING THE ASSESSMENT

Once your team has their links, the next set of steps governs how they actually complete the assessment and what happens immediately after.

13. Complete the assessment in a single sitting without distractions

The Working Genius assessment is 48 questions. Each question presents a statement, and you rate how much it resonates with you on a scale. The entire process takes 8 to 12 minutes if you answer honestly and do not overthink it.

The instructions you should give your team: Find a quiet 15-minute block where you will not be interrupted. Close your email. Put your phone face down. Read each statement, trust your gut, and answer based on how you actually feel, not how you think you should feel or how you think the organisation wants you to feel.

The assessment loses accuracy the moment someone starts performing their answers. If a leader answers based on what they believe their role requires rather than what actually energises them, the results will reflect the role, not the person. The debrief conversation will then reinforce the exact problem the assessment is meant to surface.

Example of a performed answer: A principal reads a statement like “I enjoy rallying people around a new idea” and thinks, “I am the principal, so I should enjoy that,” and rates it highly even though the truth is that galvanising work drains them and they would rather be solving problems in a small team. The assessment codes them as high Galvanising when the reality is they have two Frustrations in the people-facing Geniuses and they are burning out trying to be someone they are not.

Tell your team this before they start: “There are no wrong answers. The assessment is not testing whether you are good at your job. It is showing you what kind of work fills your energy and what kind of work drains it. Answer based on what is true for you, not what you think I want to hear or what you think your role requires. If the results show that half your role is made up of work that drains you, that is useful information. We can do something about that. But only if you answer honestly.”

14. Read your individual report immediately after completing the assessment

The moment you complete the assessment, the platform generates your individual report. Read it the same day. Do not bookmark it for later. Do not wait until the team debrief session. Read it while the questions are still fresh in your mind.

The report will show you three things: your two Geniuses, your two Competencies, and your two Frustrations. It will also provide a written description of what each type of work looks like in practice and why certain types energise you while others drain you.

Your first read should be diagnostic, not defensive. Most leaders read their results and immediately start arguing with the assessment. “I am good at Tenacity work, so why is it showing up as a Frustration?” Because being good at something and being energised by it are not the same thing. You can be excellent at pushing projects across the finish line and still find that type of work depleting. That is the whole point.

Questions to ask yourself as you read:

Which parts of my current role align with my two Geniuses?

Which parts of my role are made up of Frustration work?

Am I spending most of my time in my Geniuses, my Competencies, or my Frustrations?

If I could redesign my role to spend 70 percent of my time in my Geniuses, what would I stop doing and what would I hand off?

Write down your answers. You will need them for the debrief session. If you read the report, nod, and then close the browser, you will walk into the team conversation with nothing concrete to contribute.

15. Identify one task you are currently doing that sits in your Frustration zone

This is the single most valuable exercise you can do between completing the assessment and attending the debrief session. Look at your calendar for the past two weeks. Identify one recurring task or responsibility that drains you. Then check whether that task sits inside one of your two Frustration areas.

Example: You are the CEO of a nonprofit. Your Frustrations are Galvanising and Tenacity. You spend four hours every week in donor cultivation meetings where your job is to rally people around the vision and close the ask. You are good at it. The organisation needs you to do it. But it drains you every single time, and by Thursday afternoon you are empty.

That is a Frustration task that you are performing out of role necessity, not energy alignment. The debrief conversation is where you and your team figure out whether that task genuinely has to be you, or whether there is someone else on the team whose Geniuses are Galvanising and Tenacity who would thrive in that exact responsibility.

If you cannot identify a single Frustration task, you are either lying to yourself or you are one of the rare leaders whose role is almost perfectly aligned with their Geniuses. Most leaders can identify three to five tasks immediately. Write them down. Bring the list to the debrief session.

16. Do not share your results with the team until the debrief session

Some leaders complete the assessment, get excited about their results, and immediately start comparing notes with their teammates in the hallway or over email. Do not do this.

The debrief session is designed as a structured conversation where the entire team sees the full map at once. If half the team has already swapped results and started forming opinions about what it all means, the facilitated session loses half its impact. You want the moment where everyone sees the collective Genius map for the first time to happen in the room, together, with a facilitator guiding the conversation.

If someone asks you what your results were, tell them you will share it in the debrief session. If they push, redirect: “I want to wait until we are all in the room together so we can look at the whole team map at once. It will make more sense that way.”

The only exception is if you are co-leading the organisation with a deputy or a peer and you want to debrief your individual results privately before the group session. That is fine. Just do not loop in the rest of the team until the formal session.

FACILITATING OR ATTENDING THE DEBRIEF SESSION

The debrief session is where the individual insights become team-level strategy. This is the conversation that shifts Working Genius from interesting personality trivia to actual operational change.

17. Decide whether you will facilitate the debrief internally or bring in a Certified Facilitator

You have two options for running the debrief session. You can facilitate it yourself using the materials provided by the Working Genius platform, or you can hire a Certified Working Genius Facilitator to lead the session.

Facilitate it yourself if: You are comfortable leading team conversations about work distribution and team dynamics. You have a team that trusts you enough to be honest about what drains them. You have the time to prepare properly, which means reading the facilitation guide, reviewing every team member's results beforehand, and mapping out the conversation structure.

Bring in a Certified Facilitator if: You are the senior leader and you want to participate fully in the conversation rather than holding the facilitator role. Your team has unresolved tension or conflict that you suspect will surface during the debrief, and you want a neutral third party to hold the space. You want someone with experience running these sessions who can spot patterns and ask the follow-up questions you might miss.

The cost of hiring a facilitator in Australia typically ranges from $2,000 to $5,000 depending on the size of your team, the length of the session, and whether the facilitator is local or travelling. For a half-day debrief session with a 10-person leadership team, expect to pay around $3,000 to $3,500 plus travel if the facilitator is coming from interstate.

If you decide to facilitate it yourself, download the facilitation guide from the Working Genius platform before you do anything else. The guide includes a step-by-step session plan, discussion prompts, and common debrief questions. Do not walk into the session thinking you will wing it. The conversation can go sideways fast if you do not have a structure to hold it.

18. Schedule the debrief session within one week of the completion deadline

The debrief session should happen within five to seven days after the last person completes their assessment. Any longer and the energy dissipates. People forget what they read in their report. The insights feel stale. The session becomes an academic exercise instead of a live conversation.

Block a minimum of two hours for the session. Ninety minutes is too short for a team of more than six people. Three hours is too long unless you are running a full-day workshop that includes action planning and role redesign work. Two hours is the sweet spot for most leadership teams.

Do not schedule the debrief session at the end of a long day. If your team has been in back-to-back meetings since 9am and the debrief starts at 3.30pm, everyone will be too tired to engage properly. Schedule it for mid-morning or immediately after lunch when energy is still decent.

Book a room with enough space for everyone to sit in a circle or around a single table. Do not run this session in a lecture-style room where the leader sits at the front and everyone else faces forward. You need a setup that creates peer-to-peer conversation, not top-down presentation.

19. Bring printed copies of everyone's results to the debrief session

The Working Genius platform allows you to download and print individual reports for each team member. Print one copy of each person's report and bring the full set to the debrief session. Some facilitators also print a large team map that shows everyone's Geniuses on a single page.

Why print when everyone has the report on their phone? Because people engage differently when they have a physical document in front of them. They can annotate it. They can lay it next to someone else's report and compare patterns. They can refer back to it during the conversation without the distraction of opening their phone and getting pulled into email.

The team map is especially useful. It is a single-page grid that shows each person's name down the left side and their two Geniuses marked in the corresponding columns. When the team sees this map, patterns become immediately visible. You can see at a glance whether you have anyone with Invention as a Genius, whether the team is overloaded with Galvanising and underweight in Tenacity, and whether certain types of work have no natural owner.

If you are facilitating the session yourself, create this map manually in a spreadsheet before the session and print it in A3 size. If you have hired a Certified Facilitator, they will bring the map with them.

20. Open the session by restating what Working Genius measures and what it does not

Even though you briefed the team before they completed the assessment, restate the framing at the start of the debrief session. Half the team will have forgotten. The other half will have misunderstood.

What to say: “Working Genius measures the types of work that energise you and the types of work that drain you. It does not measure skill. It does not measure competence. It does not measure value. You can be excellent at something and still find it draining. That is normal. The goal today is to look at how work is currently distributed across this team, identify where people are spending too much time in their Frustration zones, and figure out whether we can redesign responsibilities so more people are working in their Geniuses more often.”

Then set the ground rule for the conversation: “Everything shared in this room stays in this room. If someone says a particular part of their role drains them, that is not a complaint and it is not a performance issue. It is data. We are going to use that data to make better decisions about who does what. But only if people feel safe being honest. So no judgment, no defensiveness, and no using someone's Frustrations against them in a meeting three weeks from now.”

If you do not set this ground rule explicitly, someone will hold back, and the whole conversation will stay surface-level.

21. Start by having each person share their two Geniuses and one surprise from their results

The first exercise in the debrief session is a round-robin where each person shares their two Geniuses and one thing that surprised them when they read their report. This serves two purposes. It gets everyone talking early, and it surfaces the patterns that will guide the rest of the conversation.

Keep this round tight. Each person gets 60 to 90 seconds. If someone starts telling a long story about their career history, gently redirect: “That is useful context, but let's stay focused on your Geniuses and the surprise for now. We will have time to go deeper in a few minutes.”

What you are listening for: Does anyone share the same pairing of Geniuses? Are there types of work that no one on the team has as a Genius? Is anyone surprised that a type of work they assumed they loved is actually showing up as a Competency or a Frustration?

Example of what this sounds like in practice: “My two Geniuses are Wonder and Discernment. The surprise for me was that Tenacity is one of my Frustrations. I always thought I was good at finishing projects, but when I reflected on it, I realised that pushing things across the line drains me every time. I do it because it has to get done, but it is not where I get energy.”

As facilitator, your job is to listen, take notes, and start forming hypotheses about where the team's collective gaps are. You will test those hypotheses in the next part of the conversation.

22. Map the team's collective Geniuses and identify the gaps

Once everyone has shared their individual results, put the team map up on the wall or display it on a screen. Walk through it column by column and name what you see.

Questions to ask the group:

Which types of work do we have well covered as a team?

Which types of work does no one on this team have as a Genius?

Are there types of work that multiple people have as a Frustration?

What does this tell us about the projects that tend to stall or the work that never seems to get done?

Common pattern in Australian school leadership teams: High representation in Wonder and Discernment, moderate representation in Invention and Galvanising, and almost no one with Tenacity as a Genius. Everyone loves asking questions and evaluating ideas. No one loves the grinding follow-through work that turns the idea into reality. Projects get 80 percent of the way there and then sit unfinished for months.

Common pattern in nonprofit exec teams: High Galvanising and Enablement, low Invention and Tenacity. Everyone is great at rallying people and providing support. No one is generating new ideas, and no one is closing the loop on execution. The organisation runs the same programmes year after year because no one has the energy to invent something new or the stamina to push a new initiative all the way through.

When you identify a gap, name it directly. “We have no one on this team with Tenacity as a Genius. That explains why our strategic plan has 12 initiatives and only three of them are fully implemented. Tenacity work is being done by people for whom it is a Competency or a Frustration, which means it is getting done slowly, inconsistently, or not at all.”

This is the moment where the team stops treating Working Genius as a fun personality exercise and starts treating it as a diagnostic tool.

23. Identify one responsibility each person is currently doing that sits in their Frustration zone

This is the most confronting part of the debrief session and the most valuable. Go around the table and ask each person to name one responsibility they currently hold that sits in their Frustration zone.

What to say as the facilitator: “I want each of you to think about your current role. What is one task or responsibility you do regularly that drains you? Something that, when you see it on your calendar, you feel your energy drop. Name it out loud, and tell us which Genius area it sits in.”

Give people 60 seconds of silent thinking time before anyone speaks. If you ask the question and immediately expect answers, people will name the first thing that comes to mind rather than the thing that is actually costing them the most energy.

Example of what this sounds like: “I spend about six hours a week in budget review meetings. My Frustrations are Discernment and Tenacity, and budget work sits right in Tenacity. I can do it. I understand the numbers. But by the end of those meetings I am completely empty, and it takes me the rest of the day to recover.”

As each person shares, write down what they say. You are building a list of Frustration tasks that the team can then look at collectively and ask: does this task genuinely have to be done by this person, or is there someone else on the team whose Geniuses align with it?

This is where role redesign starts to become possible. If the CFO has Tenacity as a Frustration but the operations manager has Tenacity as a Genius, maybe some of the budget follow-through work can shift. If the principal has Galvanising as a Frustration but the deputy has Galvanising as a Genius, maybe the deputy takes the lead on staff rallies and the principal focuses on the strategic problem-solving work that actually energises them.

Do not solve these problems in the debrief session. The session is about surfacing the patterns. The redesign work happens afterwards in smaller conversations between the relevant people.

24. Close the session by asking each person to name one change they want to make in the next 90 days

The debrief session should not end with everyone nodding thoughtfully and then walking out and doing nothing. Close with a commitment round.

What to say: “Based on what you have learned today, what is one change you want to make in the next 90 days? It could be handing off a Frustration task. It could be restructuring your calendar to spend more time in your Geniuses. It could be saying no to a type of work you have been saying yes to out of obligation. Name it out loud, and tell us what support you need from the team to make it happen.”

Go around the table. Each person shares their one change. Write them all down. Send the list to the team within 24 hours of the session.

Then schedule a follow-up conversation 30 days later. In that follow-up, each person reports on whether they made the change, what got in the way if they did not, and what support they still need. If you do not schedule the follow-up, the commitments evaporate and the debrief session becomes another offsite that produced great conversation and zero behaviour change. For more on what to do after your Working Genius session, there are 21 practical strategies to help the insights stick.

AFTER THE DEBRIEF SESSION

The debrief session is not the end of the process. It is the beginning. The next set of steps governs what happens in the weeks and months after the session to make sure the insights actually change how the team works.

25. Use Working Genius language in your regular team meetings

The assessment only creates lasting change if the language becomes part of how the team talks about work. Start using Working Genius terminology in your regular team meetings, project planning sessions, and delegation conversations.

Examples of how this sounds in practice:

“We are about to kick off the new programme design. Who on this team has Invention as a Genius? Let's make sure they are in the room for the ideation phase.”

“This project has stalled at the 80 percent mark. That is a Tenacity problem. Who has Tenacity as a Genius and can take ownership of pushing this across the line?”

“I am drowning in Enablement work right now and it is draining me. Can someone whose Genius is Enablement take the lead on resourcing this initiative?”

The more the team uses the language, the more normal it becomes to name what energises you and what drains you, and to design work distribution accordingly. Within three months, you will notice that delegation conversations become faster and more honest. Instead of assigning tasks based on who has capacity, you start assigning tasks based on whose Geniuses align with the work. The quality of execution improves, and the team's energy stabilises.

If the language does not stick, the insights die within six weeks. Working Genius becomes another assessment the team completed once, talked about briefly, and then forgot. The difference between organisations that get lasting value from Working Genius and organisations that do not is whether the leader keeps the language alive in the day-to-day work.

The Working Genius assessment is not a magic fix for every team dysfunction. But when you take the time to set it up properly, facilitate the debrief well, and follow through with real changes to how work is distributed, it becomes one of the most useful tools you can give a leadership team. Your team already knows something is off. Working Genius gives them the language to name it and the map to fix it.

If you want help facilitating a Working Genius debrief session for your Australian or New Zealand team, reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org. I have run these sessions with school leadership teams, nonprofit exec teams, and corporate leadership groups across Australia, and I can walk your team through the process from assessment setup to post-session action planning.