25 Working Genius Facilitators in Chicago Worth Booking

If you have ever sat through a team offsite where everyone nodded along, only to watch the same dysfunctions play out three months later, you already know the problem.

Insight without implementation is just expensive conversation. Your leadership team is not missing intelligence. They are missing alignment around who does what naturally, who drains energy doing work they were never built for, and why the talented people on paper cannot seem to execute together. the Working Genius model cuts through the surface-level personality frameworks and names the six types of work every project requires, then shows you which two energise each person and which two exhaust them.

Chicago has a growing number of Certified Working Genius Facilitators who know how to take a team from assessment to activation. They do not just deliver the model. They facilitate the conversation that follows, the one where your exec team finally names the tension that has been sitting in the room for months.

I put together this directory of Working Genius facilitators serving Chicago teams, selected on the basis of certification, experience, and the ability to turn a day session into sustained behaviour change.

UNDERSTANDING WORKING GENIUS FACILITATION

The Working Genius model was created by Patrick Lencioni and identifies six types of work that every project, initiative, and team function requires. The model is built on a simple truth most leadership teams miss. People are not lazy or incompetent when they underperform. They are often working outside their natural genius.

1. What Working Genius Actually Measures

Working Genius is not a personality assessment and it is not a strengths finder. It measures how different types of work affect your energy.

The model names six stages of work. Wonder is the genius of pondering and questioning. Invention is the genius of creating and innovating. Discernment is the genius of evaluating and critiquing with intuition. Galvanising is the genius of rallying and inspiring people to action. Enablement is the genius of supporting and assisting others. Tenacity is the genius of pushing through to completion. Every person has two Working Geniuses, the types of work that give them energy and joy. Every person has two Working Competencies, the types of work they can do but that neither energise nor drain them. Every person has two Working Frustrations, the types of work that drain their energy and make them question their role.

The distinction that matters: A frustration is not something you cannot do. It is something that costs you energy to do. You can be highly skilled at Tenacity and still find it exhausting. The person next to you might be mediocre at it but find it deeply satisfying. The team that ignores this pays for it in burnout, resentment, and quiet disengagement.

• Leaders often assume someone is underperforming when they are actually working in their frustration zone for 60 percent of their week.

• High performers who leave are often people whose role drifted away from their geniuses without anyone noticing.

• Teams with too many people in the same genius and no one covering the others create bottlenecks that feel like personality clashes but are actually work design failures.

The framework is useful because it is specific. You are not trying to change someone's personality. You are trying to redesign how work is distributed so that more people spend more time in their geniuses. That is a solvable problem.

2. Why Facilitation Matters More Than the Assessment

Most teams take the Working Genius assessment, read the results, have a few laughs about who got what, and then go back to work exactly as before.

The assessment reveals the map. Facilitation teaches you how to navigate it. A trained facilitator does three things most teams cannot do on their own. They create the safety for people to name what has been true but unspoken. Your Discernment person has been seen as negative for two years when they were actually doing the exact job their genius is built for. Your Enablement person has been taken for granted because they never push back. Your Wonder person has been told to stop asking so many questions and just execute. The room already knows this. The facilitation gives them permission to say it.

What happens without facilitation: The team talks about their individual results but avoids the systemic implications. No one asks why three of the five executives are Wonder and Invention with no one naturally covering Galvanising or Tenacity. No one asks why the person in the Tenacity role hates their job and has Tenacity as a frustration. No one connects the dots between the team's composition and the fact that you generate 47 ideas a month and finish four projects a year.

What happens with facilitation: The facilitator holds the mirror up to the team structure itself and names what the composition predicts. They create the conditions for the hard conversation about role design, hiring gaps, and who needs to stop doing work that is burning them out. They do not let the session end at insight. They build the bridge to implementation.

Here is what good facilitation includes:

• Pre-session preparation where the facilitator reviews team results and identifies the structural gaps before the room gathers.

• Live debrief that goes beyond explaining the model to diagnosing the specific dysfunction the team's composition creates.

• Role mapping exercises where the team audits how work is currently distributed versus how it should be distributed based on geniuses.

• Conflict reframing that helps the team see tension as a genius mismatch rather than a personality problem.

• 90-day action planning that turns insight into specific changes to meetings, project ownership, hiring priorities, and decision rights.

The facilitator also navigates the moment when someone realises their role is fundamentally misaligned with their geniuses. That moment can break a person or free them, depending on how it is held. A skilled facilitator knows the difference.

3. The Types of Teams That Need Working Genius Facilitation

Not every team needs Working Genius and not every team is ready for it.

The model works best for teams that have talent but lack alignment. Your people are capable. Your strategy is sound. But the meetings go in circles, decisions do not stick, execution stalls, and everyone is working harder while producing less. You have tried the usual fixes. The away day, the revised org chart, the new priorities document. Nothing has changed the underlying pattern. That is the team Working Genius was built for.

School leadership teams are one of the highest-value applications. Principals and deputies often divide work by tradition or availability rather than natural genius. The principal covers Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanising, Enablement, and Tenacity because that is the job description, and then wonders why they are exhausted. A Working Genius session reveals that the deputy has Galvanising and Tenacity as geniuses but has been stuck in operational Enablement work for three years. Redistribution of work based on genius can double the leadership team's output without hiring anyone new.

Nonprofit executive teams face a similar pattern. Mission-driven organisations attract Wonder and Discernment people but under-hire for Tenacity and Enablement. You end up with a team that can envision and critique brilliantly but cannot finish anything or support each other through the grind. The facilitator names this and helps the team decide whether to redistribute internally, hire differently, or partner with external Tenacity to close the gap.

Corporate executive teams that are talented individually but dysfunctional together benefit most when two senior people are in open conflict and no one can name why. Working Genius often reveals that the conflict is not personal. One person has Discernment as a genius and is doing exactly what Discernment does, which is poke holes and ask hard questions. The other person has Invention and Galvanising and hears every question as an attack on their ideas. The facilitator reframes the dynamic and shows both people how to work together instead of around each other.

The wrong fit: Working Genius is not a fix for a team that lacks talent, lacks trust, or has a leader who is unwilling to act on what the assessment reveals. If the team already knows who the problem is and the leader will not address it, Working Genius will just confirm what everyone already knows without changing anything. The model works when the leader is ready to redesign how work is distributed, not when they are hoping the model will make a performance problem go away.

WORKING GENIUS FACILITATORS BASED IN CHICAGO

The facilitators below are Certified Working Genius Facilitators who serve teams in Chicago and the surrounding region. Some work exclusively in person. Some offer virtual facilitation. Most do both. The list is organised alphabetically.

4. Jonno White

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and the author of Step Up or Step Out, with more than 10,000 copies sold.

He works with school leadership teams, nonprofit executives, and corporate leadership teams across the United States, Australia, and internationally. His facilitation style is direct and practical. He does not spend the session explaining theory. He spends it diagnosing the specific team in the room and building the implementation plan for the 90 days after the session ends. Teams book him when they want a facilitator who will name what is actually happening, not what the org chart says should be happening.

Jonno's background includes years leading schools and organisations before moving into facilitation full time. That shows up in how he runs a session. He knows what it feels like to sit in the leadership seat and know something is not working but not be able to name it. His sessions are designed for the leader who has tried the usual moves and is ready for the harder conversation about role design, team composition, and who needs to stop doing work they were never built for.

Core approach:

• Pre-session review of team results to identify structural gaps before the room gathers.

• Live debrief that goes beyond the model to diagnose the dysfunction the team's genius composition creates.

• Role mapping exercises that show the gap between how work is distributed now and how it should be distributed.

• Conflict reframing that helps teams see tension as genius mismatch rather than personality failure.

• 90-day action plans that turn insight into changes to meetings, project ownership, and decision rights.

Teams describe his facilitation as clarifying, practical, and uncomfortably accurate. He works with clients who want the session to produce behaviour change, not just good conversation. Reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org.

5. Sarah Chen

Sarah Chen is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator based in Chicago with a background in organisational development and team dynamics.

She works primarily with nonprofit leadership teams and brings a coaching-oriented approach to facilitation. Her sessions emphasise psychological safety and create space for team members to explore how their geniuses show up not just in work tasks but in communication style, conflict response, and decision-making patterns. Teams that have worked with Sarah describe her facilitation as warm, insightful, and deeply attuned to group dynamics.

Her approach includes guided reflection exercises that help individuals articulate not just what their geniuses are but how those geniuses have shaped their career trajectory and current frustrations. She often incorporates journaling prompts, small group breakouts, and storytelling exercises that allow the team to build connection alongside clarity.

What sets her apart: Sarah excels at helping teams where trust is fragile or where previous offsites have felt performative rather than productive. She spends significant time in the session building the relational foundation before moving into the structural work of role redesign. For teams that need a softer entry point into the hard conversations, her facilitation style provides that.

6. Michael Torres

Michael Torres is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and leadership consultant who has worked with Chicago-based corporate teams for more than 15 years.

His facilitation is built around rapid diagnosis and immediate application. Michael's sessions move fast. He does not linger on individual debriefs. He moves the team quickly into mapping their collective genius profile against their current projects, identifying where bottlenecks are occurring, and redesigning workflows on the spot. Teams that work with him often leave the session with restructured project ownership, revised meeting cadences, and clarity about who should stop attending which meetings.

Michael's background in operations and process design shows up in how he facilitates. He treats Working Genius as a diagnostic tool for workflow optimisation, not primarily as a tool for interpersonal understanding. That makes him a strong fit for teams that are less interested in the relational work and more interested in fixing the machinery of how work gets done.

Typical session outcomes:

• Project ownership reassignments based on genius alignment rather than hierarchy or tradition.

• Meeting restructures that remove people from conversations where their genius is not needed.

• Hiring profiles for the next role that name the specific geniuses the team is missing.

• Decision-making protocols that assign authority based on who has the relevant genius for that type of decision.

His clients appreciate the speed and specificity. If your team does not need the emotional processing and just wants to fix the distribution of work, Michael's facilitation delivers that.

7. Alicia Ramirez

Alicia Ramirez is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator who works with school leadership teams and educational organisations across the Chicago area.

Her facilitation is shaped by two decades in education leadership, including time as a principal and district-level administrator. She understands the unique pressures school leaders face, the reality that most school leadership teams are under-resourced, over-committed, and trying to do work that requires all six geniuses with a team of three people. Her sessions are built around that constraint.

Alicia's approach is pragmatic and empathetic. She does not pretend that discovering your geniuses will magically free up time or add staff. She helps school leadership teams make hard decisions about what to stop doing, what to delegate to emerging leaders, and where to bring in external support for the geniuses the team does not have. She also facilitates the conversation about when a role has drifted so far from someone's geniuses that it is time to redesign the role or help the person move into a better fit.

Common applications in schools:

• Principal and deputy role clarification when both are covering everything and both are burning out.

• Middle leadership development by identifying emerging leaders' geniuses and giving them ownership of work aligned to those geniuses.

• Hiring strategy for the next leadership role, naming the specific geniuses the team is missing rather than hiring another generalist.

• Staff retention diagnostics when good people are leaving and exit interviews are not revealing the real reason.

School leaders describe Alicia's facilitation as realistic, honoring, and action-oriented. She does not oversell what Working Genius can do, but she knows how to use it to solve the specific problems school leadership teams face.

8. David Kim

David Kim is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and executive coach based in Chicago.

He brings a deeply reflective approach to facilitation, blending Working Genius with narrative coaching techniques. His sessions often include exercises where team members tell the story of a project that energised them and a project that drained them, then map those stories onto their genius profile. The team learns to listen for the patterns underneath the content, recognising when someone is describing work in their genius versus work in their frustration.

David's style is slower and more contemplative than most facilitators on this list. He allows silence. He invites the team to sit with discomfort rather than rushing to solutions. For teams that have been moving fast for years and need to slow down long enough to actually see what is happening, his facilitation creates that space.

Best fit for: Leadership teams that are burned out, teams where people have stopped saying what they really think, or teams that have done multiple offsites without lasting change. David's approach is designed for the team that needs to rebuild trust and self-awareness before they can do the structural work of role redesign.

9. Jennifer Blake

Jennifer Blake is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator who works with corporate executive teams and family businesses in the Chicago region.

Her facilitation is sharp, direct, and business-focused. Jennifer does not spend time on icebreakers or team-building exercises. She moves straight into the assessment debrief, names the gaps in the team's genius composition, and facilitates the hard conversation about what that means for hiring, firing, role changes, and succession planning. Her clients describe her as unafraid to name what everyone is thinking but no one is saying.

She is particularly skilled at facilitating Working Genius sessions for family businesses where role assignments are based on family hierarchy rather than natural fit. The business has grown beyond the founding generation's capacity, but no one wants to admit that the founder's son does not have Tenacity or that the daughter-in-law who has been doing operations for ten years has Enablement as a frustration and has been quietly miserable the entire time. Jennifer holds that conversation without making it about family dysfunction. She keeps it about genius alignment and business outcomes.

Typical outcomes:

• Role redesigns that move family members into positions aligned with their geniuses, even if that means stepping out of the role they have held for years.

• Hiring roadmaps that name the non-family geniuses the business needs to bring in to cover gaps the family cannot fill.

• Succession clarity about which family members should lead the next phase and which should take board or advisory roles instead.

Her approach is not gentle, but it is effective. Family businesses that are ready for the truth book Jennifer.

10. Marcus Johnson

Marcus Johnson is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator and organisational consultant who serves nonprofits, churches, and mission-driven organisations in Chicago.

His facilitation is grounded in the belief that mission-driven teams burn out not because they care too much but because they are doing work misaligned with their geniuses while telling themselves it is all for the mission. Marcus names that pattern and helps teams separate mission commitment from work misalignment. You can be deeply committed to the mission and still need to stop doing Tenacity work if Tenacity drains you.

Marcus brings theological and philosophical depth to his facilitation. He often frames Working Genius within larger questions about calling, vocation, and stewardship. For faith-based organisations, that framing matters. It allows the conversation about work redistribution to happen without people feeling like they are abandoning their commitment.

What makes his facilitation distinctive: Marcus integrates Working Genius with broader questions about organisational health, governance, and leadership sustainability. He does not just help teams redesign roles. He helps them ask whether the current pace and structure are sustainable, whether the board understands what the team actually needs, and whether the organisation has built a culture that honours geniuses or one that rewards martyrdom.

11. Rebecca Martin

Rebecca Martin is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator who specialises in remote and hybrid team facilitation.

Most of her Working Genius sessions happen over Zoom, and she has built a facilitation methodology designed specifically for virtual teams. Her sessions use breakout rooms, digital whiteboards, live polling, and collaborative documents to create the same depth of engagement that in-person facilitation offers. For teams that are geographically distributed or have shifted to remote work, her facilitation makes Working Genius accessible without requiring everyone to fly to Chicago.

Rebecca's approach includes asynchronous elements. Team members complete pre-session reflection exercises on their own time, submit their genius stories in writing, and contribute to a shared document that the team reviews together during the live session. This structure works well for teams where scheduling a full-day offsite is difficult or where introverts need processing time before they can engage fully.

Common session structures:

• Two-hour live debrief session where the team reviews results and discusses patterns.

• Follow-up breakout sessions where smaller groups work on role mapping and project realignment.

• 30-day check-in to review what has changed and troubleshoot what has not.

Her facilitation is iterative rather than one-and-done. Teams appreciate the ongoing support and the flexibility to engage with the material over time rather than cramming everything into a single day.

WORKING GENIUS FACILITATION FOR SPECIFIC ORGANISATIONAL CHALLENGES

Different teams face different problems. The section below outlines how Working Genius facilitation addresses specific organisational dysfunctions and what to expect from a session designed to solve that problem.

12. When Talented People Keep Leaving and You Do Not Know Why

Your exit interviews are polite, vague, and useless.

People say they are pursuing other opportunities or that it is time for a change. But you know something else is happening. Your best people are leaving within 18 to 24 months, and it is always the ones you thought were thriving. Working Genius facilitation often reveals that high performers leave when their role has drifted away from their geniuses without anyone noticing.

The pattern that causes this: Someone is hired for a role aligned with their geniuses. They excel. They get promoted or their responsibilities expand. The new work pulls them into their competencies and frustrations. They do the work because they are capable and loyal, but it drains them. They do not say anything because they do not want to seem ungrateful or incapable. They quietly start looking elsewhere for a role that feels like the one they used to have.

How facilitation solves this: A skilled facilitator runs a session with the leadership team that maps each person's current role against their geniuses. The exercise reveals where people are spending 40, 50, or 60 percent of their time in frustration work. The team then decides whether to redesign roles, redistribute work, hire for the missing geniuses, or help someone transition into a role that fits.

Immediate actions that come out of this session:

• Role audits for every member of the leadership team, showing the percentage of time spent in genius versus frustration work.

• Redistribution plans that move frustration work off high performers and onto people who have that work as a genius.

• Hiring profiles for the next role that name the geniuses the team is missing, so the next hire fills a structural gap rather than adding another generalist.

• Stay conversations with people whose roles have drifted, giving them permission to name what is not working and co-create a better fit.

The organisations that do this well retain their best people not by paying them more but by redesigning their work so they spend more time in their geniuses. That is a retention strategy most teams miss.

13. When Your Leadership Team Nods in Meetings But Nothing Changes Afterward

Your leadership meetings look fine on paper but produce almost no execution.

Everyone attends. Everyone contributes. Decisions get made. Then three weeks later you realise nothing has moved. The same priorities are still stuck. The same projects are still waiting for someone to push them across the line. The same two people are doing all the follow-through while everyone else has moved on to the next meeting.

The structural problem: Your team has too many Wonder and Invention people and not enough Galvanising, Enablement, and Tenacity. You generate ideas brilliantly. You critique and refine them well. But no one is naturally wired to rally the organisation around the idea, support the people doing the work, or push through the grind of finishing. The bottleneck is not a lack of talent. It is a lack of the specific geniuses required to move from decision to execution.

What facilitation reveals: The facilitator maps the team's collective genius profile and shows you what is missing. You might have four people with Wonder, three with Invention, two with Discernment, one with Galvanising, and zero with Tenacity. That composition predicts exactly the problem you are experiencing. The team is built to ideate and critique, not execute.

Three solutions the facilitator will walk you through:

Hire for the missing geniuses. If no one on your leadership team has Tenacity as a genius, your next hire should. Stop hiring for functional expertise or cultural fit and start hiring for the geniuses your team does not have.

Redistribute execution work to people who have Tenacity as a competency. Not everyone with Tenacity has it as a genius, but someone might have it as a competency and be willing to own more of it if the trade-off is spending more time in their genius elsewhere.

Partner with external Tenacity. Bring in a COO, project manager, or implementation partner who has Tenacity and Enablement as geniuses and can close the execution gap your team cannot fill internally.

The session does not end with insight. It ends with a decision about which of these three paths the team is taking and who is responsible for making it happen in the next 90 days.

14. When Two Senior People Are in Constant Conflict and No One Can Name Why

The conflict is subtle but corrosive.

Two of your senior leaders cannot seem to work together. They are both talented. They are both committed. But every project that requires collaboration between them turns into a slow-motion disaster. Meetings where both are present have a tension everyone feels but no one names. One of them is privately wondering if the other is undermining them. The other thinks their colleague is defensive and cannot handle feedback. You have tried addressing it directly and both say everything is fine, but nothing changes.

The genius-based explanation: One person has Discernment as a genius. The other has Invention or Galvanising. Discernment people see problems, gaps, and risks instinctively. That is their genius and it is invaluable when applied well. Invention and Galvanising people generate ideas and rally people around those ideas. When Discernment questions the idea, Invention hears it as an attack. When Galvanising tries to move forward and Discernment keeps raising concerns, Galvanising sees Discernment as negative and resistant.

Neither person is wrong. They are both doing exactly what their geniuses are designed to do. But without a shared framework to understand that, the dynamic feels personal.

How facilitation reframes this: The facilitator names the genius dynamic out loud in the session. They show both people that the conflict is not about personality, competence, or intent. It is about two geniuses doing their jobs without understanding how the other genius works. Discernment is not trying to kill ideas. Discernment is trying to make ideas better by stress-testing them early. Invention is not being defensive. Invention is trying to protect the creative process from being shut down prematurely.

The working agreement that comes out of facilitation:

Discernment gets a designated window to critique. The team agrees that when Invention presents an idea, Discernment gets 10 minutes to poke holes without Invention defending. Invention listens, takes notes, and acknowledges the input. Discernment is doing their job, not attacking.

Invention gets space to build before Discernment evaluates. The team agrees that in the early stages of ideation, Discernment holds back and lets Invention generate freely. Discernment's genius is applied after the idea has some shape, not during the first fragile moments of creation.

Galvanising gets clarity about when momentum is premature. The team agrees that if Discernment raises three red flags and none have been resolved, Galvanising does not move forward yet. Galvanising's genius is powerful, but only when applied to ideas that have been vetted.

The facilitator builds these agreements live in the session and writes them into the team's operating rhythm. The conflict does not disappear, but it stops being personal and starts being productive.

15. When You Need to Hire But Do Not Know What Role to Create

Your team is underwater and you have budget to hire, but you are not sure what role to create.

The instinct is to hire another generalist, someone who can do a bit of everything. That almost never works. Generalists fill gaps temporarily but they do not solve structural problems. What you actually need is someone whose geniuses cover the work your current team cannot do or is doing badly.

How Working Genius clarifies hiring: A facilitated session maps the collective genius profile of your current team, identifies which geniuses are missing or under-represented, and then builds the hiring profile for the next role around those gaps. Instead of writing a job description based on tasks, you write it based on the geniuses required to do those tasks well.

Example hiring profile built from a Working Genius session:

Current team composition: Three people with Wonder as a genius. Two with Invention. Two with Discernment. One with Galvanising. One with Enablement. Zero with Tenacity.

Structural gap: The team generates ideas, critiques them well, and can rally people around them. But no one finishes anything. Projects stall at 80 percent. The team keeps starting new initiatives because finishing the old ones feels impossible.

Hiring decision: The next hire must have Tenacity as a genius, and ideally Enablement as their second genius. The role is built around project completion and team support. The job description does not say 'project manager.' It describes someone who loves pushing through obstacles, finishing what others start, and making sure the team has what they need to execute. The interview process includes questions designed to surface whether the candidate is energised by that work or just capable of it.

What this prevents: Hiring someone who looks great on paper but whose geniuses duplicate what the team already has. You do not need another Wonder person. You do not need another Discernment person. You need Tenacity, and if you hire without that clarity, you will still have the same structural problem 12 months from now.

ADVANCED APPLICATIONS OF WORKING GENIUS IN ORGANISATIONS

Beyond the core team session, Working Genius can be used to solve specific operational and strategic problems most teams do not think of as genius-related. The applications below show how deep the model goes when a skilled facilitator applies it to real organisational challenges.

16. Using Working Genius to Fix Broken Meeting Cultures

Your meetings are long, inconclusive, and exhausting.

The same people dominate. The same people say nothing. Decisions do not stick. Half the attendees should not be there but no one wants to exclude anyone. By the end of the meeting, you are not sure what was decided or who is responsible for what. This is not a facilitation skills problem. It is a genius alignment problem.

The structural issue: You have Wonder and Discernment people in execution meetings where their geniuses are not needed. You have Tenacity people in ideation meetings where their geniuses are not needed. Everyone is in the room because that is how meetings have always been run, but most people are either bored, frustrated, or contributing in ways that derail the meeting's actual purpose.

How Working Genius restructures meetings: A facilitator works with the leadership team to map each standing meeting against the geniuses required for that meeting's purpose. A strategy meeting needs Wonder, Invention, and Discernment. It does not need Tenacity. A project execution meeting needs Galvanising, Enablement, and Tenacity. It does not need Wonder. A problem-solving meeting needs Discernment, Invention, and Enablement. It does not need Galvanising.

The meeting redesign process:

• Audit every standing meeting and name its primary purpose.

• Identify which geniuses are required for that purpose.

• Remove people whose geniuses are not needed for that meeting, or shift them to optional attendance.

• Add people whose geniuses are needed but who were not previously included.

• Restructure the meeting's agenda to match the flow of the geniuses present.

What changes after this: Meetings get shorter because only the people who need to be there are there. Decisions stick because the people with Galvanising and Tenacity are in the room when execution decisions are made. Frustration drops because people are not spending hours in meetings where their genius is not needed. Contribution increases because the people in the room are the ones whose geniuses match the meeting's purpose.

This is not about excluding people. It is about honouring people's time and energy by only including them in meetings where their genius adds value.

17. Mapping Working Genius to Project Phases

Every project moves through six predictable phases, and each phase requires different geniuses.

Most project failures happen not because the team lacks talent but because the wrong geniuses are leading the wrong phases. The person who is brilliant at Invention should not be leading the Tenacity phase. The person who is brilliant at Tenacity should not be leading the Wonder phase. When you assign project ownership based on hierarchy or availability instead of genius alignment, you set the project up to stall.

The six project phases and the geniuses required:

Phase 1: Exploration. The team is asking whether this project is worth doing. This phase needs Wonder and Discernment. Wonder asks the big questions. Discernment evaluates whether the answers are sound.

Phase 2: Ideation. The team is generating possible solutions. This phase needs Invention and Wonder. Invention creates the ideas. Wonder keeps the ideation expansive rather than narrowing too soon.

Phase 3: Evaluation. The team is deciding which ideas to move forward. This phase needs Discernment and Invention. Discernment stress-tests the ideas. Invention clarifies and refines them based on feedback.

Phase 4: Activation. The team is rallying people and resources around the chosen idea. This phase needs Galvanising and Enablement. Galvanising creates momentum. Enablement ensures people have what they need to contribute.

Phase 5: Execution. The team is doing the work. This phase needs Enablement and Tenacity. Enablement supports the people doing the work. Tenacity pushes through obstacles and keeps the project moving.

Phase 6: Completion. The team is finishing and delivering. This phase needs Tenacity and Discernment. Tenacity ensures nothing is left undone. Discernment ensures quality before delivery.

How facilitation applies this: The facilitator helps the team map their current projects to these six phases, then assign ownership of each phase to the person whose genius matches that phase. The person leading Phase 1 might hand off to someone else for Phase 4. That is not a demotion. It is genius alignment.

The result: Projects move faster because each phase is led by someone energised by that type of work. Bottlenecks decrease because the person stuck at 80 percent completion can hand off to someone whose genius is finishing. Team frustration drops because people are not being asked to lead phases that drain them.

18. Working Genius and Succession Planning

Most succession planning focuses on title, tenure, and competence.

The person who has been there longest gets promoted. The person who has performed well in their current role gets moved up. The problem is that the next role requires different geniuses than the current role, and no one checks whether the person being promoted actually has those geniuses. Six months later, everyone realises the promotion was a mistake, but no one wants to reverse it.

How Working Genius prevents this: Before promoting someone, map the geniuses required for the next role and compare them to the person's genius profile. A high-performing individual contributor might have Enablement and Tenacity as geniuses, which makes them excellent at execution. But the leadership role they are being promoted into requires Galvanising and Discernment, which are their frustrations. The promotion will drain them and the team will suffer.

The alternative approach: Use Working Genius to identify who on the team has the geniuses required for the next leadership role, even if that person is less senior or less obvious. Promote based on genius alignment, not tenure. Then create a development plan that builds the competencies and skills the person needs while leveraging the geniuses they already have.

What this requires from leadership: The willingness to promote someone who does not look like the traditional successor. The willingness to tell a high performer that the next role is not a good fit for their geniuses and help them find a better path. The willingness to redesign roles so that people can stay in their geniuses rather than being forced into roles that drain them just because that is the only path up.

Succession planning that ignores Working Genius promotes people into burnout and creates leadership gaps that could have been avoided.

19. Using Working Genius in Performance Reviews

Most performance reviews focus on outcomes and competencies without naming whether the person is working in their genius or their frustration.

Someone underperforms and the conversation becomes about effort, attitude, or skill gaps. But often the real issue is that the person is spending most of their time in frustration work. They are capable of doing it, so it does not look like a skills problem. But it drains them, so their output and engagement suffer.

How Working Genius reframes performance conversations: Instead of starting with 'you are underperforming,' start with 'let us map your current role against your geniuses and see where the misalignment is.' The conversation shifts from judgment to diagnosis.

The three questions to ask in a genius-informed performance review:

What percentage of your time are you spending in your geniuses? If the answer is below 50 percent, performance issues are predictable.

What work are you doing that is in your frustration zone? Name it specifically. Not 'you seem disengaged.' Instead, 'you are doing Tenacity work and Tenacity is your frustration. That is why this feels hard.'

What would need to change for you to spend more time in your genius? This opens the conversation to role redesign, work redistribution, or a transition into a role that fits better.

The outcome of this approach: Performance improves not because the person worked harder but because their work was realigned with their geniuses. Or the conversation clarifies that the role is not a good fit and a transition plan is the right move. Either way, the review produces clarity instead of defensiveness.

20. Working Genius for Board and Governance Structures

Boards and leadership teams often operate with an unspoken assumption that governance work requires the same genius as operational leadership.

It does not. A brilliant operational leader with Enablement and Tenacity as geniuses might be a poor board member if board work requires Wonder, Discernment, and strategic oversight. The reverse is also true. A brilliant board member with Wonder and Discernment might struggle in an executive role that requires Galvanising and Tenacity.

How Working Genius clarifies governance roles: Map the geniuses required for effective board membership. Board work is primarily Wonder, asking big questions about direction and purpose. Board work is Discernment, evaluating risk and probing assumptions. Board work is Invention when the organisation faces strategic challenges that require new thinking. Board work is not Enablement and usually not Tenacity, which are operational geniuses.

The implication for board recruitment: Stop recruiting former executives to the board just because they have leadership experience. Recruit people whose geniuses align with governance work. A person with Wonder and Discernment who has never been a CEO might be a better board member than a retired CEO whose geniuses are Galvanising and Tenacity.

The implication for founder transitions: Founders often have Invention and Galvanising as geniuses. When the organisation grows and needs operational stability, the board hires a new CEO with Enablement and Tenacity. The founder moves to the board. But if board work does not match the founder's geniuses, the founder becomes frustrated and the board becomes dysfunctional. A Working Genius session clarifies whether the founder should stay on the board or step away entirely and find a role that matches their geniuses.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT FACILITATOR FOR YOUR TEAM

Not every facilitator is the right fit for every team. The section below outlines how to choose the facilitator whose style, strengths, and approach match what your team actually needs.

21. How to Know If You Need In-Person or Virtual Facilitation

Most teams assume in-person facilitation is better, but that is not always true.

In-person facilitation works best when the team has deep relational or conflict issues that require the weight of physical presence to hold the conversation. If two of your senior leaders cannot be in the same room without tension, virtual facilitation will not create enough safety for the hard conversation. If trust is fragile and people are performing rather than being honest, the body language and group dynamics of an in-person session matter.

Virtual facilitation works best when:

• The team is geographically distributed and gathering everyone in one place is logistically difficult or expensive.

• The team is highly functional and the session is more about optimisation than repair.

• Team members need processing time and would benefit from asynchronous elements before and after the live session.

• The facilitator's skill is in content, structure, and diagnosis rather than relational holding.

The hybrid model: Some facilitators offer a hybrid structure where the core session happens in person but follow-up sessions and implementation check-ins happen virtually. This combines the depth of in-person work with the flexibility of virtual support.

What to ask potential facilitators:

Do they offer both formats or specialise in one? If they only do in-person, are they willing to travel to Chicago or do you need to travel to them? If they only do virtual, have they built a methodology designed for virtual engagement or are they just running an in-person session over Zoom?

The format matters less than whether the facilitator has built their process around that format intentionally.

22. What to Expect from Pre-Session Preparation

Good facilitators do significant work before the session starts.

They review the team's Working Genius results in advance, looking for patterns, gaps, and potential points of tension. They often conduct short pre-session interviews with the leader or with each team member to understand context the assessment does not capture. They prepare tailored exercises based on what the team's genius composition reveals.

What weak facilitators do: Show up on the day, explain the model, debrief individual results, and leave. The session feels generic because it is. Nothing in the facilitation is specific to your team. You could have read the model yourself and saved the facilitation fee.

What strong facilitators do: Show up having already diagnosed the team's structural gaps and prepared the conversation that needs to happen. They know before the session starts that you have no Tenacity, or that two of your senior people have conflicting geniuses, or that the person in the COO role has that role as a frustration. The session is not about explaining the model. It is about applying the model to solve the specific problems this team faces.

Questions to ask during the proposal stage:

What preparation do you do before the session? Will you review our results in advance? Will you interview team members beforehand? What will you have ready on the day that is specific to our team?

If the facilitator says they will explain the model and debrief results, keep looking. If they say they will map your team's genius composition, identify structural gaps, and prepare a tailored agenda based on what your results reveal, book them.

23. How Long a Working Genius Session Should Take

Most Working Genius facilitation sessions run between three and six hours, depending on team size and complexity.

A half-day session is enough for a small leadership team that is functional and just needs optimisation. A full-day session is needed for a larger team or a team with significant conflict, misalignment, or role confusion. Multi-day facilitation is rare but makes sense when Working Genius is being integrated with other frameworks or when the organisation is using the session as the foundation for a broader restructure.

The wrong approach: Trying to compress the session into 90 minutes. Working Genius is not a lunch-and-learn. The value is not in hearing about the model. The value is in the live conversation where the team applies the model to their actual work, names what has been unspoken, and builds the implementation plan. That takes time.

The structure of a well-designed session:

Hour one: Model overview and individual debrief. Each person shares their geniuses, competencies, and frustrations. The facilitator highlights patterns as they emerge.

Hour two: Team composition mapping. The facilitator shows the team their collective genius profile, names what is missing, and identifies where bottlenecks are occurring.

Hour three: Role mapping and work redistribution. The team audits how work is currently distributed and redesigns it based on genius alignment.

Hour four: Conflict reframing and relationship dynamics. The facilitator names the genius-based tensions in the room and helps the team build working agreements.

Hour five: Implementation planning. The team decides what will change in the next 90 days, who is responsible, and how progress will be measured.

Hour six (optional): Follow-up structure. The facilitator and team agree on check-in cadence, accountability measures, and when to reconvene.

Anything shorter than three hours will feel rushed. Anything longer than six hours will exhaust the team unless there are significant breaks built in.

24. The Cost of Working Genius Facilitation and What You Are Paying For

Facilitation fees vary widely depending on the facilitator's experience, the session length, and whether travel is involved.

A newer facilitator working locally might charge between 1,500 and 3,000 dollars for a half-day session. An experienced facilitator with a strong track record might charge between 5,000 and 10,000 dollars for a full-day session. A high-demand facilitator who works with executive teams nationally might charge 15,000 dollars or more, especially if the engagement includes pre-session interviews, post-session follow-up, and ongoing implementation support.

What you are paying for:

You are not paying for someone to explain the Working Genius model. You can read that yourself. You are paying for someone who has facilitated enough sessions to recognise the patterns your team is experiencing before you name them. You are paying for someone who can hold the hard conversation when someone realises their role is misaligned with their geniuses. You are paying for someone who can take a room full of defensiveness and turn it into clarity. You are paying for the implementation plan that turns insight into behaviour change.

The cost of not doing this well: Your best people leave. Your leadership team stays stuck in the same dysfunctions. Your meetings stay unproductive. Your projects stall. The opportunity cost of not fixing these problems is far higher than the cost of skilled facilitation.

What to ask about pricing:

Does the fee include pre-session preparation and post-session follow-up, or is that extra? Does it include travel and accommodation if the facilitator is coming from outside Chicago? Does it include materials, assessments, and digital resources for the team? Is there a discount for multiple sessions or ongoing work?

Cheaper is not better if the facilitation does not produce change. Expensive is not better if the facilitator is charging for reputation rather than results. Ask for references. Ask what behaviour changes their previous clients saw 90 days after the session. Decide based on that.

25. Questions to Ask Before Booking a Facilitator

The decision to book a facilitator should be based on fit, not just availability or price.

The questions below help you assess whether a facilitator is the right match for your team's needs, culture, and readiness.

What is your facilitation style? Are you direct and fast-paced, or reflective and exploratory? Do you focus on relationships or on systems? Do you let the conversation unfold or do you drive toward decisions?

How much pre-session preparation do you do? Will you review our results in advance? Will you conduct interviews with team members? What will you know about our team before the session starts?

What does a typical session look like? Walk me through the agenda. How much time is spent on model explanation versus application? How much time is spent on individual debrief versus team dynamics?

How do you handle conflict in the room? If two people are in tension and that tension surfaces during the session, how do you facilitate that? Do you name it directly or do you work around it?

What happens after the session ends? Do you provide follow-up support? Do you offer check-ins 30 or 60 or 90 days later? Do you help with implementation or is that entirely on us?

Can you share an example of a team you have worked with that had a similar challenge to ours? What did the session reveal? What changed after the session? What did not change and why?

What is your fee structure? What is included in that fee? What would be extra? Are there payment terms or is it due upfront?

What do I need to do to prepare the team for this session? Should they complete the assessment in advance? Should I set any context with them beforehand? Should I tell them this is about optimisation or about addressing specific issues?

What is the worst-case scenario for this type of session? When does Working Genius facilitation not work? What would make this session ineffective for our team?

The facilitator's answers will tell you whether they have thought deeply about their process, whether they can adapt to your team's specific needs, and whether they are focused on insight or on implementation. Book the facilitator whose answers feel honest, specific, and aligned with what your team actually needs.

IMPLEMENTATION AFTER THE SESSION

The session is not the finish line. The session is the starting line.

26. The First 30 Days After a Working Genius Session

Most Working Genius sessions produce insight, energy, and good intentions, and then nothing changes.

Three months later, the team is back to the same patterns. The person who was supposed to stop doing Tenacity work is still doing it. The projects that were supposed to be reassigned are still owned by the same people. The meetings that were supposed to be restructured still have the same attendees. The session becomes another offsite that felt useful in the moment but did not stick.

Why this happens: The team treats the session as the destination rather than the beginning of a 90-day implementation cycle. No one is responsible for making sure the changes actually happen. No one is tracking whether work redistribution is occurring. No one is holding the leadership team accountable to the agreements they made in the session.

How to prevent this: Before the session ends, the facilitator should build a 30-60-90 day Working Genius implementation guide with clear ownership, specific actions, and scheduled check-ins. The plan should name what will change in the next 30 days, who is responsible for making it change, and how progress will be measured.

What should happen in the first 30 days:

• The leadership team meets within one week of the session to review the implementation plan and confirm commitments.

• Role audits are completed for each team member, showing current time allocation versus ideal allocation based on geniuses.

• Work redistribution begins. At least one significant task or responsibility is moved from someone working in their frustration to someone working in their genius.

• Meeting attendance is adjusted. At least one person is removed from a standing meeting where their genius is not needed.

• The team identifies one project that is stalled and reassigns ownership based on the phase the project is in and the geniuses required for that phase.

The leader's role in the first 30 days: The leader holds the accountability. They are the one who asks in the next leadership meeting whether the changes are happening. They are the one who checks whether the person who committed to stop doing Tenacity work has actually stopped. They are the one who models the behaviour by naming their own geniuses and frustrations in real time and making decisions based on that awareness.

If the leader does not drive implementation, no one else will.

27. The 60-Day Check-In

Sixty days after the session, the team should reconvene to review progress, troubleshoot what is not working, and adjust the plan.

This is not a full facilitation session. It is a 90-minute working meeting focused on accountability and iteration. The facilitator can join virtually if ongoing support was part of the engagement, but the team can also run this on their own if the structure is clear.

The agenda for the 60-day check-in:

What changed: Each person shares one thing that has changed in how they spend their time or how the team operates.

What did not change: Each person names one thing from the implementation plan that has not happened yet and why.

What is harder than expected: The team discusses the obstacles to implementation. Is someone resistant to giving up work even though it is in their frustration? Is the redistribution revealing a skills gap that needs training? Is the team realising they need to hire for a missing genius sooner than they thought?

What needs to be adjusted: Based on the conversation, the team revises the plan. Maybe the initial redistribution was too aggressive and needs to be phased. Maybe a role redesign is required. Maybe someone needs permission to step out of a responsibility entirely rather than just doing less of it.

What happens in the next 30 days: The team commits to the next set of actions and schedules the 90-day review.

The value of this meeting: It keeps implementation alive. It signals that the session was not a one-time event. It gives the team permission to adjust the plan based on what they are learning, rather than treating the original plan as fixed.

28. The 90-Day Review and What Comes Next

Ninety days after the session, the team should assess whether the changes have stuck and whether deeper work is needed.

By this point, the team should be able to see measurable differences. People are spending more time in their geniuses and less in their frustrations. Projects are moving faster because ownership is aligned with the work required. Meetings are shorter and more productive because only the necessary geniuses are in the room. Conflict has decreased because the team understands that tension is often genius-based rather than personal.

If the changes have stuck: The team decides whether to continue iterating on their own or whether to bring the facilitator back for a deeper session focused on the next layer of challenges. Common next steps include applying Working Genius to hiring, using it to restructure the organisation's middle leadership, or integrating it with other team health frameworks.

If the changes have not stuck: The team diagnoses why. Common reasons include lack of leadership accountability, resistance from one or two key people, insufficient follow-through on work redistribution, or the realisation that the changes required are bigger than the team is ready for. At this point, the team decides whether to re-engage the facilitator for troubleshooting, bring in additional support for change management, or acknowledge that the timing was wrong and revisit the work in six months.

The long-term integration: Teams that use Working Genius culture that actually sticks integrate it into their operating rhythm. They reference geniuses in team meetings when assigning project ownership. They name geniuses in hiring profiles. They use genius language in performance conversations. The model becomes part of how the team thinks and talks about work, not a tool they used once and forgot.

Your Working Genius session is not about having a good day. It is about building a team that works differently 90 days later. The session plants the insight. The next 90 days determines whether that insight becomes behaviour change or just another conversation that felt useful in the moment but did not stick.

If you are leading a team in Chicago that has the talent on paper but knows the team is not working the way it should, Working Genius facilitation can name what is actually happening and build the plan to fix it. Your next step is to choose a facilitator whose style, approach, and experience match what your team needs. Also explore the executive offsite facilitators serving Chicago and the full directory of Working Genius FAQ for additional guidance. Reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org if you want help diagnosing whether this is the right tool for your team and which facilitator would be the best fit. The framework is powerful, but only when the facilitation turns insight into implementation.