25 Working Genius Wins for New Year Team Building

If you have ever walked out of a New Year planning session with a fresh set of priorities and watched them dissolve by mid-February, the problem is not your strategy.

The problem is that your team is being asked to execute on plans that ignore how they are actually wired to work. You set goals in January without accounting for who thrives in ideation, who drains during implementation, and who quietly resents being asked to do work that feels like pushing water uphill. Working Genius is the framework that changes this pattern.

It names six types of work every project requires and maps which types energise each person on your team and which types deplete them. When you build your New Year planning around these patterns instead of around generic role descriptions, the plans survive. The energy holds. The team actually executes.

This is not theory. I have seen it play out in leadership teams across schools, nonprofits, and corporate environments where talented people finally stop grinding through work that was never theirs to carry. Here are 25 ways to use Working Genius to make your New Year team building the foundation for the best quarter your organisation has run in years.

UNDERSTANDING THE SIX TYPES OF WORKING GENIUS

Working Genius identifies six distinct types of work that every project, initiative, and goal requires to move from idea to implementation. The framework was created by Patrick Lencioni, and I use it as a Certified Working Genius Facilitator because it names patterns I have watched play out in leadership teams for years. Most teams fail not because they lack talent but because they assign work without understanding which types energise people and which types drain them. The six types are Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanising, Enablement, and Tenacity. Each one is essential. None of them is optional. Your New Year planning falls apart when you skip one of these types or when you assign someone to do work that sits outside their natural wiring. For a full breakdown of how these types interact in practice, see the Working Genius model.

1. Wonder — The Genius of Asking the Right Questions

Wonder is the ability to ponder, question, and observe the world around you with curiosity and context. People with the Genius of Wonder are the ones who sit in a planning meeting and ask the question nobody else thought to ask. They notice the gap between what the organisation says it values and what actually happens in the staff room. They are not being difficult. They are seeing what others miss.

Most teams silence Wonder during New Year planning. The agenda is tight, the timeline is fixed, and the person asking whether the priority is even the right priority gets shut down as slowing the process. This is a mistake. Wonder is the type of work that prevents you from spending six months executing a plan that should never have been built in the first place.

• Wonder energises people who love big-picture thinking and exploration

• Wonder drains people who want clarity and forward momentum

• Wonder shows up as questions like "Why are we doing this?" or "What problem are we really solving?"

• Wonder is essential at the start of planning, dangerous when rushed, and impossible to retrofit later

If your New Year session does not create space for Wonder, you are building plans on assumptions that may already be wrong. Try scheduling the first 30 minutes of your planning day with no agenda except to ask what is actually true about your organisation right now. The person who thrives in that conversation is showing you their Wonder Genius. Listen to them.

2. Invention — The Genius of Creating New Solutions

Invention is the ability to create original ideas and solutions, often in response to the questions Wonder raises. People with the Genius of Invention are energised by brainstorming, whiteboarding, and building something that did not exist five minutes ago. They are the ones who hear a problem and immediately start sketching three different ways to solve it. Invention does not care whether the idea is practical yet. That comes later. Invention cares about possibility.

New Year planning sessions that skip Invention default to last year's priorities with new labels. You end up with incremental goals that feel safe but do not move the organisation forward. Invention is what turns a strategic retreat into a strategic breakthrough.

Common Invention mistakes in New Year team building:

Rushing the ideation phase. Invention needs time to think out loud. If your planning session moves from problem identification to solution selection in 15 minutes, you killed Invention before it had a chance to work.

Letting one voice dominate. Invention thrives in environments where multiple people can build on each other's ideas. If your CEO or principal is the only person generating options, the team is performing agreement, not practicing Invention.

Judging ideas too early. Discernment comes next. Invention does not need to be told why an idea will not work while the idea is still forming. Create separation between the two types of work.

If your team lacks energy during New Year planning, the issue is often that Invention was absent. People with this Genius feel alive when they are creating. People without it feel exhausted by open-ended brainstorming. Know who is who. Structure the day to let Invention run, then transition clearly to the next type of work.

3. Discernment — The Genius of Evaluating Ideas With Intuitive Accuracy

Discernment is the ability to assess an idea, a person, or a situation and instinctively know whether it is right. People with the Genius of Discernment do not always know why something is wrong, but they know that it is. They are the ones who sit quietly through a planning discussion and then say, "I do not think this is going to work," and three months later they are proven right. Discernment is pattern recognition at speed.

Most leadership teams have at least one person with strong Discernment, and most leadership teams ignore them during New Year planning because Discernment does not come with a spreadsheet. It comes with a feeling. That makes it easy to dismiss, especially in organisations that value data over intuition. This is a costly mistake.

Without Discernment, your New Year plans include ideas that should have been killed in the room. You end up committing resources to initiatives that your most experienced people already know will fail, but they did not speak up because the culture does not reward gut-level objections. Discernment is the type of work that saves you from yourself.

What Discernment does	What Discernment is not
Filters ideas for fit and feasibility	Being negative or resistant to change
Protects the team from bad decisions	Needing to explain every objection with data
Identifies misalignment between idea and culture	Perfectionism or risk avoidance

Your New Year planning session should have a clearly defined moment when Discernment is invited to speak. After Invention has generated options, pause. Ask the people with strong Discernment to weigh in. Do not ask them to justify their concerns with evidence they do not have yet. Ask them what feels wrong. Then listen.

BUILDING YOUR NEW YEAR PLAN AROUND WORKING GENIUS

Most New Year planning sessions are structured around timelines, priorities, and deliverables. Working Genius flips the structure. You start with people, not projects. You identify who on your team is energised by which type of work, and then you build the plan to match. This does not mean people only do work they love. It means you stop assigning people to lead initiatives that drain them, and you start building teams where the right Geniuses are in the room at the right time. The result is faster execution, less burnout, and fewer priorities that quietly die by March because nobody on the team was wired to carry them forward.

4. Galvanising — The Genius of Rallying People to Action

Galvanising is the ability to move people to take action around an idea, a project, or a cause. People with the Genius of Galvanising are energised by rallying the troops, building momentum, and turning a decision into movement. They are the ones who walk out of a planning session and immediately start telling the rest of the organisation why this matters. Galvanising does not create the idea. Galvanising creates the energy that makes the idea real.

Your New Year plan dies in silence without Galvanising. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if nobody on your leadership team is wired to sell it to the rest of the organisation, the plan stays on the page. Galvanising is the bridge between decision and adoption.

Here is what Galvanising looks like in practice during New Year team building:

• The person with Galvanising is the one who volunteers to present the plan to the wider staff

• They are energised by the thought of running the all-staff meeting where the new priorities get announced

• They instinctively know how to frame the plan in a way that makes people want to participate

• They get frustrated when decisions are made but no one communicates them

If your leadership team lacks Galvanising, your New Year priorities will be technically sound and culturally invisible. The plan exists, but nobody in the organisation feels compelled to care about it. This is fixable. Identify who on your team is energised by rallying people, and put them in charge of the communication plan, not just the strategy document.

5. Enablement — The Genius of Providing Support and Assistance

Enablement is the ability to provide the support, resources, and assistance that a project needs to keep moving. People with the Genius of Enablement are energised by helping others succeed. They are the ones who respond to a request with "How can I help?" and mean it. Enablement does not lead the project. Enablement makes sure the project has what it needs to survive.

Most leaders undervalue Enablement because it does not look like leadership. It looks like support work. This is a category error. Enablement is not admin. Enablement is the type of work that prevents your New Year priorities from stalling because nobody booked the room, built the template, or followed up with the person who said they would handle it.

Enablement is the invisible scaffolding that holds execution together. Without it, your plans collapse under the weight of a thousand small logistical failures that nobody noticed until it was too late.

What people with Enablement bring to New Year planning:

They ask who is going to do the follow-up work. While the rest of the team is focused on the big idea, Enablement is thinking about the implementation details that will determine whether the idea survives.

They volunteer to take on coordination tasks. Enablement is energised by making sure everyone else has what they need. They are not resentful about it. This is the work that gives them energy.

They notice when someone is stuck. Enablement sees the gaps before they become crises. They are the ones who offer help before it gets asked for.

If your New Year plan includes ambitious goals but no one on the leadership team is wired for Enablement, the plan will fail at the execution level. You need someone whose Genius is removing obstacles and providing support. If that person is not on your leadership team, bring them into the planning process.

6. Tenacity — The Genius of Pushing Through to Completion

Tenacity is the ability to take a project across the finish line, even when the work gets repetitive, tedious, or hard. People with the Genius of Tenacity are energised by completion. They are the ones who do not lose focus when a project drags into month three, month four, month five. Tenacity does not need the work to be exciting. Tenacity needs the work to be finished.

Your New Year priorities die in the messy middle without Tenacity. The first 30 days are easy. Everyone is energised. The idea is still new. The problem is what happens in March when the work stops being interesting and starts being repetitive. Tenacity is the type of work that gets you through that phase.

• Tenacity energises people who love crossing items off a list and seeing projects through

• Tenacity drains people who thrive on novelty and get bored once the work becomes predictable

• Tenacity is essential for long-term initiatives that require sustained effort over months

• Tenacity is often undervalued because it does not look innovative or strategic

If your leadership team is full of Wonder and Invention but light on Tenacity, your New Year planning session will generate brilliant ideas that never make it to implementation. You need someone in the room whose Genius is finishing what others start. Without them, your plans are just expensive conversations.

IDENTIFYING YOUR TEAM'S WORKING GENIUS PROFILE

Before you can build a New Year plan around Working Genius, you need to know who on your team has which Geniuses. This is not guesswork. There is a Working Genius assessment that each person takes, and it identifies their two primary Geniuses, their two competencies, and their two frustrations. The assessment takes about ten minutes. The insights last for years. I have used this with leadership teams across schools, nonprofits, and corporates, and the pattern is always the same. People see their own results and immediately recognise why certain types of work drain them. More importantly, they see their colleagues' results and finally understand why the person across the table has been struggling with work that looks easy from the outside.

7. Run the Assessment Before Your New Year Planning Session

The Working Genius assessment should happen before you walk into the planning room, not during it. If you try to run the assessment as part of the session itself, you lose half a day to logistics and explanation. The assessment is the setup. The planning session is where you apply what you learned.

Send the assessment link two weeks before your New Year planning day. Give your team time to complete it without the pressure of a countdown timer. Make it clear that this is not optional. The assessment is not a personality quiz. It is the diagnostic that determines how you structure the work for the next 12 months.

Once everyone has completed the assessment, compile the results into a single view so you can see the team's collective profile. You are looking for patterns. Where is your team strong? Where are the gaps? Which types of work does nobody on the team enjoy?

What you will notice when you map your team's Geniuses:

Clusters. Most teams have three or four people with the same primary Genius. This creates strength in one area and blindness in another.

Gaps. If nobody on your leadership team has Tenacity as a primary Genius, your plans will struggle at the execution stage. If nobody has Wonder, you will execute efficiently on the wrong priorities.

Misalignments. You will see people whose current role requires them to spend most of their time working in their frustration zones. These are the people who are competent but quietly burning out.

The assessment does not solve these problems. It names them. That is the first step.

8. Map Each Person's Two Primary Geniuses

Every person has two Geniuses where they are naturally energised and effective. These are not the only types of work they can do. These are the types of work that give them energy rather than drain it. Your New Year planning should be built around making sure each person spends the majority of their time working in at least one of their two Geniuses.

The two-Genius pairing creates a natural rhythm. Someone with Wonder and Invention thrives at the front end of a project when the work is about exploring possibilities and creating new solutions. Someone with Galvanising and Enablement thrives in the middle when the work is about rallying people and removing obstacles. Someone with Discernment and Tenacity thrives when the work requires filtering options and driving to completion.

Your leadership team is most effective when people are working in their Geniuses, not against them. This does not mean people only do work they enjoy. It means you stop building plans that require your Wonder person to execute repetitive tasks for six months or your Tenacity person to sit through endless ideation sessions.

Two-Genius pairing	Natural role in New Year planning
Wonder + Invention	Leading the ideation and exploration phase
Invention + Discernment	Creating solutions and filtering for fit
Discernment + Galvanising	Selecting the right priorities and building buy-in
Galvanising + Enablement	Rallying the team and removing obstacles
Enablement + Tenacity	Supporting execution and driving completion
Tenacity + Wonder	Finishing projects while questioning next priorities

Map your team. Know the pairings. Structure your New Year planning so that each phase of the work is led by someone whose Genius matches the type of work required.

9. Identify the Two Frustration Zones for Each Person

The flip side of Geniuses is frustrations. Every person has two types of work that drain them, frustrate them, and leave them questioning why they are in the role. These are not areas where they lack competence. These are areas where competence comes at a cost. They can do the work. It just exhausts them.

Your New Year plan fails when you assign people to lead work that sits in their frustration zones. They will do it because they are professionals, but they will do it slowly, resentfully, and with diminishing energy. Six months later you will be wondering why the initiative stalled, and the answer will be that the person leading it was never wired to sustain that type of work.

Here is what happens when frustration zones are ignored during New Year planning:

• The person with Wonder as a frustration gets assigned to lead a long-term execution project with no room for questioning or exploration

• The person with Invention as a frustration is put in charge of brainstorming the new strategy

• The person with Discernment as a frustration is asked to make the final call on which priorities to pursue

• The person with Galvanising as a frustration is told to present the plan to the wider organisation

• The person with Enablement as a frustration is expected to coordinate all the follow-up work

• The person with Tenacity as a frustration is assigned a project that will take nine months to complete

All of these assignments are predictable failures. The work might get done, but the person doing it will burn out in the process. Your job during New Year planning is to look at the major initiatives you are committing to and ask who is being asked to work in their frustration zones for an extended period. If the answer is one of your key people, redesign the work.

10. Design Roles Around Geniuses, Not Job Titles

Most organisations assign work based on job titles and reporting lines. The CFO owns the budget. The Head of Operations owns the systems. The CEO owns the strategy. Working Genius exposes the flaw in this model. Job titles describe responsibility. Geniuses describe energy. Responsibility without energy produces burnout.

Your New Year planning is an opportunity to redesign how work gets assigned. Instead of defaulting to "this is your job so you lead this priority," ask "who on this team is energised by this type of work?" The answers will surprise you.

Quick win. Identify one major New Year priority and assign leadership based on Working Genius instead of job title. If your COO has Galvanising and Enablement but the priority requires Wonder and Invention, do not make them lead it. Put them in a support role and give leadership to the person whose Geniuses match the work.

Full build. Redesign your entire leadership team structure so that each person spends at least 60 percent of their time working in their two primary Geniuses. This does not mean people abandon their job descriptions. It means you redistribute the work inside those descriptions so that energy and responsibility are aligned.

I have seen leadership teams make this shift during New Year planning, and the result is always the same. People who were quietly disengaged become visibly energised. Projects that were stuck for months suddenly start moving. The strategy does not change. The energy does.

STRUCTURING YOUR NEW YEAR PLANNING DAY AROUND WORKING GENIUS

Once you know your team's Working Genius profiles, you can structure your New Year planning day to match. Most planning sessions are built around a generic agenda that treats all types of work as equal. Working Genius shows you that they are not. Ideation requires different conditions than decision-making. Decision-making requires different conditions than execution planning. If you run your planning day as one long undifferentiated conversation, you exhaust the people who need structure and bore the people who need exploration. The solution is to break the day into phases, with each phase designed around a specific type of Genius.

11. Start the Day With Wonder

The first phase of your New Year planning day should be dedicated to Wonder. No agenda. No solutions. No pressure to move fast. Just questions. What is actually true about our organisation right now? What are we avoiding? What assumptions are we carrying from last year that may no longer be valid?

Wonder thrives in unstructured space. If you open the day with a tight agenda and a pre-set list of priorities, you kill Wonder before it has a chance to work. The people with Wonder as a primary Genius will sit quietly through the rest of the day, knowing that the question they needed to ask never got asked.

Try this structure for the Wonder phase:

• 60 minutes, no solutions allowed. Tell the team that this hour is only for naming what is true. No fixing. No action items. Just observation.

• Start with individual reflection. Give people five minutes to write down what they are noticing about the organisation, the team, or the context you are operating in.

• Go around the room. Each person shares one observation. No discussion. No debate. Just capture the observations on a whiteboard.

• Look for patterns. After everyone has spoken, ask what themes are emerging. Where is the team seeing the same thing from different angles?

The output of this phase is not a decision. The output is clarity. You are naming the reality you are planning inside. If you skip this phase, your New Year priorities will be built on assumptions, and some of those assumptions will be wrong.

12. Move Into Invention Once the Questions Are Clear

After Wonder has named the questions, Invention creates the answers. This is the phase where your team generates options, explores possibilities, and builds solutions. Invention needs freedom to think out loud without immediate judgment. The moment you start evaluating ideas during the Invention phase, you shut down the people whose Genius is creating new solutions.

Invention works best when the constraints are clear but the solutions are open. Do not walk into this phase saying "we need three new priorities for the year." Walk in saying "given what we just named in the Wonder phase, what are all the possible ways we could respond?"

• Use a whiteboard or a shared document where everyone can see the ideas being generated

• Set a timer for 30 minutes and tell the team the only goal is volume, not quality

• Encourage building on each other's ideas rather than starting fresh every time

• Do not let the person with strong Discernment start filtering ideas yet

The people with Invention as a primary Genius will be energised during this phase. The people with Tenacity as a primary Genius will be visibly uncomfortable. That is fine. You are not trying to make everyone comfortable. You are trying to match the type of work to the people who are wired for it.

13. Bring in Discernment to Filter the Options

Once Invention has generated a list of possibilities, Discernment filters them. This is the phase where you move from "what could we do" to "what should we do." Discernment looks at the options and eliminates the ones that do not fit. The person with strong Discernment does not always know why an option is wrong. They just know that it is.

Discernment saves you from committing to priorities that will fail. Without it, your New Year planning produces a list of initiatives that sound good in the room but collapse under the weight of reality three months later.

Here is how to structure the Discernment phase:

• Put the full list of options on the wall where everyone can see them

• Ask the people with Discernment as a primary Genius to identify which options feel wrong

• Do not ask them to justify their objections with data they do not have yet

• Circle the options that Discernment flags as problematic

• Discuss those flagged options as a team and decide whether to eliminate them or modify them

The rest of the team may resist this process. Discernment feels subjective. It does not come with spreadsheets or case studies. But the pattern I have seen in leadership teams is that when Discernment flags an option as wrong, they are almost always proven right by month three. Trust it.

14. Use Galvanising to Build Momentum Around the Final Priorities

Once Discernment has filtered the options, you should have a short list of priorities that the team believes in. Now Galvanising takes over. This is the phase where you move from "we have decided" to "we are committed." Galvanising turns a decision into energy.

The person with Galvanising as a primary Genius is energised by rallying people to action. They are the ones who should be leading this phase of the planning day. They are not creating the priorities. They are building the narrative that makes the priorities compelling to the rest of the organisation.

What Galvanising does during New Year planning:

Frames the priorities in a way that connects to people's motivations. Galvanising does not just say "here are our three goals for the year." Galvanising says "here is why these three goals matter and why now is the moment to act."

Identifies who needs to be brought on board. Galvanising knows that decisions made in the leadership team are only real once the rest of the organisation adopts them. They start planning the communication strategy while the priorities are still being finalised.

Builds enthusiasm in the room. Galvanising is contagious. When the person with this Genius starts talking about the plan, the rest of the team feels the energy shift. That energy is what carries the plan out of the room and into the organisation.

If nobody on your leadership team has Galvanising, your New Year priorities will be technically correct and culturally inert. The plan will exist on paper, but nobody in the organisation will care about it. Fix this by identifying who has Galvanising and putting them in charge of how the plan gets communicated.

15. Assign Enablement to Build the Support Structure

After the priorities are set and the energy is building, Enablement steps in to make sure the plan has what it needs to survive. This is the phase where you move from "we have decided what to do" to "we have built the conditions that make it possible to do it." Enablement is not glamorous. Enablement is essential.

Without Enablement, your New Year priorities stall at the first logistical obstacle. Nobody booked the meeting rooms. Nobody built the template. Nobody followed up with the person who said they would handle it. These are not minor details. These are the things that determine whether a priority moves or dies.

The person with Enablement as a primary Genius should leave your New Year planning session with a clear list of support tasks. They are not leading the priorities. They are making sure the people leading the priorities have what they need.

Enablement tasks that come out of New Year planning:

Setting up recurring check-ins. Enablement makes sure the leadership team has a rhythm of accountability meetings where progress gets reviewed and obstacles get surfaced.

Building the templates and tools. If one of your priorities requires a new reporting structure or a new way of tracking progress, Enablement builds it.

Coordinating across teams. Enablement is the connective tissue between departments. They make sure the finance team knows what the operations team is doing and vice versa.

Removing obstacles before they become crises. Enablement sees the gaps and fills them before anyone else notices they were there.

If your leadership team does not have someone with Enablement, your New Year priorities will be under-resourced and over-promised. Bring someone with this Genius into the planning process even if they are not on the leadership team.

16. End the Day by Assigning Tenacity to Drive Completion

The final phase of your New Year planning day is assigning Tenacity. This is where you identify who is going to own each priority through to completion. Tenacity does not need the work to be exciting. Tenacity needs the work to be finished. The person with Tenacity as a primary Genius is the one you assign to projects that will take six months, nine months, or a year to complete.

Your New Year priorities die in the messy middle without Tenacity. The first month is easy. Everyone is energised. The problem is what happens in April when the work stops being new and starts being repetitive. Tenacity is what gets you through that phase.

Priority type	Genius required to lead it
Exploring a new strategic direction	Wonder + Invention
Launching a new initiative with a three-month timeline	Galvanising + Enablement
Implementing a new system over 12 months	Tenacity + Enablement
Building buy-in across multiple departments	Galvanising + Discernment
Evaluating whether to pursue a partnership	Discernment + Wonder

Assign leadership based on Genius, not seniority. The person with Tenacity may not be your most senior leader, but they are the right person to drive a long-term priority to completion.

AVOIDING THE COMMON TRAPS IN WORKING GENIUS TEAM BUILDING

Working Genius is a powerful framework, but it is easy to misapply. I have seen leadership teams complete the assessment, nod along to the results, and then go right back to assigning work the same way they always have. The framework only works if you actually use it to change how work gets structured. Below are the most common traps I have seen teams fall into during New Year planning, and how to avoid them. For more on building sustainable working patterns with this framework, see Working Genius culture.

17. Treating Working Genius as a Personality Test Instead of a Work Design Tool

Working Genius is not Myers-Briggs. It is not Enneagram. It is not a personality framework. It is a work design tool. The assessment does not tell you who you are as a person. It tells you which types of work energise you and which types drain you. This distinction matters because the application is different.

Personality frameworks help you understand yourself and relate to others. Working Genius helps you decide who should lead which part of a project. The goal is not self-awareness for its own sake. The goal is better work assignment.

The trap teams fall into is treating the results as interesting information rather than actionable data. They read their profiles, share a few insights, and then move on. The work assignments do not change. The New Year plan gets built the same way it always has. The framework becomes wallpaper.

If you are using Working Genius correctly, something about how you assign work should change immediately after your team completes the assessment. Someone should be moved off a responsibility that was draining them. Someone else should be given leadership of a project that matches their Geniuses. The structure of your planning day should look different because you now know which types of work each person is wired for.

If nothing changes, you wasted the assessment.

18. Ignoring the Gaps in Your Team's Collective Profile

Every leadership team has gaps. There are types of work that nobody on the team is naturally energised by. When you map your team's Working Genius profiles, you will almost always find at least one Genius that is missing or underrepresented. This is not a crisis. This is information. The trap is pretending the gap does not exist and building your New Year plan as if the team has coverage across all six types.

What happens when you ignore the gaps:

If your team lacks Wonder, you execute efficiently on the wrong priorities. Nobody is asking whether the goal is the right goal. Everyone is focused on how to achieve it. You spend six months making progress on something that should never have been started.

If your team lacks Invention, your New Year plan is incremental. You end up with goals that are slightly better versions of last year's goals. There is no breakthrough thinking. No new solutions. Just more of the same.

If your team lacks Discernment, you commit to initiatives that should have been killed in the room. Nobody is filtering for fit. Every idea sounds good. You walk out of the planning session with too many priorities, and by March you are drowning.

If your team lacks Galvanising, your plan stays on the page. The priorities are set, but nobody is rallying the organisation around them. The rest of the staff hear about the plan in passing and shrug.

If your team lacks Enablement, your priorities stall at the first obstacle. Nobody is removing barriers or providing support. The people leading the initiatives are left to solve every logistical problem on their own.

If your team lacks Tenacity, your plan dies in the messy middle. The first month is energising. The third month is a grind. By month five, the priority has quietly been abandoned because nobody on the team is wired to push through repetitive work.

The solution is not to hire someone new for every gap. The solution is to name the gap and build a compensating structure. If your leadership team lacks Tenacity, assign a project manager whose Genius is completion. If your team lacks Wonder, bring in an external facilitator who is wired to ask the hard questions.

19. Assigning People to Work Outside Their Geniuses for Extended Periods

Everyone can work outside their Geniuses for short bursts. Competence is not the same as energy. A person with Tenacity as a frustration can still finish a project. They just cannot do it month after month without burning out. The trap is assuming that because someone can do a type of work, they should.

Your New Year plan should not require anyone on your leadership team to work in their frustration zones for more than 20 percent of their time. If someone is spending half their week doing work that drains them, they will be competent in the short term and gone in the long term. This is how you lose your best people.

• Map your major New Year priorities

• Identify which types of work each priority requires across its full lifecycle

• Look at who is leading each priority and check their Working Genius profile

• Flag any assignments where someone is being asked to work in a frustration zone for more than three months

• Redesign the work or reassign leadership

This is not coddling. This is retention. The person who is excellent at their job but quietly miserable because the job requires them to spend most of their time in their frustration zones is the person who leaves without warning. Working Genius gives you the data to see this coming and fix it before the resignation letter arrives.

20. Using Working Genius to Avoid Conflict Instead of Navigate It

Working Genius reveals why certain people clash. When someone with Wonder as a primary Genius is in a meeting with someone who has Tenacity as a primary Genius, the conflict is predictable. Wonder wants to explore. Tenacity wants to finish. Wonder sees Tenacity as rigid. Tenacity sees Wonder as unfocused. Neither of them is wrong. They are wired for different types of work.

The trap is using Working Genius to excuse the conflict rather than resolve it. The team completes the assessment, recognises the tension, and then says "well, that is just how we are wired" and moves on. The conflict does not get addressed. It gets named and tolerated.

This is a misuse of the framework. Working Genius does not eliminate conflict. It gives you the language to navigate it productively. When you know that the tension between two people is rooted in different Geniuses, you can design the conversation to honour both.

Instead of saying "that is just how they are wired," try this:

Name the underlying tension. "The reason this conversation keeps stalling is that you are in Wonder mode and I am in Tenacity mode. You need to explore. I need to finish. Both are valid."

Separate the types of work. "Let us spend the first 20 minutes in Wonder. Ask all the questions. Then we will switch to Tenacity and drive to a decision."

Assign ownership based on phase. "You lead the exploration phase because that is your Genius. I will lead the execution phase because that is mine. We do not need to do both at the same time."

Working Genius does not make conflict comfortable. It makes conflict productive. Use it that way.

USING WORKING GENIUS TO BUILD ACCOUNTABILITY INTO YOUR NEW YEAR PLAN

One of the reasons New Year plans fail is that accountability structures are vague. The team sets priorities, assigns owners, and then hopes everyone follows through. Hope is not a strategy. Working Genius gives you a framework for building accountability that matches how people are actually wired. Instead of generic monthly check-ins, you design accountability rhythms that align with the types of work people are energised by. The result is follow-through that does not feel like surveillance. For practical activities that embed this kind of accountability, see Working Genius group activities.

21. Create Genius-Specific Check-In Rhythms

Not everyone needs the same type of accountability. The person with Tenacity as a primary Genius wants regular progress updates and clear milestones. The person with Wonder as a primary Genius finds that same structure suffocating. If you build one accountability rhythm for the whole team, you will either over-structure the people who need freedom or under-structure the people who need clarity.

The solution is to design check-in rhythms that match each person's Geniuses. Someone leading a priority that requires sustained execution over nine months needs weekly check-ins with clear deliverables. Someone leading a priority that requires exploration and ideation needs monthly check-ins with open-ended questions.

Tenacity-driven accountability. Weekly stand-ups, clear milestones, visible progress tracking. The person with Tenacity wants to know what got done this week and what is on deck for next week.

Wonder-driven accountability. Monthly reflection sessions where the question is not "what did you deliver" but "what are you noticing?" The person with Wonder is accountable for keeping the team aware of shifts in context and emerging questions.

Galvanising-driven accountability. Bi-weekly storytelling sessions where the person with Galvanising reports on how the priority is being received across the organisation. The metric is not task completion. The metric is adoption and energy.

Enablement-driven accountability. Real-time responsiveness. The person with Enablement is accountable for removing obstacles as they surface, not at the next scheduled meeting. Check-ins are shorter and more frequent.

Match the rhythm to the Genius. The person leading the work should feel supported, not micromanaged.

22. Assign Each Priority a Genius-Balanced Project Team

Most New Year priorities are assigned to one owner. That owner is expected to figure out the ideation, the decision-making, the communication, the execution, and the follow-through. This is a setup for failure. No single person has all six Geniuses. Even the most capable leader will hit a phase of the project where the type of work required sits outside their wiring. For a breakdown of how to match project teams to genius types, see Working Genius team composition.

The better model is to assign each priority a small project team where the six Geniuses are represented. You do not need six people. You need coverage. Someone with Wonder and Invention to lead the exploration phase. Someone with Discernment and Galvanising to filter options and build buy-in. Someone with Enablement and Tenacity to support execution and drive completion.

This is what a Genius-balanced project team looks like for a New Year priority:

Project lead. The person accountable for the overall outcome. Their two Geniuses should match the dominant type of work the project requires. If the project is launching a new initiative, the lead should have Galvanising or Invention. If the project is a long-term system implementation, the lead should have Tenacity.

Ideation support. Someone with Wonder or Invention who is brought in during the early phase when the team is still defining what the priority should look like.

Decision support. Someone with Discernment who is consulted before major decisions get locked in. They are not making the decision. They are filtering for fit.

Communication support. Someone with Galvanising who owns how the priority gets communicated to the rest of the organisation.

Execution support. Someone with Enablement or Tenacity who handles the logistical and operational work that keeps the priority moving.

You do not need five separate people. One person can cover two roles if their Genius pairing aligns. The point is that no single person is carrying all six types of work. The team is structured so that each type of work is owned by someone who is energised by it.

23. Build Monthly Reviews Around the Six Types of Work

Most monthly leadership team meetings review priorities through the lens of progress. What got done? What is behind? What is at risk? This structure works for Tenacity-driven projects. It does not work for projects that are still in the ideation or decision-making phase. If you review everything the same way, you create pressure to move to execution before the earlier types of work are complete.

A better model is to structure your monthly reviews around the six types of work. Each priority gets reviewed based on which phase it is in. If a priority is still in the Wonder and Invention phase, the review question is not "what got delivered" but "what have we learned and what options are we building?" If a priority is in the Tenacity phase, the review question is "what progress have we made and what obstacles are slowing us down?"

Monthly review questions mapped to Working Genius:

For priorities in the Wonder phase. What have we noticed? What questions have surfaced? What assumptions are we testing?

For priorities in the Invention phase. What options have we generated? What solutions are we exploring? What are we building that did not exist last month?

For priorities in the Discernment phase. What have we filtered out? What decisions have we made? What are we saying no to?

For priorities in the Galvanising phase. How is the priority being received? Who have we brought on board? What is the energy level across the organisation?

For priorities in the Enablement phase. What obstacles have we removed? What support have we provided? What is blocking progress?

For priorities in the Tenacity phase. What milestones have we hit? What is the completion percentage? What is left to finish?

This structure honours the fact that different priorities require different types of work at different times. It also keeps the people with Wonder and Invention engaged during monthly reviews instead of tuning out because the only conversation is about task completion.

24. Use Working Genius to Diagnose Why Priorities Are Stalling

When a New Year priority stalls, the default response is to apply more pressure. Push harder. Check in more often. Add resources. This works if the problem is effort. It does not work if the problem is misalignment between the type of work required and the Genius of the person leading it.

Working Genius gives you a diagnostic framework for stalled priorities. Instead of asking "why is this not getting done," ask "which type of work is missing?" Almost always, the answer is that one of the six Geniuses is absent or under-resourced.

If a priority stalls during the ideation phase, the problem is missing Wonder or Invention. The team jumped to solutions before the questions were fully explored. Go back. Create space for Wonder. Let Invention run.

If a priority stalls during the decision-making phase, the problem is missing Discernment. Too many options are still on the table, or the team committed to an option that did not fit. Bring in someone with Discernment and filter again.

If a priority stalls during the communication phase, the problem is missing Galvanising. The decision was made, but nobody is building energy around it. Assign someone with Galvanising to own the rollout.

If a priority stalls during execution, the problem is missing Enablement or Tenacity. The plan is sound, but the support structure is weak or the person leading it is not wired for long-term follow-through. Add Enablement support or reassign leadership to someone with Tenacity.

The framework turns "this is not working" into "this specific type of work is missing, and here is how we add it." That is actionable. Pressure is not.

MAKING WORKING GENIUS STICK BEYOND THE NEW YEAR PLANNING SESSION

The hardest part of Working Genius is not the assessment or the planning day. The hardest part is making it stick. Most teams complete the assessment, have a great conversation, build a plan, and then six weeks later they are back to assigning work the same way they always have. The framework only works if it changes how you operate, not just how you talk. For strategies on building this into your team's long-term operating rhythm, see the guide on Working Genius with a resistant team. Below are the moves that make Working Genius part of your team's operating rhythm, not just a one-time exercise.

25. Reference Working Genius in Every Work Assignment Conversation

The single most effective way to make Working Genius stick is to reference it every time work gets assigned. When a new priority comes up, the first question should not be "who has capacity?" The first question should be "which Geniuses does this work require, and who on the team has those Geniuses?"

This does not need to be formal. You do not need a framework document or a decision matrix. You just need to make Genius-based assignment the default way your team thinks about work. Over time, this becomes automatic. The team stops assigning work based on availability and starts assigning work based on wiring.

• When someone volunteers for a project, ask "does this work match your Geniuses?"

• When a priority is not moving, ask "are we asking someone to lead work that sits in their frustration zones?"

• When a new hire is being onboarded, map their Geniuses and design their first 90 days around them

• When someone is struggling, ask "how much of their time are they spending in their Geniuses versus their frustrations?"

The language becomes part of how your team talks about work. That is when the framework stops being a tool you use occasionally and starts being the operating system you run on.

Your New Year plan only works if the people carrying it are energised by the type of work it requires. Working Genius is the framework that makes that possible. It names the six types of work every priority depends on and maps which types energise each person on your team. When you build your planning around these patterns instead of around job titles and org charts, the plan survives contact with February, March, and April.

The assessment takes ten minutes. The application takes intention. If you are planning a New Year offsite and you want to build it around Working Genius, reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org. I facilitate these sessions with leadership teams who are done with plans that look good on the page and disappear by mid-year. Your team is talented. The work just needs to match how they are wired.