How Working Genius Improves School Leadership Meetings

Your leadership team meetings run for two hours and produce decisions you could have made in twenty minutes.

Everyone nods in the room. Nothing changes afterwards. The same people dominate the conversation while others check their phones under the table. You leave feeling like you spent time together without actually working together. Working Genius, the framework created by Patrick Lencioni, names exactly why this happens and gives you the language to fix it.

Working Genius identifies six types of work that every project requires. Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanising, Enablement, and Tenacity. Some of these energise you. Some drain you. Most school leadership meetings fail because they ask everyone to do everything, or they skip entire types of work without noticing. For a full breakdown of how the model works, see the Working Genius implementation guide.

This is how you use Working Genius to make your leadership team meetings faster, sharper, and more productive than they have been in years.

UNDERSTANDING THE SIX TYPES OF WORK

Before you can improve your meetings, you need to understand what Working Genius actually measures. The framework identifies six distinct types of work that every initiative, project, or decision requires. Each person on your leadership team has two types that energise them, two that are competencies they can manage but do not love, and two that drain them. Your meetings fail when they ignore this reality.

1. Wonder Identifies the Problem Worth Solving

Wonder is the ability to sit with ambiguity and ask the questions no one else is asking. People with Wonder as a genius notice what is missing, what could be better, or what feels off about the current state. They are the ones who stop mid-conversation and say, "Are we even solving the right problem here?"

Wonder shows up in meetings as curiosity about gaps. The deputy principal who keeps circling back to why Year 9 disengagement spiked this term even though the data review is over has Wonder. The curriculum coordinator who asks whether the new timetable solves the problem you actually have or the problem you described six months ago has Wonder. Wonder does not offer solutions. It surfaces the tension that makes solutions necessary.

What Wonder doesIdentifies the need, the gap, or the opportunity that others miss

What Wonder avoidsJumping to answers before the question has been fully understood

What happens without WonderTeams solve the wrong problem efficiently and wonder why nothing improves

Most school leadership teams skip Wonder entirely. You walk into the meeting with the agenda already set, the problem already named, and the conversation already halfway to solutions. The people with Wonder on your team sit quietly because the window for questioning has already closed. This is why you end up with polished plans that do not address what is actually broken.

If your meetings move straight to solutions, you are skipping Wonder. Try opening the first ten minutes of your next leadership meeting with a single question and no proposed answers. Ask your team what they are noticing that no one is talking about. Do not let anyone pitch a solution. Just collect the observations. The discomfort you feel is Wonder doing its job.

2. Invention Generates the Ideas That Could Work

Invention is the ability to take the tension surfaced by Wonder and generate new ideas, approaches, or solutions. People with Invention as a genius think in possibilities. They are energised by brainstorming, whiteboarding, and the early conceptual phase of any project. They do not need the idea to be polished. They need permission to think out loud.

Invention thrives in environments where bad ideas are welcome because bad ideas lead to good ones. The head of wellbeing who throws out three unworkable structures for student support before landing on the one that clicks has Invention. The business manager who sketches four different budget models in fifteen minutes to see which one fits your constraints has Invention. Invention does not care about feasibility yet. It cares about options.

Invention needs psychological safety to name ideas that are not yet defensible

Invention works best when paired with Discernment, which can sort good ideas from poor ones

Invention dies when every idea has to arrive fully costed and risk-assessed

Invention requires a clear problem to solve, which is why it depends on Wonder happening first

Your meeting structure determines whether Invention happens. If your agenda moves straight from problem identification to decision-making, you skip the ideation phase entirely. The result is that your team picks from a narrow set of obvious options instead of exploring what else might work. Try scheduling ten minutes of protected brainstorming where the only rule is that no idea gets critiqued until the time is up. You will know Invention is working when someone says something ridiculous and the room builds on it instead of shutting it down.

3. Discernment Sorts Good Ideas From Poor Ones

Discernment is the ability to assess an idea and know instinctively whether it will work. People with Discernment as a genius have a gut-level sense for what fits and what does not. They are the ones who listen to a proposal and say, "I think this will work, but not for the reason you just said," or "This sounds good, but something is off and I cannot name it yet."

Discernment is not criticism. It is pattern recognition. The deputy principal who listens to a new behaviour management approach and immediately spots the part that will fail with your Year 10 cohort has Discernment. The head of learning who hears a curriculum proposal and knows which staff will resist it and why has Discernment. Discernment saves you from spending six months on an idea that was never going to work.

Without Discernment, your leadership team wastes time executing ideas that should have been questioned earlier.

Most school leadership meetings either ignore Discernment or confuse it with negativity. Someone with Discernment raises a concern, and the room hears it as resistance. The idea moves forward. Six months later, the exact problem they named shows up, and everyone wonders why no one saw it coming. Someone did. You did not listen.

How to recognise Discernment in your meetings: The person who asks the clarifying question that makes everyone pause. The person who says, "I love this, but what happens when the timetable clashes with sport?" The person who does not shoot down ideas but makes them better by naming what is missing.

Quick win: When someone raises a concern, stop and ask them what would need to change for the idea to work. Discernment is not about killing ideas. It is about refining them.

Full build: Pair your strongest Invention person with your strongest Discernment person in the planning phase of any major initiative. Let Invention generate options, then let Discernment assess them before you bring the refined idea to the wider team.

Discernment also knows when an idea is better than the team thinks it is. The head of department who champions a proposal everyone else is lukewarm on because they can see how it aligns with three other priorities has Discernment. Listen to them. They are connecting dots you have not noticed yet.

4. Galvanising Recruits People to the Idea

Galvanising is the ability to generate enthusiasm and rally people around a decision. People with Galvanising as a genius communicate in a way that makes others want to be involved. They do not just explain the idea. They make you feel the possibility of it. Galvanising turns a good plan into a plan people actually care about.

Galvanising shows up in meetings as the shift from "we should probably do this" to "we are doing this and here is why it matters." The assistant principal who takes a dry policy update and frames it as an opportunity to reset the culture around student voice has Galvanising. The head of staff who walks out of a leadership meeting and has the rest of the team asking what you decided because the energy is different has Galvanising.

What Galvanising doesCreates momentum and buy-in around an idea or decision

What Galvanising needsA clear decision to rally around, not ongoing ambiguity

What happens without GalvanisingDecisions get made but no one outside the room understands or cares

Most school leadership teams make decisions and then wonder why the rest of the staff did not get on board. The problem is not the decision. The problem is that no one Galvanised it. You walked out of the meeting assuming everyone would understand why this matters. They did not. Galvanising is the difference between compliance and commitment.

Here is what Galvanising is not. It is not spin. It is not selling a bad idea with enthusiasm. Galvanising only works when the idea is sound. Trying to Galvanise a decision that should have been questioned harder in the Discernment phase creates cynicism. Staff smell it. They stop listening.

If your leadership decisions land flat with the wider staff, your team is missing Galvanising. Try identifying who on your team naturally communicates in a way that makes people want to act. Let them frame the message. Do not hand them a memo to read. Let them translate the decision into language that connects.

5. Enablement Handles the Systems and Details

Enablement is the ability to provide the structure, resources, and support that turn an idea into reality. People with Enablement as a genius think in systems. They are energised by questions like "What do we need to make this happen?" and "Who else has to be involved for this to work?" Enablement does not care about the idea itself. It cares about whether you can actually deliver it.

Enablement shows up in meetings as the person asking about timeline, budget, roles, and dependencies. The business manager who listens to a new programme proposal and immediately flags that it will require additional staff has Enablement. The operations coordinator who hears a decision and starts mapping which policies need updating has Enablement. Enablement is not glamorous. It is also the reason some schools execute well and others do not.

Your meetings fail when Enablement is treated as a problem instead of a partner.

Most school leadership teams see Enablement as the person slowing things down. Someone with Enablement asks a logistical question, and the room sighs because they think it is killing momentum. It is not. It is saving you from announcing something you cannot deliver. The principal who has to walk back a decision three weeks later because no one checked whether it was actually possible has a meeting structure that skipped Enablement.

Enablement does not block ideas. It identifies what has to happen for the idea to succeed.

Enablement needs to be in the room early, not brought in after the decision is made.

Enablement works best when paired with Galvanising, which provides the vision Enablement builds towards.

Enablement prevents the gap between what leadership decides and what staff experience.

If your school has a pattern of announcing initiatives that quietly disappear six months later, the problem is not commitment. The problem is Enablement. You are making decisions without the systems to sustain them. Try giving your Enablement person five minutes at the end of every decision to name what needs to be true for this to work. Listen to what they say. Half of it will feel inconvenient. All of it will be necessary.

6. Tenacity Drives Work Across the Finish Line

Tenacity is the ability to push through to completion. People with Tenacity as a genius are energised by finishing what was started. They do not get bored in the execution phase. They get bored when projects stay in the idea phase too long. Tenacity follows up, tracks progress, holds people accountable, and makes sure things actually happen.

Tenacity shows up in meetings as the person asking "Where are we on this?" and "Who is responsible for the next step?" The head of department who keeps a running list of every commitment made in leadership meetings and checks back in four weeks later has Tenacity. The deputy principal who will not let a decision drop just because it got hard has Tenacity. Tenacity is the difference between teams that start strong and teams that finish.

Most school leadership teams confuse Tenacity with micromanagement. Someone with Tenacity follows up on an action item, and the person responsible feels nagged. The issue is not the follow-up. The issue is that no one clarified who was responsible and when it was due. Tenacity thrives when there is a clear plan to execute. Tenacity struggles when the plan is vague and accountability is unclear.

What Tenacity needs to succeed: A decision that has moved past ideation. A clear owner for each action. A timeline that is specific, not aspirational. Permission to ask the uncomfortable question about why something has not moved.

What happens without Tenacity: Your leadership team generates great ideas, makes clear decisions, and then watches them dissolve because no one tracked whether anything actually happened. You spend the next leadership meeting talking about the same issue you decided on last term.

If you find yourself revisiting decisions you thought were resolved, your team is missing Tenacity. Try assigning one person to track progress on every leadership decision and report back in thirty days. Make it their explicit role, not an afterthought. You will know Tenacity is working when fewer items reappear on the agenda because someone made sure they got done.

APPLYING WORKING GENIUS TO MEETING DESIGN

Knowing the six types is useful. Using them to redesign how your leadership team meets is where the value shows up. Most school leadership meetings fail because they treat every type of work as if it happens at the same time, or they skip entire phases without noticing. The patterns below show you how to structure meetings that match the work you are actually trying to do.

7. Match the Meeting Type to the Work Type

Not every leadership meeting needs all six types of work. A meeting designed to generate ideas should look and feel different from a meeting designed to track execution. When you try to do everything in one meeting, you end up doing none of it well. The person with Invention gets frustrated when the conversation jumps to logistics. The person with Enablement gets frustrated when the conversation stays abstract. Both leave dissatisfied. For more on how schools apply this specifically, see Working Genius in schools.

Different meeting types require different combinations of Working Genius.

Ideation meetings are for Wonder and Invention. These meetings surface problems and generate options. The person with Discernment might attend, but their job is to listen, not to critique in real time. Enablement and Tenacity should not be in the room yet. You are not trying to execute. You are trying to think. An ideation meeting that includes your business manager asking budget questions every five minutes is a meeting where no one generates anything new.

Decision meetings are for Discernment and Galvanising. These meetings assess options and commit to a path. Wonder and Invention have already done their job. Discernment sorts the ideas. Galvanising frames the decision in a way that makes the rest of the team want to act. Tenacity does not need to be in this meeting unless the decision requires immediate action planning.

Execution meetings are for Enablement and Tenacity. These meetings focus on systems, roles, dependencies, and tracking. Wonder and Invention should not be in the room. If someone with Invention starts proposing a new approach halfway through an execution meeting, you have lost focus. Execution meetings exist to make sure the decision you already made actually happens.

Your leadership team calendar should reflect these distinctions. Try running one ideation meeting per term where the agenda is open and the goal is to surface what no one is talking about. Run monthly decision meetings where you assess and commit. Run fortnightly execution meetings where you track progress. Stop trying to do all three in the same ninety-minute slot every week.

8. Stop Asking Everyone to Contribute to Everything

Your leadership meetings slow down because you think everyone needs to weigh in on every topic. They do not. The deputy principal with Tenacity as a genius does not need to be part of the brainstorming session for the new house system. The curriculum coordinator with Invention does not need to sit through the budget execution review. When you ask people to do work that drains them, they disengage. When you only invite them to the work that energises them, they show up.

Here is the mistake most school leaders make: You think removing someone from a meeting signals they are not important. It does not. It signals you understand what kind of work they do best and you are not wasting their time.

Invite Wonder and Invention to the front-end conversations about strategy and direction.

Invite Discernment to the middle conversations where you are refining and deciding.

Invite Galvanising to the messaging and rollout conversations.

Invite Enablement and Tenacity to the execution and tracking conversations.

This does not mean people only ever attend one type of meeting. It means you stop defaulting to "everyone attends everything" and start thinking about who needs to be in the room for this specific conversation. The business manager should be in the decision meeting when the decision has budget implications. They do not need to be in the ideation meeting two weeks earlier when the team is still surfacing possibilities.

If your leadership meetings regularly run over time, you are asking the wrong people to sit through the wrong conversations. Try auditing your last three leadership meetings. For each agenda item, ask which types of Working Genius were needed. Then ask who was in the room. You will find that half the people present did not need to be there, and some of the people who should have been there were not invited.

9. Open Meetings With the Work Type That Matches the Agenda

The first ten minutes of your leadership meeting set the tone for everything that follows. If you open with administration and logistics, you signal that the meeting is about tracking, not thinking. The people with Wonder and Invention stop expecting to contribute. If you open with a problem no one has named yet, you signal that the meeting is about discovery. The people with Enablement brace for a conversation without a clear outcome.

The opening should match the primary work type the meeting is designed to do.

If the meeting is an ideation meeting, open with a question. "What are we noticing about student engagement that we have not talked about yet?" Do not summarise the context for ten minutes first. Just ask the question and let Wonder do its job. The discomfort is the point. Wonder needs space to surface what is not obvious.

If the meeting is a decision meeting, open with the decision you are making. "By the end of this meeting, we need to decide whether we are proceeding with the new reporting structure." Name the options. Then let Discernment assess them. Do not open with background. Everyone in the room already knows the background. You are not trying to inform. You are trying to decide.

If the meeting is an execution meeting, open with progress. "We made four commitments last month. Here is where we are on each of them." Then let Enablement and Tenacity identify what is blocking progress and what needs to happen next. Do not open with a new idea. Execution meetings die when someone introduces a new direction halfway through.

Your opening signals what kind of thinking the room should do. If your leadership meetings feel unfocused, the problem is usually in the first ten minutes. You opened with the wrong type of work, and the rest of the meeting never recovered. Try writing the meeting type at the top of the agenda before you write the agenda items. Ideation. Decision. Execution. Then design the opening to match.

10. Name Who Is Responsible for What Type of Thinking

One of the simplest ways to improve your leadership meetings is to explicitly name who is responsible for which type of work during the meeting. This does not mean people cannot contribute outside their genius. It means someone owns each phase, and the room knows who to look to when that type of work needs to happen.

Assign a Wonder lead. This is the person whose job is to ask the questions no one else is asking. When the conversation moves too quickly to solutions, the Wonder lead pulls it back. "Are we solving the right problem?" Their job is not to slow things down. Their job is to make sure you are solving for the actual issue, not the symptom.

Assign an Invention lead. This is the person whose job is to generate options when the team gets stuck. When the conversation circles the same three ideas, the Invention lead says, "What if we tried this instead?" Their job is not to defend the idea. Their job is to make sure the team has more than two options to choose from.

Assign a Discernment lead. This is the person whose job is to assess ideas honestly. When the room is leaning towards a decision, the Discernment lead asks, "What are we missing?" Their job is not to be negative. Their job is to make sure the decision is sound before you commit.

Assign a Galvanising lead. This is the person whose job is to frame decisions in a way that makes people want to act. When the meeting ends, the Galvanising lead summarises what you decided and why it matters. Their job is to make sure the message does not stay in the room.

Assign an Enablement lead. This is the person whose job is to ask what has to be true for the decision to work. When the team is ready to move forward, the Enablement lead asks, "What systems need to change? Who else has to be involved?" Their job is to make sure you can actually deliver what you just decided.

Assign a Tenacity lead. This is the person whose job is to track progress between meetings. When the next meeting starts, the Tenacity lead reports on what got done and what did not. Their job is to make sure commitments do not quietly disappear.

If no one owns these roles, every type of work becomes optional. You end up with meetings where ideas get floated but never assessed, decisions get made but never enabled, and commitments get tracked by whoever remembers. Try assigning these roles explicitly for the next three months and see what changes. The meeting will feel more structured because someone is responsible for making each type of work happen.

FIXING COMMON LEADERSHIP MEETING PROBLEMS

Every school leadership team has predictable problems that show up in meetings. The conversation goes in circles. Decisions do not stick. The same people dominate while others check out. Most of these problems are Working Genius problems in disguise. The patterns below show you how to diagnose what is broken and what to do about it.

11. The Meeting Where No One Decides Anything

You spend ninety minutes talking about a decision and walk out without making it. The conversation was productive. People contributed. But when someone asks what you decided, the answer is vague. "We will keep thinking about it." This is not a facilitation problem. This is a Discernment problem.

Meetings fail to produce decisions when Discernment is missing or ignored. Discernment is the type of work that sorts options and commits to a path. Without it, your team keeps circling. The person with Wonder keeps raising new questions. The person with Invention keeps offering new ideas. The conversation stays open because no one is willing to close it.

What most school leaders do: They let the conversation continue until time runs out, then move the item to the next agenda.

What actually works: Assign someone with Discernment to assess the options halfway through the conversation and name which one is strongest. Their job is not to make the final call. Their job is to give the room a recommendation so the principal can decide.

Here is what that sounds like in the room: "We have three options. Option one solves the immediate problem but does not scale. Option two scales but costs more than we have. Option three is the best fit for where we are right now. I think we should proceed with option three." The principal can agree, disagree, or ask for more input. But the decision now has a shape. The conversation can close.

If your leadership meetings consistently fail to produce decisions, try this. Twenty minutes before the end of the agenda item, stop the conversation and ask your Discernment person to summarise what they are hearing. Let them name which option makes the most sense. Then decide. The discomfort you feel is the cost of actually leading.

12. The Meeting Where the Same Three People Do All the Talking

Three people dominate every leadership meeting. Everyone else sits quietly, contributes when asked, and leaves feeling like their time was wasted. This is not a personality problem. This is a genius problem. The people who talk the most are the people whose genius matches the type of work the meeting is doing. Everyone else is sitting through work that drains them.

If your meetings are dominated by the same voices, check which types of work the agenda prioritises.

Meetings that focus on ideas and possibilities will be dominated by people with Invention. Meetings that focus on assessment and critique will be dominated by people with Discernment. Meetings that focus on logistics and systems will be dominated by people with Enablement. The people who go quiet are the people whose genius is not being used.

If Wonder and Invention dominate, your quietest people likely have Enablement or Tenacity. They are waiting for the conversation to move to execution.

If Discernment dominates, your quietest people likely have Invention. They stopped offering ideas because every idea gets critiqued before it has a chance to develop.

If Enablement and Tenacity dominate, your quietest people likely have Wonder. They are waiting for space to surface a question, but the meeting is already focused on delivery.

The fix is not to force quieter people to talk. The fix is to design meetings that rotate through different types of work so that everyone has a phase where their genius is needed. An ideation meeting where Enablement people go quiet is fine, as long as you also run execution meetings where Invention people go quiet. Balance across meetings, not within them.

Try this in your next meeting. Halfway through the agenda, pause and ask, "Who has not spoken yet?" Then ask them directly, "What type of work does this conversation need right now that we are not doing?" You will learn more in two minutes than you will in two hours of hoping people speak up.

13. The Meeting Where Decisions Get Made and Then Ignored

Your leadership team makes a decision. Everyone agrees. Two months later, nothing has happened. You raise it again in the next meeting, and people act surprised that it was meant to be actioned. This is not a commitment problem. This is a Tenacity problem. No one was responsible for making sure the decision moved from the room to reality.

Decisions do not fail because people disagree with them. Decisions fail because no one tracked whether they happened. The meeting ends, everyone goes back to their day, and the decision sits in the minutes until someone remembers to ask about it. By then, momentum is gone.

What Tenacity does: Tracks every commitment made in a leadership meeting. Assigns a specific owner and a specific deadline. Follows up before the deadline to check progress. Reports back at the next meeting on what got done and what did not.

What happens without Tenacity: Decisions get made in meetings and unmade by inaction. The principal ends up chasing people individually between meetings, which takes longer than the original decision. The leadership team stops trusting that decisions matter because half of them disappear.

If your school has a pattern of decisions that do not stick, assign one person on your leadership team to own Tenacity. Their only job is to track what you decided and report on progress. This is not administrative support. This is a leadership function. Give them five minutes at the start of every meeting to name what was supposed to happen since the last meeting and whether it did. The discomfort that creates is the cost of accountability.

14. The Meeting Where Everyone Agrees Too Quickly

You propose an idea, and the room nods. No questions. No pushback. You move forward, and three weeks later the problems show up. The initiative does not fit the timetable. The staff push back. The parents ask questions no one anticipated. The leadership team agreed too quickly because no one did the Discernment work.

Fast agreement is not always a sign of alignment. Sometimes it is a sign that the people with Discernment stayed quiet because the room did not feel safe enough to question.

Discernment is not about being negative. It is about assessing whether an idea will work in the specific context of your school. The deputy principal who sees the clash with the sport programme before you announce it has Discernment. The head of learning who knows which staff will resist and why has Discernment. When these people stay quiet, you lose the chance to refine the idea before you commit to it.

What creates fast false agreement: A culture where questioning is treated as resistance. A principal who gets defensive when someone raises a concern. A leadership team that has learned it is easier to agree in the meeting and raise concerns privately afterwards.

What actually works: Explicitly invite Discernment before you move to a decision. After someone proposes an idea, stop and say, "Before we decide, I need to hear from the people who can see problems I am not seeing. What are we missing?" Then wait. Do not defend. Just listen. The person with Discernment will tell you exactly what will go wrong if you do not adjust the plan.

If your leadership decisions regularly require course corrections within the first month, your team is agreeing too fast. Try building in a mandatory questioning phase before any major decision. Make it clear that the job of that phase is not to kill the idea. The job is to make the idea better before you commit.

15. The Meeting Where Ideas Die Before They Develop

Someone with Invention offers an idea, and before they finish the sentence, someone else lists three reasons it will not work. The person with Invention stops contributing. Six months later, a consultant suggests the same idea, and the leadership team loves it. This is not about the quality of the idea. This is about the timing of Discernment.

Invention and Discernment need to happen in sequence, not simultaneously. Invention generates options. Discernment assesses them. When Discernment jumps in too early, Invention shuts down. The person with Invention learns that offering ideas leads to public critique, so they stop offering. You lose half the thinking your team is capable of.

Most school leadership teams do not realise they are doing this. The person with Discernment is not trying to shut down ideas. They are doing what comes naturally to them, which is assessing feasibility. But timing matters. An idea that gets critiqued in the first thirty seconds never gets the chance to be refined.

Quick win: Separate ideation time from assessment time in every meeting. Spend the first fifteen minutes generating ideas with no critique allowed. Then spend the next fifteen minutes assessing them. The person with Discernment will still raise concerns. But the person with Invention will have generated ten ideas instead of one.

Full build: When someone with Invention offers an idea, respond with, "Say more about that," instead of, "Here is why that will not work." Let them develop the thought. Then bring in Discernment to refine it. You will end up with better ideas and a team that feels safe contributing.

If your leadership meetings feel like idea graveyards, check whether Discernment is happening too early. The person raising concerns is probably right about the flaws. They are just raising them at the wrong moment in the process.

16. The Meeting That Should Have Been Three Separate Meetings

You try to do ideation, decision-making, and execution planning in the same ninety-minute meeting. The result is that you do none of them well. The person with Invention wants to keep brainstorming. The person with Discernment wants to narrow the options. The person with Enablement wants to know who is responsible for what. Everyone leaves frustrated.

Different types of work require different meeting structures. Ideation meetings need open time and psychological safety. Decision meetings need clarity and closure. Execution meetings need tracking and accountability. When you try to do all three at once, you create a meeting where no one gets what they need.

This is what happens: You open with brainstorming. Ten minutes in, someone asks a logistical question that kills the creative momentum. You switch to planning. Fifteen minutes in, someone raises a new idea that reopens the decision. You end the meeting without a clear outcome because you were trying to do three different types of work in the same conversation.

The fix is simple but requires discipline. Run separate meetings for separate types of work. Run an ideation meeting when you need to surface possibilities. Run a decision meeting when you need to commit to a path. Run an execution meeting when you need to track progress. Stop trying to do all three in one slot.

If your leadership meetings consistently run over time, you are probably trying to do too many types of work in one conversation. Try splitting your next big agenda item into three meetings. One to generate ideas. One to decide. One to plan execution. The total time will be less than the single meeting you are running now, and the quality of each conversation will be higher.

IMPROVING DECISION QUALITY

School leadership teams make dozens of decisions in every meeting. Most of them are fine. A few of them are costly. The difference between a good decision and a poor one is usually not the decision itself. It is whether the right types of Working Genius were involved at the right time. The patterns below show you how to lift the quality of your decisions by matching the work to the people who do it best.

17. Let Wonder Surface the Problem Before You Solve It

Most leadership teams move too quickly from noticing a symptom to implementing a solution. Student behaviour referrals are up. You implement a new consequence system. Six months later, referrals are still up. The solution was fine. The problem was that you never questioned whether behaviour referrals were the actual issue or just the visible symptom of something deeper.

Wonder is the type of work that sits with a problem long enough to understand what is actually broken. The person with Wonder does not rush to answers. They ask whether the problem you are solving is the problem that needs solving. This feels inefficient. It is the opposite. Solving the wrong problem efficiently is how you waste a year.

What most leadership teams do: Someone raises an issue. The team brainstorms solutions. The principal picks one. Everyone moves on. No one asks whether the issue they just solved was the root cause or just the most obvious manifestation.

What actually works: When someone raises an issue, stop and give the person with Wonder ten minutes to ask questions. "Why is this happening now?" "What changed three months ago that we have not connected to this?" "Are we solving for the symptom or the cause?" Let them sit in the discomfort of not knowing. The answers they surface will save you from solving the wrong problem.

If your school has a pattern of solving the same problem repeatedly, the issue is not execution. The issue is that you skipped Wonder. You are solving symptoms instead of causes. Try opening your next problem-focused meeting with this question: "What is the problem underneath the problem?" Do not let anyone propose a solution until the room agrees on the actual issue.

18. Pair Invention With Discernment for Better Options

Invention generates ideas. Discernment assesses them. When you separate these two types of work, you get lots of ideas but no clear path forward. When you pair them intentionally, you get fewer ideas that are stronger and more feasible.

Here is how the pairing works in practice. The person with Invention generates three or four options. The person with Discernment listens without interrupting. Once Invention is done, Discernment assesses each option and names which one has the best fit for your context. Invention is free to generate without defending. Discernment is free to assess without being seen as negative. The result is a shortlist of ideas that are both creative and sound.

Most school leadership teams let Invention and Discernment fight instead of collaborate. Invention offers an idea. Discernment raises a concern. Invention defends. Discernment pushes back. The conversation becomes about who is right instead of what works. The pairing breaks.

Invention needs to finish generating before Discernment starts assessing.

Discernment needs permission to critique without being seen as blocking progress.

Invention works best when they know Discernment will make their ideas better, not kill them.

Discernment works best when they have multiple options to assess, not just one to defend or reject.

If your leadership team struggles to move from ideas to decisions, the issue is usually the relationship between Invention and Discernment. Try running your next planning session in two phases. Phase one is Invention only. No assessment. Just generate. Phase two is Discernment only. Assess the options Invention produced. Pick the strongest one. Do not let the two phases overlap.

19. Use Discernment to Test Ideas Before You Announce Them

Your leadership team decides to implement a new initiative. You announce it to staff. Within a week, three problems surface that no one anticipated. The initiative is not wrong. You just did not test it with Discernment before you committed publicly.

Discernment is the type of work that stress-tests an idea before you go live with it. The person with Discernment can see how the idea will land with different groups, where it will clash with existing structures, and what objections will come up. They do not need to have experienced the exact scenario. They recognise patterns. When you skip Discernment, you announce ideas that sound good in the leadership room but break the moment they meet reality.

What Discernment catches: The new timetable structure that will not work for part-time staff. The reporting change that will confuse parents. The behaviour policy that assumes every student has stable home support. The wellbeing initiative that doubles the workload for the one person already at capacity.

What happens without Discernment: You announce the initiative. The problems surface. You adjust on the fly. Staff lose confidence in leadership decisions because too many of them require immediate course correction.

Try this before your next major announcement. Gather your leadership team and ask the person with the strongest Discernment to pressure-test the decision. Give them permission to name every problem they can see. Do not defend the idea. Just listen. Adjust the plan based on what they say. Then announce. The problems they identified will not surprise you because you already solved them.

20. Let Galvanising Frame the Message After Discernment Refines It

You make a sound decision. You announce it to staff. The response is lukewarm. People comply but no one is energised. The issue is not the decision. The issue is that no one Galvanised it. Discernment made the decision sound. Galvanising makes people care about it.

Galvanising is the type of work that translates a decision into a message that moves people. The person with Galvanising does not change the decision. They change how it is framed. They connect the decision to the values staff already care about. They name what becomes possible now that you have decided. They make the decision feel like an opportunity, not just a directive.

Most school leaders assume that a good decision will sell itself. It will not. A decision announced in neutral language gets a neutral response. A decision framed with energy and clarity gets buy-in. The difference is Galvanising.

Quick win: After your leadership team makes a decision, hand the messaging to the person with Galvanising. Do not give them a memo to read. Ask them how they would explain this decision to staff in a way that makes people want to act. Let them frame it. The decision stays the same. The response will not.

Full build: Pair your strongest Discernment person with your strongest Galvanising person for every major decision. Let Discernment refine the decision until it is sound. Then let Galvanising frame it for the wider audience. You will end up with decisions that are both smart and compelling.

If your leadership decisions consistently land flat with staff, the issue is not the quality of the decision. The issue is that you are announcing decisions without Galvanising them. Staff hear what you decided. They do not hear why it matters.

21. Build Enablement Into the Decision, Not After It

Your leadership team makes a decision. Everyone agrees. Two weeks later, you realise you do not have the budget, the staff, or the systems to deliver it. You either walk the decision back or deliver a version that disappoints everyone. The problem is not the decision. The problem is that Enablement was not in the room when you made it.

Enablement is the type of work that identifies what has to be true for a decision to succeed. The person with Enablement thinks in systems, resources, dependencies, and timelines. They do not question whether the idea is good. They question whether you can actually do it. When Enablement is missing from the decision conversation, you make commitments you cannot keep.

What Enablement asks: Do we have the staff capacity to deliver this? Does this require a policy change? Who else has to approve this before we proceed? What is the realistic timeline given everything else we are doing?

What happens without Enablement: You make decisions that sound achievable in the room but turn out to be impossible in practice. You announce initiatives and then quietly delay them. Staff stop trusting leadership timelines because half of them shift within a month.

The fix is to bring Enablement into the decision phase, not the execution phase. When your leadership team is narrowing options, ask the person with Enablement to assess feasibility. Let them name what each option requires. Pick the option you can actually deliver. This feels like it slows the decision down. It does not. It prevents you from making decisions you have to unmake later.

If your school announces initiatives that quietly disappear, Enablement is being consulted too late. Try this in your next decision meeting. Before you commit, ask your Enablement person, "What has to be true for this to work?" If the answer includes things you do not currently have, either adjust the decision or commit to building what is missing. Do not proceed hoping it will work itself out.

22. Assign Tenacity to Track Every Commitment Made

Your leadership team makes commitments in every meeting. Three people agree to do three things. No one writes down who is doing what or when it is due. A month later, one of the three things happened. No one can remember who was responsible for the other two. This is not a memory problem. This is a Tenacity problem.

Commitments do not fail because people lack intention. Commitments fail because no one tracked whether they happened. The person with Tenacity is energised by follow-through. They keep a running list of every action item from every meeting. They check in before the deadline. They report back on progress. They do not let commitments quietly disappear.

Most school leadership teams treat tracking as administrative work. It is not. It is leadership work. A leadership team that does not track commitments is a team that does not finish what it starts. The result is that decisions pile up faster than execution, and the leadership team spends more time talking about what they should do than doing it.

What Tenacity does in practice: At the end of every leadership meeting, the person with Tenacity reads back every commitment made during the meeting. They name who is responsible and when it is due. They send a summary within 24 hours. They check in halfway to the deadline to see if anything is blocked. They report at the next meeting on what got done.

What happens without Tenacity: Commitments are made and forgotten. The principal ends up chasing people individually, which takes longer than the original task. The leadership team stops believing that decisions lead to action because too many of them do not.

If your leadership meetings produce lots of conversation but little follow-through, assign one person to own Tenacity. Make it explicit. Their job is to track every commitment and report on progress. This is not about micromanagement. It is about making sure that what you decided in the room actually happens outside it.

REDUCING FRUSTRATION IN LEADERSHIP TEAMS

Most leadership team frustration comes from mismatched Working Genius. Someone is being asked to do work that drains them, or someone is being excluded from the work that energises them. The result is disengagement, conflict, and a team that underperforms relative to its talent. The patterns below show you how to reduce frustration by aligning people with the work they do best.

23. Stop Assigning Execution Work to Invention People

Your head of curriculum is brilliant at designing new programmes. You assign them to track implementation, follow up with staff, and report on progress. Six months later, nothing has moved. The problem is not their commitment. The problem is that you assigned Tenacity work to someone whose genius is Invention. For a deeper look at how genius distribution shapes team performance, see ideal Working Genius team composition.

Invention people are energised by creating new ideas, not by following through on old ones. They lose energy in the execution phase. They will do the work because you asked them to, but it will drain them, and they will do it poorly compared to someone whose genius is Tenacity. The tracking will be inconsistent. The follow-up will be reactive. The reporting will happen late. You will interpret this as a performance issue. It is not. It is a misalignment issue.

What most school leaders do: They assign work based on role, not genius. The head of curriculum designed the programme, so they should implement it. The deputy principal proposed the initiative, so they should track it. This logic makes sense on paper. It breaks in practice.

What actually works: Separate the work. Let the person with Invention design the programme. Then hand the implementation tracking to someone with Tenacity. The person with Invention stays energised because they are doing what they do best. The person with Tenacity stays energised for the same reason. The programme actually gets delivered.

Invention people should own ideation and design, not execution.

Tenacity people should own follow-through and tracking, not ideation.

Enablement people should own systems and logistics, not brainstorming.

Wonder people should own problem identification, not solution delivery.

If someone on your leadership team consistently fails to follow through, check whether you are asking them to do work outside their genius. The issue is probably not capability or commitment. The issue is that you assigned the wrong type of work to the wrong person.

24. Stop Asking Enablement People to Brainstorm

You run an ideation session with your full leadership team. Everyone is supposed to contribute ideas. The person with Enablement sits quietly or starts asking logistical questions that derail the creative flow. You interpret this as resistance. It is not. It is someone doing what comes naturally to them, which is assessing feasibility, in a meeting where feasibility is not the point yet.

Enablement people are not energised by open-ended brainstorming. They are energised by solving logistical problems and building systems. Asking them to sit through an hour of unstructured ideation drains them. They will either disengage or they will do what they do best, which is raise practical concerns. Either way, the meeting suffers.

The fix is not to force Enablement people to brainstorm. The fix is to not invite them to the brainstorming meeting. Bring them into the conversation after the ideas have been generated and the team is ready to assess feasibility. Let them do the work they are brilliant at, which is identifying what has to happen for the idea to succeed.

Here is what that looks like in practice. You run an ideation session with your Wonder and Invention people. You generate ten ideas. You narrow it to three. Then you bring in your Enablement people and say, "We are deciding between these three options. We need you to tell us what each one requires and which one is most feasible given our current capacity." They will give you an answer in twenty minutes that is more useful than anything they would have contributed in the brainstorming phase.

If the person with Enablement on your team consistently seems negative in meetings, check whether you are asking them to brainstorm. They are not being negative. They are trying to apply their genius in a context where it does not fit. Change the context.

25. Recognise That Some People Are Energised by Different Phases

Your head of wellbeing loves the early planning phase of any new initiative. They are engaged, energised, and full of ideas. Six months into implementation, they are visibly drained. You interpret this as burnout. It might be. But it might also be that their genius is in the Wonder and Invention phase, and you are now asking them to do Tenacity work.

Different people are energised by different phases of a project. Some people love the start. Some people love the middle. Some people love the finish. When you assign someone to own a project from start to finish, you are asking them to do three or four types of work, and only one or two of those types will energise them. The rest will drain them.

What most school leaders do: They assign project ownership and expect the person to manage the entire lifecycle. Ideation, planning, execution, and follow-through. This works if the person has a balanced Working Genius profile. It does not work if their genius is concentrated in one or two phases.

What actually works: Hand off the project between phases. Let the person with Wonder and Invention own the ideation phase. Let the person with Discernment and Galvanising own the decision and messaging phase. Let the person with Enablement and Tenacity own the execution phase. The project moves faster because each phase is led by someone who is energised by that type of work.

This requires a leadership team that trusts each other enough to hand off work. Most leadership teams do not do this. They treat handoffs as a sign that someone could not finish what they started. The opposite is true. Handoffs are a sign that the team knows how to match work to genius.

If someone on your team starts strong on every project but fades halfway through, their genius is probably in the early phases. Let them own the start. Hand the finish to someone else. Both people will perform better, and the project will actually get done.

MAKING WORKING GENIUS PART OF YOUR LEADERSHIP CULTURE

Working Genius improves meetings when it moves from being a framework you learned to being the way your team actually works. That shift does not happen automatically. It requires intentional embedding. The patterns below show you how to make Working Genius part of your leadership culture, not just another tool you tried once.

26. Name Working Genius Explicitly in Team Conversations

Most leadership teams learn about Working Genius, nod politely, and then never mention it again. The framework stays abstract. It does not change how the team works together. The reason is that no one uses the language in real conversations. For practical activities that embed the language, see Working Genius group activities your team can use straight away.

Working Genius only improves your team when you name it explicitly in the room. "This conversation needs more Wonder before we move to solutions." "I think we are missing Discernment on this decision." "We need Enablement in this conversation or we are going to commit to something we cannot deliver." When you name the type of work out loud, the team knows what is missing and who to look to.

What this sounds like in practice: You are halfway through a planning conversation and someone keeps raising concerns. Instead of interpreting it as negativity, you say, "I think what we are hearing is Discernment, and we need that right now. Keep going." The person feels permission to continue. The room understands why the concerns matter.

Or you are in a brainstorming session and someone asks a logistical question that is derailing the creative momentum. Instead of answering it, you say, "That is an Enablement question, and it is a good one. Let us park it and come back to it after we finish generating ideas." The person feels heard. The brainstorming stays on track.

This only works if the whole team speaks the language. If only the principal knows Working Genius, it becomes another tool that sits in a drawer. If the whole team knows it and uses it, it becomes the shared vocabulary that makes collaboration easier.

Try this in your next leadership meeting. When the conversation stalls, stop and ask, "What type of work does this conversation need right now?" Let the team name it. Wonder. Invention. Discernment. Galvanising. Enablement. Tenacity. Then ask, "Who on this team is strongest in that type of work?" Let that person lead the next phase of the conversation. You will move faster because the right person is doing the right work.

27. Include Working Genius in Leadership Team Onboarding

When a new person joins your leadership team, you onboard them to policies, priorities, and expectations. You do not onboard them to how the team thinks about work. The result is that they spend the first six months learning unspoken norms by trial and error. Working Genius gives you a way to name how your team divides work before the new person has to guess. For structured programmes that build this kind of cultural foundation, see Working Genius training programs.

What most school leaders do: They introduce the new leader to the team, hand them a position description, and expect them to figure out how the team operates by watching. The new leader sits in meetings, misreads dynamics, and makes assumptions about who does what and why.

What actually works: Run a Working Genius session as part of the onboarding process. Show the new leader the full team's profile. Name who owns which types of work. Explain how the team structures meetings based on the type of work the agenda requires. Give them the language before they need it.

Here is what that sounds like: "Our head of curriculum has Wonder and Invention. When you see them asking questions that feel like they are slowing us down, they are doing Wonder, and we need that. Our business manager has Enablement and Tenacity. When they raise logistical concerns, they are not blocking progress. They are making sure we can deliver what we just decided."

This does three things. It helps the new leader understand the team faster. It prevents misreading genius as resistance. It signals that this team thinks intentionally about how work gets divided.

If new leaders on your team take six months to feel like they understand the dynamics, you are not onboarding them to how the team thinks. Try running a Working Genius debrief in their first week. It will save both of you three months of confusion.

28. Review Meeting Agendas Through a Working Genius Lens

Before you finalise the agenda for your next leadership meeting, review it through a Working Genius lens. Ask yourself what type of work each agenda item requires. Then ask whether the people who are strongest in that type of work will be in the room. If the answer is no, either change who attends or change the agenda.

Most school leaders build agendas based on topics, not on the type of work the topic requires. The agenda says "new behaviour policy" but it does not say whether the team is ideating, deciding, or planning execution. The result is that the wrong people attend, the conversation drifts, and the meeting runs long.

What actually works: Label each agenda item with the type of work it requires. "New behaviour policy: Ideation (Wonder, Invention)." "Budget allocation: Decision (Discernment, Galvanising)." "Reporting timeline: Execution (Enablement, Tenacity)." Then check whether the right people are invited.

If the agenda is primarily ideation, invite Wonder and Invention. Optional for everyone else.

If the agenda is primarily decision-making, invite Discernment and Galvanising. Enablement should be there if feasibility is a factor.

If the agenda is primarily execution, invite Enablement and Tenacity. Optional for everyone else unless they own a specific action.

This feels like it excludes people. It does not. It respects their time by only inviting them to meetings where their genius is needed. The person with Tenacity would rather skip the brainstorming session and attend the execution session. Let them.

If your leadership meetings consistently run over time, review the last three agendas and check whether the right people were in the room for the type of work the agenda required. You will find that half the attendees did not need to be there, and some of the people who should have been there were not invited.

29. Rotate Meeting Facilitation Based on the Meeting Type

The principal does not have to facilitate every leadership meeting. Different types of meetings are better facilitated by different types of genius. An ideation meeting facilitated by someone with Wonder and Invention will feel different from an execution meeting facilitated by someone with Tenacity. Both are valuable. The principal should still lead the team. But facilitation can rotate based on who is strongest in the type of work the meeting is designed to do.

What this looks like in practice: The principal facilitates decision meetings because decision meetings require authority and closure. The deputy principal with Invention facilitates ideation meetings because they know how to create space for ideas without shutting them down. The business manager with Tenacity facilitates execution meetings because they are brilliant at tracking commitments and holding people accountable.

Most school leaders assume that leadership means facilitating every meeting. It does not. Leadership means making sure the right work happens. Sometimes that means facilitating. Sometimes that means letting someone else facilitate while you participate.

Try this with your next major project. Instead of facilitating every meeting yourself, assign facilitation based on the meeting type. Let the person with Invention facilitate the brainstorming session. Let the person with Discernment facilitate the decision session. Let the person with Tenacity facilitate the execution session. You stay in the room. You still lead. But you are not doing all the work.

30. Use Working Genius to Diagnose Why Projects Stall

Every school has projects that start strong and then quietly stall. The team was aligned. The decision was clear. But six months later, nothing has moved. Most school leaders diagnose this as a commitment problem or a capacity problem. Sometimes it is. More often, it is a Working Genius problem. One or more types of work were skipped, and the project is stuck because the work that should have happened did not.

Here is how to diagnose it. Map the project against the six types of Working Genius and ask which ones happened and which ones did not.

If Wonder was skipped: You are solving the wrong problem. The project is stalled because the team is unconsciously questioning whether this is the right thing to be doing.

If Invention was skipped: You have one idea and no alternatives. The project is stalled because the first idea hit a barrier and the team does not know what else to try.

If Discernment was skipped: You are executing an idea that should have been refined. The project is stalled because it does not actually fit your context, and everyone is realising that now.

If Galvanising was skipped: No one outside the leadership team cares. The project is stalled because staff are complying but not committed.

If Enablement was skipped: You do not have the systems to deliver what you decided. The project is stalled because no one built the infrastructure it needed to succeed.

If Tenacity was skipped: No one is tracking progress. The project is stalled because everyone assumed someone else was responsible for moving it forward.

Most stalled projects are missing Enablement or Tenacity. You made a decision but never built the systems to support it, or you built the systems but never tracked whether anyone used them. The fix is to go back and do the type of work you skipped.

If your school has a graveyard of initiatives that started well but disappeared, use Working Genius to audit them. Ask which types of work were present and which were missing. You will find a pattern. The same one or two types keep getting skipped. Fix that and your next initiative will land differently.

Your leadership meetings are only as good as the work you ask people to do in them. Working Genius shows you which work energises each person and which work drains them. When you match the two, meetings get faster, decisions get sharper, and your team stops wasting time on conversations that go nowhere. The framework does not fix every meeting problem. But it fixes the one that matters most, which is making sure the right people are doing the right work at the right time.

Your next step is simple. Have your leadership team complete the Working Genius assessment. Then spend one meeting reviewing the results together. Name who is strongest in each type of work. Then use that knowledge to redesign how your next three meetings run. You will know it is working when people stop checking their phones and start leaning in. For answers to common questions about the framework, see the Working Genius FAQ.