25 Ways Working Genius Transforms Executive Teams

If you have ever wondered why some types of work energise you while others leave you questioning your career choices, Working Genius holds the answer.

Patrick Lencioni created the Working Genius model to name the six fundamental types of work that exist inside every team, every project, and every organisation. What makes it powerful is not the framework itself. What makes it powerful is what happens when a CEO or executive leader finally sees where the energy in their leadership team actually lives, and where it has been missing all along.

I work with executive teams around the world using Working Genius as a diagnostic and a design tool. The patterns repeat. A talented team that cannot execute. A leadership group that generates endless ideas but never lands them. Two senior people who respect each other professionally but cannot collaborate without friction.

Working Genius does not solve these problems by adding more talent or more effort. It solves them by revealing the underlying structure.

UNDERSTANDING THE SIX TYPES OF GENIUS

Working Genius identifies six distinct types of work that flow in sequence through every initiative. Each type of work requires a different cognitive mode, a different energy signature, and a different kind of attention. When a person is working inside their area of genius, the work energises them. When they are working outside it, the same task drains them even when they can technically do it well.

The six types are Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanising, Enablement, and Tenacity. Understanding how these six types interact is the foundation of using the Working Genius assessment with executive teams.

1. Wonder

Wonder is the work of noticing what is broken, what is missing, or what could be better. People with genius in Wonder ask the questions no one else is asking. They surface problems before they become crises. They wonder why things are the way they are and whether they need to stay that way.

The cognitive mode Wonder requires:

Observation without immediate pressure to solve. A person working in Wonder needs space to notice patterns, ask open questions, and sit with ambiguity before the team rushes to answers.

What energises someone with Wonder:

The moment a question they asked six months ago turns out to have been the right question all along. The recognition that noticing the problem was harder than solving it.

What drains them:

Being told to stop asking questions and just implement. Being in an organisation that treats every observation as a complaint. Working in a culture that values answers over inquiry.

Where Wonder shows up in executive teams:

The CEO who keeps circling back to whether the strategy is addressing the real problem. The COO who notices the gap between what the board says it wants and what the organisation actually needs. The exec who flags a cultural issue no one else has named yet.

Why executive teams fail without Wonder:

Without someone doing the work of Wonder, teams get stuck executing ideas that should have been questioned weeks ago. The strategy looks good on paper but misses the actual market need. The initiative launches on time but solves the wrong problem.

The mistake most CEOs make with Wonder:

They dismiss it as overthinking. A person with genius in Wonder is not being difficult when they ask another question. They are doing work the rest of the team cannot do. The question is whether the team has made space for that work to happen before the decision gets locked in.

2. Invention

Invention is the work of creating solutions, designing new approaches, and generating ideas where none existed before. People with genius in Invention move naturally from problem to possibility. They do not just see what is broken. They see what could be built.

The work of Invention is not about wild creativity for its own sake. It is about the cognitive leap from constraint to concept. A person working in Invention takes the question Wonder surfaced and generates the options the team will eventually choose from.

The three conditions Invention requires to do its best work:

Permission to generate options without immediately defending them. Invention happens when ideas can be rough, incomplete, and wrong without being dismissed too early.

Proximity to the problem. Inventors need to sit close to the people doing Wonder. If they are inventing solutions to problems the team no longer cares about, the genius is wasted.

Protection from premature evaluation. The moment an idea has to justify itself financially or politically, Invention slows down. Evaluation comes later. Invention needs a window where volume matters more than polish.

Where Invention shows up in executive teams:

The CFO who redesigns the budget process to solve a cultural problem no spreadsheet could fix. The head of people and culture who invents a staffing model no one in the sector has tried yet. The CEO who takes a constraint the board handed them and turns it into the organising idea for the next three years.

Why teams struggle without Invention:

They recycle old solutions to new problems. They copy what other organisations are doing without adapting it to their own context. They talk about innovation but never actually generate anything new. The result is a leadership team that sounds strategic but feels stuck.

The pattern that repeats:

A team with strong Wonder but weak Invention generates dozens of important questions and no viable answers. A team with strong Invention but weak Wonder builds elegant solutions to problems that do not actually matter. The two types of genius need each other to produce anything useful.

What drains people with Invention:

Being told to stop coming up with new ideas and just pick one. Being in a culture that treats every new idea as a threat to the plan. Working on a team where the first response to any suggestion is a list of reasons it will not work.

3. Discernment

Discernment is the work of evaluating ideas, sensing what will work and what will not, and making judgment calls before all the data is in. People with genius in Discernment do not need a business case to know whether an idea has legs. They feel it.

This is not about intuition in the vague sense. Discernment operates on pattern recognition built from lived experience. A person with strong Discernment has seen enough initiatives succeed and fail that their gut is now a reliable instrument. They can tell you in the first five minutes of a conversation whether an idea will survive contact with reality.

What Discernment looks like in practice:

In strategy meetings:

The exec who listens to three options and says, "The second one will work. The first one sounds good but it will not survive your board. The third one is six months too late." They are often right, and they cannot always explain why.

In hiring decisions:

The leader who interviews a candidate everyone else loves and says, "They will not fit the culture. I do not know why yet, but they will not." Six months later, the prediction proves accurate.

In crisis:

The person who cuts through twelve competing opinions and names the one thing that actually matters. Not because they have more data, but because they can feel the shape of the problem underneath the noise.

Why executive teams fail without Discernment:

They waste months building the wrong thing. They pursue ideas that looked good in the meeting but were never going to work in the market. They hire people who perform well in interviews but cannot do the actual job. Without Discernment, a team has no immune system. Every idea gets the same level of enthusiasm, and the bad ones consume just as much energy as the good ones.

The mistake organisations make with Discernment:

They ask people with genius in Discernment to justify their judgment with data before the data exists. Discernment works fastest when it is allowed to operate as pattern recognition first and analysis second. If you force someone with Discernment to build a business case before they can say no to an idea, you have just disabled the early warning system your team needs most.

What drains someone with Discernment:

Being in a culture that ignores their input until it is too late. Watching the team proceed with an idea they flagged as flawed, then being asked to fix it six months later when it fails exactly the way they predicted.

4. Galvanising

Galvanising is the work of rallying people, generating momentum, and creating the energy required to turn an idea into a movement. People with genius in Galvanising do not just communicate the plan. They make other people want to be part of it.

The work of Galvanising is not about charisma in the superficial sense. It is about the ability to translate strategy into enthusiasm. A person working in Galvanising takes the output of Discernment and turns it into the thing everyone in the organisation now believes is possible.

Galvanising operates on three levels inside an executive team:

Internal alignment:

The ability to get the senior leadership group genuinely committed to an idea, not just politely nodding in a meeting. This is the exec who leaves a strategy session and within 24 hours has the entire team talking about it as if they co-created it.

Organisational enrollment:

The ability to take a decision made at the executive level and cascade it through the organisation in a way that creates energy rather than compliance. People do not just understand the plan. They want to execute it.

External visibility:

The ability to position the organisation's work in a way that attracts the right talent, the right partners, and the right attention. This is not marketing in the promotional sense. It is making the work compelling enough that people outside the organisation want to be connected to it.

Where Galvanising shows up in executive teams:

The CEO who takes a difficult board decision and reframes it for the staff in a way that turns anxiety into resolve. The chief of staff who takes six competing priorities and turns them into a narrative the whole organisation can repeat. The head of a division who inherits a demoralized team and within three months has them believing the turnaround is possible.

Why teams struggle without Galvanising:

The strategy is sound. The plan is clear. The resources are allocated. And nothing happens. The organisation hears the message but does not feel it. Compliance replaces commitment. The executive team is aligned on paper but cannot generate the energy required to move 200 people in the same direction.

The pattern most CEOs miss:

A team with strong Discernment but weak Galvanising makes good decisions that no one executes with urgency. A team with strong Galvanising but weak Discernment creates excitement around ideas that should never have been approved. The two types of genius need to work in sequence. Discernment picks the idea. Galvanising turns it into a movement.

What drains someone with Galvanising:

Being asked to generate enthusiasm for a decision the leadership team does not actually believe in. Being in a culture that treats momentum as noise rather than as the necessary precondition for execution.

5. Enablement

Enablement is the work of responding to need, providing support, and making sure the people doing the work have what they require to do it well. People with genius in Enablement do not lead the charge. They make sure the charge can actually happen.

What Enablement actually does:

Enablement is the person who asks, "What do you need?" and then actually provides it. They troubleshoot the bottleneck no one else noticed. They find the resource the team did not know existed. They remove the obstacle that would have derailed the project three weeks from now.

The work of Enablement is not glamorous. It rarely gets celebrated in the same way Invention or Galvanising does. But without it, nothing moves. A team can have brilliant ideas, strong judgment, and organisational energy, and still fail because no one is doing the work of making execution possible.

Enablement shows up in three forms inside executive teams:

Operational Enablement:

The COO who builds the systems that allow the CEO's vision to scale. The CFO who structures the budget so the strategy is actually fundable. The head of IT who quietly solves the infrastructure problem that would have killed the digital transformation six months in.

Relational Enablement:

The exec who notices when two senior people are in conflict and creates the conditions for the repair conversation to happen. The leader who checks in with the person carrying the hardest part of the workload and asks what support they need.

Environmental Enablement:

The person who makes sure the meeting has the right people in it. The exec who realises the strategy session is scheduled at the worst possible time and moves it. The leader who protects the team from distractions so they can focus on the work that matters.

Why teams fail without Enablement:

The plan looks good. The team is committed. And six weeks in, execution stalls because no one built the infrastructure required to deliver it. The project runs out of budget because no one was tracking spend. The key hire leaves because no one was supporting them through onboarding. Enablement is what turns intention into outcome.

The mistake most executive teams make with Enablement:

They treat it as administrative rather than strategic. The person doing Enablement is not just supporting the work. They are often the only person who can see where the work is about to break. Ignore their input and the organisation pays for it in failed execution, burned-out staff, and strategies that never convert to results.

What drains someone with Enablement:

Being asked to support work they were not consulted on. Being in a culture that plans the initiative but not the support structure required to deliver it. Watching the team celebrate the idea while ignoring the dozen small failures that are about to derail it.

6. Tenacity

Tenacity is the work of finishing, following through, and pushing initiatives across the line when everyone else has moved on to the next thing. People with genius in Tenacity do not get bored when the work stops being new. They get energised.

The cognitive mode Tenacity requires is the opposite of Invention. Invention thrives on novelty. Tenacity thrives on completion. A person with genius in Tenacity feels genuine satisfaction when a project that has been running for 18 months finally closes. They do not need the work to be interesting. They need it to be done.

Where Tenacity shows up in executive teams:

The CFO who follows up on the action items from the strategy session that everyone else forgot about. The program director who takes the pilot everyone loved and turns it into a repeatable process. The exec who inherits a half-finished initiative from their predecessor and actually finishes it instead of starting something new.

What Tenacity does that no other genius can:

It closes loops:

Projects do not stay in permanent beta. Commitments made in January are still being tracked in July. The initiative gets implemented, not just announced.

It sustains momentum through the boring middle:

Every project has a phase where it stops being interesting and just needs to be worked. Tenacity is the genius that works through that phase without losing energy.

It protects the organisation from initiative fatigue:

A team that only has genius in Wonder and Invention generates endless ideas and finishes almost none of them. Tenacity is what converts a culture of ideation into a culture of delivery.

Why executive teams fail without Tenacity:

The strategy is brilliant. The kickoff is energising. Six months later, nothing has actually shipped. The team has moved on to the next big idea, and the previous initiative is now a half-finished project someone will have to clean up later. Without Tenacity, an organisation becomes a graveyard of good ideas that never made it to completion.

The pattern that repeats across sectors:

A leadership team with strong Wonder, Invention, and Galvanising but weak Tenacity generates enthusiasm and produces very little. They are always in the exciting early phase of something new. They never experience the satisfaction of finishing what they started.

What drains someone with Tenacity:

Being on a team that celebrates the launch but not the finish. Working in a culture that treats completion as boring and novelty as the only thing worth talking about. Being the person left behind to finish the work while everyone else has moved on to the next initiative.

WORKING GENIUS PAIRINGS AND WHAT THEY REVEAL

The real diagnostic power of Working Genius is not in knowing your individual geniuses. It is in understanding how your two primary geniuses combine to create a working style, and how that pairing interacts with the pairings of the people around you.

Every person has two areas of genius, two areas of competency, and two areas of frustration. The pairing of your two geniuses creates a default rhythm. Some pairings naturally live in the ideation phase. Some pairings naturally live in execution. Some pairings connect the two. For a deeper look at how pairings interact, see the Working Genius pairings guide.

7. Wonder and Invention Pairing

The Wonder and Invention pairing is the classic ideation combination. This person asks the question and generates the answer in the same conversation. They notice what is missing and immediately start designing solutions.

What this pairing brings to an executive team:

The ability to see problems early and generate options before anyone else has named the issue. This is the exec who walks into a meeting, identifies the thing everyone is dancing around, and offers three ways to solve it before the agenda moves on.

The limitation of this pairing:

Strong start, weak finish. People with Wonder and Invention often lose interest once the idea is approved. They want to move on to the next problem, not manage the execution of the last one. Without Enablement and Tenacity on the team, their best ideas never convert to outcomes.

Where this pairing creates conflict:

With people who have Tenacity as a genius. The Wonder-Invention person keeps introducing new ideas while the person with Tenacity is still working on finishing the previous three. The tension is not personal. It is structural. One person is wired to generate. The other is wired to complete.

8. Invention and Discernment Pairing

The Invention and Discernment pairing is rare and powerful. This person generates ideas and immediately evaluates them. They filter their own thinking before it reaches the team. They do not present twelve options. They present the two that will actually work.

What this pairing brings to an executive team:

High-quality strategic input with low noise. The exec with this pairing does not waste the team's time on ideas that sound good but will not survive contact with reality. They have already done the internal filtering. What reaches the table is pre-vetted.

The challenge with this pairing:

They can appear overly critical. Because they evaluate ideas as they generate them, they reject a lot of options before anyone else sees them. To the rest of the team, it can feel like this person is dismissing possibilities rather than protecting the team from bad ones.

How to work with this pairing as a CEO:

Give them space to think before they present. They do their best work when they can generate and discard internally before bringing options to the group. Asking them to brainstorm out loud with the team often produces weaker output than letting them prepare in advance.

9. Discernment and Galvanising Pairing

The Discernment and Galvanising pairing creates leaders who can sense what will work and then build the momentum required to make it happen. They pick the right idea and then make everyone else believe in it.

Where this pairing dominates:

In turnaround situations. The exec with Discernment and Galvanising walks into a struggling organisation, identifies the two or three decisions that will stabilise it, and rallies the team around those moves before doubt sets in.

What this pairing struggles with:

Patience with process. People with Discernment and Galvanising want to move fast from decision to action. They get frustrated with teams that need extensive consultation, detailed planning, or consensus-building before committing. They have already decided and already created the energy. Waiting feels like wasted time.

The mistake organisations make with this pairing:

They put this person in roles that require long-term operational delivery. Discernment and Galvanising is a pairing built for identifying direction and creating momentum, not for managing the 18-month execution cycle. Pair them with someone who has Enablement or Tenacity, and they become unstoppable. Expect them to do both, and they burn out.

10. Galvanising and Enablement Pairing

The Galvanising and Enablement pairing creates the ultimate support leader. This person does not just respond to what the team needs. They generate the energy required to make the team believe the support is coming, and then they actually deliver it.

What makes this pairing effective:

People trust them. When someone with Galvanising and Enablement says they will handle something, the team believes it will get handled. They do not just promise support. They create confidence that the work is covered.

Where this pairing shows up in executive teams:

Chief operating officers who do not just manage operations but inspire the people doing the operational work. Heads of people and culture who do not just process HR issues but create a culture where people feel genuinely supported. Chiefs of staff who do not just coordinate the executive agenda but make the CEO more effective by anticipating needs before they are named.

What drains this pairing:

Being asked to galvanise around ideas they do not believe in. Galvanising and Enablement is a pairing built on authenticity. If they are faking enthusiasm or supporting work they think is flawed, the energy collapses. They can enable almost anything. They can only galvanise around work they genuinely believe matters.

11. Enablement and Tenacity Pairing

The Enablement and Tenacity pairing is the execution engine. This person does not come up with the ideas. They make sure the ideas actually happen. They provide what is needed and they do not stop until the work is done.

What this pairing delivers:

Finished projects. Reliable systems. Commitments that actually get kept. The exec with Enablement and Tenacity is the reason the organisation can trust that what gets approved in the strategy session will still be running 18 months later.

Where this pairing is undervalued:

In organisations that celebrate ideation over execution. The person with Enablement and Tenacity rarely gets the applause. They do not pitch the big idea. They do not give the inspiring speech. They make sure the big idea that someone else pitched gets delivered on time and under budget.

The leadership mistake most common with this pairing:

Assuming this person does not need development or recognition because they are "just executing." Enablement and Tenacity is not a lesser pairing. It is a different pairing. The organisation depends on it as much as it depends on Wonder or Invention. Treat it as administrative and you lose your best operators.

How to develop leaders with this pairing:

Give them bigger operational problems to solve, not just bigger teams to manage. People with Enablement and Tenacity are energised by complexity in delivery, not complexity in ideation. The challenge for them is not coming up with new ideas. The challenge is executing harder things better.

12. Wonder and Discernment Pairing

The Wonder and Discernment pairing creates strategic thinkers who ask the right questions and sense which answers will actually work. They do not generate a lot of options. They identify the one option that matters.

What this pairing brings to an executive team:

Clarity in complexity. When a leadership team is stuck in analysis paralysis, the person with Wonder and Discernment cuts through the noise. They ask the question no one else has asked, and once that question is answered, the path forward becomes obvious.

Why this pairing frustrates teams:

They slow things down at the front end. While everyone else wants to move to solutions, the Wonder and Discernment person is still questioning the premise. It feels like obstruction. In hindsight, it was the most valuable thing anyone did.

The pattern that repeats:

A team overrides the input from someone with Wonder and Discernment, proceeds with the plan, and six months later realizes the question they were asking was the question that mattered. By then, the cost of getting it wrong has compounded.

How CEOs should use this pairing:

Bring them into strategy conversations early, not late. Their value is highest before the decision is locked in. Once the organisation has committed to a direction, their ability to influence the outcome drops. Ask them the hard questions first, not after the plan is already in motion.

13. Wonder and Galvanising Pairing

The Wonder and Galvanising pairing is rare. This person asks the uncomfortable questions and then makes the organisation care about the answers. They do not just surface problems. They create urgency around solving them.

Where this pairing creates impact:

In cultural transformation. The exec with Wonder and Galvanising is the person who names the thing everyone has been avoiding and turns it into the organisation's top priority. They do not just wonder why retention is dropping. They make the entire leadership team commit to fixing it.

The challenge with this pairing:

They can feel disruptive. Because they combine inquiry with energy, they do not just raise questions quietly. They raise them loudly enough that the organisation has to respond. If the leadership team is not ready to act on what they are naming, the tension escalates quickly.

What this pairing needs to succeed:

A CEO or board that is willing to act on what they surface. If the person with Wonder and Galvanising keeps identifying critical issues that never get prioritised, they burn out. Their genius depends on seeing their questions convert to action.

14. Invention and Enablement Pairing

The Invention and Enablement pairing creates practical problem solvers. They do not just generate solutions. They generate solutions they can personally deliver. This is the exec who says, "Here is what we should do, and here is how I will make sure it happens."

What this pairing brings to an executive team:

Ownership of outcomes. People with Invention and Enablement do not hand off their ideas to someone else to execute. They stay with the work. They solve the problem and then they support the implementation.

Where this pairing is most valuable:

In startups, turnarounds, and small executive teams where the same person needs to design the strategy and deliver it. The separation between thinking and doing does not exist for this pairing. They are the same activity.

The limitation of this pairing:

Scalability. A person with Invention and Enablement can take a project from concept to completion, but they struggle to hand it off. They would rather do it themselves than train someone else to do it. As the organisation grows, this becomes a bottleneck.

How to grow leaders with this pairing:

Teach them to enable others to execute their ideas, not just enable the execution themselves. The shift from "I will make sure this happens" to "I will make sure the team has what they need to make this happen" is the hardest transition for this pairing.

15. Invention and Tenacity Pairing

The Invention and Tenacity pairing is rare and operationally powerful. This person generates ideas and finishes them. They do not need someone else to close the loop. They close it themselves.

What makes this pairing effective in executive teams:

Low dependency on others. The exec with Invention and Tenacity can be handed a problem, generate the solution, and deliver the result without requiring support from the rest of the team. They are self-sufficient in a way most other pairings are not.

The challenge with this pairing:

They can operate in isolation. Because they do not need help from ideation to completion, they sometimes bypass the team entirely. The result is high-quality work that the rest of the leadership group does not understand or support because they were not involved in creating it.

How CEOs should manage this pairing:

Require them to bring the team along. Not because they need the help, but because the team needs to understand the work. The person with Invention and Tenacity will deliver the outcome either way. The question is whether the rest of the organisation is ready to adopt it.

16. Discernment and Enablement Pairing

The Discernment and Enablement pairing creates leaders who sense what the team needs and then provide it before anyone asks. They do not wait for a request. They anticipate the gap and fill it.

Where this pairing shows up in executive teams:

The CFO who realizes the CEO is about to make a decision without enough financial context and quietly provides a briefing before the board meeting. The COO who senses that two senior people are in conflict and creates the space for them to resolve it. The exec who notices a team member is overwhelmed and reallocates resources before the person breaks.

What this pairing delivers:

Anticipatory support. Most people with Enablement wait to be asked. People with Discernment and Enablement see the need before it is named and act on it. This makes them exceptionally valuable in high-stakes environments where waiting for someone to ask for help is too late.

The limitation of this pairing:

They can become overextended. Because they sense needs constantly, they can end up supporting too many things at once. They struggle to say no because they can feel that the need is real.

How to protect someone with this pairing from burnout:

Give them explicit permission to prioritise. Their instinct is to support everything. Your job as their leader is to help them focus their energy on the few things that matter most.

17. Discernment and Tenacity Pairing

The Discernment and Tenacity pairing creates leaders who know what needs to be done and will not stop until it is finished. They do not just pick the right path. They walk it all the way to the end.

What this pairing brings to strategy execution:

Relentlessness on the things that matter. A person with Discernment and Tenacity does not get distracted by the next shiny idea. They identified the priority six months ago, and they are still working on it today because it is not done yet.

Why this pairing is critical in turnarounds:

Organisations in crisis do not need more ideas. They need someone who can sense the two or three things that will stabilize the situation and then execute those things without getting pulled into every other urgent problem that surfaces. Discernment tells them what to focus on. Tenacity keeps them focused.

The challenge with this pairing:

They can appear inflexible. Because they have already decided what matters and committed to finishing it, they resist course corrections. Sometimes the resistance is justified. The organisation is being distracted by noise. Sometimes the resistance is a problem. The situation has changed and the original priority is no longer the right one.

How to work with this pairing as a CEO:

If you need to shift their focus, do not ask them to stop working on the current priority. Give them a clear reason why the new priority is more important, and help them see that finishing the original work can wait. They will resist abandoning something unfinished. They will not resist re-sequencing if the logic is sound.

18. Galvanising and Tenacity Pairing

The Galvanising and Tenacity pairing creates momentum that lasts. This person does not just generate excitement for an idea. They sustain the energy all the way through execution. They galvanise at the start and they keep galvanising when everyone else has moved on.

What this pairing delivers in executive teams:

Long-term change initiatives that actually stick. Most change efforts fail in the boring middle. The Galvanising and Tenacity person is still generating enthusiasm in month eleven when the rest of the organisation is exhausted.

Where this pairing is most valuable:

In organisations going through multi-year transformations. Culture change, digital transformation, merger integration. The work that requires sustained energy over time, not just a strong start.

The limitation of this pairing:

They can push too hard. Because they are still energised by work that everyone else is tired of, they sometimes fail to notice when the team needs a break. Their relentlessness can become a source of burnout for the people around them.

How to develop leaders with this pairing:

Teach them to read the room. Their instinct is to keep pushing. Your job is to help them see when the organisation needs consolidation rather than more momentum.

19. Wonder and Enablement Pairing

The Wonder and Enablement pairing creates responsive problem solvers. They notice what is missing and then provide it. They ask the question and then help the team answer it.

What this pairing brings to executive teams:

The ability to surface needs the rest of the team has not articulated and then meet those needs before they become crises. This is the exec who notices that the leadership offsite agenda is missing a critical conversation and quietly adds it. The person who realizes a team member needs support and provides it without being asked.

Why this pairing is undervalued:

The work happens quietly. People with Wonder and Enablement do not announce what they are doing. They just do it. The result is that their contribution is often invisible until they leave and the gaps they were filling suddenly become obvious.

The challenge with this pairing:

They can become the person everyone depends on without anyone realizing it. The organisation starts to assume that certain things just happen, not recognizing that someone is making them happen.

How to recognize and develop someone with this pairing:

Name what they are doing. Make the invisible visible. Ask them what they are noticing that no one else is seeing. Give them a platform to surface the patterns they are observing, not just respond to them quietly.

20. Wonder and Tenacity Pairing

The Wonder and Tenacity pairing is the most unusual combination. This person asks questions for months until they find the right one, and then they do not stop working on the answer until it is fully resolved. They wonder slowly and they finish completely.

What this pairing brings to long-term strategy:

The ability to stay with a complex problem until it is genuinely solved, not just addressed. Most teams move on once the urgency fades. The person with Wonder and Tenacity is still working on the root cause two years later because they can feel that it is not fixed yet.

Where this pairing creates tension:

With fast-moving organisations. The person with Wonder and Tenacity operates on a longer timeline than most teams are comfortable with. They are still asking questions while everyone else wants to move to execution. They are still finishing work everyone else has forgotten about.

Why this pairing is valuable despite the tension:

They solve problems that no one else has the patience to solve. The cultural issue that keeps resurfacing every 18 months. The operational inefficiency that everyone complains about but no one fixes. The strategic misalignment that the organisation has been living with for years. The person with Wonder and Tenacity is the one who finally resolves it.

How CEOs should use this pairing:

Give them the hard problems no one else wants. The ones that require sustained inquiry and long-term follow-through. Do not ask them to move fast. Ask them to move thoroughly.

WORKING GENIUS AND TEAM COMPOSITION

Understanding individual pairings is useful. Understanding how pairings combine across an executive team is where Working Genius becomes a design tool. A leadership team is not just a collection of talented individuals. It is a system with a specific capability profile, and that profile determines what the team can deliver and where it will consistently fail.

21. The Ideation-Heavy Team

An ideation-heavy team has multiple people with Wonder and Invention as their primary geniuses. They generate ideas constantly. Strategy sessions are energising. The whiteboard fills fast. The problem is not creativity. The problem is completion.

What happens inside an ideation-heavy executive team:

Initiatives launch with enthusiasm and stall six weeks later. The leadership group keeps introducing new priorities before finishing the old ones. The organisation feels like it is always in beta. Staff report initiative fatigue. The board starts asking why nothing is landing.

The pattern most CEOs miss:

They keep hiring for strategic thinking because that is what they value, not realizing they are compounding the problem. The team does not need another person who can generate ideas. It needs someone who can finish them.

How to rebalance an ideation-heavy team: Stop hiring for Wonder and Invention. Start looking for Enablement and Tenacity. Not as support roles. As senior executive roles. Your next CFO or COO should have genius in execution, not ideation. Use Working Genius for hiring to assess candidates' genius profiles before you commit. If you do not rebalance the team composition, no amount of strategy will convert to outcomes.

The immediate tactic for an ideation-heavy team:

Create a finish-before-you-start rule. No new strategic initiative gets approved until the previous one reaches a defined milestone. The team will resist this. They are wired to generate. Your job is to protect the organisation from its own generativity.

22. The Execution-Heavy Team

An execution-heavy team has multiple people with Enablement and Tenacity as their primary geniuses. They are exceptional at delivery. Projects finish on time. Commitments get kept. The organisation runs smoothly. The problem is stagnation.

What happens inside an execution-heavy executive team:

The team keeps doing what it has always done, but better. Efficiency improves. Quality improves. Innovation does not. The organisation becomes excellent at executing a strategy that is slowly becoming irrelevant.

Why execution-heavy teams struggle with change:

Change requires ideation. Ideation requires Wonder and Invention. If no one on the executive team has genius in those areas, the organisation has no mechanism for questioning the current approach or generating new ones. They wait for the board or an external consultant to tell them what to do next.

The warning sign most boards miss:

The executive team consistently delivers what it commits to, but the commitments themselves are incrementally ambitious. The strategy is last year's strategy with slightly bigger numbers. No one is asking whether the organisation is solving the right problems anymore.

How to rebalance an execution-heavy team:

Hire for Wonder and Invention. Not in advisory roles. In decision-making roles. Your next hire should be someone who makes the rest of the team uncomfortable by asking questions they were not planning to address. If everyone on the team nods when the new person speaks, you hired wrong.

23. The Discernment Gap

A team with a Discernment gap generates plenty of ideas and has the capacity to execute them, but cannot reliably tell which ideas are worth executing. The result is wasted effort on initiatives that were never going to work.

What a Discernment gap looks like in practice:

The leadership team approves a new initiative, invests six months of effort, and then quietly abandons it when it becomes clear the idea was flawed from the start. Post-mortems reveal that several people on the team had concerns early but did not voice them. The pattern repeats every 12 to 18 months.

Why Discernment gaps persist:

Organisations often misread the problem. They think the issue is poor execution or insufficient resources. The real issue is that no one on the executive team has the ability to sense whether an idea will work before the organisation commits to it. They are flying blind at the front end of every decision.

How to identify a Discernment gap:

Audit the last five strategic initiatives the leadership team launched. How many of them delivered the intended outcome? If more than half failed or underperformed, the team has a Discernment problem, not an execution problem.

The fix for a Discernment gap:

Add someone to the executive team who has Discernment as a primary genius. Not as a consultant. As a permanent member of the decision-making group. Their job is to evaluate every idea before the organisation commits resources. If the team resists this because it slows down decision-making, the gap is worse than you think.

24. The Galvanising Gap

A team with a Galvanising gap makes sound decisions but cannot generate the energy required to execute them. The strategy is clear. The plan is approved. And the organisation responds with polite compliance rather than genuine commitment.

What a Galvanising gap looks like inside an organisation:

Leadership communication feels flat. Town halls are informative but not inspiring. Staff understand the plan but are not energised by it. The executive team is aligned, but that alignment has not cascaded. Execution happens slowly because no one feels urgency.

Why Galvanising gaps are dangerous:

They are invisible to the executive team. The leadership group is committed to the strategy, so they assume the organisation is too. They do not realize that what felt like a compelling decision in the boardroom felt like a directive when it reached the staff.

The diagnostic question for a Galvanising gap:

If you asked ten people in the organisation to explain the current strategy, how many of them could do it? And how many of them sound energised when they explain it? If the number is low, the problem is not communication frequency. The problem is Galvanising.

How to close a Galvanising gap:

Identify who on the executive team has Galvanising as a genius and give them explicit responsibility for translating decisions into momentum. Do not assume this will happen naturally. It will not. Someone needs to own the work of making the organisation care about what the leadership team has decided.

25. The Balanced Team Myth

The assumption most CEOs make is that a balanced team has equal representation across all six types of genius. Two people with Wonder. Two with Invention. Two with Discernment. Two with Galvanising. Two with Enablement. Two with Tenacity.

This is not how high-performing teams actually work.

What a genuinely balanced team looks like: A team where every phase of work has someone whose genius aligns with that phase. Not equal numbers. Aligned coverage. The question is not whether the team is numerically balanced. The question is whether the team can move an idea from question to completion without getting stuck. For a practical approach to designing teams this way, see the guide to Working Genius team building.

The phases that must be covered:

Inquiry and ideation:

At least one person with Wonder or Invention needs to be present at the executive level. If this is missing, the organisation cannot generate new thinking.

Evaluation and decision-making:

At least one person with Discernment needs to be in the room when strategic decisions are made. If this is missing, bad ideas get approved as often as good ones.

Activation and momentum:

At least one person with Galvanising needs to be responsible for translating decisions into energy. If this is missing, strategies do not cascade.

Support and delivery:

Multiple people with Enablement and Tenacity need to be present, because execution requires more capacity than ideation. If this is missing, nothing finishes.

The rebalancing question every CEO should ask:

Map your current executive team against the six types of genius. Where is the concentration? Where is the gap? And what does that tell you about why certain types of work consistently succeed or fail in your organisation?

Your leadership team is already designed to produce certain outcomes. The question is whether those outcomes are the ones your organisation actually needs.

Working Genius does not solve leadership problems by adding more talent. It solves them by revealing the structure underneath the talent, so you can finally see why a group of capable people has been underperforming together.

Your next step is to map your executive team. Identify the pairings. Name the gaps. And decide whether the composition you have now is the composition you need to deliver the strategy you have committed to. You can start with the run a Working Genius workshop guide to plan the session.

If you need help facilitating that conversation, reach out at jonno@consultclarity.org.