49. CEO, The Table Group

Intro: Duration: (02:04)

Opening music jingle & sound effects

Jeff Hunt:

Hi, I'm Jeff Hunt and this is Human Capital where we uncover the deeply human aspect of work. Have you ever been working on a particular activity and thought to yourself, this just drains me, and I can't wait until I'm done with it. Or conversely, what about the time when you're in that state of flow at work, where you love what you're doing so much that you lose yourself and perform at your best. We are all created with unique gifts and talents that motivate and inspire us. And we can be triggered by other activities that seem to suck the life out of us.

Today, I'm incredibly lucky to have Pat Lencioni join me on the podcast. And he's going to help me explore this topic as we unpack his new book, “The six types of working genius”, Pat needs no introduction, but here are a few reminders. He is the founder and president of the table group, one of the best-known business authors of our time, having written 12 books and sold over 6 million copies that have been translated into 30 languages.

And he's the host of three podcasts at the table, the work of genius, and the simple reminder. I have read Pat's new book, which I love and highly recommend. So, go preorder it for the September 27 release date. Like so many of Pat’s books, it's pragmatic, it's funny, and it's a fable, and this one helps us understand a radically new way of how we can work better together. Quick story that speaks to Pat's character before I turned the mic over to him.

About 10 years ago, I got the opportunity to hang out with Pat, as well as Amy and Jeff from the table group, as they donated two days of their precious time to teaching and training a group of consultants to go out and help improve the effectiveness and health of nonprofit and faith-based organizations. Pat's core values and servant leadership come out in everything he does. Welcome, Pat!

Patrick Lencioni:

That's a very kind thing of you to say, Jeff, I hope I live up to that. Thanks for having me.

Topic 1. Who or what inspired you in your career? (02:05)

Jeff Hunt:

Well, I'm super excited to have you on the podcast today. And I love this new book. So, we're gonna get into that. Before we do take us back to the beginning of your career and give us a quick thumbnail, but also share who or what inspired you at the beginning of your career and along the way?

Patrick Lencioni:

Yes, so I'll do a quick one. You know, I think it started with my dad who worked very hard and was good at what he did. He was a salesperson and didn't go to college. But he would come home from work and be frustrated with something he called management. I didn't know what that meant I was a little kid. But I thought that was a bummer. And then I had my own first jobs, and I went to college, and I worked hard, and I got my own first job at Bain and Company, a management consulting firm.

And it was two years of misery, and I didn't know why it was supposed to be a great job and I thought, what's wrong with me? And I didn't realize it didn't line up with what I was good at, and the culture wasn't good for me. And so, I worked at Oracle for a couple of years, I went from the frying pan to the fire, and Oracle was not an easy place to work. And it was not a great culture for me. And then I went to another company called Sybase, and the founder of the company took me aside and said, you're really good, we want to hire you.

But we're gonna have to detox you from what you've already learned about work. Because until that time, I thought work was meant to be drudgery. I thought that you were supposed to compete against your colleagues and that it was political. And I had that taken out of me and five years later, I decided, I came up with some ways of thinking about work. I'd been fascinated by it since my dad came home. And I started to understand that, and I decided I wanted to start my own firm, to help companies make the culture of their organization, the human side.

Frankly, it was more important than the intellectual side, because a humanly healthy company, actually figures out a way to get smarter. But smart companies that are dysfunctional, culturally, usually struggle. So, we started a company 25 years ago, this October. And I didn't know I didn't have a book, I didn't know what was gonna go on I had been writing a little book for fun, and a publisher got it by accident, kind of, and published it.

And then people started asking for more and asking me to speak. And 25 years later, the Table Group has been here, and 12 books and lots of different models and tools, I keep thinking I'm finished. And then another idea comes. And now that we've done the working genius, I understand why because naturally, I'm inclined toward invention and discernment and that's kind of what we do.

Topic 2. Ideation, activation, and implementation (04:41)

Jeff Hunt:

Well, keep those ideas coming because they have been absolutely transformative for so many people in organizations. And so I want to get into the working genius. And before we do that, maybe we can just talk about how people tend to think of work in more generalities. You know, not think thinking about how tasks and projects get chunked down. I like to be sort of starting with the big picture. You mentioned this in your book but talk about the difference between ideation, activation, and implementation.

Patrick Lencioni:

Right. So, this model came about two years ago, almost exactly here in our offices in Lafayette, California, I was frustrated that day, I found myself frustrated. A lot at work, even though I love my company, I love my work. And Amy said to me, why are you like this? She was really curious. And so it started with me saying, I don't know, but I want to figure it out. And the first thing we figured out is that there are actually three stages of work. And the first one is ideation that's where you come up with an idea, everybody knows what that is. The last one is implementation, which is when you actually have to get it done.

The middle stage, though, is often missed and that's called activation. So we talked to a guy from Nike, and shortly after we came up with a model, and he worked in innovation. And he said, too often they would do ideation throw it over the wall to somebody to implement. And they were like, why doesn't more of our ideas work? And come to fruition, and they realized they were missing that middle step, which is called activation. Because after somebody comes up with an idea, you have to actually vet it and tweak it and go back and forth with the ideators.

And then you have to get people on board, which is part of that step before you can start to implement. And if you skip that middle step, neither side works very well. So, those are the three steps but there are two activities involved in each one and that's where the six types of working genius come from. There are six skills or geniuses involved in every kind of work, whether it's launching a product, starting a company, planning a family vacation, rolling out a new, a new program, any kind of work, at home, at church, at school, in the office involves six different skills.

And unfortunately, only two of them for us as individuals are our geniuses where we get joy and energy. Two of them were okay but they don't feed us. And two of them, we really get frustrated doing caught our work in frustration. And if we don't know which of those six are geniuses, or competencies, we call them our frustrations. We can go through a whole career frustrated and not know why. So that's where ideation, activation, and implementation come into play.

Jeff Hunt:

Okay, and so what are your working geniuses and you're working frustrations?

Patrick Lencioni:

Okay. So, if you think about the six of them in order, going from 50,000 feet in the air, which is wonder, all the way down to the 61, which is called tenacity, which is the final step in getting things done. I live up at about 35 and 20,000 feet, I have invention, I love to come up with new ideas. So that's the second genius and discernment, which is I love to evaluate things I love to use my gut feeling my instincts, and kind of pattern recognition and intuition to evaluate things and come up with ideas. So, I have those two, I'm what's called the discriminating Ideator. I love to come up with new ideas, and I love to evaluate them to make sure they work. So those are my two geniuses, and so when a person comes to me for help, those are the things I love to do.

Jeff Hunt:

And what are the things that drain you?

Patrick Lencioni:

Well, it's hard to say this, I mean, it's hard to admit this because you feel guilty, but you shouldn't. I do not have any natural gifting in enablement, which is coming alongside somebody who needs help and helping them on their terms. It's really difficult for me when somebody says, will you help me? I'm like, yes, but please let me ideate and discern for you, and they said, no, just do what I asked. Some people are naturally God gave them the gift.

You and I were talking before we recorded like the deacon of the church who says, I love to come alongside people and give them whatever they need. And it's just that's not natural to me. I can do it sometimes, I certainly have to do it for my children and my wife, but it doesn't come naturally. The other one that I don't have, which is frustration is tenacity. I don't like to finish things, I start something I move on. And I don't like to blow through the obstacles at the end I don't like to tie up all the loose ends.

And so writing a book, I have to have an editor Tracy, who works with me, who forces me to finish it as well as I started it because I often give it to her and I go I think it's good, and she's like, Yeah, it's good until the last third of it, which you didn't even try. And I'm like, Oh no, I want to write my next book she's like, no, get back in the room, I'm gonna crack the whip on you until it's as good as the beginning.

Jeff Hunt:

Well, I'm glad that you have her because it's a great book.

Patrick Lencioni:

Thank you. I think the early readers, some of them think this might be my best one. I mean I think I'm getting better as a writer.

Jeff Hunt:

One of the things I love about it, you are providing a system for people to better understand how they can work together and so that's number one. The other thing I like about it, is I've used Myers Briggs, MBTI is very popular, but the challenge is when you get those letters, what do you do with them?

Patrick Lencioni:

Exactly. We've been using Myers Briggs for 25 years here, my wife introduced it to us. And we used it with our clients we still do to a certain extent, but it was always like, so what does this mean about how we get things done? This tool is all about the specific activities, and their God-given gifts, but they're related to getting work done really specific kinds of tasks, so we're seeing teams, have everybody take this and reorganize their work within 15 minutes, they look at it, and they go, Holy Toledo, nobody in our group likes invention. We better borrow somebody from another department or hire somebody or learn to be better at that, it's very practical, it's very close to the work getting done.

Jeff Hunt:

The other thing I love is, that it's really a celebration of diversity. Now, statistically, they have proven that diverse teams outperform homogenous teams, right?

Patrick Lencioni:

Yeah. And that's always been true, but the question is, what is diversity exactly?

Jeff Hunt:

But the working genius model shows that we have these various attributes that are critical to being productive, and joy-filled as a team. And so, when we didn't reflect on that before, we sort of missed out on that opportunity and maybe we're working out of areas of frustration.

Patrick Lencioni:

Exactly and there are lots of different kinds of diversity, but if you don't get to the heart of this kind. You can have six people on a team who have completely different backgrounds and racial backgrounds and cultural histories. But if they actually do work exactly the same way, they're going to be missing a bunch of stuff. So, if this isn't factored into that, we can do our best around diversity, and it won't work.

Topic 3 WIDGET (11:54)

Jeff Hunt:

The other thing I like is. I'm a big acronym person so, it's super easy, because it's just WIDGET. It's Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity.

Patrick Lencioni:

Yeah, and I will tell you, I did not try to do that. Well, I didn't until the end. So, when we started coming up with names for these, wonder was the right one because like people that wonder and invention was clear, because that's what people come up with. Discernment was a great word because it's like, oh, people that just know how to discern the right answer. And then we got to G and galvanizing was the right word. And I said it's WIDG. Oh, my gosh, this could be WIDGET. But I still didn't want to do that, because I didn't want it to seem like we started out by saying, let's come up with a word.

And then we struggled with enablement, because people said, well, it sounds like drug addicts and alcoholics getting enabled. We said, that's true but all the other words we came up with were like, support and help and they weren't, right. So, we said, enablement is right. And when I got to WIDGE, I said, we're gonna find a T word, darn it, I'm not gonna make it WIDGEL.

And tenacity was great, it was like the people that just love to push things through to the end. So yeah, it does help. It does help, and I like widget, it's about getting things done. And then my wife came up with the idea. She looked at the model and said, I had six circles, she said, those should be gears because they work off one another one propels the next and so that's how that came about.

Jeff Hunt:

Thinking about these six different types, I want you to just speak for a second Pat about how each of these has inherent value in their own unique way. So can you put our listeners at ease?

Patrick Lencioni:

Yes, I think God made us to need one another. And the thing is, no one person no man is an island. Who said that? I can't remember what author said that. But we are not meant to work alone, and I remember right when I started my company, I didn't know this model. But I decided to leave my job. I was a vice president at a company and my dad said, don't leave Pat, you have benefits. And you know, he came from a very conservative background around finances and stuff.

And I said, Dad, I'm going to start my own company, and then I said I'm gonna hire four people that worked with me before. And he said, Oh, no, no, no, wait until you make enough money to afford them. And I said, Dad, I'm so bad at some of the things we need to do and they're good at them I'll never make any money. And even early on, I knew I needed others, now, I understand why I understand exactly, I can explain it. And so God gives none of us all of these things. And yet people go through their life feeling guilty for the ones they don't have.

Especially if you're raised a certain way. You know, Jeff, I grew up, my dad had his type. And when he asked me to help him with things, he wanted me to help him the way he did them, so he'd get me up to mow the lawn every weekend, and I hated it. I loved my dad, but I hated mowing the lawn. And I always thought, Man, I'm a bad son, I'm lazy, but I realized now that he wanted me to do exactly what he asked me to do, and to fit in and to do it perfectly.

And those are my two working frustrations, enablement and tenacity had he said to me, Hey Pat see the lawn, I want you to go figure out how you want to do it, what we could plant where and you figure it out on your own and use your judgment. I'd have been like, Oh, how fun! So, I just am not good at responding to other people's needs. And yet there are people I know that are like, just call me I'll do whatever you need me to do. And for years, I thought, I'm just not a nice person. And it's like, oh, when we came up with a model and we design the test, my son, Tracy, and we designed the test, it was like, oh, okay, this explains everything.

Similarly, we had pastors call us Jeff, and say, I've been feeling guilty about being a pastor for the last 20 years, we were like, why? They said, because every time I have to write a sermon or a homily, I'm not good at it, and I thought, why did I become a pastor? They took the working genius, and they didn't have any wonder or invention. But they were good at counseling and running their church and organizing activities.

But they didn't have creative new, groundbreaking ideas about what to speak on. And they finally said, now I realized, I just didn't get that gift. And now I can call this other person who has that natural gift, they can help me. It allows them to be who God made them to be. It allows me to be who God made me to be. And it doesn't mean I'm a failure. We carry guilt and judgment around our whole lives because we think that we're supposed to be everything and none of us, none of us are.

Jeff Hunt:

It seems as though maybe there is a greater realization today with the pandemic and the global collective trauma that we've all experienced around that, and that led to the great resignation. But are people sort of getting to that point where burnout has. They have not been working out of their genius, is that true?

Patrick Lencioni:

Yeah, and the problem is when people don't understand their genius, and their frustration, it's just as important to understand that, they think that the way to make their lives better is to work less. And here's what's interesting, Jeff, take a person who has mild or too low satisfaction in their job, but they're not working in their genius at all. Giving them less work to do not in their genius does not make them happier.

In fact, it makes them worse, giving them more work to do, but allowing them to use their genius makes them happier. So, there are people out there that work 12 hours a day in their genius. And they are on top of the world. There are people working four hours a day from home thinking they're getting away with something, but it's drudgery. And I think that's what the great resignation is they're like, Well screw it, I'm not going to do this anymore.

But they're not replacing it with something meaningful. And that's why what we find is there are so many people right now who are so sad, and there's their morale is so low. And when you discover your genius that God actually put you on this earth to do something, it is the best and that applies at home, as well as at work.

Not every aspect of parenting is easy for me, I have to do it anyway. But if I'm not using my genius, as a parent, my kids aren't getting the best for me and I'm not going to be the parent I need to be. So, understanding this changes everything. And I think the great resignation, and everything that's going on right now is a more personal and psychological problem than it is an economic one.

Jeff Hunt:

It almost feels like this book and this model. They're business-oriented, but they're really personally oriented about self-development and finding peace within themselves. I'm reading this book right now called the Five Regrets of the Dying I don't know if you've heard of it but is a fascinating book about this Australian woman who does hospice care, and she has an opportunity to be with people and their end days and learns from them.

But what I'm getting Pat is that your book almost provides a new realization for people that if they can change the way they work to live out of their place of joy, they can go through the rest of their life and end up at a place of peace rather than stress.

Patrick Lencioni:

Yes. And you know, what's interesting about this, first of all, Cody, who works on our team, when he saw this model, three days later, he has discernment and galvanizing. He said, this is going to be bigger than The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which is our biggest thing. And that seems absolutely true right now, based on the response we're getting, more than a quarter of a million people have taken this assessment before the book has even come out.

And the responses are, that this is life-changing, team-changing, and company changing. But I think the interesting thing is, on October 1 of last year after this model have been around for a while, we decided to relaunch our company after 24 years. And we're really focused now broader than organizational health on human dignity. Because we think that is what this is all about and that gets into faith and culture and society and relationship and all those different things.

And this book touches on all of that and this model does. and I think you're exactly right. It is so far beyond just work. It's about people and one of the groups of people that I'm most excited to use this are retiring people. Because think about what is retirement, really? Retirement is, I'm no longer going to get paid to work it looks like, but I can now work, doing whatever I love most. Retirement can be the best time in your life if you've never got to live in your genius, so go volunteer, by using your geniuses and find people who need those geniuses.

And it's going to be a marriage made in heaven but if we retire and think we're just going to watch more TV or just golf, we lose so many people, my dad went through this, he didn't have a purpose after retirement. I wish I'd had the working genius, god bless him because he would have been able to see like, Oh, I'm meant to do this kind of stuff. So I think we should all retire right now, whether we're getting paid or not, and find the geniuses that we need to use and spend much of our time using them.

Topic 4. The fundamental attribution error and how to fix it (20:55)

Jeff Hunt:

So, let's shift and talk a little bit about teams. Was it in the five dysfunctions of a team that you were talking about the fundamental attribution error? Yes. First of all, maybe you can explain to listeners that aren't familiar, what is the fundamental attribution error? And then how can we actually reduce that by knowing somebody's working genius?

Patrick Lencioni:

The fundamental attribution I learned in college in a social psychology class, and it's one of the few things in college that really stuck with me that I apply, and it goes like this, when other people do things that annoy us, we tend to attribute it to their character, we make a fundamental attribution about their character, it's an internal one. And this is the guy that cuts us off in traffic, on St. Mary's Road, where you and I live, and we think, what a jerk. Wow, to be married to that person or to be to have to work with that person.

They are just a selfish, uncaring person, they didn't even care about me. The next day, I'm driving down that same road, and I cut somebody else off, because I got confused or something. And I think, Oh, I'm not a jerk. I just didn't know where I was going and it's a tough day, so we have more information about ourselves, and not about others. And St. Francis of Assisi said, seek to understand others more than to be understood, and so is the fundamental attribution breakdown in relationships because we tend to judge others and expect people not to judge us.

So, the key is to know people, know who they are, and what are they all about, what is their story? What's their situation today? You're going to be less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error. Well, once you know a person's working genius, you're like, oh, no wonder, we tend to judge people and say things like, gosh, I think he hasn't worked that hard, or he doesn't care. Or he's not very smart. When you learn they're working genius you go, oh, it's not that at all, it's just you're not naturally gifted in that area.

This is my favorite story I think, Jeff, the favorite kind of story because we've had many of these people call us and say I was about to fire someone, and when they took the working genius, and I realized, Oh, they're a great cultural fit for the organization I had them in the wrong role. We had a guy I can't remember what kind of organization he was in North Carolina. And he said he was going into a performance review, and it was going to be ugly, he knew he had been struggling. He goes in there, he takes the work in genius, that the day before he brings the results and hands it to his manager, his manager looked at it and says, well, no wonder you're doing terrible, you're in the wrong job.

We have this other job over here. Oh, my gosh, you would be fantastic. They gave him a raise and put him in a different job when he was going in to talk about why he wasn't good at what he did. But they didn't know why. So, it just gives language I'm parenting my youngest son differently because I know what his working genius is. I'm gonna give you an example. He is what's called wonder and enablement. These are people that are really deep thinkers, and they love to help others. They don't advocate for themselves very well. So, he had a group of friends who weren't treating him very well.

And he never stood up for himself, and with our other sons, we just said, stand up for yourself, you should do this. We understood why we understood that was baked into him, we could explain to him, Hey, it's okay but understand this is kind of what happens with you. And as a result of that, rather than us criticizing him, we empathize with him, and he made the decision on his own. So, this is a fundamental way to understand people. The ramifications come about in five minutes of looking at the results, and the assessment takes 10 minutes to take, which we love.

Jeff Hunt:

By the way, before we get too far off of that just go to workinggenius.com to take the assessment.

Patrick Lencioni:

Yes, working genius.com two g's in the middle. We purposely priced it at $25 Dave Ramsey he’s my friend he’s the financial guy, and he is and he said to me, this is worth way more than $25 Pat, you should have charged a lot more. And I said I know Dave, but we don't want anybody. We don't want a junior in college or a parent or a family to say oh, we can't all afford to do this. Once you do this, it changes the way you look at people, my wife and I, our marriage has changed as a result of this.

Jeff Hunt:
this. That's incredible. Well, your whole concept and mission of providing dignity for people sort of connects to the price you make accessible to everybody. Right?

Patrick Lencioni:

Exactly. And by the way, you mentioned the team thing before, you know what one of my challenges is, Jeff? This tool is really two very different but related things, but they're very different one, it's an individual tool for understanding yourself and what you should do. But the team application, it's actually a productivity tool. I was talking to a CEO just two days ago, a friend and he said, Oh, Pat, have I told you what working genius did for our organization?

He asked his employees, he goes, we are editing one another better, we are giving each other feedback, we're switching roles on our own employees are going hey, why don't I do that thing for you? Why don't you do this thing for me? Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna love my job. They're getting more done in less time with the same number of people. So, when a company says we're having a hard time hiring people, because of the great resignation, what they're finding is they do this, and they're like, oh, we can get more out of the people we have but only if we understand their geniuses and their frustrations.

Topic 5. Impacting employee experience with the 6 Types of Working Genius model (26:10)

Jeff Hunt:

Well, the table group is all about organizational health. And what I'm reflecting on is that today, if you look out at what the buzzwords are in People Operations and HR, it's all about employee experience. And I'm thinking about how the working genius model really connects up beautifully to both the organizational health, which is a cultural, it can be a cultural thing. And employee experience, so if you do this broadly, can it really impact employee experience?

Patrick Lencioni:

In a massive way, so, there are two ways to look at employee experience, it's like the CEO and the executive team, the leaders setting the culture for the organization and making it work well, and that's critical. And too many organizations think culture is about giving them free food or a pool to swim in, or all this other stuff, and even like flexible hours, that's the new one, like you don't have to come to work. Well, if you hate your work, working from home, I guess makes you a little less miserable, but it's not going to change your job.

But the other thing, you can look from the bottom up and say to people, I want you to know what you're best at, and come to us and help us give you work that aligns with what you're best at. And so it needs to be organized from the top. But it also needs to be celebrated and implanted from the bottom so people can advocate for like, I think I could give this organization so much more if I were allowed to use these geniuses.

So, it's a game changer, one that I didn't expect. I mean, we used to use the Myers Briggs, but we never really understood how that could transform the culture of an organization, this tool can. We still love the Myers-Briggs for understanding things about your personality, but this is more about your job.

Jeff Hunt:

What are your words of wisdom, Pat, for somebody who suddenly realizes they've just been working in their area of frustration maybe for years, or even decades? And all of a sudden, it's this epiphany. So what words of wisdom do you have for them?

Patrick Lencioni:

Well, the first thing is no guilt just be grateful. I remember I have obsessive-compulsive disorder. I've had it since I was a kid I got diagnosed when I was 25. And I was like, wow, that's great. I remember the first time I got diagnosed, somebody told me the story of a 70-year-old man who had had it his whole life and didn't know. And I remember thinking, oh, man, he must have been bummed. He was like, No, this is so great that I finally figured this out.

So wherever you are in your life, celebrate the relief of knowing that there's nothing wrong with you, you are just tough on yourself because you didn't understand, and allow yourself to lean into the gifts God gave you. The other words of wisdom, I would say as some people may realize they've been working in the wrong area, and they've actually gotten good at it. Don't let that trick you into thinking you should continue to do it.

Because there are people that because of their wounds, or because of their discipline or whatever else have ground hard enough to get good at something they don't like. Have the wisdom and the courage and the leap of faith to go and find a way to do what you do. You know, when professional football players or athletes retire really early.

I don't know if you know Barry Sanders is the best running back ever. And at age 30 he quit, and you're like, What are you doing? I think you might have been 29. And I think he probably just said, I don't like this. I'm good at it because I got praised for it but I really don't like running over I want to go do something else. And that is good.

Jeff Hunt:

That is good. That is good. No question. So before we jump into some lightning round questions, you're fairly open about your faith sometimes and I'm wanting you to share, if you will, how has your faith shaped your values and who you are as a person in a business leader?

Patrick Lencioni:

Well, it's hard to answer that because it's the core, I would say How has my occasional lack of faith drifted me? But that's one of the big things that we did last year, as we said, you know, we're going to lean into the whole person, the human dignity, which is something given by God. So, my faith, throughout my life, it's constantly re-aligning me around what matters and what's important. And what I'm amazed about is I'm 57 years old.

And I feel like I'm just starting every year I'm like, Well, I'm growing in my faith, I just realized how much further I have to go. So, I guess I would say it's central. Jesus is the first person I greet when I wake up in the morning. And I try to, as I walked out of the house today, I felt myself getting a little like, caught up in work. And I was like, okay, Jesus, stay with me. Let me stay with you. Let me not lose sight of you. So, that's what I would say.

Topic 6. Lighting round questions (30:35)

Jeff Hunt:

I'm gonna ask you some lightning round questions, but before I do you have a lightning round concept for team meetings? Can you share what that is? Before I throw my lightning round questions edge.

Patrick Lencioni:

Yeah, ours is a little different. Although it's called that for the same reason. Before a meeting, we say before you start talking about what you think you're going to talk about the meeting, just go around and give everybody 30 seconds at most they can they probably use 15. To say here's what I think I'm working on right now. And then like, you're three minutes into the meeting,

If six people use 30 seconds, and then you go, Okay, wow, I'm way more informed about what everybody's doing, that's going to help us understand what we need to be thinking about because I didn't even know two of you are doing that stuff. So the lightning round is just a quick way of level setting so people know what they think they're working on so we might know what we need to change.

Jeff Hunt:

So, my lightning round questions for you are just top of mind, and I'm gonna throw them out there. You tell me what you think. First of all, it's a very easy one. The first one is what are you most grateful for?

Patrick Lencioni:

It is an easy one. It's my wife and my children. It's my faith and the gift that I I'm most grateful for is my wife and my children. And I need to slow down and appreciate that more, it's so easy to see what's lacking and to get frustrated. And, boy, that idea of counting your blessings every day, my wife has got 8 out of 10 Fantastic qualities, which is higher than I deserve. And Gosh, darn it if we can't focus on the two that we need that we wish were different. So it's her and my boys.

Jeff Hunt:

It's the human condition. What's the most difficult leadership lesson you learned over your career Pat?

Patrick Lencioni:

Well, it gets into vulnerability. It's just like that you can dig yourself in trying to defend yourself and pretend you don't have problems. And that you just have to just stop and say, Yeah, it's my fault, there's a lot of things I do, and that I bring on, and I can't blame others. And so those moments of vulnerability seem easy to talk about. But in every single moment of those, it's painful and liberating, but the pain you have to go through to be liberated is huge.

Jeff Hunt:

And there's so much growth through vulnerability, I think of the working genius model on how there's an opportunity for people to be vulnerable with each other and grow out of that vulnerability, right?

Patrick Lencioni:

Well, it actually makes it less painful. Because you can say to somebody, Oh, this isn't because I'm a bad person. This is because I'm just not good at this and it gives you the context to do that. We've only had one person take it. My son, Matt got a note from somebody saying I'm good at all six. What do they call themselves? I'm a lethal systems thinker. I can do it all.

Jeff Hunt:

Who's one person you would interview if you could living or not?

Patrick Lencioni:

Living or not? You know, there is an author, who I love. His name is Dean Koontz and he writes, some people might know him that he's super prolific and he writes these books. They're not horror books. They're supernatural, they’re beautiful books and he's a great writer. I'm afraid to do it because I love his books so much that I'm kind of afraid that I would be disappointed. But I think it would be Dean Koontz. And I can't recommend his books enough. He is one of these deceptively deep authors that write these books that are hard to put down. And then you realize that he's a brilliant writer and thinker.

Jeff Hunt:

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Patrick Lencioni:

Before I started my company, I was in a meeting. And the Vice President of Marketing, who was a pretty well-known guy in his industry, said to me, I didn't know him very well. And I just gotten married and he said, Hey, Pat, do you have kids? We were having a meeting to go over a presentation around the company's purpose and analysts are in place. He said, Hey, Pat, do you have kids? And I said, No, I don't, not yet, we just got married.

And he goes, well, when you do I want you to spend time with him because I have a 16-year-old son and I don't know him, and it's really awful. So, let's talk about the presentation, he said and I was like, Whoa, that he said that to me? It was so vulnerable. And later on, so when I had kids, I always kept that in mind. And I remember like, my twins were having their first confession in the Catholic Church, you know, and I got invited to fly across the country. To get an award because I had sold a million books. And I was like, What am I going to do?

I've gone to their first confession, they can mail me that trophy. I don't care. But I remember Stuart, the guy that gave me that advice, it's stuck with me. And so many times I've had opportunities to do something that would have been professionally beneficial. And I was like, no, I'm coaching their soccer team, I'm, I'm gonna stay home, I could fly overseas and that would be kind of cool to say, Oh, I went to Switzerland to give a talk, I can always go to Switzerland. But I've really erred on the side of doing family things and I really appreciate his advice.

Jeff Hunt:

I like to ask at the end of the podcast, what the most important takeaway is, and I want you to share that but I also want you to share what your hope is, for the working genius model. So, if you have a vision for this, and you think of it 5,10, or 20 years from now, what's your hope?

Patrick Lencioni:

I hope that there are no people that spend time, get to the end of their career or their lives, and say, I didn't actually use the gifts that gave me joy, and that would have given joy to others. And when I was a kid, and my dad used to come home from work, I remember being kind of heartbroken, like, my dad's a great guy, he works really hard and he's just not loving what's going on there. And I just don't want people to do that.

There are three things we do in our life, Jeff, we sleep, we work and we live our personal lives. You could break it down that way, the way we work impacts the other two more than the other two impact their work. So, people, I help people sleep well, their personal lives are critically important. But if your work is bad, you don't sleep well and you don't have good personal experiences because you feel down. So, I want work to be an additive effect in life, not a minus effect.

Jeff Hunt:

Wonderful I love that. Thanks for sharing all this great wisdom Pat, and for coming on the show.

Patrick Lencioni:

Well, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate your interest and passion and you're and given me this opportunity to talk to you. God bless you, Jeff,

Jeff Hunt:

You too.

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Outro(37:08)

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Jeff Hunt:

Thanks for listening to the show this week. We release new episodes every other Tuesday. Let me know what you thought of this episode by emailing humancapitalgoalspan.com. Human capital is produced by GoalSpan. Subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts. And please share this podcast with your colleagues, team, or friends. Thanks for being human kind.