The Six Types of Working Genius and Mission Teams
by Alan Howell
Director of Church Relations
Why does my team get stuck? Why do we seem to hit the same ruts and have the same conflicts over and over again?
Those questions pop up often as we at MRN work with mission teams serving cross-culturally. And the truth is, we also find that American Church mission committees face similar challenges.
Patrick Lencioni’s book, The 6 Types of Working Genius: A Better Way to Understand Your Gifts, Your Frustrations, and Your Team, offers a simple framework that has proven to be a useful concept in a variety of contexts and situations. The book uses a fable to help the reader see how different people will be able to leverage strengths or be stymied by weaknesses in the following areas: Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity. We’ll include a graphic so you can see some simple definitions and how they fit together.
Lencioni suggests that people typically will be gifted in two of the areas that come naturally to them (their working geniuses), that they will have two areas where they are sufficiently capable (their areas of competency), and then two areas where they experience struggle (their areas of working frustration). When teams can have the right mix of these geniuses and people can perform regularly in their areas of strength, that’s when a group can really thrive. Lencioni uses the metaphor of a coffee cup where the areas of frustration end up acting like a hole in the bottom and one’s energy and passion can quickly leak out if they are spending too much time on that area. Another useful takeaway from this framework is that it provides a pathway for intentionally moving through the work stages of Ideation (Wonder & Invention), Activation (Discernment & Galvanizing), and Implementation (Enablement & Tenacity).
What are some ways that this approach can be helpful for mission teams on the field and missions committees that support them from the United States?
Let’s consider a group of kingdom workers who have great critical thinking skills and can come up with the right plan for meeting the needs of people in that context (they have strengths in Wonder, Invention, and Discernment). But, this group unfortunately lacks the drive to see things through and actually implement it well (they are missing Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity). If, on the front end, their training had identified this problem and helped them come up with strategies to work around that, or alternatively, added some people to the team who could fill in those missing areas, that would set them up for success. Creating awareness and coming up with options for handling these challenges would be crucial for thriving and actually reaching their goals.
Now, let’s imagine a church missions committee who are great at providing support (Enablement) and following through on their commitments in a thorough, detail-oriented way (Tenacity). Those working geniuses certainly are huge gifts to the kingdom workers that they are partnering with... But, what happens when they run up against some roadblocks without an obvious path around them and need some Wonder and Invention? Or if they need to Galvanize members in the congregation to step up to give and serve courageously? Missing out on these strengths could end up being disastrous to this church’s missions engagement. So, taking the time to practice self-awareness about the current group dynamics and intentionally add members to the team to balance their areas of giftedness even before a crisis hits, could make everyone’s experience (including those on the field) markedly better.
MRN exists to help churches and kingdom workers serve well and have meaningful kingdom impact. If you’d like to have a conversation about how tools like these can be useful for your team, we’d love to assist you with that. We believe that when the different parts of the body of Christ function well with one another, we’ll be able to step into a world in need of assistance and be the hands and feet of Jesus together! One of God’s genius moves has been the commitment to have his children work together and we’re glad to get to work together with you, as well.
If your team could benefit from deeper insight into working together more effectively, we’d love to support you. Feel free to reach out to Alan Howell at Alan.howell@mrnet.org.