[Music] welcome to the working genius podcast where we discuss anything and everything related to the six types of working genius and how it impacts your work and your life I'm patlin chony your host joined by Cody Thompson my co-host how you doing Cody I was gonna not say great but I'm just gonna go with great I I have don't have my list of synonyms in front of me so great works you're doing great we got Tracy Noble Tracy how are you I'm awesome to awesome she's even better we got Matlin chony not on mic he's our engineer he refuses to join the mic he doesn't want to do that right now we're going to we're finding a way to twist his arm all right so Cody what what are we gonna talk about today today the most exciting title we've ever had pairings and labels part one but actually the content is really exciting yeah not pairing like p e a r but pairings and labels hey it is going to be fun we're going to let you into our discussion about how we're describing and labeling the different pairs of working genius and if there's 16 types I mean you know there's the the six types working genius I me if there's six types there's 15 permutations and combinations that go together Pairs and so what we've been doing lately in our conference room I wish you could see it because it's all over the board we have been talking for the last month about what label What description would you use to describe each one of these pairs and today we're going to explore three of the 15 pairs the three that correspond to Cody Tracy and me and while we're pretty feeling pretty strong about this we've been we we want to you guys are Insiders on this podcast and there's like 10 or 12, people that listen to this regularly now and we want to solicit your input if you think that you like something or you don't like it or you have some insight for us that's great so did I do that well Tracy does that describe it that's great yeah that was what we going say Cody before we jump in I think the the thing I would say is this is sort of what we promised after season one was like Hey we're going to go back and dive back into exploration of the model because there's so much more there and so we have for months been putting these different combinations up and and throwing people that we know into those buckets and then figuring out what is true about them and trying to come up with ideas that this is not to go around labeling people with these two pairings but it's to help people accept and sort of felt seen and known by going like yeah that's kind of what I feel like I do and and it's not just these labels I think the next step of this is that we want to put like hey here's what this type of person brings to a team and here's how your teammates can actually utilize a person with this pair and so there's this is sort of the this is all wet cement and so we're going to explore these words that we're using but by the time it gets to you know concrete I think I we're not quite there but this would be so fun because I think at the end what we'll ask is hey reach out to us let us know does this resonate with you yeah and and it's it's worth saying like why does this matter it really is helpful when somebody does their finds out their two letters and they're I think these this is me to say here's how we describe that kind of person and so often already in our test team people have said oh my gosh that's exactly me or that's my friend and I that so it's good confirmation it's it makes it easy for people to resonate because somebody you might talk to go I'm an it and then you go well that really what they are is this and people can say oh I can get that because I know what those words mean and it's darn fun it's just darn fun to come up with these with these labels and I think the way to think about it is like you know the the what we've sort of codified or what is like quote unquote Canon of of working Geniuses still the descriptions of each of these individual Geniuses like someone has galvanizing and tenacity this is sort of a icing on the cake of like hey I want to explore that a little bit more what does that mean and and what sort of like nuances could I could I go about the pairings cuz right now we just have the like hey here's what discernment means and here's what galvanizing means but when you put them together what does that look like so it's it's really really fun exploration and we should probably say that it doesn't matter the order we're not saying like the difference between a g d or a DG we're like no it's just the pairings we're not going to do that many combos because we're not really sure you know it's hard for people to say this is my first and this is my second it's the pair that matters most and so that's what we're going to be doing and we should probably tell you what our Tracy why don't you describe you're in that room right now why don't you describe what the Whiteboard looks like and what's on there so people have a sense of what this is like it's beautiful no it's actually quite a mess it's a gigantic whiteboard It's actually an entire wall and we've got each one of the pairings up there we've got a list of names we've got the labels and there are quite a few labels we actually have maybe five labels crossed out per pairing and then we've got some struggles and some attributes under each one of the pairings as well so it's like it's this beautiful mess that I'm looking at right now yeah we've been Crossing things out and adding names so like we oh I have another friend who's a wd so let's talk about that so we're using real people and dissecting them and asking ourselves is this is this relevant the last thing is I think it's kind of interesting to know that we're using the working genius model to develop these like so basically we have Pat who's an inventor go up and come up with a potential label and then we have discerners behind you sitting there and going like I don't think that's exactly right so that's why we have four or five of them crossed out so anyway no but you know something Cody I think it's worth saying that I went in there one day and we wrote up all the the Combos and I just started coming up with words because I love to do that and I don't know if any of the words that I originally came up with they're still there oh no they are are they okay but we've been refining it and so let's talk about the first one today let's talk about Tracy okay Tracy's combination is either de or e d so she's a de that means discernment and enablement and we went through this and here's what's the label we you are what Tracy I am the insightful collaborator the insightful collaborator that means she works well with people she's some of the other phrases we we talked about you know like the she's the partner and the like the most awesome teammate is this because they want to help and they're really thoughtful about the way they do that so we said the insightful collaborator yeah and and so think about this like it it's really hard to find Just Two Words and each of these words has to correspond to one of the the genius letters right so insightful is the discernment sort of thing like she also has enablement but it's not just that she's helping people indiscriminately she's actually using her discernment to be insightful about the way she's coming alongside someone so like as you you'll see as we go through these labels like one of the words is more aligned with one of the Geniuses but together they sort of create this this nuanced you know picture of that the the other ones we had in mind for this was like a thoughtful partner right like a a really intentional thoughtful person that would come alongside or even a compassionate adviser someone who the adviser part then speaks to the discernment right like I'm going to counsel you in the right direction and the compassionate part speaks to the enablement process so the all of those words we landed right now on the insightful collaborator and I think that as as we asked Tracy like does that fit and she's like oh yeah that sounds that sounds like me it's actually great to have that label because when you're describing it you're describing the working genius to other people and you you're a de it's really easy for me to say well the way it's described is I'm an insightful collaborator so it's a really good thing as you're trying to describe your type to others to have that label yep so you're my editor but really so I write my and you give insights and you're collaborating with me and helping me along you're perfect at that and you and Karen and Danny three people in our office are all insightful collaborators and it completely makes sense and all of them said that's me and that's what's the great thing about this the other thing is people who aren't this type are like that's not me people know I would never describe myself that way so that's what we're going for in these in these descriptions is things that the people that have those types would say that describes me to a te and people that don't would say nope I can't relate to that one so that's who you are so we'd love to hey if you're having thoughts about that if you're a de or an ed out there listening to this we'd love for you to say that sounds like me I can't wait to tell somebody or like well what about this so it's not like you said it's not in cement yet we're we'd love to get your input are we ready to talk about Tracy's that like the the Dark Side of each type yet oh yeah let's go there the dark side I love that dark side we we did actually on this and I think this is helpful as like the goal here is to have a one pager that would be like hey here's here's the label here's what it looks like you know when you're activated and used well and here's some potential struggles you might have and under traces we put you know you can be Dees can be kind of slow to confront the E part of them might might kind of overwhelm the conflict part of it like the although Tracy you know one of the things that I Galvanize you around is I'm like hey Tracy I want to see you lead with your discernment if you don't agree with that and sometimes that's hard for you because you're so accommodating you know y e takes over y we were just talking about that today in fact Tracy even said I feel kind of ashamed half the time because I don't make people do things in a certain way I always accommodate them and then in the end my stuff doesn't get done I feel like I've let things down and let herself down absolutely and then the the really negative sign to that is sometimes the bitterness will set in and I don't like that like I get I get bitter around those things and I don't that's that's not a natural thing for me right and it's related to the second thing we put in the struggle box which is self forgetful and and really what that means is like you're so focused on being the thoughtful collaborator for other people that you can sometimes forget that you need people to come alongside and help you or or you make you know so you're always you see that's a double responsive type meaning that you're there anticipating people's needs always reacting to what's going on and so there are times where you don't disrupt and say hey I actually need something from you guys you know yeah the thing about people with the enablement genius is they don't like to be enabled as much because they always feel like they should be helping others so Tracy is not great at asking for help and so oftentimes with Tracy Karen and Danny and people with this type by the time they're burned out they're in tears and people are like what's going on and they're like I'm dying it's like why didn't you tell me it's like because I didn't want to have to and so they can it's not martyrdom but they can be they can push themselves to that point where they're really really burnt out yes no martyrdom that that is interesting and that I think that speaks to kind of that the bitterness right yeah and and I know you're like I know I should have asked for help before but I just don't feel like I should have to do that yes yep so that's the Eed the insightful collaborator It's a Wonderful type every type is wonderful I was just describing this to somebody the other day every one of these types is fantastic and you need them all but they're very different very different okay let's talk about Cody the DG or the GD that means he's a discerner he's got really good gut feel and he's a galvanizer he likes to get people moving he likes to rally the troops so Tracy what do we call now Cody you can say yours what do we call you the more firm cement here is intuitive activator so the intuitive part kind of describes the discernment right like you kind of have integrative thinking and kind of understand what needs to happen and then the activator piece speaks to the galvanizing part of it which is then once you understand intuitively what needs to happen you get people moving around that and actually you guys came up with this before I saw the Whiteboard and you you had me try it on when I walked in there and I was like yeah that kind of feels pretty right for me I mean that that's sort of I walk in and I go hey I'll kind of figure out what needs to happen and then I'll get people moving so I I feel like that is pretty pretty accurate yeah and intuitive meaning it it's not data driven and we thought the other one that was close to this we thought was pretty good was Matthew said you're the pushy douchebag yeah the pushy douchebag is is another one he was just teasing Cody that's not what this type is all about but so for the real one there was another like another version of this was The Confident activator which is I think what led Matt to say yeah sometimes the confidence can go into the pushy dou bag Arena so which I didn't think was that wrong either I tried that on and that seemed to fit pretty well also so whatever we decide on you know we have had a lot of fun with this it is really fun trying to come up with this so the intuitive activator they don't they don't need a lot of data but it's not like they're being careless they are really in touch with like this feels right let's act now and they get people moving and we love that about dgs because they're not galvanizing us around something they haven't really assessed but their assessment comes pretty quickly and it's usually pretty right on and that's one of the things Cody does around here he's like are you kidding you guys we have enough information let's go and and and and we like going with that which leads to the dark side and I mean also say so you don't have to say it in my face like this but one of the things that is that is on there is it says projects overconfidence and you know I do that I've gotten that feedback from My Wife and everyone that I've ever worked with and so yeah that's definitely true generally I like to say hey I you know I thought I was wrong or I'm not wrong very often I thought I was wrong once but I was wrong about that you know so I think there is a thing about me in particular and maybe it's shared with all all dgs is like because you have this intuition you and you and you are you want to activate people it can sometimes project as hey guys let me tell you what to do and I I need to wait and learn and I discern with other people before I start the galvanizing of that right and and but the thing about it is the reason why all of these things you take the the the difficult Parts with the good parts because for for every 10 times Cody activates us around something he feels intuition he's right about it eight and a half nine times that one time he's wrong is hard not because he doesn't want to admit he's wrong because he trusts his gut so much yeah you really have to and we Cody and I have been through this I really have to work hard to get you off of that but it works nine out of 10 times so I want it yeah and the other word we wrote down there was so Cody can be a little bit Cavalier a little too quick to go yeah I think we know and again I'll take that cavalierness and that projection of overconfidence because nine out of tenen times he's right one of my Reflections and this might be helpful for other dgs is you know working genius is a sequence of how thing how work gets done it it doesn't always happen in sequence but what I find more often when I'm the negative side which is overconfidence or Cavalier I'm ging before I've discern I'm galvanizing before I've discerned it or I have to clarify am I Discerning or am I galvanizing because often times I'll just because those are so close together I'm I'm Discerning but it feels like I'm already pushing people to action you know right and so I need to clarify that and that's helpful for our my colleagues and people in my life you're exactly right Cody it's like the the beauty of these pairings is that you can emphasize one or the other and sometimes we can say hey let's just use your discernment you don't have to Galvanize y okay so we're going to do mine now I guess I'm the ID or the DI and that would be the invention and discernment so I like to invent come up with things from scratch and discern and evaluate things I like doing both of those things when you put those together we've had a hard time labeling this one probably because the the words we get used for other things but we we're calling this the discriminating innovator and you know what's interesting right out of the gate and this is I think Tracy shares this is this feels like the most wet cement one like there's still something in our discernment that says those are not the exact right two words for this and and in fact there's we've used so many other labels here to get here we had an integrative inventor one time we had a insightful innovator and again this is like trying to get these are people who invent and discern their invention so most often they're really insightful they they're using invention and discernment in a loop simultaneously so they often don't invent terrible things well you know and I think it's worth saying because when people are hearing this they're kind of like oh so you're describing yourself it's like we have all kinds of names on the board if we were only using ourselves we'd be we'd have no confidence but there's there's a number of other people that we know that are inventors discerners and we look for like what do they all have in common and one of the things we realize so I'm not just talking about me is that the discriminating innovator the ID actually doesn't most of their ideas are not hairbrained they've really thought so we said discriminating we also wanted to call it the Practical inventor inventor but but practical is not a good word to describe me but our inventions are actually pretty on because we do iterate as we go yeah the discriminatory or discriminating in innovator innovator is a good word because oftentimes they like to come up with things out of nothing or they like to disrupt the status quo or so it does have an innovation element to it and then like you said it's not like it's going to be a hairbrained idea but one of my favorite you I think Pat you tried to work in the word I think you wanted to just call this one the genius right isn't that you threw that out there one time Super Genius you know what the word we did toy with though was discover y rather than invention in innovator because we it it seems like what I do with more is I discover things not not not just invent them but like figure out what already exists and kind of integrate that anyway so we really struggled with this one maybe there's an IDE out there that has a better idea yeah we we'd love to hear some other IDs if you have this podcast TG group.com or is it podcast at work it's podcast TG group.com right yeah yeah now but let's talk about the downside of the discriminating in innovator and that is all of the people on our list including me there is an intensity about us and we we're pretty incessant and and it goes right with this and hard to disagree with and I don't think it's because of ego I think it's because we've already vetted our ideas and by the time we present them we're feeling pretty confident that it's a pretty good idea and so it's not like we're like hey I had this idea and we pretty much Cast Away the hairbrained ones the ones that AR very good so by the time we present them we thought through it more than the average bear yeah and it is a little bit difficult to get us to move off of our things so intensity and there's an incessant nature to what we do difficult to disagree with and I mean I think those are all good things but uh well well this is what I think is so usable about this in some ways is like you know when we have these conversations when we talk about vulnerability now we're doing a little crossover from at the table and working genius right here but when we talk about vulnerability we've sat in rooms with people where we've had them read their Myers Briggs type or or even they're working genius and this and those sort of struggle things when you say that Pat it we we've been in rooms where someone go other team members will say oh you know that about yourself like when I'm able to say hey you know what I know I project overconfidence I'm sorry I I know that's a struggle of mine I'm I'm really working on that it's a byproduct of the way I'm wired it's not because I'm just a push pushy douchebag you know it's like I there's no shame in it yeah so there's actually relief yeah absolutely yeah so it really is a very usable thing to tee up some vulnerability around hey I kind of show up this way because of the way I'm wired I know I'm aware of it I want you to be aware of it so that you can call me on it like we all all the things that we mentioned all the struggles of our three types we we are regularly calling each other on it Like Pat you're doing that intense thing right now what's up what's up with that or Cody you're you're really hard to you're projecting a lot of confidence are you sure you're that confident you know so it's really really usable in a team Dynamic and fortunately we figured out that look on Tracy's face when she's saying yes but she's actually not exactly we're like you don't agree with d she's like you see right through me every time it's taken years so we described today the insightful collaborator the de the intuitive activator the DG and the discriminating innovator the ID we'd love to hear what you think about those it's fun you guys are insiders you're the first you know 10,000 12,000 people that are working on this and it's fun to hear from you Matt is the guy who gets to read all the the messages that people send and it's fun for us to to look that look at that so send send those our way and I think it's worth saying like you know we are going to put this all together when we're done with it and put it in a PDF or a tool or something that is more usable so it's it's not like you have to don't reach out we don't have it now so don't we we have a picture of a whiteboard in our office so don't overwhelm Matt with requests for let me hear the other ones we're going to do multiple series of this until we get through all of them but at some point we're going to have a document that's like a at least a one or two pager that says hey here's what this means with this combination and here's maybe even what roles you should look for here's ways you show up on teams and here's ways your your teammates can utilize you well so hopefully at the end of this it'll be really practical and usable for everyone you know I I hesitate to say what I'm about to say cuz I'm I'm embarrassed but so literally tomorrow night we're going to finish the book probably because I don't M maybe an idea is a flaky douchebag because I I thought I was going to finish it in the summer and I thought I'd finish this but it really is coming together now the problem is we can't publish it right away because there's not enough paper because of in the supply chain crisis but anyway but the point is we're just about done Tracy do you think that we'll be able to get these titles in the book probably not huh well we have to decide do we want to get them in the book yeah we can always do it later yeah it's a good question we should discuss we're we're gonna have to close down the book writing in a couple weeks exactly all right then I think that's the end of this podcast which is just the first in our working genius podcast about pairings and labels and let us know what you think we can't wait to do the next ones we'll have people on with each type so we can talk to them dissect them and put them on the spot all right anything else Tracy Cody Matt think that's good all right thanks for joining us we love doing this we'll talk to you next time on the working genius podcast God bless