Mastering Organizational Health: Insights from Patrick Lencioni on Leadership and Team Dynamics | S2:E61

0:05Hey, everyone. Welcome back. Today, we have a very special guest who impacted my life. It might be like 15, 12 or 15 years ago, I read his first book, Dysfunctions of a Team, which has sold millions upon millions. Every corporate job I had, I think we've used that book. But Patrick Lencioni, who is a bestselling author of over 10 books, millions and millions of books sold, which is incredible. But Pat, I'm very excited to have you on the show talking through your new book, the Working Genius Model. I was able to take it. You've already given me an individual assessment as well, which I'm excited to go through.

0:45But we are really honored to have you on the show today. Well, thank you for having me. It's good to be here, Dan. So let's dive into just the impacts of leadership. What do you see in terms of what is the impact of good leadership, effective leadership versus the opposite to a company or a business? Well, I think that there's a lot of ways to say that. Obviously, it's profound. It's everything almost. But the way I like to look at it is the purpose of being a leader is to create a healthy organization, which is what my firm does, what I've been doing for the last 27 years. The other side is the smart part of an organization, which is like, do we have the right strategy or marketing or technology.

1:30All of that's really important. And I started my career as a management consultant working on that. But what I found is that leadership and how you create the right environment is what allows you to tap into your intelligence. And so many people think that good companies come about because they're smarter than their competitors, but usually it's they're healthier, they're less dysfunctional, they're more interpersonally effective, and that allows them to tap into the knowledge they have. Well, reading through your books, I would almost come to the conclusion that you could have the best products and services, but if you don't have the right leadership or effective leadership, you're going to fail.

2:05And that's maybe why a lot of companies have failed. Something that I've noticed is many times companies don't do a great job of really matching people with the right leadership or even the right leadership in the right positions. Yeah, definitely. I mean, the first thing you have to do is make sure you have a culture and that the leaders fit that culture and promote it. But then you have to make sure that the leader's skillset or their passions line up with what you want them to do. And a lot of companies don't know how to make that happen. Wow. Yeah. I love that. Skillset and passion. So let's dive into the working genius model.

2:42What was the inspiration for you to create this? It was accidental slight desperation. And that is for 20 years, more than 20 years in my own company, I would come to work and was excited to go to work every day, but I would get grumpy when I was there and I didn't know why. And one day someone on my team said to me, she said, why are you like that? What happens that makes you get grumpy? And I said, I don't know, but I want to figure it out. And so I just sat down by the grace of God with a whiteboard and a pen and started thinking about, okay, when am I happy? When am I not? What's going on?

3:13And I came up with this model that there's actually six different kinds of work that have to happen in any endeavor. And nobody likes doing all of them. And I was constantly coming to work and being asked to do things in my own company that I didn't like. And it was preventing me from doing the things I loved. And over time, it was burning me out. So that's how we came up with the model. I thought I was just solving a problem for myself. Some other people saw it and people started to say, this really works. And so we developed an assessment. And just a couple of weeks ago, we hit a million assessments in the last four years.

3:47So it's really growing like crazy. Wow. Wow. It's always amazing when somebody finds a need within themselves, sees a problem that they need to solve for themselves. And when they solve it, they realize the world needs it. There's so many other people that think the same way or have the same problem. So what are you finding? What is your working genius? Oh, nobody ever asked me that in the interview. So there's six different things. And the two that are mine, everybody has two. And your genius is where you get joy and energy. And I get joy and energy out of inventing new things. I just love it when somebody says, we don't know what to do about this.

4:25We need a solution. And I'm like, let me come up with something. Let me come up with a new idea, a new product, a new approach. The second one is called discernment. And that is, I love evaluating things. I love curating things. I love looking at something and seeing what's probably going to work or not. So I'm an ID, which I'm called the discriminating ideator. I like to come up with new ideas and I like to evaluate them before I present them. And so usually by the time I present them, they're pretty close because I do both of those things. So that's my combination. So now that you know this, how do you then effectively apply this to your team?

5:03Well, so the thing I was doing for more than 20 years every day was one of the other geniuses, which is called galvanizing, which is not a genius of mine. And it doesn't give me joy and energy. And after a while, it drains me of joy and energy. And galvanizing is constantly reminding people and motivating people. Now, I like to do it once or twice. And I don't hate it, but I don't like to every day keep doing it. And there are people who have the genius of galvanizing. They wake up every morning and they want to get up and inspire people. They love to sell people with new ideas. They like to remind people and get people moving.

5:35And I was doing it every day. And after a while, it was burning out. And it was preventing me from doing what I really wanted, which was inventing and discerning. So I found another person in my organization that had this as a genius. I said, how would you like to be the chief galvanizing officer? And he goes, well, I don't think I've been here long enough. And I said, no, no, you have a genius. I want you to keep us on task. I want you to keep us motivated. And he said, well, that would be the best job in the world for me. And I said, well, it'd be a great thing if I didn't have to do it all the time.

6:03So I still have to do it sometimes, but we're not meant to do the things. I don't think God put us on earth to be miserable in our work. I hate to laugh, but it just, it really reminds me of working in the corporate environment before where I was always forced to do jobs I was not good at, or I just hated. And I looked around and then when I became a leader, I would many times talk people out of the job that they were in and say, look, I'm not gonna fire you, but this department is not right for you. Like, I'm going to help you get a job in a different department. And people thought I was crazy for that.

6:40So what are you seeing in terms of the organizations that are using this? Like, what are they telling you? Yeah. So here's the thing. There's three steps to building teamwork in an organization. The first thing is to get the right people on the bus. Jim Collins used to talk about that. And that's, are they a cultural fit? Do they belong in your organization? That's one thing. But the second thing is you have to get them in the right seat on the bus. And what you are doing, which is a great service, is saying, hey, you belong here. You're a great person, but this is just not the right position for you.

7:08This is not the right place for you to be working. And that's an act of love to help people realize that. And that's why the working genius can be so powerful is because people take it. It takes 12 minutes to take the assessment. They look at the results. One guy was going in for his performance review the next day and he had had a horrible year. He thought he might get fired or demoted. He walked in and handed them the report and his boss looked at it and says, well, heck, you're in the wrong job. No wonder you've struggled. Let's put you in this other job. He goes, I got promoted instead of demoted because they finally understood what I was good at.

7:40And that's the purpose of this is to find out where you get joy and energy and what you're naturally good at and to figure out what drains you of joy and energy and what you're naturally going to struggle in. And my first job out of college, Dan, was supposed to be this fantastic job. It paid well and it was supposed to set me up in my career. And it was exactly the opposite of what I like doing. and I did it for two years, the longest decade of my career. And I never knew why I was struggling. And today, 30 years later, I'm going, oh, no wonder I should have never taken that job. I was fired from my last corporate job.

8:17And for many years, I kept telling them like, look, this is not for me. Like I need a different position. And they're like, well, there's no one else that can do the job or no one else wants to do it. So you have to do it. And they ended up firing me, which was the best thing ever because like you're saying, I was miserable doing this job that I didn't want to do. But how do you, what do you find that people can use this for besides maybe just the workplace? Well, you go home and you realize, so my wife, God bless her, she was doing work for years, raising our four boys. Our youngest just went to college and it was not aligned with her genius.

8:54And she didn't know that she felt guilty and like, why are those moms good at this? And why do I struggle with this? And, and finally, when I wrote the book, she read it and she said, this is great and I'm kind of pissed off. And I said, why? And she goes, because I realized I was in a job that wasn't allowing me to exercise my genius. And it had, I known that, cause I'd always say to her, why don't you outsource some of these things? Why don't you, why don't you borrow from your friends and you do different? And she goes, no, I'm supposed to be good at this. I'm a mom. And so even in that job, even in that, even in the way you run your house, it's like, why do some families are good at this and others are good at that?

9:27Well, the profile of the parents has a lot to do with that. That doesn't mean you can just abdicate things, but you shouldn't feel guilty about not being good at the things that you're not good at. You're wired that way. I think that's really great, right? Outsource those things that you're not good at, whether that's in the home life or whether that's in work, in business, finding somebody else can do other things and then you're less miserable and then you can focus on these things that you're best at. so how does it feel when you hit that 1 million assessment hey everyone i'm not sure if you've heard but our show founder's story is now available on the iheart radio app so check that out iheart radio online or you grab the app it's super easy you can listen to all of our episodes wherever you enjoy your podcast whether that's iheart radio iheart radio app apple podcast spotify and many more, but check it out.

10:22It's done. How does this feel as a writer, author, consultant, business person, when you know that a million people or over a million people have taken an assessment and are impacted? Well, it's gratifying because you know that the stories we get from people around how it's changed their lives and how it's changed their careers and how they see themselves, it's wonderful. But I have to say, I've got some issues that I'm not very good at celebrating things. I'm always like onto the next thing. That's part of my personality, which is not good, by the way. And so I like it. I appreciate it, but not enough.

10:55I need to practice being more grateful and living in the moment. I'm always in the future. But it was really, I mean, man, the day we came up with this, if you'd have told me four years ago that today more than a million people would be taking this and it's growing like crazy, I'd have thought, no way. We just came up with this. We didn't have any idea what we were doing. Celebration is always a hard one, right? Like, it's like we're constantly moving 100 miles an hour. So who can stop? Who can stop to celebrate? Who has time to celebrate success? So when you look back to dysfunctions of a team and when that took off as well, and now you're selling millions of books because I'm a first time author.

11:33I just submitted my first draft of our book. Oh, what's it about? What's it called? It's called Unlimited Possibilities, How to Live Without Limits. Thank you. But how does it I want to know what it's like to celebrate once it starts selling and once it takes off, like how was that feeling to you? Because it's it's a lot to write a book. I don't think people realize like how much energy and effort goes into it and how much emotions. But what was that like when you like, man, it's validated, it takes off and it's been going for decades. Yeah, it's almost kind of hard to put in perspective because, again, you don't.

12:08And I just say, thank God for it all. But I remember I used to write in this hotel not very far from my office because I'd have to go get focused. And people would come there and I would show them what I was writing. They'd give me feedback. And I remember the room I was in writing The Five Dysfunctions of Tima. I remember the characters because I write fiction stories and how I was crafting the characters and naming them and what their backstory was. And it is weird to think that 22 years later, people are still reading that book and applying the principles. And I guess what I'm really happy about is two things.

12:38One, that it's universal. So we wrote it about a small technology company, but they're using it in churches and the military and sports and places all over. I remember you're in the Philippines right now. I remember the Philippine national basketball team used it. We felt like 20 years ago, we heard that. I was like, that's in Filipinos love basketball. So we thought that was pretty cool. The other thing I like is that I try to write my fiction to be realistic. I want people to read it and go, oh my gosh, that's exactly how we talk in our meetings. people think that I'm writing my books based on real life stories and they're not there it's fiction based on what I've experienced but I love the fact that people can relate to the dialogue and the characters and feel like it's real and it's not fluffy and silly so was your strategy all along to do that fiction style because I've seen that with you and and I think it's it's something that's almost maybe becoming more popular because we were even approached when we about our book to do that.

13:33The editor said, hey, this might be something you want to look into. And I thought it was so I started really diving into this style. But was this your approach all along to do this fictional style? Or did it just happen to be that way? Well, you know, two things happen. I think first of all, throughout my life, I've been writing stories. I've always wanted to be a fiction writer. I was we were pretty poor growing up. And I wasn't going to study that in college. I had to get a real job. So I got a job as a management consulting consultant, but I was always writing stories. And I took a screenwriting class in college and my books read more like screenplays than books.

14:05It's a lot of dialogue and quick setup of what's going on. I don't go into a lot of physical detail. It reads more like a screenplay. So that's where that came from. I've always loved fiction writing and I spent a lot of time practicing it for fun. But the other thing was, I remember when I started to write my book, somebody said, you should write a book about this. And I remember thinking, I love writing fiction and I want to write something that will keep people's interest, even if they don't like to read, that I want something they can finish on a two-hour plane ride. And at the end of it, they can go, I can't believe I just finished that because I want it to be like a page turner.

14:41So I did that on purpose. And then in the back, I kind of described what it's about. And I didn't know people were going to like that or not. We didn't have a publisher when I first started writing. And then we wrote one book that wasn't fiction, it was really hard. It was really hard. They're both hard in their own way. But I would say I do like bringing the principles to life through story. I'm with you. I have a really hard time reading books. And nonfiction, it's a struggle for me. I can maybe listen. But fiction, though, like you're saying, I get captured into the storyline and I'm envisioning it.

15:21It's way better. And if the fact that you're learning something, which I think is one of the reasons why your book is the book, you know, 15 years ago, dysfunctions of a team was like one of the first books I think I read because the company was always giving us books, but it's the only one that I really read. And I just lied to them. I always said I read all the other books. I am curious, though, in your life, is there a leader or somebody that's had a major impact on you? The answer is, of course, yes, but it's always been little steps along the way. And it wasn't like there was one that I can recall.

15:59You know, I mean, I had a track coach when I was in high school who became like a dear friend and a mentor to me. And so he was only like four years old, no, five years older than me. But he was very much a leader and a motivator to me. And he was killed in a car accident right when I graduated high school, which was tragic. Died when he was 23. But his name was Joel. and Joel was a leader. He was passionate and he was unafraid. And I loved that. And then in the corporate world, every once in a while I'd meet somebody and they all had different qualities. I remember this one guy, Mark, who was super humble and I loved that.

16:30And I had this woman, Sally, I worked for and she was really appreciative and interesting. But I learned a lot from the leaders who weren't good too, because I would see them and I would think, oh man, if they didn't do that, this would be so much better. So there were leaders along the way, certainly. I can totally remember the bad leaders I've had and what I've learned. It's almost hard sometimes to remember the really good leaders, unfortunately, right? But I'm really, I'm with you on that. So what's next for you? What do you see in the next few years? Where are you going with this assessment, your new book?

17:08What do you see the future of Pat? Well, one of the things I realized, Dan, is that in addition to people understanding their working genius, which is what they like to do. And then you have to understand your Myers-Briggs and there's other wonderful tools out there that are more about the noun, about who you are. But the working genius is about what you like to do. There's this other thing about life experience and wounds that when people don't know how they've been wounded in their life, sometimes they're acting out of their woundedness. A lot of leaders do this almost as though it's a superpower.

17:43and when they realize what their wounds are, they can change everything. There's a lot of leaders who are successful, but they're kind of fearing failure or they're addressing problems in their life that aren't really healthy. And I've discovered that in myself and I'm exploring all those things. And I'm gonna write a book about how to help leaders and anyone identify what wounds they might have so they can begin the process of looking into them and getting healed. Wow, I guess that would be, when you say wound, is that like trauma? Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it's trauma that happened during your whole life when you're a kid and you learn to cope with it.

18:16And then that turned into how you actually succeeded. Like in my life, I was, I got really good at things I hated because I wanted approval and I wasn't getting it. And so I decided I better just be good at everything that every coach, teacher, parent asked me to do. So I had this perfection complex that carried over into my adult life. And the problem was I was actually pretty good at stuff I hated. And that's not a good thing because then you just keep doing more of that. And so when people realize who they are and what they're great at, and then they can invite other people who have different talents into their life to supplement them, and they can come to terms with why they work so hard and why they're motivated, you can really heal.

18:56And that's the next step, I think, for me is helping people heal who might not realize what's going on. Wow. So everyone needs to take the assessment today. 12 minutes. It takes 12 minutes to fill the assessment out. Very easy. But when you come out with your new book, you have to come back because I need to find out the reason why I always feel like I have to prove people wrong. I have to work through this. I have to figure these things out. Now that you're saying it, I think this next book might be the most emotionally intense, but required by everyone because everyone I know, I mean, you know, like entrepreneurs who are super motivated, leaders, they're doing this because they have a lot of trauma.

19:41They have things that they don't deal with and we know it comes out. We've seen so many people have successful companies and then their traumas come out and then they end up destroying the culture for whatever reason and they never face it. So you got to come back. But if people want to take the assessment, they want to get in touch with you, how can they do so? So the Working Genius Assessment is at WorkingGenius.com. workinggenius.com there's two g's in the middle and there's all kinds of free resources the assessment you can get it there you could do a team map where a whole team can do it and see where their gaps are as a team it's very interesting there's all kinds of assessed stuff there my company is called the table group so tablegroup.com you can find out more about me and what i do and um and just know i'm in the middle of this journey like everybody else dealing with wounds dealing with what i'm good at and figuring out where we're headed and there were a lot of prayer faith in god and trying to keep learning and that's what you're helping people do is keep learning.

20:33That's how we move forward. Well, I'm honored. I never thought 15, 12 years ago that I would meet you. You longer know in life how things would go. I was just a sales associate. I never thought that I would one day get to have this conversation. You are one of the most humble. I could tell amazing humans in just 15, 20 minutes. The fact that you ask questions is rare. Most people don't ask questions or inquisitive about other people. So I really appreciate you coming on today. And I think a lot of people are going to get huge benefit from what you're doing and what you're doing in the future and what you've already done in the past.

21:14But Patrick, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you, Dan. And good on you for what you're doing. God bless you.

21:25Thank you for tuning in to Founder's Story. Keep exploring, Keep dreaming and join us next time for more inspiring entrepreneurial journeys.