Book Review: THE 6 TYPES OF WORKING GENIUS


Have you ever felt like so utterly bored or bad at a tasks others seem to relish?

This books tells a a fictional story of a growing company and how they discover their own ‘geniuses’ that help them to contribute to the team. The latter part of the book then explains the concept in more details and how it can be utilized in various different context.

The six types of geniuses referred in the title refer to different characteristics in a given end-to-end cycle of a workflow. Someone can be a “Working Genius” (gives us joy, energy and passion and good in this area), “Working Competency” (neither miserable nor completely joyful, can operate well but not for long) or “Working Frustration” (drains energy and joy, struggles at it). A person is usually at most a genius or two of these. Identifying one’s genius and finding people who can complement each other across whole spectrum can help a team to complete its tasks with everyone contributing their maximum ability.

  1. Wonder: Ability to ponder and speculate and question the state of things, asking the questions that proke answers and action
  2. Invention: Coming up with new ideas and solutions
  3. Discernment: Instinct, intuition and uncanny judgement
  4. Galvanizaing: Rallying, motivating and provoking people to take action and around an idea or an initiative
  5. Enablement: Providing people with support and assistance in the way that it is needed
  6. Tenecity: The satisfaction of pushing things across the finish line to completion

I always like when lessons are taught via a story. This makes it interesting and relatable versus describing the concept by itself for the whole book. This is an interesting framework to understand and it is appealing to trying to figure out your strong point within an ecosystem. I can imagine that if I have to wonder and invent all day, I’d not know what to do and go crazy! I’m definitely more of an enablement type wanting to support people and push things forward. See if this helps your team as each of the team member finds their Genius!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61128912-the-6-types-of-working-genius?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=3BlLLNy5US&rank=1