Steven Wilson, CEO of Parallel 42 Coaching & Consulting, Certified Working Genius Facilitator, and Six Sigma Black Belt, helps leaders unlock potential by applying Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius Framework to transform teams and organizations. His mission is to guide people and businesses to be better at who they are, what they do, and how they serve others.

We explore Steven’s journey from Lean Six Sigma process expert to leadership coach and how the Working Genius Framework helps individuals identify whether they’re in the right seat, boosts productivity by focusing 80% on natural strengths and 20% on personality, and increases team collaboration. Steven explains how the six types of genius align with the phases of any project and how leaders can recognize where people are most engaged to build resilient, high-performing teams.He also shares why organizational “health” often matters more than “smarts,” how hungry, humble, and smart behaviors strengthen culture, and how servant leadership creates accountability, trust, and long-term success.

Good day, dear listeners. It’s Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast. And my guest today is Steven Wilson, a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, a Six Sigma Black Belt, and the CEO of Parallel 42 Coaching and Consulting. Steven, I hope I didn’t butcher this. Welcome to the show.

No, not at all. I appreciate the opportunity, Steve. Good to be on.

Okay, I had to focus on the Parallel 42 because I know another company called Parallel37 here in Richmond, Virginia. And yeah, I just didn’t want to confuse. But anyhow, exciting to have you here and I’m excited about your “Why,” to hear your “Why” and how you manifested it in your coaching practice.

Yeah, well, again, appreciate the opportunity and my “Why” really comes from, and I really, I think I discovered this even more so in working with Patrick Lencioni and some of his programs. The “Why” is I really enjoy helping individuals or helping organizations. One of my downfalls, we can always talk about how strengths can become weaknesses. There’s a bright side and a dark side to our strengths. And so, when I happen to hear somebody say, hey, I’d like to do X, I’m generally all in and I’m asking, how can I help? And so that’s really the foundation or the basis behind why I wanted to begin and do what I do is looking for opportunities. How can I help individuals become better at who they are, what they do, and how can I do the same thing within organizations?

Yeah, that’s great. Organizations are made up of people and when you help organizations, you help people and then organizations also serve other people, so there’s the multiplier effect. That’s exciting. And I’m excited about you being a kind of a Patrick Lencioni expert because I love Patrick Lencioni’s stuff as well. I think he’s got really good insight in the human element and the human dynamic in companies. So let’s talk a little bit about that. So how did you get to choose Patrick Lencioni’s portfolio of products and tools to work with?

Yeah, and I’ve always been a fan of Lencioni and his work. And for those of you that might be familiar, and those that are truly experts of Patrick Lencioni, you may challenge my expert status, but so I appreciate that, Steve. But what I found about them is that they are so down to earth. Their advice. Because there’s many things that are not new under the sun. And Lencioni has taken these concepts and these ideas and all of these things and his practice as an organizational and an industry leader. And he dials into the people. He dials into the people side of things because I think, again, he looks at it from a, yes, a technical, a very high level, but then he’s able to communicate these things in a very applicable way.  And that’s why Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Ideal Team Player, Working Genius, all of those things resonate with me so much.

Because even in my work with Lean Six Sigma,

I like to focus on the people side of change, the people side of improvement.
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Yeah. And people are really important. I mean, this is all what companies are. They are a group of people committed to a cause, and if you get them to be invested, not just mentally and technically, but emotionally into your cause and work for your company, and you can bring the best out of them, then you’re gonna go a long way. And one of the things I like that Lencioni talks about is this distinction between healthy and smart. So, most companies who are in business for any length of time, they’re smart enough. They’re 80% smart, 90%. You can tweak the dial a little bit, but the healthy, there’s so much upside for most companies to create a more cohesive team and the more healthy, drama-free team that care about the purpose of the company. There’s a huge opportunity there.

Right, because when drama increases, productivity goes down, accountability goes down. And so the more things that you can do to eliminate that drama, reduce it at least, the better off the organization is as a whole.

Absolutely, absolutely. So let’s talk about Working Genius. This is a book that Lencioni came out with probably two or three years ago, and it turned into a program, and a lot of coaches teach it. I also have taught it to my clients, but I don’t profess, I’m not certified. I don’t want to say it loudly because my clients might listen to this, but I didn’t do a stellar job on it. I think the product was so good that it was easy to do an adequate job.

Yes.

So tell me a little bit about, and our audience, about the Working Genius framework and what it does.

Yeah. So I love tying in Working Genius with some of other, Lencioni’s other works that we talked about, The Ideal Team Player, we’re looking at then also Five Dysfunctions of a Team. And

I think what really kind of transpires here is The Ideal Team Player speaks to having the right people.
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Why do I feel frustrated at the end of my day? What is it that I do? And why am I frustrating others with what I do? And all of these things there. So Working Genius, the framework, and we talk about it, there’s many different assessment types. There’s Myers-Briggs, DISC. I always like to say, Myers-Briggs, Briggs and Stratton, Braxton Hicks, the mothers in the crowd generally get that joke there. But what’s different about Working Genius is that it’s 80% productivity, 20% personality. So it focuses on how we work and how we work together and how we work best. So if we can dial into the strength and the power of Working Genius and the assessment and the results and get a full understanding of it, we’re going to become a more productive organization. And so Working Genius, it stems from that there are six geniuses and they go Wonder, and it spells out WIDGET if you need it to write something down there, but Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanize, Enablement, and Tenacity. So those are the six. So the framework works and says that we have two geniuses, those things that just really fill our cup. So I’ll use the example of a Yeti. Generally, I have a Yeti sitting around here, but I don’t. A Yeti cup, we pour coffee into that, and it’s going to stay hot for a very long time. So, our energy is gonna be high. So that’s where we want our individuals, our team, ourselves, operating the majority of the time.

Because when we're high energy, when we're enjoying what we're doing, we're generally going to produce greater work and have a greater impact upon the organization.
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And because Steve is loyal and because Steve wants to do a great job, Steve does it, but then eventually Steve gets burnt out because Steve’s doing something that doesn’t really give him energy. So, the theory is,

the thought process behind just the individual is that the more that we can have them working in their geniuses, the more productive, the more enjoyable, the better they're going to be.
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We’ve all been party to those meetings. But in reality, I like to refer to them, that’s not going to work. We’ve all been party to those meetings. But in reality, I like to refer to them, they’re a refiner. They’re the individual that is saying, yeah, that’s a good idea, but have we given thought to, and all of a sudden that puts them in a positive light.

We recognize them as bringing more value. They're refining those ideas and we need those individuals.
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And then lastly, we have tenacity. Tenacity is that individual that sees something that needs to get done, and they say, let’s get it done, and puts it all together. So those are the individual pieces. And then what I love about this is it translates into teams. So we’ll work with a team, we’ll work with the individual to help understand where they’re at. And for me personally, it was very liberating. So I come out as I have invention and enablement. So there is not a new idea that I don’t like to investigate. I have a garage full of 70% completed ideas that I just love coming up with new ideas and new solutions for things. And then I love coming alongside somebody and helping them. And so it was very liberating to realize I don’t have to be able to do it all. I can operate. It’s best if I operate just how I’m wired, how I’m designed. And that’s where I’m gonna bring the most value to myself and to others as well.

Okay, Steven, so let me ask you this, because one thing that I was struck by, and maybe that’s why I didn’t revisit this product in subsequent annual meetings with my clients, and then maybe you can point out what I went wrong. I found that on leadership teams, most people were in one of the four top disciplines and there were few tenacity people and enabling people. Is this normal?

Well, generally what you might find is that leaders might be in the wonder and invention piece. But just as I did, as my work with DISC, I’ve worked with that for many years. And over time, what I’ve found is when I began doing work with that in 2010, we were finding more and more leaders were in that D and I, which are more of the outward, more of expressive, more of the verbal and vocal individuals.

Sure.

Yeah, more driven. But then over time, we’ve recognized that there’s a shift, I think because we’re looking at leadership in a different way. And I love the fact that Lencioni brings out, he does not, and I don’t like it either, the term servant leadership. Because he says if it’s not servant leadership, it’s not leadership. So, why do we have to add this additional word on to further describe when in reality, leadership should include that servant mentality that I am here working with you and for you and to help you. We shouldn’t have to throw in this additional adjective to describe, for me, it’s like active listening.

Yeah.

I think listening should be active.

I’m actually okay. And I see your point. And with DISC it’s the same thing. I agree with you. It’s a lot of D’s and I’s, and maybe you have a CFO who’s more DC.

Right.

Then you want this quality of the servant leader. I think you can’t have everyone be a servant leader because the servant leaders are often less assertive, they are more understanding, and sometimes you just have to push things through. You need that high D sometimes. But I do agree with you that you also need this. I think Mother Teresa is an example and I think Nelson Mandela, they were these servant leader types.

Well, and in that vein, just servant leadership doesn’t necessarily mean that you are not driven, you’re not goal-oriented. It’s how you see yourself. Think about it, when Lencioni is talking about the ideal team player, hungry, humble, and smart. Same thing goes for the leader, hungry, humble, and smart. And that servant leadership, that phrase there, I think, speaks to that humble piece of, hey, it’s not a, well, I earned it, I worked up and I got this leadership position, and now I’m in a position of power and authority. It should be more of like, oh, my, I’m responsible for other people. And it’s very humbling to be in foot in that position where, wow. And so I need to do everything that I possibly can to help these individuals. And I get pushback when I talk about value-added and non-value-added in managers and leaders, because in some respect, the only value that

leaders have and provide, and managers particularly, is they're getting things out of the way. They're removing the obstacles that enable the people that are on the front lines to do the work that they need to do.
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Okay, so yeah, before we move forward, I’d like to talk a little bit about this humble, hungry, and smart, because that was another concept that I was a little bit confused about. I definitely love these three values. I think it’s the kind of person I would want on my team. So I’d like to preface this with that. However, what I’m confused about is that how do these qualities relate to the core values that a business chooses for themselves? Which are very specific to each business. And there’s some business emphasize customer service and the behavior of serving the customer or learning and growing and getting things done and stuff like that. So how do these three qualities that I fully agree that ideally all your people should have them, do they come in addition to the core values, the core behaviors of a company? So if they have five core values, now they have eight because they also want the people to be humble, hungry and smart, or you use these three as a general core value for all companies? What’s your approach?

I wouldn’t necessarily say that they are core values, but they are core behaviors that you want to see in your people. And not distinguishing. So, for instance, my personal core values and of the organization, I look at it. People matter, eternity matters, life matters. And so we look for that people matter. That’s our focus is people matter. Eternity, so we’re looking at things in an eternal perspective and not just short-term, but long-term things. And then life matter. So I feel it’s my obligation to be a good steward of what I’ve been given and helping others with it. So helping others improve their life. So when I look to look at adding individuals, number one, they do have to have those core values. But individuals can have those core values and still not be hungry, humble, and smart. So the hungry piece is they’re not driven to succeed, or they’re not driven to be a team player. They’re not hungry for what we’re trying to do. The humble piece is, again, they’re not willing to be vulnerable, and they’re not letting themselves be transparent, and they’re not allowing themselves to be challenged. And so they take this arrogant approach to working with individuals, peers, or direct reports. And then smart is not so much that technical savvy, but the navigational of relationships and all of the political things that go on within organizations. They have that savvy.

So that’s like emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence, yeah, would be a great way of phrasing it there. So

when we look to employees, we say, yes, we want these employees to have these values, these core values. That's who we are as an organization.
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You can starve your employees, I guess.

Yeah, right, you could, yeah, to then create the hunger. But we talk about motivation. And so some of the classes that I facilitate, I’m doing for others, I’m using their materials or some of the training I do. And we’ll talk about motivation and ask what motivates you. And the reality is that we as leaders, we really can’t, in a long term, motivate.

Yeah, it has to be innate.

Yeah, it has to be innate. And so what we can do as leaders and as organizational leaders, we can create an environment in which people are motivated. We can create an environment in which people are hungry. We can give them challenges. We can be going for the right things.

We can inspire them.

Yeah, things that matter. Humble, that’s a tough one. That’s a tough one. You can’t necessarily as a business leader or team leader instill that into somebody. They have to truly have a heart change or whatever. And then lastly, that’s smart, that one too. We can help them develop that sense of emotional intelligence if they’re willing to. So we look at it as just really kind of a litmus test of sorts of, hey, where are these individuals at? And when we look to hire or performance reviews, those types of things.

Yeah, I think I got it now. I think you really helped me understand. I look at the core values a little bit differently than you. So the ones that you mentioned, I consider them more about corporate ideals or company aspirations. And I like to use core values as behaviors. Because I feel like you can hold people accountable to behaviors. You can’t hold them accountable to their beliefs. You can’t hold them accountable to your aspirations as a company, which is an abstract thing for the whole company. But I do think that these are additional because these are innate things. You explained that humility, this is how you grew up, this is your personal experience that you’re humble. Maybe you went through experiences that made you humble and now you have it, but you can’t just force it. The emotional intelligence. Yeah, you can create awareness. You can help people if they are coachable to make them realize that they are missing some things, but at least half nature, half nurture. And then the third one, the drive, I think that’s very innate. Maybe you can’t train it. So perhaps those three are great when you hire someone, because then you can use it as a filter. Do I want this person on my team? When they are on your team, maybe you don’t want to hold them accountable, because if they don’t have that, then it’s your fault you hired the wrong person. It’s not their fault.

Yeah, exactly. And then, yes, as you were talking about, with those three that I mentioned, and then we identify behaviors, to your point, within there. What does that look like? People matter. What does that look like? There’s behaviors that are associated with each one of those particular things. And what I love about Lencioni’s work is because he does bring it to that behavioral component. It’s not these esoterical or these existential things, but bring it down into application. And so when we then take and look at it from an individual perspective, and then we look at a team. So say we have a team of seven or eight. And I’ll use an example. I was meeting with, I was part of the team. I wasn’t facilitating the team because the team had all done the map, or had done the assessment. I’m able to then generate a team map, which lets us know where everybody on the team was. So it says, hey, who do we have in the Wonder? Who invents? And all of the different six areas. So it helps us understand where are our opportunities. Because if you have a team that is heavy in the wonder and invention, but light in, say, discernment, you’re going to have a lot of ideas that get into the pipeline and go through the pipeline that maybe never should get through the pipeline. Because we didn’t have that individual to say, okay, what about that? Maybe we should rethink that.

Or we spent too much money on it at that time.

And then we see, if we don’t have that tenacity piece, we see companies that have all kinds of ideas that have gotten into the pipeline and we’re working on them but for some reason, we just never complete them.

We need some more solutions.

And they’re just sitting there. So I was sitting in this meeting and the individual that was facilitating was asking for ideas. We were a new team and wanted to know how often do we want to meet and all of these different components. And came to this individual, I knew exactly they said, hey, what idea do you have? And his response was, I don’t have any ideas. Just tell me what you need done, and I’ll help you get it done.

It’s a tenacity.

Enablement and tenacity. Tell me what I need to do. Tell me what you want help with, and I’ll get it done. And so what this does is it helps us identify, where do people like to operate? Where do they like to engage, and where can we best utilize their skill sets?

Yeah, that’s a good point, because you don’t want to frustrate that person to expect something from them that they’re not good at. On the other hand, if you give them stuff to get done, GSD, that they’re going to come through and then you’re going to be happy and they’re going to be happy as well.

Absolutely. And then what we do is we’re respecting them. So say we do have that individual that has discernment and is sitting in the meeting and it’s a brainstorm and the whole time they’re going, yeah, but yeah, but the rest of us can become very frustrated with this individual and think, well, Jared, they’re just poking holes in everything. They’re shooting every idea down. But the reality is, is we need them. We just might not need them at that point in the meeting, in the project. We don’t need them. Right now, we just need ideas. So I, as a leader, can simply say, hey, Steve, we need your discernment. And we refer to it as regulating. Just need you to regulate your genius right now. And jot down all of these things that you’re thinking and all of these concerns that you might have. Because at some point, we’re going to need them. And so then also we talk about in this, the work, we talk about meetings where we go from this grand idea, then we’re slowly, the plane is beginning to land, if you will. We’re talking through the big idea and discerning it, and then we almost get ready to land the idea. And then somebody like myself, who has invention, goes, oh hey, have we thought about this? And all of a sudden, the plane shoots back up. And we call that meeting turbulence. And so how we’ll work on it with teams as well is we’ll work to identify, hey, what’s our purpose. Lencioni talks about, he’s got some companies that if you don’t communicate what type of meeting it is in your invitation, people are not obligated to come. Because what it does is it helps. So for instance, that ET individual, if we’d have given notice two weeks ahead and said, hey, when we come together, this is what we’re going to be talking about. We want you to provide some ideas. He would have been able to have some ideas.

Yes.

But it’s just in that core. There’s a lot of things then that we do with meetings and helping meetings become more productive.

Yes. I don’t think we can cover the whole thing.

Oh, I know. I know. You can tell I’m passionate about it, Steve.

You’ve given a great premiere on it and this whole idea, the Six Working Genius, so you’ve got essentially everyone has two strengths and two weaknesses and you want to put people in the right seat so that they can leverage their strengths and they can downplay their weaknesses and then you basically elevate the whole team. Everyone’s going to be more productive. And then you have to mix them together as well so that you have the different kinds together so that they help each other. And two plus two equals six.

Absolutely, because we need everybody, especially then when we look at it in a project phase, we need every aspect of it.

That’s awesome. So, Steven, if someone would like to learn more or maybe needs your help to figure that out for their company, where should they go? How can they hit you up?

The best way is just email [email protected].

Okay, well, definitely check it out. Lencioni is amazing. He’s got fantastic programs for companies that have team dynamic issues, which means all companies, and help you get more out of your team and make your team happier. And Steven is an expert in that. He can pull on all of Lencioni’s levers for you. So do check him out. [email protected]. And if you enjoyed this episode, then stay tuned because every week, we have a very interesting guest who will tell you a good framework that you can use to elevate your business, to accelerate your growth and to have more fun in your business. So thanks for coming and thank you for listening.