One of the biggest myths in leadership is that great leaders excel at everything. Great leaders don’t do everything well, and they don’t have to.
We often celebrate leaders who appear to have limitless energy, endless ideas, impeccable execution, and the ability to solve every problem that lands on their desk. We tell ourselves that becoming a better leader means becoming more capable in every area. But after working with leadership teams across industries, I’ve found the opposite is often true. The best leaders aren’t the ones who can do everything. They’re the ones who understand what they were uniquely designed to contribute and who intentionally surround themselves with people whose strengths complement their own.
Many leaders become overwhelmed not because they have too much work, but because they spend too much time doing work that drains them. Think about the executive who loves generating bold ideas but spends every day buried in project management. Or the operations leader who excels at execution but is constantly expected to innovate from a blank page. Or the visionary founder who built the company through creativity but now spends most of their time in administrative meetings. None of these leaders are incapable. They’re simply working outside of the areas where they naturally bring the most energy and value. When that happens, leadership becomes exhausting. Not because the work is hard, but because the work is misaligned for them, they are not working in their genius.
To completely understand your team, you cannot simply identify personality traits or communication styles, you have to fully understand each one of them; what gives them energy, what drains them, and where they naturally create value in the work of the organization. Once you understand where everyone best contributes and how to better utilize each team member’s geniuses, it changes everything.
The Working Genius identifies six stages of work, as well as assesses where individuals find the most energy and fulfillment within those six stages:
Wonder
Wonder is the ability to notice that something could be better.
People with this genius naturally ask questions like:
“Why do we do it this way?”
“What are we missing?”
“Is there a better opportunity?”
They challenge assumptions before anyone else realizes there is a problem to solve.
Great leaders with Wonder keep organizations from becoming complacent.
Invention
Once questions have been identified, someone has to imagine possible solutions.
That’s Invention.
These leaders love brainstorming.
They connect ideas.
They see possibilities where others see obstacles.
Innovation often begins because someone with Invention refuses to believe the current answer is the only answer.
Discernment
Not every idea is a good one.
Discernment brings wisdom.
These leaders possess an intuitive ability to recognize which opportunities deserve attention and which should be left behind.
In executive teams, Discernment often sounds like:
“This feels right.”
Or just as importantly,
“Something about this doesn’t sit well.”
Organizations need people who know the difference.
Galvanizing
Ideas don’t create momentum.
People do.
Galvanizers inspire others to move.
They naturally communicate vision, build enthusiasm, and help people believe that meaningful work is possible.
Every organization eventually reaches a point where someone has to say,
“Let’s go.”
That’s Galvanizing.
Enablement
Perhaps the most underrated genius is Enablement.
These leaders find joy in helping others succeed.
They remove obstacles.
They offer support.
They build trust.
They’re often the people everyone turns to because they genuinely want others to win.
Healthy organizations cannot scale without leaders who create this kind of environment.
Tenacity
Eventually, someone has to finish the work.
Tenacity is the drive to push projects across the finish line.
These leaders follow through.
They create accountability.
They ensure commitments become results.
Without Tenacity, great ideas remain unfinished conversations.
This is why every genius matters. One of the greatest insights from Working Genius is none of these stages is more important than another. Organizations often celebrate ideation while overlooking execution. Others value execution while neglecting innovation. Some reward vision but underestimate the importance of support. In reality, every stage is essential. When one genius is consistently absent, organizations experience predictable problems:
Without Wonder, they stop improving.
Without Invention, innovation slows.
Without Discernment, they chase too many ideas.
Without Galvanizing, initiatives lose momentum.
Without Enablement, leaders become isolated and teams disengage.
Without Tenacity, execution suffers.
Healthy leadership teams don’t try to eliminate these gaps by asking one person to become everything. They build teams where the collective strengths cover the entire cycle.
One mistake I see repeatedly is leaders assuming that everyone approaches work the way they do. A leader high in Tenacity may wonder why others don’t naturally push projects to completion. Someone strong in Invention may become frustrated when their team isn’t constantly generating new ideas. A Galvanizer may expect everyone to share the same excitement for change. But leadership isn’t about expecting people to think like you. It’s about understanding what they naturally contribute and creating an environment where those contributions can flourish. The moment leaders stop viewing differences as deficiencies, collaboration begins to improve.
So, how do we become better leaders?
We become better leaders through self-awareness. The greatest value of Working Genius isn’t simply identifying your strengths. It’s increasing your self-awareness. When leaders understand where they naturally create energy, they begin making better decisions about how they spend their time. They delegate more effectively. They hire more intentionally. They build more balanced leadership teams. Most importantly, they stop measuring themselves against an impossible standard of being equally gifted in every aspect of leadership.
No leader possesses all six geniuses in abundance. And that’s good news. Organizations were never designed to depend on one heroic leader. They were designed to benefit from teams whose strengths complement one another. When leaders embrace that reality, they move from trying to be indispensable to building organizations that thrive because everyone contributes what they do best. That’s where sustainable leadership begins. And that’s where organizational health becomes more than a goal, it becomes the natural outcome of leaders who understand themselves, value others, and build teams around complementary strengths rather than individual perfection.