Structured For Burnout (Part 3)
Noticing signs of burnout on your team? You could have the right people, just in the wrong roles.
Teams work best when they’re structured around each person’s unique wiring. Understanding your own wiring, what each role requires and how your team’s strengths fit together can help you lead and work in a way that is more effective, fulfilling and sustainable.
In this episode, we sat down with Cody Thompson, Chief Operating Officer at The Table Group, to talk about how Working Genius can help your staff avoid burnout and serve in the way God has wired them.
- What is Working Genius?
- How to tell if someone is in the right role or the wrong role
- Burnout patterns that show up when people work outside their natural strengths
- How to build a team with a healthy mix of strengths
We typically think of burnout as the amount of work that you have, but the truth is that it’s more about the type of work that you’re doing, which is a very liberating idea. [episode 444] #unstuckchurch Share on X You can do very little work in your frustration and get burned out, and you can do tons of work in your genius and be totally fulfilled. [episode 444] #unstuckchurch Share on X If you know who you are as a leader, then you can start to understand the gifts and talents of your team and tap into those gifts and talents. [episode 444] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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Transcript
Sean:
Hey, listeners, before this week’s episode, I want to take a moment and share something with you because if you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time, you know Amy Anderson. Amy has been a part of the Unstuck team for more than 10 years. She’s been on this podcast. She’s been in the room with a lot of your churches. She is a genuine part of what we do here. Last week, Amy experienced a brain bleed that led to a stroke. We are grateful—incredibily grateful—that her husband Jason was home with her when it happened and that she was able to get care quickly. She is recovering, and there is already a lot to thank God about for that. Now, this week’s episode was actually recorded before any of this happened. We went back and forth on whether or not to share it or not. But, honestly, it felt right because this topic of helping church leaders discover and lean into their gifting is something that Amy cares deeply about. It’s the kind of work that lights her up. So, in a way, releasing this episode felt like the right thing to do right now. We’d love for you to join us in praying for Amy and her family every day as she continues to heal. We’ll keep you updated as we are able. Thank you so much for being a part of this tribe that we Unstuck churches. Now, here’s this week’s episode of The Unstuck Church Podcast.
Welcome to the Unstuck Church Podcast. I’m Sean, your host, here with my teammate again, Amy Anderson. And we are in week three of our Structured for Burnout series. Amy, back in week one, we talked about how your structure could be setting you up for burnout, and then in week two, we talked about the importance of getting your senior leadership team right in order to avoid burnout, quite honestly. And today we’re talking about how important it is to structure around your wiring.
Amy:
Yeah. And you know, to be clear, this doesn’t mean that you build your structure around people first, because when we’re talking about wiring, what’s the wiring right of the people around us? We still have that mantra, you know, where we say you need to do your strategies first, then you need to build your structure, and then you need to choose the people. Right? Because if you go backwards, then we have, who do we have? What can they do? What can we do?
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
But when you do get to the people part, I just think it’s really important to understand what wiring is needed, both for that role. And for the team that they’re gonna be a part of.
Sean:
Yeah. So Amy, there’s a tool, honestly, we’ve used on our team for several years now, and it’s called The Working Genius. And today we get to have Cody Thompson, who’s the Chief Operating Officer at The Table Group, join us on the podcast. He’s one of the geniuses behind the Working Genius to kind of introduce that tool. And I know there are a lot of churches that are using this, but, for churches that aren’t, they need to be considering it. And for everyone, we’re gonna go in depth in some of the ways that Working Genius can help our churches avoid burnout. Right?
Amy:
Yeah. So, let’s jump into our conversation with Cody.
Sean:
So today we’re excited to have Cody Thompson on the podcast. Cody is the Chief Operating Officer at The Table Group.
Amy:
And I’m guessing, Sean, that many of our listeners are familiar with the Table Group.
Sean:
I’m sure.
Amy:
Because when I’m on the ground with churches, I’ll do like a show of hands, how many are familiar with Working Genius or any of the other resources from the Table Group, which by the way, was super foundational in my leadership development over the years. I’ve always appreciated and passed on those resources. So, Cody, it is great to have you with us. And you know, I was just thinking, I think I was in the very first group of facilitators that you all trained on Working Genius. And now I have facilitated that assessment with so many churches, and you know this, but it is just extremely helpful with the churches, church teams that are out there. It’s light bulb moments for what’s missing on their team. So that’s why I am so glad to have you on the call today to share it with our broader audience. But just in case someone is not familiar with The Table Group, maybe not familiar with Working Genius, can you just tell us a little about that?
Cody:
Sure. Yeah. Well, Amy, if you were in the first, training, that means I ran it. It’s gotten much better since then. So anyways, interesting, we have far more competent people running that now than we did, in the first few times. But, yeah. Working Genius has been, I think it’s been out for about four and a half years now. So we, you know, it’s like many things Pat has done. I kind of describe Pat as like an excavator or like a, one of the people that like unearthed dinosaur bones.
Amy:
Yes.
Cody:
Or whatever. He just kind of brushes the dirt off of things that are true and people kind of experience like the universal truths that he observed. So. We, it was actually born out of a frustration we had on our own team.
Pat was loved parts of his job and was really grumpy at other parts of his job. And he, and somebody asked him the question, why are you like that? And so he went to a whiteboard and kind of tried to dissect what we do at work. And we came out with these six circles that were all of the six activities that we thought kind of comprised any activity or any like, job or, you know, any type of work, whether you’re launching a product or running a church or, you know, a business. And so we were using it internally for, you know, months and months. And then one of our consultants came in, looked at the whiteboard, and we kind of explained what was on the whiteboard. And the next day he used it with a CEO that he was with. And the CEO actually got tears in his eyes and he is like, this explains a lot of what I’m feeling on my team.
Sean:
Wow.
Cody:
So it wasn’t like we weren’t sitting in a room thinking the world needed another assessment. ’cause we all know that’s not true. Like we’ve been told we’re red dolphins and, you know, colors and animals. And all sorts of letters. So, it was not that. It was really just like, Hey, how do we understand what we do at work and how do we understand how other people contribute? So quick flyover is that—that’s probably where we should start, right? Like what are the Working Geniuses and what are the activities? So I’ll try to be concise.
So there are, there are six things that make up any type of work. And, Working Genius is really this concept that all of us are innately wired by God to enjoy two of them to get joy and fulfillment from two of them. We call that your Working Genius. And then there’s two. So as I’m explaining this, it’s helpful for listeners to kind of think like, okay, two of these might resonate with me as something I get joy and energy from two of them will be something that really drain you or frustrate you. We call those your Working Frustrations. Two in the middle are kind of like, what we call your Working Competencies. I like to use the analogy like, your Working Genius is like riding a bike downhill. You know, you could do that all day long. You don’t really have to think about it. Working Frustrations on the other hand is like riding a bike uphill analogy.
Amy:
That’s a great analogy.
Cody:
If you, for any amount of time, it’s gonna really drain you pretty quickly. And then Working Competencies, you can do it for a little while. It’s like riding on a flat surface. So as we’re going through these, you can kind of self opt into like, oh, that’s the type of thing that I love and enjoy and get a lot of energy from. So here’s the idea is that work happens in these six activities, typically in this order, which is the first one is wonder. And so when we talk about wonder, we’re talking about these are people who love, you know, pondering the bigger picture, that it’s not like their heads are in the cloud in a not practical way, but they’re really wondering and like pondering, like the bigger picture, what is missed opportunity? Potential? They ask great questions and they’re always sort of helping us understand like, what problem are we actually trying to solve, you know? And that should be the start of any initiative that we take on should start with what problem are we trying to solve.
And then it goes to the next Working Genius, which is the gift of invention. And so invention, they respond to the question of the wonder, like, what is the opportunity here? What can we do more of? Or what do our customers want from us or our constituents? Like, whether you’re serving customers or people in pews or whatever you’re doing. And the inventor loves the freedom to come up with new creative ideas around that. They like, kind of know, imagine like a blank whiteboard. Like, I love the idea. An inventor would look at a blank whiteboard and a question and say, I can’t wait to come up with a lot of ideas around that.
Amy:
Clearly that is not my genius, Sean , I don’t like blank whiteboards. Draw something on it, and then I can get to work.
Sean:
But we’ll get to your genius though.
Amy:
Okay.
Sean:
We will.
Cody:
Well, you know, I mentioned the origin story. So Pat is an inventor. Somebody asked him the question, why are you like this? You know, like, why are you frustrated at parts of your job? He literally went to a blank whiteboard and said, I don’t know, let’s play around with that. So that’s like the gift of invention, right? Then after invention comes discernment. So there are people that are uniquely wired to have good gut feel, judgment, like evaluating the invention. So the inventor kind of presents these ideas, and someone with discernment will be able to pick like, oh, that’s the one that we should pursue, or hey, maybe, I like that one, but let’s tweak it this way. So they sort of vet and refine the ideas from the inventor. So that’s the next activity and work, every invention should be discerned before we move forward with it.
Amy:
Yes.
Cody:
And then it moves to the next genius, which is galvanizing. So this is the one where people love rallying the troops around that idea. They, like, you can call it like, I like to think of galvanizing as part inspiration. We might like inspire people to act around that idea. Or it is, sometimes you can do it by like pushing people outta their comfort zone. Like, Hey, I know we really need to get behind this. So it’s, it’s like creating the first amount of like energy and momentum around the discerned idea. Right? So they’re like being in front of rooms, galvanizing the team towards action and pushing them out of their comfort zone.
Amy:
Yeah. And we find on those teams, that’s a lot of our campus pastors, teaching pastors, they often have that galvanizing gift.
Cody:
Right.
Amy:
Which, you know, fits with their role very well ’cause they’re trying to envision their congregations.
Sean:
And that’s also you, Amy. Now we found your genius there.
Amy:
There it is! No whiteboard, just let me talk.
Cody:
That’s awesome. Okay, so there’s two more. I know you said brief, and I’m bad at that.
Sean:
No, this is good.
Amy:
No, it’s good. Foundational.
Cody:
We’ll try to go a little faster. So galvanizing, let’s rally the troops, let’s get everybody, you know, the energy and momentum focused around that idea. The next genius is the genius of enablement, and we actually like wrestled with this word quite a bit. It was like, what is, what is it when someone possesses this, that they are really, uniquely gifted at like, supporting ideas, getting them off the ground. Like the initial movement around responding to the galvanizer and saying like, I’m here to help.
And, we use the word enablement, like we thought of a bunch of other words. Obviously there’s some negative connotation with that word. But when you are doing that in light of Working Genius, these are like the team players that are the glue on a team. They wanna bring everybody along with them. They’re willing to support the idea, get the initial momentum going. Oftentimes, they can like volunteer too much for things. They so much want to please others that they can say, like, I’ll help, you know, like all the time in every aspect of whether you’re, you know, at a church setting or in work. So they’re, but they really are uniquely gifted at the people part of the ide, and like really bringing everybody along. If you lack this, which I think, Sean and I both have enablement as a frustration.
Sean:
That’s right.
Cody:
We don’t even really think about like, how do we get everybody on, you know, bring everybody along with the idea, you know or how do we, sometimes I’m like, I’m willing to help you, but I want to help you with my discernment, not just my support.
Amy:
I actually think, so that’s my other genius, I think that’s actually how I got my job.
Cody:
Oh, yeah.
Amy:
Because Tony had all of these things that he wanted to get moving, and that was my natural come alongside and let, well, let’s go, let’s make it happen.
Cody:
They really are. I mean, we have so many people with enablement on our team, they help like grease the gears of teamwork for our entire organization. It’s really a beautiful genius to have. So the last one is called tenacity. So where enablement, people with enablement, they’re more people focused in terms of implementation. Tenacity are very task focused. Like they want to see the, like, for me, I’m fine seeing the finish line. People with tenacity are like, we are gonna go all the way. We’re gonna, we’re gonna get in the end zone, you know? We’re not, they are, they’re great at like, pushing initiatives all the way through to completion. So they actually really love clarity, details about what the expectations are and when we want to finish this, and they won’t let you move on to the next task until we’ve completed that task.
So all the way from wonder, like, what question or what problem are we trying to solve through invention, tenacity, people are like, we’re not moving on until we see the results of that in our team, our organization, our, you know, like, we’re gonna make sure this thing gets finished.
Amy:
Now. And so that’s an acrostic for widget. So that’s how I can remember those six geniuses.
Sean:
Right. Yes.
Amy:
Thanks for giving us that overview. by the way, if you’re listening today and this is a brand new content for you, I recommend pick up the book, start listening to the podcast. Because what we’re gonna get into next is really talking about how these geniuses fit in on a team and how you can help not only yourself, for sure, yourself, know your geniuses and get your job in the right shape, but it’s how you also have the team around you. So as we look at these geniuses, Cody, what are some of the most common ways leaders end up doing work, like outside their genius and not even realizing it? You talked a little bit about how Pat was like that, but what’s, what ways can they see that?
Cody:
Yeah, I think, I think it’s important to realize that, we are all, like, we say this often. Every job is a six letter job, so all six letters are kind of required in every job. But we don’t often think about, well, what’s the order of those letters for my job? Like, how do I, you know, and sometimes in certain environments, certain activities of work are more rewarded than others. So we sometimes get like, thrust into, and I think the real answer to your question is we’ve done a bad job as leaders and managers of really articulating what the work is when we hire people. So we do a, you know, job description and we try to match a resume and say, do you have four years of experience being this job description, you know, or this title. And we think that a job is a job is a job, you know? Yeah. And that’s not true. Or a pastor is a pastor is a pastor. That’s nott true either.
Amy:
That’s right.
Cody:
And then there’s, you know, I think that oftentimes, you know, we talk about an imposter syndrome, like people think like, oh, I don’t belong here. I think there’s also like an impersonator syndrome where you look at somebody who’s doing this well, and you think I have to do it just like them. You know, and so I’m gonna try to mimic who they are in that role because they’re successful without under a real understanding of who I am and how God wired me. And so I think that there’s a combination of ways that people sort of wake up and find themselves, like really drained because they’re in a role or a job that doesn’t really fit their geniuses. Partly because they don’t know what they are. And then partly because they’re sort of thrust into these positions and say, here’s the gamut of responsibilities that you have, just go and do them.
Amy:
Yeah. I’ve seen that a little bit with some senior pastor succession, where you’ve got, you’ve had this, you know, 24, 25 years you’ve had this lead pastor, and then the new person comes in, they probably don’t have the same geniuses. They have some of the same competencies, like as far as the gifts that you need to be a lead pastor at a church. But I could see where that successor could be working outside their genius for some time without even realizing it.
Sean:
Cody, some of the language that you guys have developed around this has been really helpful for me. I mean, this is called the Working Genius, but, some of the other words that you use, the competencies and the frustration have helped me a lot because there are some things that I do that I wonder, maybe similar to what Pat was experiencing, why do I feel the way I do as I do this? Why does this kind of make me angry in some ways? And so just being able to put that word to it, frustration, it’s not that I can’t do it explains how I feel when I do it. So I wonder from your perspective, what are some of those telltale signs that somebody is in the wrong role, that they’re kind of working in those frustrations? Maybe how can you tell that that wiring is a mismatch there and maybe not just burnout or overload.
Cody:
Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s really important to remember that what Working Genius, the assessment, what we’re trying to really, what that assessment is about, is about joy and energy. You know, it’s not really about your ability to do some of those things. Like, I remember we first put this assessment out, and I had someone who like a really intelligent, had gone through medical school, said, Hey, I took your assessment and it told me that I wasn’t good at tenacity. I went all the way through medical school; how is that possible? And I was like, well, did you like it? And she was like, no, it was terrible. You know, and I was like, oh, yeah, that’s okay. I mean, you can get through that, but this is about what measures your, what fills you up, like I actually think one of the really unique things about Working Genius is when you do things in your Working Genius, it’s like charging your battery. You know, it’s not just like, oh, I can do it. It’s, it’s the thing that you start doing that you’re like, I’ll wake up at 6 am and galvanize. Like that feels like a blast. But if I have to wake up at 6 am and start with tenacity, which is one of my frustrations, and I feel all sorts of like discouragement, frustration, and ultimately, I think what, you know, when your question is like, how can someone identify that, we’re often in roles where we, I mean, burnout is one of the ways that I think people, I think we’re gonna, we’re moving in that direction towards burnout is like, I think this is like a burnout finder assessment as well. I think people very often, this was one of my ahas when we first started this process, was I think people have often thought of burnout, or we, the way we typically think of it is the amount of work that you have, oh, I’m overloaded. And the truth is, it’s more about the type of work that you’re doing than the amount of work, which is a very liberating idea.
Amy:
It sure is. Cody, it’s brilliant.
Cody:
Because you can do very little work in your frustration and get burned out, and you can do tons of work in your genius and feel totally fulfilled. And so just the idea that people could have a lens where they could say like, well, what is the thing that gives me joy and energy? And what’s the thing that I’m frustrated by? Is just a great first step to understanding burnout and how God wired you know?
Sean:
That is really good.
Amy:
It’s really funny. We just did the Unstuck Church report. I don’t know what Working Genius this is, but I had the honor of evaluating all of the submissions that came in, and my husband and I were on vacation and we’re in our hotel, and we’re like, let’s get a couple hours of work done. And he is just kind of staring at me because I’m in this spreadsheet just living the dream. I could, I love, I love analysis. And he’s looking at me like I’m crazy. I’m like, I could do this all day. Right? But again, going back to when I stepped into more content for the podcast, when I would have that blank just outline script, you know, just like intro this, that I could sit there forever and not hardly get a thing done until my good friend Tiffany and our team said, why don’t I put a few words in there first, and then I could take it from there. But it’s exactly what you said. I could work forever on the things that bring me energy. So that really is the difference. Right? When you’re evaluating your work, how do you feel, as Sean said, does it create energy and joy, or does it create frustration, really?
Cody:
Yeah. And the beautiful thing is, I mean, God made us to need each other. We only have two of the Working Geniuses, so even imagine, like in your marriage, there’s six Working Geniuses, the maximum you and your partner can have are four. And we’ve had so many people reach out and say, man, we’ve had this 15 year fight in our marriage because we didn’t understand how each of us are wired. You know, like I had a mom, this was like one of my favorite stories. A husband and wife reached out and they said, we’ve had this—the mom felt guilt and shame her entire life because she would do most of the laundry. And then when it came time to fold and put it in the kids’ rooms, she would put it on a bed in the guest bedroom, and the kids would like, go in there and pull socks out, and it’s all clean laundry. And she’s like, I just felt all this guilt and shame around this. And then she’s like, and then I realized I don’t have tenacity. I don’t like the very end of the project. And her husband had obviously, like, contributed to the guilt that she had felt. So she, they both emailed in and they were like, now we have a laundry service.
Amy:
There you go.
Cody:
Like, what a beautiful thing. They were like, we had this fight for no reason other than we didn’t understand how God wired her. And now we do. It’s beautiful.
Sean:
Cody, there are a lot of pastors listening today, and for a leader that’s watching their team right now, what patterns show up when somebody is consistently working outside of that genius? And then, and then when they do that, how is that related to the idea of burnout and experiencing burnout?
Cody:
Sure. So I think there’s two ways to think about this. If you’re evaluating your team, and any project should go through all six of those activities, right? When you look at a team map, so you can like take Working Genius with your team, you can put it on a team map, and it, and we do this with clients all the time, and it looks like you’ve been a part of their last 20 team meetings because you can start to predict things about their team based on their wirings. And so if you’re, if you’re a pastor leading a team, if there’s a really common area where you’re getting stuck, like, you know, The Unstuck Group. If you’re getting stuck or lost or bored or frustrated, or you’re spending a lot of time, you know, because we love our Working Genius teams that, like, teams that have lots of discernment, love taking tons of time to evaluate an idea. We might just like, spend a bunch of time there, like, why do we never actually execute on this idea? Oh, we can start to see patterns in our team because we don’t have anybody with enablement and tenacity to like execute the idea, you know? So that’s the way you would maybe look at it with a team, you know, Hey, where are we getting stuck or lost or bored or frustrated, drained. Like, there are teams that, you know, I worked with a church board, beautiful team, like wonder, invention, discernment, like really thoughtful about the content that they were putting out.
Amy:
They’re just ready to fire, aren’t they? I mean, ready, aim. Ready, aim. Ready, aim.
Cody:
Yeah. Yeah. And really bad at galvanizing the whole congregation to engage with it. And really bad at externally marketing themselves because nobody wanted to stand in front and like galvanize people around that. Well, they felt some shame about it. That’s fine. We don’t need to feel shame or guilt around that. Like, let’s just recognize that we’re lacking a genius in that area. So for an individual that’s pretty similar, too, is like, you know, I had a, I have a friend who works at a church on the east coast, and he went in for a performance review, and he was not working in his genius. His role was not like, really tied to his Working Genius. And he took in his Working Genius report and showed it to the senior pastor and said, Hey, I think this is not working for you, and it’s not working for me. And they changed his job and he got promoted to a different role. Because they finally understand who he was, you know?
Sean:
Love that. Yeah. Yeah.
Amy:
Yeah. And, you know, after working with teams, Sean, I’m just gonna jump in and answer your question too. It’s basically what you’re saying, but just for our listeners and their context, I think that there are some teams that really do fail to execute on things. So those are geniuses that are good at it. There’s other teams that make wrong decisions, so. They’re, they’re great at invention, but they’re lacking those discerners and they’re starting and stopping ’cause things just aren’t working. So I think as our listeners get more familiar with it’s, it’s a little bit easier to diagnose.
You know, one of my funny stories, it was shortly after I got trained in this and I worked with a pastor in the Northeast, and he’s an Italian guy, big personality, and I’m like, oh, he’s invention and galvanizing. And he was doing it down every hallway he walked, and he was a lead pastor. So you have the executive pastor with discernment going, you can’t do that anymore. We can’t do that. We need, we need to discern your ideas because of position and energy and galvanizing strength. So, you know, if you have a team that they’re not sure, did we make that decision, where are we going? They’re probably lacking some of that discernment area on their team.
Cody:
Yeah. That’s a really great insight. I like, I think when you think of the Working Genius, if you skip a step Yeah. You’re skipping someone’s ability to, like, you’re skipping a person, actually. The way God wired them.
Sean:
Right.
Cody:
If you move from invention to galvanizing, and somebody with discern is like, hold on, can we evaluate that? Like, are we sure that’s the right thing to do? And what’s unfortunate and beautiful at the same time is that the leader kind of has the formal authority to live at their geniuses.
Amy:
That’s right.
Cody:
You know, so oftentimes when we look at a team map, we will double the leader’s weight. You know, like if you’re an IG leader, that means the team probably, you know, every meeting you’re in, every conversation you’re in, you’re gonna live at the elevation of invention, galvanizing. In a way that, people kind of have to, you know, like move in that direction whether that’s their genius or not.
Sean:
I think, so you guys have talked about Cody, some of those geniuses that are kind of the disruptors and, I think sometimes it can be difficult to let the disruptors into the conversation because they might slow things down or they might disrupt, what we think is a great idea. Right? And I’ve seen that play out on teams as well, where, if we’re not really allowing each of those geniuses to show up in the development of an idea or a project, we miss those steps. And sometimes it’s unfortunately intentional.
Cody:
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t wanna get too nerdy about the model, but I love that you brought that up because it is really helpful for people. So we use the gears to represent Working Genius and the top gears are all responsive gears, meaning wonder, discernment and enablement are all responsive, meaning wonder responding to invention, discernment responding to the invention and enablement responding to the galvanizing. And then the bottom gears are more what we call disruptive. And not disruptive in like, it’s more responsive, disruptive. Like they’re the, they’re more like, you know, you could think of an inhale and exhale, you know.
Sean:
Yeah. They’re not there to cause problems. Right.
Cody:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s not like a bad label.
Sean:
Right.
Cody:
It’s like inventors really disrupt things with like, I have an idea, you know? A galvanizer disrupts things by saying, come on, you guys, let’s go. You know?. And tenacity people are like, we are not stopping until we get to the finish line. So, that’s sort of an interesting way, and if you look at your team members, your staff, like you can tell when somebody has two responsive geniuses. Yeah. They’re really, you know, an inhale, a pause. Like, I’m gonna, I really wanna evaluate that. If you’re a discerner/enabler, you’re going to like, really want to contemplate what’s going on. If you’re an inventor, galvanizer, like you mentioned Amy. You’re like, I have an idea, let’s go. You know? Yeah. And so there’s almost no inhale, when somebody is like that.
Amy:
Well, and here’s the world that I get to live in Cody. I’m surrounded by Sean and Tiffany who are inventor/discerners. So they just go in constant loops.
Cody:
Yeah. Yeah.
Sean:
We do.
Amy:
They’ll start speaking, and I’m like let’s just get it out there.
Sean:
It’s a little bit of a curse, Cody, because I think I have a great idea, but then I figure out it’s not a great idea.
Amy:
While he’s talking.
Sean:
And I just kind of cycle that. Yeah.
Cody:
Yeah. Well, inventor/discerners, what’s great about, like, you guys come up with ideas and already start refining and vetting them in your own brain. So by the time you present it to Amy, you’re like, I’ve already thought about that. You know, like, yeah. So it can sometimes come across like you’re defensive about the idea, but it’s really that you’ve just thought it through more thoroughly than people realize, you know?
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
That’s so true. And Cody, we obviously can’t go into everything, but, you know, I’m thinking about the pastors out there in this subject of burnout. Working Genius is also so helpful for meetings and helping the team really understand where are we at in the stage of this work, you know? So for us, for our team, when it came to wonder, we had a couple people with competencies, but I could actually just relax now and not feel that anxiety and that, feeling like I wasn’t contributing. And then it’s also helpful when we’re in that stage, like for Jacinta on our team, who’s tenacity. She also knows I can just sit for a while and then my genius will kick in at a different point. But I think that can be a source of burnout because of how it makes you feel when you don’t feel competent.
The other thing that I’ve seen a lot of with the teams is that idea of turbulence where. And again, depending on what your role is in the church, if you’re the lead pastor, if you’re the executive pastor, you’re leading a ministry area, that turbulence is a real thing when we’re jumping between wonder and tenacity or between you know, invention and tenacity. And so that’s been a really helpful thing too. So, again, I know we can’t go into it fully on this podcast to our listeners, but it, if this is intriguing you at all, there’s so much discovery in how to build a team around you, where you can really thrive in your geniuses. And actually let me ask that. So how do you build a team with a healthy mix of strength so that the work gets done without feeling drained? Is it a balanced approach? Like how do you coach teams through that?
Cody:
Yeah, that’s a great question. It takes an amazing amount of self restraint to not go into the meeting scene ’cause I think you’re hitting on something that so many people experience.
Amy:
I know it’s so good.
Sean:
But, Cody, you guys have some great podcasts where you cover that whole topic, right?
Cody:
Yeah. Sure. Sure. Feel free to.
Sean:
So a lot of our listeners could refer to those.
Cody:
And Pat wrote a book Death by Meeting that like Working Genius gave extra light to.
Amy:
It’s genius.
Cody:
And so there’s plenty of resources out there for people to fix their meetings. But, how do you build a team around this? Like, I think that if I’m talking specifically to pastors or people that are in churches, what it’s, it’s, it would be like really a disservice to them to be like, yeah, you should have a perfect mixture of all of the Working Genius on your team because you can’t necessarily hire, you can’t always go, you know, farm out some of this, some of these activities as somebody else. And so, I, the first thing is everybody, the first step for any leader is self-awareness. Who are you, how did God wire you? And who are you as a leader? If you know who you are, then you can start to understand the gifts and talents of your team, and you can tap into those gifts and talents, you know.
And so if you’re building a team, if you’re like a, you know, if if somebody comes to me and says, I wanna start a business and I’m a solopreneur, I would say, well, let’s do your Working Genius, and I’ll tell you where you’re gonna get burned out. You know? So many pastors are out there, like with really small staffs and are like I can pretty much predict where you guys are gonna get burned out or stuck. So be aware of what that is. And then I think, like, obviously having people represented in those areas is really great, but if you can’t do that, I actually think Working Genius, you know, I was, we didn’t cover, so I got a master’s of divinity degree and I was a pastor before I ever like joined Pat.
Amy:
I didn’t know that about you. That’s great.
Cody:
Yeah. The way the Lord, like you constructed my journey to Table Group is beautiful and huge grace. But I remember thinking back and going like, man, we used to just like try to solicit volunteers, like, can you help we, do you have a pulse? Like, can you do something like, and now with this lens, I would love to go. Can I give you a job that matches your genius that is gonna give you joy and energy? Are you an inventor? Like, I’d love to use your invention, you know? We don’t have that on our team. Is there somebody in the congregation that can help us think of how we should reorganize the children’s ministry?
Sean:
That’s a great idea.
Cody:
And people, when you give someone work that they love doing, it’s a gift. And so much of this is about us, our ability to tap into the way God wired other people. And so, yeah. How do you build a team? Ideally, you’d have a great mixture of all of these things and you’d really, you’d go into every meeting and say, we’re spending time in wonder and invention and circle those. Things like, if you have tenacity, this might be frustrating for you. All of that is true. But if you’re in a church setting where that’s not possible, so many of those people sitting around wanting to contribute, if you give them the gift of contributing in their unique identity and how God wired them, they’re gonna jump at that opportunity.
Amy:
Yeah. There are so many things that Working Genius explains. I worked with one, ministry team and the lead pastor was wonder and tenacity, so I don’t know how rare that is, but it felt rare.
Cody:
One of the rarer ones for sure.
Amy:
He had a creative arts team, and it was so funny. It was just a few weeks before Easter, and he came into their planning meeting and said, I wonder if we’re doing the right thing for Easter. I mean, they were full on in tenacity. And he wondered them. So we just had some, again, what’s it called in the plane turbulence and going through Working Genius. He just laughed. He’s like, that’s what I did. Yep. I brought him from tenacity to back to wonder, and it was so helpful for their team ’cause again, what are your frustrations? What’s not going well? What’s causing that burnout? It provides a lot of insight. A lot of insight.
Sean:
Cody, so we’re gonna wrap up our conversation, but I wonder if you’d just leave our listeners with one kind of practical exercise or conversation, maybe a prompt for them to help them name their wiring, and then to start to make adjustments to, what they do, what their schedule looks like, what their meetings look like accordingly.
Cody:
Well, I mean, and this is not a, we don’t do sale. We have nobody on our team that does sales, but like, take the Working Genius. It’s $25. It takes 10 minutes. It’s super easy. But then the other, you know, we haven’t like put a one sheet together around this exercise, but I often tell people to do this, which is, just write down what you do in a given day, and then try to attribute it to what genius does that correspond to. And, and if 60-70% of that is outside of your Working Genius, like let’s have a conversation about how we could reorganize our role, you know, to put more of your time and energy into the thing that gives you life, you know? And I mean, that’s the beautiful part is one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. If you’re working in tenacity and that’s not your gift, there’s probably somebody on your team that would be like, boy, I’d love to do more of that. So it’s just the idea of like kind of getting more aware about what am I doing on a given day.
And then also, you know, for pastors, like, I actually looking back, my, co-pastor was this beautiful like, shepherd personality, and I’m sure he was a discerner/enabler, you know, he just like, was so insightful and wanted to come along people and really cared about them. And I’m a galvanizer, and I loved being in front of people and trying to rally people around that. If I wanted to be like him, I think this is like the body of Christ part of it, you know?
Amy:
It is, isn’t?
Cody:
The eye doesn’t say to the foot like, I don’t need you. And so be who you are. You know, like, just live into the identity the Lord gave you, the giftings the Lord gave you. And don’t try to like work outside of that. You know, he made us to need each other for a reason.
Sean:
That’s very good. Cody, so if, listeners wanna take the Working Genius assessment or they wanna find you, the podcast, how can they do all of that?
Cody:
Yeah, sure. So workinggenius.com will have like, the easiest like access to the assessment. We do a podcast, I think every other week. It’s called The Working Genius Podcast with Patrick Lencioni. I’m not in the title, but I’ll be on there if you listen to it. But, yeah, it’s fun. And what I would, if you start with the Working Genius Podcast, we’re now three years into that podcast. Go back to the beginning ’cause we’re now we’re talking about like, sort of fringe applications to this. But at the beginning it was like joy and energy. What job should I have? How do I organize my team? What meeting, what do meetings look like? So don’t start at the most recent one. It’s like evergreen content. Go all the way back and start there.
Sean:
That’s good.
Amy:
You know, I’ll add one thing that I don’t think we said. You know, you said we don’t need any more assessments in the world. And what I love about the Working Genius is that it’s maybe 20% personality, 80% productivity. And that’s what fits in this series that we’ve been talking about with burnout, is we wanna be productive people and we’re gonna be so much more productive and full of energy if we’re living in our geniuses.
Sean:
Cody, thanks for your time. This has been great.
Well, Amy, I don’t know about you, but I got some personal coaching through that conversation. It was really helpful for me to hear Cody go a little more in depth on the Working Genius side. What stood out to you from the conversation?
Amy:
Well, I would just say if you’re familiar with Working Genius, you probably tracked the whole 30 minutes with us today. If it’s a new tool to you know, we’re not, we’re not selling anything. We just at Unstuck, it was such a helpful assessment for us, and it really made us enjoy our work more. And so if you’ve got some feelings of burnout, dissatisfaction, I just think it’s a really easy, simple, affordable tool to work through. I think it’s gonna answer some of the questions and give you some of the ahas that a lot of teams we’ve worked with, you know, burnout can mask itself in so many different ways. And this could be the area that’s causing your frustration.
Sean:
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, burnout going back to as part of what Cody talked about and if you’re working outside of your genius and just feeling that tension of everyday doing things that don’t bring you life and don’t bring you joy, of course a lot of the solution for that, especially for church teams, goes back to how they’re structured, right?
Amy:
That’s right.
Sean:
And that’s one of the things that we do as we get on site with churches. We help them build out organizational structure that we talk about this all the time, Amy, and you do such a good job at this, getting the right people in the right roles. Not just for the church’s sake, but also for those people’s sake so that they can serve in the way that God’s really wired them for.
Amy:
Yeah. And then, you know, next week, listeners, it’s our last week in this series and we’re gonna have Lance Whit join us. You know, I think when we, you know, we talked about burnout early in the series, people were probably thinking about the things that we’re actually gonna be talking about next week, and that’s gonna be how do we actually personally care for our soul and have awareness when the other kind of burnout, not the structure one, not the wiring ones, but just general burnout start to sneak in. So please join us for that conversation.
Sean:
Yeah. Well, listeners, thanks for being with us for this week’s episode. And again, if this conversation’s hitting close to home for you or any of the conversations in this series, we would love to help. You can start a conversation with us just by going to theunstuckgroup.com and make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen, so that you don’t miss the rest of the series. The next two episodes are gonna be just as good as this one. We’ll be back next week with a conversation with our good friend, Lance Witt. Until then, have a great week.
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