The Working Genius Assessment Review
Another great team building tool by Pat Lencioni
PROS
Inexpensive
Easy to take, not many questions
Accurately assesses the individual role in a specific team
Great add-on to a teamwork workshop, provides additional dimension to the frameworks of the Ideal Team Player and Five Dysfunctions of the Team
CONS
Not very accurate for individual behavior outside of a specific team
Technical issues with email reports
I am a huge fan of Patrick Lencioni's talent. His books, The Five Dysfunctions of the Team and The Ideal Team Player, have helped me design my best leadership team building workshops, moving very different teams to a new level of trust and productivity. Also, I like assessments. I think different assessments can help you grow and learn, by showing you different angles of yourself.
So of course, I had to check out Patrick's new assessment model: "The Six Working Genius” (TSWG).
The idea behind the model is to help people identify the areas of their biggest joys and strengths, or as Patrick likes to call them, “working genius,” as well as identify areas of draining weaknesses. He looks at people’s strengths and weaknesses from a teamwork perspective: in order to accomplish an assignment, all six working geniuses need to work together. Even if one is working alone, they must be able to tap into all six of these abilities.
I took an assessment of this tool and I want to share my experience and thoughts with you all. This is an independent review; I won’t be making any profit if you decide to buy this product.
How Much Does the Assessment Cost?
If you purchase up to 99 licenses, each one will cost you $25. If you decide to buy 100-499 licenses, the price would be $22.5 per license. So the price for 90 licenses and 100 licenses will be the same, and it will be cheaper to buy 100 licenses instead of 91. 500 and more licenses will cost $20.00 per license, so again, if you need 445 licenses, purchasing 500 will give you a better deal.
Getting Started with The Six Working Genius
Signing up for TSWG assessment is pretty simple. You just visit https://www.workinggenius.com/ and click “Take assessment now.” It will redirect you to an online cart at The Table Group, Lencioni’s consulting company.. You can then select the number of licenses you need, register at the site, and pay with your credit card. You will then receive a confirmation via email and an invitation to your administrator account on https://www.workinggenius.com/
From there, you can distribute assessments via your administrator account as well as view assessment reports of fellow participants.
Questionnaire
After participants receive a link to the assessment, they can start it immediately.
During the course of evaluation, they need to read the given statements and indicate how each statement applies to them on the rating scale. Each option is listed below:
Oh no,definitely no
Sometimes/somewhat
Oh yeah, definitely
It took me five minutes to go through 42 questions. The instructions on the website say it should take about 10-15 min, and I can see how people may take the time to ponder over their answers.
All the statements are very clear, and not susceptible to misunderstanding. It is very easy to apply them to yourself and answer truthfully. They do not contain any negativity, so any answer can be construed as positive. However, it was sometimes hard for me to respond, “Oh no, definitely no,” because I wanted to mark down all of those options. I answered “Oh no, definitely no” to maybe 2 or 3 statements.
Once you’ve finished, you receive a copy of your report via email, and the report also appears in the Admin account. I noticed one problem with a report I received via email. The extension of the file wasn’t converted, so I had to rename the document extension into .pdf to open it. I submitted a request to Support, so hopefully they will fix this problem soon.
Report
The report is well designed. The front page contains the name of the participant, so it should be easy for the administrator to distribute those reports or store them in personnel files.
The next page contains the summary of the working genius model. There, you can see the quantitative results of the report, which shows the
participant’s “Working Genius” area, “Working Competency” area, and “Working Frustration” area. I genuinely liked the names of these areas, since it is often the case that frustrating work is not work we are bad at, but rather work we dislike the most.
Then there is a section dedicated to qualitative review. The report contains a brief description of every Working Genius, what people with this genius tend to say, and what others tend to say about them.
The following section is titled, “Your final Determination,” and it offers you an opportunity to re-evaluate yourself based on the quantitative and qualitative information provided.
And finally, there is the “Application Section,”which is probably the most important section as it suggests ways to apply your knowledge to your current team. Then, based on team evaluation, it provides information on issues your team may face due to one of the geniuses being underrepresented.
It provides a very simple framework for the team evaluation, and recommends practical insights based on which genius is underrepresented in the team.
Then it also provides some guidance on how you, as an individual, can put your genius to work.
Accuracy
I took the assessment twice, with a 20 day gap between the first and second attempts. Results were not 100% consistent between attempts. Both reports said that Invention Genius was my strongest area. However, the first report said Galvanizing was my working frustration, while the second one said it was Working Genius.
I guess it’s related to the fact that we often have to take on different roles for different teams. Taking that into consideration, individual guidance wasn’t helpful to me. However, I have tried the group exercise and it was a big success as the team had an opportunity to discuss their productivity and areas for improvement.
Overall, the effectiveness of The Working Genius consists of multiple layers, with results depending on the types of individuals and their respective teams.
