CERTIFIED WORKING GENIUS FACILITATOR · PITTSBURGH, PA
The Working Genius®
CERTIFIED WORKING GENIUS FACILITATOR · PITTSBURGH, PA
The Working Genius®
When people spend their time on the work that energizes them, teams move faster. Meetings get shorter. And your best people stop burning out. Working Genius is built to get more of your people into the work that fits them.
Working Genius is a short assessment and a practical model. It identifies the six kinds of work every project needs, and maps people to the kinds of work they do best.
Individuals learn where they excel. Teams get a clear map of who should own what and where projects tend to stall. That same map guides better decisions about staffing, hiring, and how meetings run.
Heidi Sadecky is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator with more than 30 years of experience helping leaders and teams across Pittsburgh and beyond.
The Case for Working Genius
Most roles are built around titles, headcount, and who happens to be available, not around the work people are naturally good at. So capable people spend a large part of the week on work that drains them. They can do it. It just costs them, and it costs the organization.
The result is predictable. Projects stall at the same points every time. Meetings run long and decide little. Strong performers quietly burn out and eventually leave. None of it looks like a talent problem, because it is not one. It is a fit problem, and until you can see it, you cannot fix it.
Working Genius makes that fit visible and gives you a way to correct it. Teams that use it report higher morale and productivity, and lower frustration and turnover. The payoff is concrete: work gets assigned to the people best suited to it, projects move, and you keep the people you have already invested in.
What Is Working Genius?
Working Genius names the six kinds of work that every project needs, from the first idea to the finished result:
Wonder
Sensing that something could be better, and asking the questions that start it.
Invention
Creating new ideas and solutions from a blank page.
Discernment
Weighing ideas by instinct and judgment to see what will actually work.
Galvanizing
Rallying people and building momentum around a direction.
Enablement
Stepping in to support the effort and help it move.
Tenacity
Pushing the work through to a finished result.
The premise of Working Genius is that, for most people, two of these six come naturally. These two are your genius: the work you do well and that leaves you more energized than when you started. Two more are areas of competency, where you are capable but it is not where you shine. And two are areas of frustration, the work that consistently drains you.
Knowing your two, and everyone else’s, is what makes the model useful. It tells you where each person does their best work, where a team is strong, and where that team has a gap that stalls projects.
How Working Genius Works With Heidi
Working Genius works for individuals and for whole teams. The assessment is the same. What you do with the results is where Heidi comes in.
For an individual, the assessment produces a clear read on your two areas of genius, your two competencies, and the two that wear you down. In a working session, Heidi helps you apply it to your real role: what to lean into, what to hand off, and how to spend more of your week in the work that plays to your genius.
For a team, everyone’s results go onto a single Working Genius team map. In one picture, it shows where the team’s genius sits, who is worn down by the wrong kind of work and heading for burnout, and which kinds of work no one on the team is wired for. Those missing types are the gaps where projects stall.
From there, the work gets practical. Heidi helps a team:
- Reassign roles and project work toward the people who do them best.
- Fix the handoffs. Every project passes work from the idea people to the deciders to the finishers. Heidi helps the team see where those handoffs keep breaking and how to smooth them.
- Run better meetings by naming the kind of work each meeting actually needs, getting the right genius in the room, and giving the finisher the job of locking owners and deadlines before anyone leaves.
- Hire and staff for the genius a role truly requires, instead of discovering the mismatch six months in.
- Build a shared language. Instead of “he is difficult” or “she overthinks,” people say “that is a Discernment question” or “this needs Galvanizing.” It routes work to the right person and takes the friction out of it.
The value builds the more a team uses Working Genius, so Heidi does not stop at the workshop. She follows up to help the team apply the map and the language to their day-to-day and week-to-week work. That follow-through is the difference between an interesting afternoon for your team and a lasting gain in its performance.
Working Genius for Individuals
Working Genius is not only a team tool. On your own, it gives you language for something you have probably felt for years: why some work feels effortless, and why other work, even work you are good at, wears you down.
That insight is specific enough to act on. You can steer your role toward your genius, stop over-committing to the work that costs you, make sharper decisions about your career, and tell a manager exactly what you should own and why. For many people it reframes their whole history of what felt like a win and what felt like a slog.
Working Genius for Teams and Organizations
On a team, Working Genius turns into a set of practical moves. Organizations use it to:
- Develop leaders and align leadership teams around who contributes what.
- Design roles and responsibilities so the right work sits with the right people.
- Onboard new hires into work that fits, so they ramp up faster and stay longer.
- Plan projects by mapping which genius each phase needs before the work begins.
- Reduce the burnout and turnover that come from capable people stuck in the wrong work.
Teams that adopt Working Genius tend to report the same results: higher morale and productivity, less frustration, and fewer people walking out the door.
Heidi facilitates Working Genius for leadership teams, departments, boards, and entire organizations. You can run it as a workshop, a retreat, or ongoing engagement with follow-up built in.
WHY HEIDI
Your Certified Working Genius Facilitator in Pittsburgh
Working Genius was created by Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Heidi earned her certification through his firm, The Table Group.
What she adds is judgment. The assessment gives you a map. Heidi has coached leaders for more than 30 years, much of it as an executive coach, and she uses that experience to help you act on the map inside the real decisions your team is facing. A report can tell you who is wired for what. A seasoned coach can tell you what to do about it.
Working Genius or CliftonStrengths: Which Is Right for You or Your Organization?
The two tools answer different questions. Working Genius asks what kind of work you thrive in and how a team fits together to get things done. Gallup CliftonStrengths asks what your natural talents are and how to lead from them.
When to choose Working Genius
Choose Working Genius when you want to understand the kind of work you do best and, above all, how a team gets things done together: who should own what, why projects stall, and how to fix it.
When to choose CliftonStrengths
Choose CliftonStrengths when you want a deep, personal read on your natural talents, ranked and specific to you, as a foundation for individual growth and self-aware leadership.
Many leaders use both: CliftonStrengths to understand the individual, Working Genius to change how a team works together. On a discovery call, Heidi will help you decide where to start, or how to combine them.
Working Genius FAQs
What is Working Genius?
Working Genius is an assessment and model from Patrick Lencioni that identifies the six kinds of work every project needs. The assessment shows each person which of the six they are naturally built for, and which ones take the most out of them. The model helps teams use those results to improve coordination, communication, and teamwork.
How is Working Genius different from a personality test?
A personality test describes who you are in general. Working Genius focuses on the work itself: the specific kinds of work that come naturally to you and the kinds that don’t. That practical focus is what makes it useful for assigning roles, running meetings, and staffing projects.
Is Working Genius for individuals or teams?
Both. An individual gets a clear read on the kinds of work they do best and enjoy most. When a whole team shares their results, Working Genius does its most valuable work: the team can see its collective strengths and gaps, assign work to the people best suited to it, and stop projects from stalling in the same places.
How is Working Genius different from Gallup CliftonStrengths?
Gallup CliftonStrengths coaching helps you identify and name your natural talents so you can develop and lead from them. Working Genius focuses on the kinds of work that fit you and the kinds that do not, and on how a team hands work off, which is why it is so useful for meetings, staffing, and getting stalled projects moving. Heidi is certified in both methodologies. She can help you choose between the two, or schedule both so the results complement each other. See Gallup CliftonStrengths.
What does Working Genius cost?
The cost of a Working Genius engagement depends on a few things: whether it is for an individual or a team, how many people are included, and how much follow-up you want with Heidi to help the team apply and adopt it. You can see how Heidi prices her work on the Investment page. Nonprofit and ministry leaders often qualify for a reduced rate.
How do I get started with Working Genius?
Start with a discovery call. Heidi will learn what you are trying to improve, whether that is your own role or your team’s, and recommend the right way in, whether that is an individual assessment or a facilitated team session.