Live A Vibrant Life Podcast with Life Coach Kelly Tibbitts
Join Life Coach Kelly Tibbitts as she shares her coaching tools and interviews guests to help you Live A Vibrant Life.
Using her tools, this podcast can help you NOTICE your thoughts & feelings, DECIDE to live with self-awareness and develop the small PRACTICE steps that create your Vibrant Life!
Kelly has over 25 years of leadership development experience as an educator, pastor, mother and non-profit leader. The desire to live with aligned energy led her to her first coach.
This transformative work made Kelly pivot into the self-development world. Over the last decade, she has created the tools she shares in her coaching programs.
Kelly believes Self-Awareness Changes Everything.
She is certified to teach the wisdom of the Enneagram and Pat Lencioni's new tool, "The 6 Types of Working Genius."
You can download the .pdf for this episode here. Identifying your strongest skills so that you are able to refill your energy reserves and navigate through draining and overwhelming circumstances can be life changing.
Main points:
Every one of us has unique gifts and talents, which makes us a genius in our own way
Those gifts and talents correspond to the 6 steps in the work process- wonder, invention, discernment, galvanizing, enabling, and tenacity.
Hey friends, today's episode is about the tool that I love teaching called the working genius. I know that you have an area that is best for you to invest your energy. Here we go. I believe that you are a genius. I believe you were made on purpose for a purpose and that there are things that, when you do them, it fills your soul with energy and at the same time, there are pieces of the work process that can be quite exhausting and nothing's gone wrong. We all have geniuses, competencies and frustrations, so this workbook may begin to help you get a glimmer into understanding yourself.
Speaker 1:
One of the big gifts of being part of my coaching community is we work together on what's called the manual of me. It's a toolbox to help you understand your strengths, where you get energized, where you get frustrated, and have the toolbox ready to help you in those times that you know might be exhausting, overwhelming and depleting. So we're going to start with just an overview that this is an all-in-one model to help us understand work. Work can be anything from paid work to getting that basement organized, to creating a dinner for 10 people, and work involves different pieces. This working genius program, actually in my coaching toolbox, has three different workbooks. So we're just doing an overview today. Try not to get overwhelmed. See if you can notice, maybe, where you're working frustration is that's usually a bit easier for us to notice what is exhausting, what is depleting, what is overwhelming. But maybe you'll start to notice for the first time that you are in fact a genius. So Paolin Sione has always been one of the leaders I look up to in my season of leadership. I sort of stepped into leadership around 2003,. Discovered him as a leader, as an author, but when he came up with this tool I knew instantly this was something that was life changing for me and people that I knew, and I wanted to be certified in it.
Speaker 1:
But what he says is far too many people in the world suffer needlessly because they don't understand their own personal area of genius and, as a result, they're not doing the work that gives them joy. They end up in jobs that are draining and demoralizing. So that's what I want for you today to realize you're a genius and that there's work that when you do it it's going to energize you and, of course, as a human, you're going to have different things that you do that are exhausting, overwhelming, depleting. So let's go and look first at what these different areas are. So there are six different steps in getting work done. Again, this is not a deep dive. This is an overview day. All of these worksheets will be available for you to go through them. Try not to feel overwhelmed. Just notice what you notice. For today, that's enough. He created this model to look a little bit like a widget, where each gear turns into each other.
Speaker 1:
So the right way for any kind of work to happen is in this order you have an idea, you activate yourself and others and you implement the task. All of us have one to two areas that energize us, a few areas that we're competent in, and one to two areas that really deplete us because they're a frustration. So work begins with wonder. Wonder is the person who identifies the need for change. You're really good at asking questions and you tend to show up in life with a very steady energy. Once the questions have been asked, we need someone to come in and invent. Just come up with a bunch of ideas and solutions, and the ideator tends to come with a burst of energy. So think about a room where there's a big whiteboard. The ideator would love to throw ideas onto that whiteboard.
Speaker 1:
Well, once you have a bunch of ideas, you need someone who comes in and discerns is this a good idea for right now? Is this something that should maybe be a? No, the discerner really can assess the workability of ideas and, again, people with discerning energy show up with a very steady energy. Once you've discerned yes, no, maybe not now you need a galvanizer. You need someone to come into the space and say this is the direction we're going. A galvanizer tends to come in with a high burst of energy and people just naturally follow them. So now you've had an idea and you've activated it. Now it's time to implement it. Ideally, you have someone with the gift of enablement who sees that people matter and they want to move ideas through. People again showing up with a very steady energy. And in order for that galvanizer to know where to go and the enabler to get the people on board it is not quite to the finish line yet you need someone with tenacity. Now they chose this word to complete the idea of a widget, a tool. It's more of the person who gets things done. Are you somebody who loves to make sure that if we said we were going to do A, we actually finish it. We dot the I's and cross the T's again a very steady energy.
Speaker 1:
So just notice, and it's OK if you're not sure, but do any of these things sound like something you just naturally do? When we're not self-aware that all people think, feel and do life differently, we sometimes assume that what's a genius to us is naturally in everybody else, and that's not true. And then we also assume that what's hard and frustrating for us is hard and frustrating for others. So maybe today's big aha is that different people think, feel and do life differently. So when it comes to your working genius, the most important thing to notice is that we all have been given a gift, talents that give us energy, and there is work that, when we do it, depletes and frustrates us. Nothing's gone wrong, but no one can do all six steps in getting work completed. So let's just review again the three steps of getting something done.
Speaker 1:
You have someone who comes up with an idea, you have people who are activating themselves and others, and then, finally, you have energy put to implementation, to making sure that what was decided is completed. And one of the reasons that Pat wanted to bring this into the workforce is when we're not self-aware, we tend to focus our energy in the area that we enjoy doing, and for some reason in America we love to say that leaders are inventor galvanizers. They're the people who come in with ideas and move people forward, even if that idea doesn't serve the organization's mission or purpose. And so maybe you've worked with people like that before, who they show up and they have the energy and they're like this is where we're going, but yesterday they said we're going in the other direction. That can get really frustrating to someone with tenacity who wants to complete the tasks that they've decided to do.
Speaker 1:
Cornell University has said that the best leaders are self-aware, more important than any other gift a leader might show up with. The best leaders are self-aware. So our work is to understand ourselves. Which of these six geniuses do we get energy when we do and which do we get drained from? One of the reasons that he has brought this to the world is he really realized, especially through his father, who was such a good man but doing the wrong job that we can end up with shame, guilt, judgment about ourselves when we don't have the gift of self-awareness. We can look to the left and the right and be comparing ourselves to others, and so understanding your gifts and understanding that you were meant to be interdependent, you were meant to work with other people, can help with guilt and judgment judging yourself, judging others and the guilt and shame that comes from thinking things like I'm not doing this very well. Well, of course you're not doing it very well.
Speaker 1:
If your job is primarily in your area of frustration, the area that depletes you, nothing's gone wrong. You're showing up as a really healthy human, doing your very best, but what would it look like if you got to do more work in the area where you have energy, where you have a genius? That's what I'd like to help you discover. So, as you review these pages on your own, maybe you'll notice one or two of the geniuses resonating with you. Begin to notice if you have the opportunity to use them on a regular basis and if you're not currently using them in some area where you get paid for work, maybe that's an ideal place for you to volunteer. What drains your energy? Is there any way to delegate it? Is there any way to partner with somebody who might have energy in that area, and would this help you to notice whether your team is effective or not? I've loved sharing this on a smaller basis right now, with a few teams. The aha moments they get when they realize oh, of course, this is why we always get stuck here, it's not an area of genius for this current team.
Speaker 1:
And then finally using this information in a practical way is to understand yourself. That's the goal. I think self-awareness changes everything. So if we can use this information to have grace and love for ourselves, what will naturally happen is we will begin to have grace and love for others. Protect and replenish your energy. That's our primary job. If we want to live a vibrant life. Jesus said I came that you might have a life, and a life more abundant. We want to be caring for our minds and our souls and our emotions and our physical body. We want to care for ourselves so that we have the energy to go and do our work that we were created on purpose to do.
Speaker 1:
When you're doing a lot of the work in the area where you are naturally frustrated, you can expect that it's going to be draining.
Speaker 1:
Nothing's gone wrong.
Speaker 1:
Can you find a way to partner with other people and to get back into a place where you're doing more of the work in the area of genius, so you can refuel and fill your energy.
Speaker 1:
And what I really think is true, now that your brain has the job to go and look, is you probably have around you other people who have geniuses that compliment yours. And if we're not looking for that, it's sometimes hard to be in relationship with people who are very different from us, who think and feel and do life differently. Until we realize the value that they bring to the table as a compliment, there's no competition. So my hope for the working genius is that you'll understand yourself, You'll be kind and loving to yourself, you'll do more work that fills you with joy and you'll begin to notice that other people think, feel, do life differently. Nothing's gone wrong and you'll do whatever it takes to make sure you have some time to spend in your area of genius and you invite people along to partner with you in your area of frustration. All right, let me stop recording, and if you want to unmute and show your face, I'd love to have a conversation about this. Thank you, thank you.
