The 6 Different Kinds of Intelligence (Patrick Lencioni)

This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "The 6 Types of Working Genius" by Patrick Lencioni. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.

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What are the six different kinds of intelligence every team needs? How do these types of “genius” contribute to project development?

Patrick Lencioni’s The 6 Types of Working Genius argues that there are six distinct types of working intelligence and that all successful teams consist of members each possessing a combination of each type. By properly identifying which traits your team members have, you can maximize both productivity and individual fulfillment.

Keep reading for an in-depth look at each kind of intelligence.

The Six Geniuses

Lencioni explains that an intelligence type is intrinsic to the individual, meaning the types reflect what that person is naturally good at. Each intelligence helps people excel at one of six essential activities required during any project, from developing your next product to planning a family vacation to establishing a summer fundraiser for your local charity group. These are Lencioni’s names for the different kinds of intelligences as well as the descriptions we’ll use to reference them:

Wonder: Perceiving Opportunity
Invention: Innovating Solutions
Discernment: Vetting Ideas
Galvanizing: Mobilizing People
Enablement: Supporting
Tenacity: Seeing Things Through

We’ll describe each intelligence type in more detail below. For now, it’s important to understand that Lencioni argues that each individual excels in only two intelligence types, that the intelligences are mutually complementing, and that all intelligence types must be represented for a team to succeed.

Fixed Vs. Growth Mentality?

Some may argue that Lencioni’s insistence that everyone celebrate and stick to their natural geniuses—and thus leave all remaining tasks predominantly to others—fits into a fixed mindset approach, where you stick to what you know, believing what you’re good and not good at are essentially unchangeable. In Mindset, Carol Dweck argues that such a fixed mindset can limit you to believing you can never evolve to succeed at anything new.

For example, a person who is self-observably good at literature may determine that they will never be good at science. According to Dweck, this can lead to insecurity and complacency. Alternatively, people with a growth mindset believe they can improve any skill through hard work, persistence, and the right learning strategies.

Lencioni argues that each of these six intelligences has either a responsive (passive) or disruptive (active) quality and that this stems from the source of the intelligence’s inspiration. Passive intelligences draw inspiration from the surrounding world and formulate approaches to changing or reorganizing it—in other words, they respond or react to situations. Active intelligences rely instead on their own internal powers to instigate change or impact behaviors—they create, innovate, and pull ideas from thin air.

(Shortform note: Managers can benefit from considering passive vs. active personalities in determining how they approach tasks including training, motivating, and giving feedback. For example, passive employees may require more prompting to share opinions, whereas active personalities thrive in free-form, open conversations. Additionally, passive employees typically avoid conflict, making a lighter, supportive work environment more conducive to their success. On the other hand, active personalities embrace conflict, making it important to provide them with venting opportunities while also tempering tendencies to dominate discussions or offer excessive pushback.)

Moreover, each intelligence is defined by its role during one of three stages of work that Lencioni defines: ideation, activation, and implementation. From here on out, we’ll refer to these as the brainstorming, set-up, and follow-through phases, respectively, and we’ll describe them in more detail below. Each of these three phases comprises two intelligences—one passive and one active.

Lencioni illustrates the three phases on a downwardly sloping gradient he calls elevation. The earliest phase of work (brainstorming) is at the top, descending through the remaining phases toward the project’s completion. This gradient has a metaphorical quality, where the earliest phases of work occur when our heads are in the clouds and activities are most conceptual. The process then eventually gains practical definition as it descends.

Lencioni emphasizes that one phase of work or intelligence is not better than another—only that they are most effective in a specific sequence in the life cycle of a project. For instance, early-stage discussions typically can’t tolerate too much task-mastering, because they’re meant to be more open and imaginative. Similarly, abstract creativity in later-stage discussions can distract the focus from the project’s execution and last-minute problem-solving. This means that putting team members in positions that don’t capitalize on their unique intelligence can derail the project.

Intelligence #1: Perceiving Opportunity

Category: Passive

The person with this intelligence gets the ball rolling. She recognizes an opportunity in the status quo and contemplates what’s possible. This intelligence is passive because it reacts to external challenges calling out for solutions and is required to catalyze projects.

For example, imagine your company wants to develop a new razor blade for personal care, but that particular market is saturated. This person sees where your competitors are going wrong and why their products don’t fully satisfy consumer demands: because their prices are staggeringly high. Instead of seeing difficulty, the person with this intelligence sees an opportunity—if you could lower production costs while maintaining quality, your company could make its mark.

The 6 Different Kinds of Intelligence (Patrick Lencioni)