The 6 Gear Engine of Teamwork

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
Sustained organizational performance depends on the effectiveness of teams—not just the capability of individuals. It’s not only about communication and collaboration—it’s about how work moves through a team. When roles, strengths, and responsibilities are misaligned, even high-performing teams experience friction, delays, and frustration.

This workshop introduces leaders to the 6 Types of Working Genius framework as a practical approach to improving teamwork at its core. Through interactive exercises and real-world application, leaders will gain the tools to build more balanced, cohesive teams—where ideas flow and decisions are made efficiently. The result is stronger collaboration, clearer accountability, and a team that works together more effectively to deliver results.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND:

• People leaders, Leadership Teams or leaders collaborating across X-functional teams.

PARTICIPANTS WILL LEARN:

In this workshop, participants will learn how to intentionally design and lead more effective
teamwork using the 6 Types of Working Genius framework.

• Recognize their own working geniuses, competencies, and frustrations, and how these shape how they lead, contribute, and engage others
• Understand how work flows through a team and diagnose gaps, overlaps, and inefficiencies in team collaboration —from identifying opportunities through to execution including where work stalls, ownership is unclear, or effort is misaligned
• Map team strengths across the full workflow to ensure all six stages of work are adequately supported
• Align roles and responsibilities with natural strengths to improve both performance and engagement
• Strengthen decision-making and execution by clarifying who should lead each stage of work
• Apply the model to current team priorities to improve coordination, reduce friction, and deliver more consistent results

COURSE OUTLINE

Welcome & Introduction (30 Mins)

• Overview of Workshop Goals
• Introduce the Working Genius Framework
• Team Warm Up Activity
  • The Illusion of Teamwork (Busy vs Aligned)
  • Common leadership challenges
• Slow Decision making
• Inconsistent execution
• Over-reliance on key individuals

Understanding The 6 Types of Working Genius (40 Mins)

• Deep Dive into each Genius
• Examples of each Genius in Action
• Group Discussion: Which Geniuses can you see on your team?

Individual & Group Assessment Review (60 Mins)

• Participants Review their personal results
• Reflection Prompts:
  • What resonates?
  • Where are you overusing your genius?
  • How might you be impacting teamwork?
• Small Working Groups – Discussion of personal results

Team Mapping Exercise (45 Mins)

• Plot team members’ geniuses on a shared visual map
  • Identify Strength Clusters
  • Genius Gaps
  • Overloaded Geniuses
• Discuss how this affects:
  • Individual and team productivity issues
  • Projects and workflows
  • Decision Making
  • Burnout

Applying Working Genius to Real Work (45 Mins)

• Break Out Groups
  • Apply the model to a Current Project (W-I-D-G-E-T)
  • Identify where the work gets stuck
  • What geniuses are missing?
  • Realignment of work or tasks for better flow

Action Planning (60 Mins)

• Each participant creates a personal “Genuis Alignment Plan”
  • Specific adjustments they can make to their role, workflow or habits
  • Conversations they may need to have with their leader or team
  • Tasks they want to lean into and tasks they may want to delegate or reassign
• Team creates a “Team Genius Workflow Agreement” – Team Operating System
  • Who will own each stage of work? (6 stages)
  • Aligning natural strengths and identification of gaps
  • Meeting structure – alignment, handoffs, supporting and leveraging geniuses
• Making Changes
  • Redesigning workflow bottlenecks
  • Delegation planning
  • Adjusting meeting roles
  • Reassigning tasks to align to geniuses
  • One behavioral change as a leader

Key Reflections and Closing (15 Mins)

• Key Takeaways
• Next Steps for continued team development
• Q&A

METHODS TO BE USED

This focused workshop uses a highly engaging, experiential learning approach that blends self- reflection, team dialogue, real-world application, and structured facilitation. Designed to help leaders strengthen how their teams work together—by deepening understanding of individual contributions, improving alignment across the team, and addressing the root causes of collaboration challenges. Participants leave with practical tools and insights they can immediately implement to enhance team dynamics, increase collective productivity, and accelerate execution through more effective, aligned teamwork.

The 6 Gear Engine of Teamwork workshop uses a suite of interactive, hands-on tools—including personalized assessments, visual team mapping charts, workflow models, role alignment matrices, and real-world application templates—to help leaders understand how teamwork truly functions within their teams. Through these tools, leaders gain clarity on team strengths, identify gaps and misalignments across the full workflow, and uncover the root causes of collaboration breakdowns. The workshop is designed to enable leaders to immediately to strengthen alignment, enhance collaboration, remove productivity barriers, and drive more coordinated, effective execution across their teams.

Pre-work: Completion of the Personal Assessment at www.workinggenius.com