Why Founders Should Find Their Zone of Genius and Own It
Photo by Lance Grandahl on Unsplash
Zone of genius involves doing the thing that comes to you almost effortlessly and that energizes you before, during and after doing it.
If you see a little bit of yourself in either (or both) of these two founders, your problems may not lie where you think they do.
Founder #1 is incessantly disappointed by those who work around her. They don’t seem to understand how to do their jobs. She feels she makes her expectations crystal clear but they don’t get it. In meetings, they stare blankly at her and wait to be told what, and how, to do something. Her team seems bereft of creativity and initiative.
Founder #2 feels he gives his days over to meeting after meeting, which makes him feel he cannot devote enough time to the most important things. When I ask him what those important things are, he gushes about how much he loves to “sell his baby,” his company, to investors and retail customers and consumers. He can talk for hours about why his company is awesome, but he can’t because of all those meetings. And meetings bring his energy level way down.
The problem these founders must face is that neither is operating in what Gay Hendricks calls their “zone of genius.” He laid out the idea in his book, The Big Leap, which I recommend for every change-the-world entrepreneur. He has a new book out called The Genius Zone I’m reading now. Conscious Leadership Group Co-Founder Jim Dethmer talks about this hot topic in this short video.
Basically, the concept of the genius zone is that all of us spend our time vacillating among four zones of competence that break down in the following way:
Zone of incompetence: even the most talented of leaders can’t be good at everything, right? When you’re bad at hiring people or speaking in public or managing processes but insist on doing these things anyway, you’re working in your zone of incompetence.
Zone of competence: this involves things you do pretty well … about as well as the next gal. It feels like busy work for the most part. The key point about this work is that it’s the kind many others could do just as well as you.
Zone of excellence: this involves the stuff you do very well indeed and have been rewarded for over time. You are better than most people in this area.
Zone of genius: this involves doing the thing that comes to you almost effortlessly and that energizes you before, during and after doing it. Your zone of genius has less to do with being better at something than anybody else — you don’t have to be Beethoven or Michael Jordan to operate in your genius zone — than it does receiving more energy back than you expended doing it.
Using myself as an example, for many years I was the CEO of companies, a role in which I operated in my zone of excellence. It was something that I did very well based not only from a financial sense of growing the companies but also the cultural sense of building purpose-driven brands that stood out from the competition. Avoiding my zone of incompetence, operations, I would vacillate into my zone of genius, which I would claim lies in teaching, mentoring, and coaching.
When I had a chance to strike out on my own to do something different, I did a lot of research to explore my zone of genius and do something that kept me in that zone as much of the time as possible. This is how I ended up co-founding Findaway Adventures, where I spend 70–80% of my time in my zone of genius. That’s pretty energizing and inspiring for me and, I hope, for the companies with which I work.
What about you? Are you working in your zone of genius most of the time, sometimes, occasionally or never? One way to answer this question is to take this daily energy audit for a few days. It will help you determine what energizes you and what saps your energy. Look for a pattern among the things that give you more energy than they take away. Note the activities that make you feel cranky and resentful or frustrated. Then take the bold step of beginning to focus on the things that inspire you.
“But what will happen to my company? How will anything get done?” you may be wondering. Well, nobody said that working in your zone of genius was easy. To the contrary, it involves courage because you’ll have to give up control over some things — and that can be challenging for the ego.
But I’ll bet you find your company a better place to work for you and your team.
For example, maybe building a team isn’t your forte. So, hire somebody who loves nothing in his or her professional world better than building a team and even running it. You’ll know you’re on your way to being a conscious leader who is working in your zone of genius when you begin surrounding yourself with other entrepreneurs or team members who are better at some things you need in the business than you are.
You can’t be the smartest person in every room in your organization, and if you try to be, you’re likely to wind up in exactly the same quandary as our two founders: surrounded by neediness or outright incompetence. So be bold and let me know what you’re doing to keep yourself energized and focused on the things that matter the most to you.
Sincerely,
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All credit to my ghostwriting partner, Dave Moore, who is instrumental in getting my thoughts out in a coherent manner & into these blogs. Thanks Dave!