There’s the original book by Gay Hendricks, and by now several articles describing the 4 zones of function: zone of incompetence, zone of competence, zone of excellence, and zone of genius. However, I still like Alex MacCaw’s take on it the best. He says,
People’s performance consists of a mixture of skills, strengths, and talents. Here’s how I define them:
- A strength is anything that gives you energy.
- A talent is an innate ability that can’t be taught. For example, a love of numbers.
- A skill is a competency that can be taught. For example, knowing Excel back to front.
Zone of Excellence occurs when your talent and skills line up. It makes sense, you’re in the top of your field or workplace and the work comes naturally. However, it doesn’t energize you, after all, it’s not a strength. So eventually you may find yourself burned out.
I know I’ve personally felt this way before. I could do good work practically in my sleep, but I felt no joy, no drive. And the days went by so slowly. It was confusing because I’m naturally a cheerful person, so I’d still be happy but it was hard to distinguish that from the lingering, draining feeling I was left with at day’s end. Just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean you want to do it for the rest of your life.
That’s where the Zone of Genius comes into play and what makes this framework so appealing to me.
Zone of Genius emphasizes having all three - strengths, talents, and skills. Not only are you excelling at your work, but you feel energized by it. It plays in the back of your mind even after you leave. Work doesn’t feel like work. And time flies by oh so quickly.
I’ve realized I don’t always have to be great at it, because doing that kind of work makes me smile and that in itself is enough for me. It’s why I can joke that I like to garden, even though my plants still die.
In terms of finding your strengths, well you can always talk with close family and friends, or just reflect on your past experiences. Journals or work diaries are a great place to start. However, I do enjoy a good personality test and that’s where I’d turn to Tom Rath’s StrengthsFinders 2.0.
You take a <45 min. assessment to discover which of the 34 themes are your top five strengths and weaknesses. It’s based on the premise that we shouldn’t spend as much time improving our weaknesses because even after much effort, we’d probably only even out compared to others. Instead, we should focus our efforts on improving our strengths so that we can truly stand out among the crowd.
In Chinese, we’d say 鶴立雞群(he4li4-ji1qun2). It literally means to be a crane standing among chickens.
While I was skeptical at first, it actually helped me a lot in my career journey once I saw what my strengths were. According to StrengthsFinder, they are:
- Learner - read more
- Responsibility - read more
- Individualization - read more
- Empathy - read more
- Developer - read more
Suddenly, it didn’t feel as hokey as before. The little voice in my head was nodding empathically along with everything this test was telling me. What people had complimented me on my whole life. Habits of mine that I had always brushed off as “No big deal” or “Of course, doesn’t everybody?”
I’m really glad I work in the project management field because it plays very well into my strengths. The best days are when I come home re-energized after a full day’s work. I hope you’ll be able to find satisfying work as well that’s in your zone of genius.