Culture Needs Your Genius
Culture doesn’t change through conformity — it changes through creative, courageous individuals who bring their unique gifts to their communities, workplaces, and institutions. Research shows that cultures encouraging creativity and individual contribution see significantly better outcomes: positive, supportive cultural environments are strongly linked to higher creativity and innovation among people at work. Studies demonstrate that organizational cultures valuing open communication, risk-taking, and recognition significantly boost employees’ creative behaviors and innovative output, while rigid, punitive environments suppress them. ([turn0search29]) When each person’s genius — their distinct insight, courage, and conviction — is welcomed and cultivated, culture becomes adaptive and flourishing, not stagnant or conformist.
In the tensions of our time, it’s easy to feel like the pressures of culture are happening to us, but what if culture doesn’t simply need louder voices, it needs your specific kind of genius?
In this THINQ talk, Patrick Lencioni explores the idea of Working Genius—the six ways God has uniquely wired us to contribute: Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity (WIDGET). None of us carries all six. And that’s the point.
Wisdom, after all, is truth in action. And truth comes alive when our diverse gifts work together.
This conversation invites us back to the beginning—to see culture as a shared project to steward. When we lean into our strengths and honor the gifts of others, we don’t just do better work, we change culture together.