Liz Wiseman talks Native Genius with Toby Jenkins and Adam Franklin

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Why communicating people’s ‘native genius’ is so important.

Toby: Hi I’m Toby Jenkins from Bluewire Media

Adam:…and I’m Adam Franklin

Toby:…and we’re here today with Liz Wiseman and having a talk about a case study where we applied ‘native genius’ to what we do. One of the examples is: Recently, we ran two Web Strategy workshops with clients and they were two quite contrasting workshops. In one workshop we introduced the team members by their native genius and, in the other, I hadn’t.

The feedback from the clients on each occasion was completely different. In the one where I’d introduced the Bluewire Media team members by ‘native genius’, the client said it was great to see that we know each other’s strengths and that you have a very clear purpose and reason for being in the Strategy, and we were able to understand why everyone was there and were able to direct our questions accordingly.

In the second example – a not so great example – the complete opposite feedback was that: ‘I wasn’t quite sure what roles those two other people were playing in the Strategy Workshop.”

So that was a lesson for us and, from here on in, I will certainly be introducing our Web Strategy workshops using ‘native genius’ for all of the staff in the team.

Adam: We found it’s such a valuable way to introduce people to the meeting; introducing internal staff at the weekly, monthly and quarterly Bluewire meetings. We get the Chairperson to introduce all the staff via their ‘native genius’, and also we remind people what question to ask to harness their native genius. We find that by practicing this internally it really pays dividends in the workshops that Toby is talking about, because everybody is so familiar with each other’s native genius it becomes apparent to the client, we know each other really well and we know which questions to ask to get the best from other people.

That’s our experience of using ‘native genius’ and introducing people at our meetings.

Liz: Toby, what’s Adam’s native genius? And vice versa?

Toby: Adam’s native genius is ‘connecting with people’. Specifically, the question you want to ask Adam if you want to maximise his ‘native genius’ is, “How do we make the most of this, and who do we connect with to make the most of this?” It might be a project or it might be an e-book that we’re just launching, all sorts of different scenarios, but it’s all about connecting with people

Liz: And Adam?

Adam: Toby’s native genius is getting the most out of other people. So you go to Toby with the question: “Can I get your feedback on….x, y and z?” And Toby asks the questions and provides the feedback to help get the most for you.

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What is a Native Genius?

It’s a concept from Liz Wiseman‘s book Multipliers (thanks again for your influence Liz) and definitely not to be confused with a technical skill:

A native genius is something that people do, not only exceptionally well, but absolutely naturally. They do it easily (without extra effort) and freely (without condition)…They get results that are head-and-shoulders above others but they do it without breaking a sweat.

[Toby Jenkins wrote a blog post on How to Discover Native Genius if you’re looking for more info.]