Should Your Working Genius Type Inform Your Signature Style? 

Should your Working Genius type inform your signature style? 

Around Christmas, I heard that the staff at my church was going through something called Working Genius. I didn’t think much about it then.

But six months later, three different people in the profiling community mentioned it to me, and my friend who I talk to every day had been reading Pat Lencioni’s other books. Too much coincidence to ignore.

• Working Genius identifies six stages of work necessary to move any project to completion
• Unlike Myers-Briggs which focuses on how you take in, process, and evaluate information, this is about the actual kinds of work that energize or drain you
• It reveals not just your working geniuses, but also your working frustrations and competencies
• The system also shows whether you have disruptive energy that questions and creates, or responsive energy that supports and implements

I actually asked Claude to help me figure out my Working Genius profile through targeted questions. My geniuses—Invention and Discernment—were immediately obvious. But sorting through my frustrations and competencies took several tries.

How Working Genius Impacts Signature Style

While house-sitting for someone else on church staff, I stumbled across Lencioni’s book and read the whole thing. That’s when the real revelation hit me.

The most common Working Genius combination is Enablement and Tenacity. I am Invention and Discernment, literally the opposite energy pattern.

• Most people naturally expect others to be helpful and to push things through to completion
• But my energy comes from creating new ideas and evaluating what works best
• When people expect Enablement and Tenacity from me, everyone ends up frustrated
• This explains so many workplace dynamics I’d never understood before

Here’s what this means for how I show up visually: people don’t automatically think “inventive” when they see a 60-year-old woman. As I’ve gotten older, people have started to recognize my Discernment naturally. But if they can’t see my Invention genius, they’re going to ask me to do things that drain me instead of leveraging what energizes me.

How This Differs from Other Personality Frameworks

Working Genius operates differently from Myers-Briggs or Enneagram in a crucial way.

• Myers-Briggs focuses on how you process information: your mental preferences
• Enneagram explores your core motivations and fears
• RIASEC reveals the work environments you are most aligned with
• Working Genius is less about who you are internally and more about which parts of the work process you are most inclined toward contributing to

This makes Working Genius uniquely relevant to visual communication. In collaborative settings, people make split-second decisions about what to ask from you based on how you appear.

• Your visual presentation either supports or contradicts your natural working genius
• When there’s alignment, collaboration flows smoothly
• When there’s misalignment, everyone feels frustrated without knowing why

The Real Question About Signature Style

So should your Working Genius type inform your signature style? Yes and no.

Understanding your Working Genius makes a powerful case for why authentic visual expression matters. But the solution isn’t to create another set of style rules based on your genius type.

• If you’re Invention, you don’t need to follow “inventive dressing” guidelines
• If you’re Enablement, you don’t need to adopt a “supportive style” uniform
• What you need is to express who you authentically are so clearly that others can’t miss it
• This means going deeper than any personality framework, straight to your essential aesthetic

For me, this means I need to look distinctly unlike everyone else. I can’t afford to blend in or look conventional, because then people assume I’m the common ET combination and ask me to do work that drains me.

Expressing your authentic self through signature style is the most effective way to communicate who you are without saying a word.

Moving Beyond Systems to Authentic Expression, aka Signature Style

Here’s where most people get stuck: they want another system to follow instead of trusting their own aesthetic instincts.

Working Genius reveals how crucial it is to be seen accurately, but your signature style should come from your unique combination of personality and the artistic elements that harmonize with your body.

• Your aesthetic intuition reflects both who you are as an individual and what works visually with your physical form
• This is more nuanced and personal than any typing system can capture
• When you trust this deeper knowing, your style communicates authentically without effort
• People naturally see and respond to your genuine energy rather than a curated image

This is why I focus on helping people discover their essential aesthetic rather than creating more categories to fit into. Your Working Genius might explain why authentic expression matters to you, but your style should come from something much deeper than your genius type.

Here’s something simple you can do this week to integrate these principles into your wardrobe: Get dressed one day in the outfit you have that most reflects who you authentically believe yourself to be: the one you love the most. Then observe how people interact with you that day.

If you’re ready to discover your authentic aesthetic beyond any personality framework, I invite you to explore my Essential Signature Style Guide. This comprehensive analysis reveals your natural style essence and the visual elements that make you look most like yourself, with no typing system required.