Don’t Wait Until January to Strengthen Your Team
As the year winds down, many leaders are already looking ahead. They are setting goals, building budgets, and deciding what they want their organizations to accomplish next year.
But new goals do not automatically create a stronger team.
If people enter January with the same communication gaps, unclear responsibilities, frustrating meetings, and unresolved assumptions, a new calendar will not change how the work gets done.
That is why the final months of the year can be one of the best times to invest in a team workshop—especially a Working Genius workshop.
Engagement Affects the Bottom Line
The strength of a team’s workplace experience is not merely a cultural concern. It affects measurable organizational results.
Gallup’s Q12 research found that highly engaged business units, compared with those in the bottom quartile of engagement, experienced:
23% higher profitability
18% higher sales productivity
Up to 51% lower employee turnover
Those numbers do not mean that one workshop will instantly produce those results. They do show what is at stake when people understand how they contribute, feel valued by their team, and are meaningfully engaged in their work.
Team development should not be viewed as an optional activity. It is an investment in how people communicate, collaborate, and perform.
Working Genius Gives Teams a Shared Language
Many workplace frustrations are interpreted as personality problems.
One person seems to ask too many questions. Another moves toward action too quickly. Someone generates more ideas than the team can pursue, while someone else keeps pushing everyone to finish.
Without a shared language, those differences can quickly become judgments.
The Six Types of Working Genius helps people understand the kinds of work that naturally give them energy, the work they can perform competently, and the work that tends to drain them. It also helps teams recognize the six stages every successful project needs—from the initial question to final completion.
This understanding can change the conversation.
The person asking whether the team is solving the right problem may be contributing the Genius of Wonder. The person evaluating ideas may be providing Discernment. The colleague pushing toward completion may be supplying Tenacity rather than simply being demanding.
Working Genius helps teams replace frustration with understanding and judgment with curiosity.
Apply the Insight Before the New Year Begins
The real value of Working Genius is not found in the assessment result alone. It comes when the team applies that insight to its actual work.
A year-end workshop gives team members an opportunity to examine:
Which parts of their work gave them energy this year
Where projects repeatedly became stuck
Which contributions may be missing or undervalued
How meetings and handoffs could improve
Whether responsibilities match people’s natural strengths
What the team wants to do differently next year
These conversations help leaders recognize where people may be underused, overextended, or repeatedly working in areas of frustration. They also help the team identify gaps that might otherwise follow them into January.
The goal is not to leave with a page of ambitious resolutions. It is to choose a few practical changes the team can carry into its meetings, projects, and daily interactions.
Start the Year With Vigor Purpose and Clarity
A Working Genius workshop before the end of the year creates a natural bridge between reflection and planning.
Your team can finish the year with a clearer understanding of what happened, why certain frustrations emerged, and how each person contributes. It can then begin the new year with shared language, practical agreements, and greater confidence about how to work together.
That creates vigor because people better understand where they find energy.
It creates purpose because individual contributions are connected to the team’s larger mission.
It creates clarity because people have language for their strengths, frustrations, responsibilities, and needs.
A successful workshop is more than an enjoyable afternoon. It changes what happens when everyone returns to work.
A workshop works when the team carries it back into the work.
David and Lynn Cherry are certified Working Genius facilitators who lead practical, interactive workshops designed to strengthen team alignment, connection, and impact. To explore a year-end or new-year workshop for your team, schedule a free 30-minute discovery call at dpcherry.com.
