I received an out-of-the-blue e-mail from George Fitzpatrick who reminded me about leadership development programs that I led 20+ years ago for managers at Exxon (now ExxonMobile). Amazing! One aspect of those programs involved finding and recognizing each person’s genius. George remembers the program that he attended and his genius, and I invited him to write this guest post.

by George Fitzpatrick

I went through the “ing” exercise (finding a name for genius) years ago with a peer management team at ExxonMobil. After a frustrating day with little success at finding my “ing” one of the team observed that I always was looking for an edge, and there it was in a blinding flash: Creating An Edge. Having just read Is Your Genius at Work?, it’s interesting to look back at the evolution of my “genius”, and where I am along the path at this point.

First clue was competitive sports. As a pitcher, the “aha” came, after being shelled for a few innings, in learning how to pitch (very) inside occasionally to keep the opposing hitters honest. This was followed by a realization that education was critical (an edge) and several graduate degrees in engineering, business and finance thanks to ExxonMobil.

As I worked at ExxonMobil to build effective teams, I observed that while only we “top 10%ers” were given formal leadership training, there was tremendous potential leverage (creating an edge) by taking my whole team through leadership training together. The outcome was not just me becoming a better leader, but the whole team growing in leadership, and in the process of sharing leadership thinking together, becoming a much more tightly knit group with a high level of personal leadership and teamwork.

This path has led me to starting my own consulting business, and continuing to create an edge for my clients through The Leader In You, our workshop for intact leadership teams.

George Fitzpatrick, owner of Leadership Ventures, has been developing leaders in industry for the past 30 years, through personal one-on-one coaching and through The Leader In You workshops. Contact George at gifitz@comcast.net.