Flying in Your Zone of Genius

One of the most wonderful feelings in the world comes from being in flow. This happens when you merge with your activity, when time disappears, and you forget yourself in the process. When you are in flow, that’s when you deliver your best work, and also when you really enjoy what you are focusing on.   You are most likely experience flow when you are in your ‘Zone of Genius’. 

The concept of the Zone of Genius’ is explained in great depth in the book: ‘The Big Leap’ by Gay Hendricks. According to Gay Henricks’ model, your work falls into four different buckets:   

• Zone of Incompetence
• Zone of Competence 
• Zone of Excellence  
• Zone of Genius

Zone of Incompetence & Zone of Competence

When you don’t know how to do a task, and you are a total novice, this corresponds to your Zone of Incompetence: low skills, low enjoyment.

When you start off your career, your work is often in the Zone of Competence - when you know what to do and you quite enjoy doing it. As you grow, learn and progress, you shift towards your Zone of Excellence: medium/high skills, medium/high enjoyment. 

Zone of Excellence

In your Zone of Excellence, that’s when you’ve become very skilled in your field, and you quite enjoy the work. Here’s the catch! It’s very easy to get stuck in your Zone of Excellence because you are rewarded for the results you deliver, and it’s comfortable. 

Yet, in your Zone of Excellence, you never feel entirely fulfilled; purpose & meaning are often missing, and you may sometimes wonder if you would rather be doing something else entirely.

Zone of Genius

And thankfully, there is a whole other level of joy and purpose: the Zone of Genius. Here you tap into your full potential by not only delivering great outcomes, but also highly enjoying the journey you are on. When skills & enjoyment are very high, that’s when you are working in your Zone of Genius. 

For some people, this is when they are writing. For others, it’s when they are networking. For data-driven workers, it’s when they are coding. Each person has their own Zone of Genius activities.  The two great challenges that then arise are: how can you discover your Zone of Genius and how can you prioritise spending time in it. 

Discovering our Zone of Genius

The easiest tool you can use to uncover your Zone of Genius is to map out all the activities you are doing in your work and your free time and place them on a graph of Skills/Enjoyment. You can plot how skilled you are for a given activity, and how much you enjoy that activity. What you will soon see is that there are a few activities that hit that lovely, sweet spot of high skills and high enjoyment – that’s the Zone of Genius. 

Often, there are only one or two core activities in the Zone of Genius. These are activities that come easily to you, and that you never considered as special talents or skills. These are the activities you would do even if you didn’t have to, or you weren’t paid to. Activities that are intrinsically rewarding and that you just love doing them. 

Prioritising Your Zone of Genius

The second challenge is prioritising spending time in your Zone of Genius. You might realise that you excel and love certain activities and yet you find it challenging to prioritise them in your workload or in your life. A few methods can support you to spend more time in your Zone of Genius. 

If you are an employee, then having an honest conversation with your manager to explain that your output will be higher and benefit the entire organisation is a smart move forward, combined with delegating other activities to colleagues. 

As a business owner/ entrepreneur, thriving in your Zone of Genius comes from outsourcing other activities to team members and freelancers, so that most of your work is focused on Zone of Genius activities. 

Working in your Zone of Genius is about giving yourself the permission to enjoy your work and to really thrive. If you firmly believe that: ‘Work needs to be hard, or it’s not work’, this type of thinking will block you from dedicating more time to Zone of Genius activities. As long as you think that way, you will take on activities that are outside of your Zone of Genius.

Once you fully give yourself the permission to thrive in what you do, and you also realise that it is a far more effective way of working, that’s when you are ready to commit to the wonders that await you in your Zone of Genius!

If you missed Katie's Coaching Conversations discussion on with our Head of Training, Sharon Lawton, you can watch the replay on The Coaching Academy's YouTube Channel here.

About Author

Katie Stoddart, founder & CEO of ‘The Focus Bee’ is an-award-winning, transformative coach & conscious leadership facilitator. Katie supports entrepreneurs & companies to reach & sustain peak performance in their business, through full clarity and focus.   The Focus Bee’s mission is to empower people to lead with greater joy, alignment, and purp ose, so that they can thrive in both their life and work.   Katie started her career as an engineer, working offshore, mapping the seafloor. From her time at sea, she gained the experience of leading teams under stressful circumstances. During her career, Katie has explored two of the greatest mysteries & unknowns: the infinity of the ocean and the depth of the human psyche. She is passionate about: focus, high performance and intentional living, Katie is frequently invited to speak & host conferences – she has amongst others spoken at Mindvalley, Women in Tech, Fifteen Seconds, and hosted a TEDx event (as MC) in Gothenburg. For her weekly podcast ‘The Focus Bee Show’ (300+ episodes), Katie interviews world-wide high performers.