Lead Culture with Jenni Catron

In this episode of the Lead Culture Podcast, Jenni Catron sits down with renowned leadership expert and bestselling author Patrick Lencioni to explore his groundbreaking framework, The Six Types of Working Genius.
Lencioni—best known for The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and his work on organizational health—shares how the Working Genius model helps leaders and teams understand the kinds of work that energize them and the tasks that drain them. When teams gain a shared language for how people are wired to contribute, collaboration improves, frustration decreases, and culture becomes healthier.
Patrick explains the six types of work required in every project—Wonder, Invention, Discernment, Galvanizing, Enablement, and Tenacity—and how each person typically excels in two of these areas. By identifying these strengths, leaders can build more balanced teams, place people in roles where they thrive, and reduce unnecessary guilt and judgment in the workplace.
Throughout the conversation, Catron and Lencioni discuss:
Why organizational health is more important than strategy alone
How the Working Genius framework improves team communication
Why many leaders unintentionally place people in the wrong roles
How shared language around strengths transforms team culture
Practical ways leaders can use the model to hire, develop, and align teams
Whether you’re new to the Working Genius assessment or already using leadership tools like DISC, Myers-Briggs, or the Enneagram, this conversation will help you rethink how work gets done—and how understanding your team’s natural gifts can unlock greater engagement, productivity, and purpose.
If you want to build a healthier culture, lead people more effectively, and help your team do their best work, this episode is a must-listen.
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In this special anniversary episode of the Lead Culture Podcast, Jenni Catron celebrates one year of Culture Matters, her USA Today bestselling book on building healthy organizational culture. If you’re a leader looking for practical tools to strengthen your team culture, improve workplace alignment, and create a clear culture strategy, this episode is for you.
Jenni revisits the core principles of the Lead Culture Framework—a five-phase leadership framework designed to help leaders assess their current culture, define their desired culture, build a strategic culture plan, equip their teams, and commit to ongoing culture development. Leaders across industries are using this proven model as a step-by-step “how-to” guide for building high-performing teams and closing culture gaps before they turn into crises.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Why organizational culture requires proactive leadership—not crisis management
How to assess gaps in your workplace culture with clarity and confidence
The five essential phases of a sustainable culture strategy
How to create alignment around values, beliefs, and behaviors
Why culture conversations feel vulnerable—and how to lead them well
Practical steps to start building a thriving team culture today
Whether you’re leading a small team, a growing organization, or an established company navigating change, this episode will equip you with actionable leadership tools to strengthen team alignment, boost engagement, and create a healthy, high-performing culture.
If culture work has been sitting on your back burner, this conversation will challenge and inspire you to take the first step—because your leadership shapes everything, and culture truly matters.
Learn more about CultureMattersBook.com
Get the LeadCulture Course Anniversary Sale Here.
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AI isn’t just a tech conversation—it’s a leadership conversation.
In this episode, Jenni welcomes AI strategist Jackie Celske for a timely discussion on leading with wisdom, clarity, and conviction in a rapidly evolving digital world. As AI moves from novelty to necessity, leaders are faced with real questions: How do we reduce fear? How do we protect our culture? How do we ensure innovation makes us more human—not less?
Jackie shares practical insights on AI training, governance, team readiness, and the widening talent gap—along with a powerful reminder that empathy, discernment, and emotional intelligence are still our greatest leadership assets.
This episode will challenge you to think beyond cost-cutting and instead ask: How can we steward this technology in a way that strengthens people and builds thriving teams?
Learn more about Jackie here.
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Culture doesn’t break down because leaders lack effort or good intentions—it breaks down when there’s a gap between how leaders show up and how teams experience that leadership.
In this episode, Jenni Catron builds on last week’s conversation about the Clarity Cascade—mission, vision, strategy, and structure—and takes it one level deeper. The focus shifts from who is on the team to how well leaders are equipping people to fully engage once clarity is in place.
Jenni unpacks why self-awareness is one of the strongest predictors of leadership success and how emotional intelligence directly shapes organizational culture. Drawing on research, real-world leadership experience, and the LeadCulture Framework, she explains why competence alone isn’t enough—and why leaders must develop both self-awareness and others’ awareness to build healthy, high-trust teams.
You’ll also hear why tools like personality assessments and Patrick Lencioni’s Working Genius can be powerful culture-shaping resources when used well—not as labels, but as shared language that improves collaboration, alignment, and momentum.
If you’ve clarified roles, strategy, and structure but still feel like your team is getting stuck, this episode will help you identify what might be missing—and how growing emotional intelligence can unlock the next level of effectiveness.
This conversation sets the stage for Jenni’s upcoming webinar with Patrick Lencioni, where they’ll dive deeper into how Working Genius strengthens teams and accelerates culture health.
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You’ve done the work.
You cast the vision.
You built the strategy.
So why does execution still feel slow, stalled, or stuck?
In this episode of the Lead Culture Podcast, Jenni Catron unpacks a challenge leaders face every year—especially as they move from strategic planning into real-world execution. Teams aren’t failing because they don’t care. They’re struggling because clarity is breaking down in the system.
Jenni introduces a powerful framework she calls The Clarity Cascade, showing how results depend on more than just a strong strategy. You’ll learn how mission, vision, strategy, structure, and role clarity must intentionally cascade together to create momentum—and why most leaders stop one step too soon.
This episode will help you:
Identify why your team feels busy but isn’t making progress
Understand how organizational structure either fuels or blocks execution
See why misaligned org charts create confusion, frustration, and disengagement
Clarify roles and responsibilities so every team member can confidently contribute
Audit your structure to ensure it actually supports your strategy
If your 2026 goals feel solid but results aren’t showing up yet, this conversation will help you uncover the invisible barriers holding your team back—and give you practical next steps to realign for impact.
We need your help to get the LeadCulture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
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