When Full Plates Hide Untapped Potential: Rethinking Capacity on Your Team

Heather Italiano
Dec 3
2 min read

I’ve felt it. Maybe you have too.

Your plate is overflowing. Meetings are stacked, deadlines are pressing, your inbox is full, and yet you know you’re not really being used to your greatest potential.

You’re busy, but not in the right ways. You’re contributing, but not where you make your best contribution. You’re stretched thin, but not in the work that actually gives you life.

It’s a strange tension — feeling overworked and underutilized at the same time.

And if leaders overlook it, they risk losing their best people. Not because they’re unwilling, but because they’re underutilized.

Why This Matters

When we talk about a person’s “capacity,” we default to one metric: Time.

How many projects can they take on?
How many hours do they have?
How much more can we add without tipping them over the edge?

But time bandwidth is only one piece of the puzzle, and it’s not even the most important one.

Capacity isn’t just about time. Capacity is also about strengths.

Someone can have a normal workload and feel completely overwhelmed… while someone else can have a heavy workload and feel energized, fulfilled, and fully engaged.

The difference? How well their role aligns with their natural strengths.

Capacity Grows When Work Aligns With Strengths

When someone is working outside their strengths, even reasonable work feels heavy. When someone is working inside their strengths, even stretch work can feel meaningful and manageable.

It’s possible for people to be:

busy and bored
busy and burnt out
busy and underutilized
busy and thriving

The difference is whether the work that is keeping them busy matches the kind of work that naturally brings them energy, joy, and fulfillment — their Working Geniuses.

Working in your Genius turns effort into energy. Working outside your Genius turns effort into exhaustion.

Until leaders understand this, they’ll keep managing time when they should be managing fit.

How Working Genius Unlocks Capacity

The Six Types of Working Genius is a productivity and teamwork model developed by Patrick Lencioni and The Table Group.

You don’t have to guess where someone thrives.

You don’t have to assume who should own what.

You don’t have to rely on personality alone.

In less than 10 minutes, the Working Genius assessment gives leaders a fast, accurate, practical snapshot of:

the work that energizes someone
the work that drains them
where they add natural value
where they get stuck
where collaboration breaks down
where untapped strengths are hiding

It is simple. The insights are immediate. And it is shockingly accurate.

For example, the results below show that if this person is constantly asked to create original ideas (Invention) or motivate others to get things moving (Galvanizing), they’ll feel exhausted fast. Those aren’t their energizing strengths.

Final Thought

Burnout isn’t always caused by too much work. More often, it’s caused by too much of the wrong work.

When leaders measure capacity by strengths (not hours) they unlock higher engagement, better collaboration, stronger performance, and more sustainable momentum.

You already have the talent you need. You just may not be using it the way it’s meant to be used.

Written by Heather Italiano

Certified Working Genius Master Facilitator

Organizational Health Consultant

Founder of People Warriors