Working with Teams
Strong leadership is essential to the long-term success of your organization. Without it, your business will struggle. And working with the Enneagram can help you personally grow your leadership capacity.
But if you don’t have strong teams, you are at a serious handicap. The type of solutions that are needed to navigate an increasingly complex world requires mental flexibility and emotional intelligence that most people are lacking.
Looking at the mix of Enneagram types on your team can help you understand and anticipate strengths and shortcomings as a whole team. It can also give you a lens to use to view roles and communication within your team. For example, is there a natural focus on tasks or processes? Do we default to an assertive style of going after things instead of taking the time to think through the different angles?
The Enneagram can complement organization development work
Investing in organizational development to improve your productivity or effectiveness is valuable, but most of this work sees the individual as a generic unit. Integrating the wisdom of the Enneagram types can illuminate dynamics that were previously not visible and point you in the direction of solutions that will be even more impactful.
Bringing the Enneagram to your team and working with the different types grows your capacity to see different perspectives and navigate conflict, as well as get to know each other better. There are lots of things you can explore in the context of developing teams using this tool, depending on the current dynamics within your team and your goals.
Anytime there is a difference of opinion or something goes wrong on a project, there is an opportunity to work on dealing with conflict. (And we want there to be differences of opinions and perspectives on your teams in order to make things happen and get creative!) Understanding the Enneagram types can help make things feel less personal and increase the ability for each member to see things from different perspectives.
The Pinch Theory of Conflict
Have you heard of the Pinch-Crunch Model? Its premise is that conflicts (called pinches) are unavoidable - expectations don’t get met, personalities clash, and differences in information or perspective can cause disagreement. Most of the time this type of harm or hurt feelings is unintentional. The other person isn’t trying to irritate you, but if you feel a pinch and don’t talk about it you will end up avoiding it and that creates its own dynamic on your team. So it is important to talk about that first pinch you feel with someone.
If you leave these pinches unresolved, they will inevitably build and cause a festering resentment (called crunches) that leads to decreased performance. Pinches can be predicted and reduced by sharing expectations, understanding personalities, and discussing them as soon as they occur in order to avoid escalation and unnecessary stress. Good leaders understand that trying to avoid conflict robs you of the opportunity to have meaningful discussions that end up creating stronger relationships and better performance.
We can predict things that will cause pinches
The cool thing about the Enneagram is that it highlights the fact that you have very predictable pinches based on your personality type. Your irritation about someone else is really about you and your type. What development work can you do so that you don’t get so easily pinched by that person? You may still choose to talk to them or give them feedback, but it moves from a space of blame or shame and into being able to see how you contribute to the dynamic (so you don’t come at them with a bunch of heat that makes them feel defensive or angry).
Working together to nurture your team
I offer a variety of solutions to working with your team, depending on the size and the goals of our time together. Send me a message so we can chat about how to work together to grow the capacity of your team and create ease and flow.
In addition to training workshops and individual Enneagram personality reports, I offer a team profile that uses team theory to decode and describe how your team's diverse perspectives blend into a set of unique collective drivers and dynamics, reflecting their collective Enneagram team style and the gifts and potential challenges they might face.
Check out these articles if you’d like to learn more about the Pinch-Crunch model or see some ways to work with this theory.
