5 | Why use the Enneagram at work?
Have you ever wondered if an issue you were facing at work was related to the task or could be related to personality styles? Do you long to feel more confident in your ability to be a great leader? What if I could share data that could give you x-ray vision into your team dynamics?
In this episode, I share why I use the Enneagram personality system to help teams reach their full potential.
Episode Contents:
[00:04:38] What the Enneagram is great at
[00:05:48] The business case for working with the Enneagram
[00:06:48] The Enneagram helps you see your default mode
[00:09:42] The Enneagram helps us understand each other
[00:11:09] The ripple effect of working with the Enneagram
[00:13:54] The Enneagram can help teams work together more effectively
[00:16:08] Companies use the Enneagram for organizational development and to support diversity and inclusion efforts
[00:16:31] Coming up next
Resources mentioned in this episode:
“You Waste a Lot of Time at Work” infographic from Atlassian
“Employee Engagement on the Rise in the US” from Gallup
LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning report
Have a favorite podcast player? Here are direct episode links to:
Transcript
(This transcript was generated with the help of AI - please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.)
Hello, and welcome to Upleveling Work, a podcast about the strategies and solutions that real people are using for improving their work life so they can make a bigger impact and find more connection and fulfillment along the way. I'm your host, Michelle Kay Anderson, and I'm an executive coach and the creator of the Conscious Leadership Framework. I'm on a mission to increase the diversity of leadership at organizations. And the work that I do as a coach is all about empowering women and other marginalized people to become leaders who gracefully navigate complex work environments with confidence. Join me here each week to learn how to create high performing teams without working more or burning out.
[00:00:42] Introduction
This is episode five: why use the Enneagram at work?
In the last episode, we talked a little bit about how I discovered the Enneagram and some of the personal benefits that I've seen in my life. Today, I'd like to focus on why I think the Enneagram can really help at work and share some of the benefits the teams that I'm working with see as we work together.
And then in the next two episodes, I'm going to share four specific ways that I help teams achieve higher performance. That is where we will get into the, how to apply the insights of the Enneagram.
But first, I want to make the case that this is worth your time.
Most people assume that building a successful team is about finding a group of people with the right mix of professional skills. Like, "if you hire a bunch of A-players, then you'll have A team."
So you go and hire some really smart people who have impressive resumes and hope that they can pick things up quickly and start to produce. But often you find yourself with a group of smart and capable employees that struggle to work together or accomplish the results that you're hoping for.
In an attempt to fix this, you may fire people prematurely, believing that you have to 'cut the fat' to get to higher performance. You end up spending more time and energy finding the right person that's just the right fit. And because it can take a long time to hire, it puts pressure on the existing employees and performance can slip even further.
The whole thing becomes this perfectionistic fantasy that has you holding people accountable for things that are outside their capability or control, or enforcing unrealistically high standards. Instead of just addressing the root cause of performance issues or staying open and letting something new emerge.
This is what frustrated and overworked managers struggle with all the time. They know there's more potential on the team, but they just aren't sure how to tap in to that next level of performance.
Think about it: if high-performance was caused by hiring a bunch of superstars, then the New York Yankees would have won the world series each year that they had a star-studded roster. But they only won one world series title between 2006 and 2013 with stars like Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera on the team.
Or think about a team of players who aren't stars individually, but who took home the championship , like the 1980 US Olympic hockey team. The "miracle on ice" team made up of amateur and college players defeated the heavily favored Soviet union in the 1980 winter Olympics. This victory is one of the most famous examples of teamwork overcoming individual talent.
And the research backs us up. It shows individual excellence doesn't necessarily translate to team excellence. Factors like alignment on shared purpose, trust, and the nature of the teams interactions make a team more than the sum of its parts.
It is possible to build a high-performing team by creating a foundation of trust, building genuine comradery, and acknowledging and aligning work with each person's unique gifts. Getting your team into alignment on the project and mission and then intentionally focusing on key tasks are more impactful drivers of growth than raw talent.
You're better off hiring for a growth mindset and finding people who are coachable and willing to learn, then just hiring for the skills you think are needed to execute the role. This is what empowering and conscious leaders know: it is often possible to go farther, faster with the team you already have. And you can find more ease and flow when you let go of control and trust something more innovative can emerge.
And I think this is what the Enneagram is particularly good at...
[00:04:38] What the Enneagram is great at:
The Enneagram can help unlock the potential of a team. By working to identify the gifts and strengths of your team style and then within your team. It can help you value and support the unique contribution of each team member.
And then it also helps you to notice any significant imbalances in the team profile. It's almost an invitation to ask, “What does a team lose by paying attention to these specific areas?”
When I run the team report from Integrative Enneagram for the teams that I work with. It generates a team style, which is kind of like a compilation of how all the individual styles come together on your team and how you're operating. Sometimes the style is aligned with the other styles on your team. But other times it can be a completely different style. So you each have your individual Enneagram styles. And then we can also look at how those styles come together to form a team style. And you can discuss points of inefficiency or friction in the team and the patterns or assumptions that are underlying them. It's like as a team, we have this new language to start to name certain dynamics with more specificity so that we can start to talk about them and work with them.The Enneagram can help you understand your collective social and conflict styles and develop processes to harness healthy conflict as a driver of performance, not a barrier.
[00:05:48] The business case for working with the Enneagram
It is becoming increasingly clear that businesses need to invest in leadership development for both team members and managers.
21% of profitability increases come from highly engaged teams. Engagement looks like employees showing up every day with passion and purpose, presence and energy. However, 53% of workers report not feeling engaged at work. (According to Gallup)
69% of managers expressed feeling uncomfortable communicating with their employees. Businesses with highly effective communicators have a 47% higher total return to shareholders, compared to companies with the least effective communicators. (According to the Harvard Business Review and Towers Watson)
What this tells us is that communication has a direct link to both engagement and employee retention. And that soft skills are the things that are going to help you translate mediocre performance into high performance at the individual and team level.
[00:06:48] The Enneagram helps you see your default mode
But the thing is, most of us are operating on autopilot.
This is a common mistake I see with clients as they start coaching with me. It's true of everyone, really. we don't know that we're operating on autopilot most of the time, but most of us stay asleep to our blind spots and the unconscious tendencies that are no longer serving us. This might look like doing the same things over and over again, hoping something will change.
Or not making progress in your career or business for reasons you don't totally understand. Or maybe surrendering to the hustle, working harder or longer, but not making a material difference and finding yourself on a fast track to burnout. Maybe you're staying in a job longer than you should, or you're waiting around for the right opportunities to fall in your lap.
I talk to a lot of people in career crisis who are tired of playing office politics, or chasing the next client or new job opportunity in the hopes of feeling more fulfilled or successful. And because they're asleep to their own blind spots, and the ways that they might be preventing the very thing that they want, they feel frustrated and insecure, believing that they can't catch a break, or that maybe they aren't cut out for this. It is hard not to think that you aren't enough when you get passed over for a promotion again and again.
Using the Enneagram system at work allows you to more clearly see the areas where you're strong and have something unique to contribute and what work might not be meant for you. In other words, where are you trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, when instead you could be of knowing what embracing and celebrating what makes you unique or communicating in a way that it will land better with your audience.
That way you can more confidently go after those dream projects or clients, say no to the things that aren't helping you get where you want to go, and find a little more ease and flow.
A metaphor:
Think about it, managing a team when you're operating on autopilot is like traveling around the world without navigation or sonar.
You might see what is immediately in front of you and try to navigate what comes up in the moment. If you hit an iceberg or something under the surface, it's because you didn't see it or anticipate it. And so you have no way of what is really lurking under there. If you run into something, you might take on water and start to bail and try to patch things up in order to keep moving forward.
You have a choice. Either you do what you need to do to move forward in these situations, or you turn your engines off and drift. Either way, it tends to be a super inefficient way to get where you want to go. This is kind of how we're living on the daily. Your conscious mind deals with the immediate demands, but the subconscious is what is determining your course and influencing the results that you're seeing in your life.
But what if you could install a navigation and sonar system? Would you invest the time to learn how to use it and practice your navigation skills? Of course you Would the truth is, success isn't about how hard you're working or how long you've been at the job. It's all about charting your course, using the resources available to you, and being strategic about avoiding the obstacles in your way.
What if you didn't have to work any harder to get what you want?
[00:09:42] The Enneagram helps us understand each other
While many people are familiar with the Enneagram as a framework for working with individuals, the Enneagram also offers insight into what drives the behavior of teams, groups, organizations, and communities, as well as providing practical ways to improve the effectiveness.
Most of us think of business like a machine, where you have people or resources as inputs that produce a product or service. And managers think about pulling different levers or trying to optimize the performance of this machine in order to produce the most products in the most efficient way. But human systems and organizations operate more like an ecosystem or a living community than a machine.
The people and teams that make up organizations have an undeniably powerful effect on the systems that they act within. So as each individual takes action and then interacts with the other people that they work with, individuals and the groups are making sense of the world and learning and adapting as they go.
The Enneagram helps us decode and make sense of the dynamic relationships between people and the systems that they form as groups, teams, and organizations. So as we operate within teams and organizations, the individuals influence each other, and then the collective is also influencing individuals in very complex ways.
The challenges often lie in the relationship between individuals, or between the individual and the system, and the Enneagram can help highlight both tensions and possibilities in these relationships.
[00:11:09] The ripple effect of working with the Enneagram
Now let's explore the ripple effects that working with the Enneagram can have for individuals, teams, and the company as a whole. This next section draws on a lot of the training materials that I received from the Integrative Enneagram when I learned how to administer the team report and interpret the results.
I really like how they use the model of concentric circles to describe the ripple effect this work can have on an organization.
In the middle of this model, the circle in center is the individual, then the next circle around it is the team.
And then the biggest circle on the outside is the organization.
So you can think of this model as three nested circles
Starting at that individual circle in the middle, people who are self-aware are more aware of their habits and are better able to reflect on and change their behaviors. They have this enhanced understanding of themselves and others that enables them not only to be more effective at the personal level, but also more compassionate and authentic in the relationships that they have with others.
And then, at the team level, compassionate, authentic engagement drives trust in teams, groups, and even families. Self aware people support positive group dynamics. They're better at communicating, managing conflict, and making decisions collectively. And in the outside circle, learnings individual and the team level then filter through to the organization and community to create improved collaboration and the ability to affect real change, supporting an innovative, adaptive culture that is positioned for long term success.
Let’s look deeper at how working with the Enneagram at the INDIVIDUAL level adds value to the system:
Within teams, families, and systems, individuals are constantly learning, developing, adapting, and improving their skills and knowledge to remain relevant and grow. The Enneagram offers an in-depth understanding of the diverse, often-unconscious assumptions and patterns that drive individual behavior.
This deeper self-awareness leads to a fundamental shift in the way we think, feel, and show up in the world, while also developing our compassion and understanding of the needs and perspectives of others. Employees, leaders, and teams with higher levels of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and the ability to understand and communicate with others tend to outperform their peers in most settings.
The Enneagram is helpful for any individual who seeks to understand themselves and others better, become more tolerant, better at conflict resolution, and more courageous and authentic. It supports a diverse range of individuals in using their strengths more effectively, in many different areas of life. Its depth and integrative nature make it ideal for multi-layered development over time and it is capable of addressing a diverse range of issues.
[00:13:54] The Enneagram can help teams work together more effectively
Now let’s look at how working with the Enneagram supports TEAMS:
Working effectively in teams requires high levels of collaboration, trust, and interactive decision-making between diverse members and personalities. Therefore, much of the conflict and friction in teams is the result of misunderstandings or differences between members' perspectives.
The Enneagram offers teams a language for understanding, discussing, and leveraging their diverse perspectives and strengths. This enables them to improve communication, understand different members' approaches to conflict, and respect and leverage the gifts of each individual within the team.
The Integrative Enneagram report also scales to apply to teams, going beyond illuminating the challenges each person may experience in a team environment as a result of their individual type. The Team Profile applies team theory to decode and describe how the 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.
Finally, we’ll look at how working with the Enneagram supports the organization as a whole and adds value at that level:
To succeed and thrive in this modern, increasingly complex, and fast-changing world, organizations need different voices and perspectives. This is why diversity and inclusion initiatives are so important right now. Major organizations around the world are using the Enneagram to align and link diverse organizational development initiatives such as leadership development, team building, culture and climate, engagement, and productivity.
As one framework that scales to multiple levels, the Enneagram not only offers a language for discussing and balancing diverse perspectives, complex trade-offs, and real systemic polarities, it allows organizations to embrace diverse perspectives and utilize the gifts of their staff, offering the potential to create coherent, long-term journeys that result in sustainable change. By helping managers and leaders identify the individual needs, motivations, and drivers of their staff, the Enneagram helps them get the best out of their people, even in times of change or uncertainty.
[00:16:08] Companies use the Enneagram for organizational development and to support diversity and inclusion efforts
Did you know that the Enneagram has been used to develop leaders in hundreds of companies, including the NBA, Spotify, Dropbox, Toyota, Best Buy, and Avon, among others?
Companies who work with the Enneagram have experienced specific benefits including improved happiness, job performance, engagement, communication, problem-solving, relationship satisfaction, effectiveness, and self-confidence. And they’ve seen decreased anxiety, stress, depression, misunderstanding, and conflict. This comes out of a survey that the Enneagram in Business conducts.
[00:16:31] Coming up next:
Now that you understand how the Enneagram insights can be applied in a work setting to help you get results, you're probably wondering, "but how, how exactly does this work?" This is what we explore in the next couple of episodes where I'm going to share with you the four primary ways that I use the Enneagram with teams.
If you are familiar with the Enneagram, you'll be able to start to apply some of these insights right away. But even if you're new to the Enneagram, it'll help you think about the support that your team might need in order to become a high impact team.
Stay tuned next week to learn more about what it's like to work with me and some of the tools and strategies that I use with my clients.
Thank you for joining me on this episode of Upleveling Work. To view the complete show notes and all the links mentioned in today's episode, visit uplevelingwork.com. That's where you can search by the episode number in order to find the transcripts and any downloads or resources mentioned in the podcast.
That's also where you can find my 10 Mistakes Managers Make ebook, which explains the most common mistakes managers tend to fall into. My intention is to save you the wasted time and energy that these failed solutions cost you. That way you can become a more effective leader while playing to your natural strengths.
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