Communication & Interpersonal Relationships

7 Ways the Enneagram Can Rock Your World

November 29, 2014 By Lisa

The Enneagram is the most powerful personal and professional development tool I have ever used to examine core motivations and understand why we do the things we do.

Having worked extensively with the Enneagram for the past few years and trained with Ginger Lapid-Bogda, a world leader in using the Enneagram in the workplace, I’m excited to share my passion with you.

Here are 7 ways the Enneagram can rock your world:

1. It accelerates your personal growth. 
Learning about the patterns of your type helps you see the big picture of who you are: the qualities that energize you and make you great as well as your blind spots and the subconscious triggers that hold you back.  By shining a spotlight on the patterns of behavior that lurk below the surface, you’re able to pinpoint the ones that are distracting you and focus on the patterns that lead to your success and voila – your potential for growth is limitless.

 2. It provides a strong foundation for strategic decision-making.
When you understand your type and your core motivations and intrinsic drivers to what you want, you can make better choices.

3. It helps you build stronger relationships. 
First and foremost, the Enneagram helps you improve the relationship you have with yourself but also with friends, family, colleagues, bosses, and clients.

Knowledge of the Enneagram helps you understand how others filter information differently than you, providing insight, objectivity, and compassion for those most important to you so you can draw out their strengths and cut them slack in areas that trigger them.

4. It improves your communication skills.
Knowing your type helps you understand the way you are perceived with laser-like precision. You gain insight into how you influence others. Working with this information helps you adjust your communication style to your audience and increase your circle of influence.

5. It helps you become a more effective leader. 
Effective leadership starts with understanding the big picture of who you are – leading with your strengths as well as being aware of how you get derailed so you can develop a more authentic leadership style.

The Enneagram also helps you understand the different needs of your people, to identify their strengths as well as the areas in which they need to develop, so you can empower them, stretch their performance, and help them grow.

6. It helps you handle change with finesse.
Life is full of change. With change can come anxiety and the emergence of our worst personality traits.

The Enneagram gives us insight into each type’s defense mechanisms so you can better anticipate the reactions of others and communicate approaches based on different needs.

7. It provides perspective. 
The most beautiful thing about the Enneagram is that you gain perspective into why you do things, so you can depersonalize situations and develop strategic approaches for the way you think and interact with people who think and act differently than you do, developing an appreciation for their perspectives.

Great Leadership Starts with One Step

November 28, 2014 By Lisa

Have you ever felt an incredible desire to change something at work or in your personal life but backed down because it just seemed too hard?

Some of my biggest regrets were times I retreated from taking on increasing levels of responsibility in leadership roles, usually turning them down because I didn’t feel like I had the skills, the backing, the time or the energy.

I guess that’s why the movie, “The Help” strikes a chord within me. Each time I’ve seen it, I feel more inspired and uplifted by the messages of courage and transformation.

Set in Jackson, Mississippi during the Civil Right’s Movement, the story revolves around a very strong and resilient group of women who fight the status quo of the domestic servitude, the culture they were born into.

The character that resonates with me the most is Abileen, a black maid who belongs to a long line of women who’ve raised dozens of children born to repressive white socialites. She teaches these children the values of appreciation, respect and unconditional love, virtues that are not reciprocated by the families she serves.

Abileen desperately wants to speak up against the manipulation, intimidation and abuse she and her community have endured, especially after her 24-year-old son dies as a result of negligence at the hands of her oppressors. But she hesitates. She pushes down her desire to take initiative for fear of repercussions.

Abileen is what I call a reluctant leader.

When Skeeter, an aspiring journalist and rebellious white socialite approaches her to tell her story, at first Abileen won’t even consider it. She fears speaking out against the people she and her family have been working for generations. She’s afraid of what they might do.

But most importantly, she’s afraid no one will be listen. She’s been treated as if she were invisible all her life.

When she does start writing and sharing her stories, she finds she has a voice and powerful lessons to share too. She starts talking with her community, women who have supported each other in hardship and celebration. She has conviction and inspires them. They want to join her too.

They want to expose the travesties they have endured at the hands of their oppressors — exposing them for who they are. They want to be heard.

Without even realizing, Abileen becomes the leader within her community by taking the first step to share her stories. She then empowers them by creating the vehicle to join forces and speak up for what they know is right.

Together, they create a movement that has power and energy to change not only the way they are treated but the way others around the country are treated too.

In this clip, Abileen is seen owning her voice as a writer and standing up to the lead antagonist in the movie and her manipulative tactics.

As Abileen’s preacher says, “Courage isn’t just about being brave. It’s about overcoming fear and daring to do what is right for your fellow man.”

This is how reluctant leaders change the world.

It starts with the willingness to stand up for what you believe and know is right for you, your people, your community, your followers.

How about you? What’s your first step?

Lessons Learned from a Pointed Finger

November 26, 2014 By Lisa

Have you ever had someone point their finger at you with such vengeance and hostility that you immediately felt like recoiling?

This happened to me a few years ago at an executive roundtable – the lessons I learned were invaluable.

After focusing on launching my business, I decided I wanted to branch out and expand my local networking circles. Since I’m a connector, have a strong business background and love to brainstorm, joining a local mastermind seemed like a natural fit.

As part of most roundtables, a good chunk of time is spent with each person sharing a particular issue then benefiting from the wisdom of the crowd through their insights, resources, ideas and suggestions.

The dilemma I shared involved having fear about launching new program that would require a significant investment of time, money and resources without having fully established my business yet.

True to form as part of this exercise, the group set to task and spent a few minutes brainstorming on paper what they would recommend and then went around the table sharing their most valuable insights. The first person to report back to me was a woman who had been clearly agitated and confrontational from the beginning of the meeting.

She pointed her finger at me and said, “SHAME on you for making it about the numbers,” following it up by saying, “you should be ASHAMED.”

Hun? What? Immediately, the facilitator intervened and asked her to refrain from such accusations to which she threatened to leave.

I was taken back. It’s not at all what I was expecting and I was stunned by her intensity.

I hit a nerve in this woman and she pounced on me like a saber tooth tiger projected her fears of shame on me.

Had this happened a couple of years ago, I would have either immediately gotten defensive and said “screw you” OR more than likely absorbed her anger by retreating internally, only to question, what did I do to deserve this?

But having invested substantial time in developing deeper levels of self awareness and self management, I’ve learned to shift perspective on the fly, this time I chose to take a deep breath and check in.

“Do I feel SHAME for having fear about launching something big?”

Nope, not really. As a matter of fact, it took a lot of guts to honor what I was feeling and share a fear with a group I didn’t know. This was clearly her issue not mine.

Then I got curious. I wanted to know what she had to say. I listened. She had a decent point — don’t play small, shoot for your dreams, don’t wait to take risk. I get it, but her caustic delivery eroded any empowerment in that message.

Some might consider not reacting a sign of weakness – why wouldn’t I stand up for myself and fight back. However, I consider it to be a great sign of accomplishment. A huge part of being true to who you are is not taking on what doesn’t belong to you.

Consider for a moment a time you’ve been humming along, feeling just fine, then you had a conversation with someone that left you feeling awful, pissed off, or helpless. It’s a natural tendency to want to hurl back an insult or stew on the internalized negativity. But those are both forms of taking on the other people’s stuff.

What I did was refrain from immediate reaction, gain some mental distance from her insult and looked at what she said objectively. It takes practice and restraint not to react, but I promise you it’s well worth it. The secret to success is being clear on who I am and how I feel. Do I fear uncertainty? You betcha! But shame, no, that’s not mine.

After the meeting, a couple people approached me and said they didn’t think they could have handled that situation so gracefully and wouldn’t have known how to react. I was quick to point out (no pun intended), the advice she was giving me, is most likely the advice she needed to follow herself. I saw this woman’s outburst as a cry for help. It was so clear to me that she was struggling with her own stuff.

While my heart truly went out for her suffering, no one should ever be shamed, especially not for expressing fear and taking on other people’s dark cloud doesn’t help anyone.

A quick Google search reveals the opposite of shame is honor and respect and this is my greatest lesson. I have learned to honor the integrity of my emotions, energy and time and respecting myself by not reacting to other people’s stuff and to me, it doesn’t get anymore powerful than that.

So I encourage you, the next time you find yourself on the receiving end of someone’s accusation, anger, frustration or shame — before you react, take a deep breath and ask yourself, is this my issue and respect what you hear? Is there anything to be gleaned from what is being said? Then take what’s helpful and relevant and leave the rest behind.

And remember when someone points a finger at you, there are 3 fingers pointing back.

The Enneagram In Action – the Wonder of Perspective

November 24, 2014 By Lisa

The Enneagram ~ original work in porcelain by Andrea Sinclair, artist

If you’d like to gain perspective on your strengths and challenges, try the Enneagram.
The Enneagram is a personality system and learning tool that helps us understand how we view reality and why we do what we do by highlighting nine distinct ways that people think, behave, and filter information.

Once you identify your type, you gain a deeper understanding of your intrinsic drivers and motivations, teaching you to lead with the ones that strengthen you and modify the ones that derail you.

Here is a snapshot of the common drivers and worldviews for each of the nine types:

1s are driven by doing the right thing and improving themselves and their environments.
2s thrive on connecting and often define themselves through service to others.
3s are driven to achieve, measuring their value by what they are able to accomplish.
4s thrive on meaning and purpose and feel most alive when they authentically express their personal experiences and feelings.
5s thirst for knowledge and seek to conserve their energy, time, and resources.
6s seek security, driven to anticipate worst-case scenarios so they feel prepared for whatever might come their way.
7s thrive on the stimulation of new ideas, people and places, seeing a world full of possibilities — compelled to keep their options open.
8s seek power, action and truth, striving to keep things under control while minimizing their weaknesses.
9s seek harmony and peace, avoid conflict, ease tension, and promote positive mutual regard.

The easiest way to understand these worldviews is to see them in action.

For example, let’s explore how each of the types might select a book from the library about developing communication skills.  

An Enneagram type 1 is motivated to perfect themselves and their environment, so they would look for a book about “rules of thumb” and standards from credible and validated sources of information.

Because a type 2 is driven to connect with others, they might look for a book that explores the interpersonal dynamics of communication and how to bring out the best in others. They’d also want to find resources they can give to their peers to help them improve their communication.

A type 3 would have a goal before even stepping foot in the library. They would have researched several different approaches to improving communication and select a book that can help them achieve their goals as efficiently as possible. They may have already made sure the book is in stock and reserved it so they can get in and get out of the library and start digging in.

A type 4 will look for innovative approaches to improving communication that stand out from all the others. Because 4’s are driven for meaning and purpose, they’ll look for books that have depth in content and possibly personal narratives that showcase how the author has improved their own communication skills.

A 5 will search for experts with a great depth of understanding, who provide the theory behind communication development, based in logic and rational thinking. As ardent fact finders, they may want several books so they can become an expert in their own quest for understanding.

A 6 will search for authors who are trustworthy and make sure there are no hidden agendas, such as books aimed to get the reader to buy expensive communication development tools. They might read what others have written about the book to validate credibility and authenticity of the author’s work. 6s will also want the author to explore different scenarios to apply communication approaches so they understand the full range of application and outcomes.

A 7 will enter the library and likely pick out several books on different topics that may be unrelated to communication, knowing they have the ability to connect the dots and come up with creative approaches that will inspire others to improve their communication skills.

An 8 will gravitate to authors who write with authority and provide the big picture. 8s want to find resources that help them get a better handle on communicating so they can maintain their powerful presence.

A 9 will select books that provide communication skills and exercises that are easy to relate to and appeal to many different perspectives. They’d be attracted to authors who are fair-minded and have every intention of fostering community and connection through improving communication.

Although the task is the same, the motivations behind each person’s quest differ depending on their worldview and the way they filter information.

At this point, you may be resonating with one of the types and finding all this information intriguing, but be wondering: what is the practical application?

I firmly believe that the more you understand why you do what you do and how you best contribute, the better you are able to communicate this to others and seek ways to align what you to do to your strengths and what lights you up.

The Enneagram helps you develop a greater awareness of who you are, so you can make strategic choices that lead to greater satisfaction.

To learn more about discovering your Enneagram type, click here.