USING THE ENNEAGRAM IN BUSINESS

© Belinda Gore, Ph.D. 2004

There are many, many ways to utilize the Enneagram in a business environment. Let’s look at a fictional company to address some of those possibilities.Company XYZ is going through a re-organization. Their primary customers are being affected by a change in the national economy and sales are down. In order to survive, the CEO and his executive committee have decided to “down-size” and have laid off 15% of the company’s employees. The Human Resources department is flooded with requests for help from managers who are trying to accomplish more with fewer staff and individuals who are suffering stress-related physical and emotional symptoms, including burn out and survivor guilt.

As a consultant, I work with the Human Resources staff to address stress management. The intent is to give the team a shared understanding of the causes of stress and tools to reduce the stress in their work environment as well as in their personal lives. They can use these tools for dealing with the stress created for them as individuals, being the contact people for the entire company during stressful times, as well as learning to apply the same tools in working with individual employees and teams. The Enneagram is included as a tool for understanding how people try to get what they want, using the Process style sub-grouping (Riso and Hudson call this the Horneyvian group), and how they cope when they are unsuccessful in getting what they want, using what Riso and Hudson call the Coping Styles. These two sub-groups can be used to create a 3X3 grid into which all nine personality types fit. I work first with the HR team so they are familiar with the concepts.

The HR manager later hires me to work with a particularly difficult team. The manager—let’s call her Judy-- is a cheerful person with a Type Nine personality who has been with the company for many years. When interviewed by the consultant, Judy says that she has loved working at Company XYZ because it was such a positive environment and everyone got along together so well on the team. The changes in that past year have been upsetting to her personally and have created havoc with her staff. As a Nine, Judy does not like conflict and tries to maintain a cheerful demeanor. As a result of this tendency to have only a positive outlook, the team that works for her is frustrated by her apparent denial of the conflicts within the group. They view her as treating them like children yet unwilling to stand up for \them with higher management. As a result, a couple of employees—both Sixes, who have a low tolerance for lack of leadership—are starting to create “trouble” in the eyes of their Nine manager.

We agree that the first intervention will be a half-day stress management workshop for the team of 18 people. No one from HR or management will attend. This gives the group an opportunity to identify the problems themselves, with no one being singled out. During the workshop, the consultant discovers that two staff members, Don and Diane, who have each worked for the company for more than twenty years, readily admit that they are frustrated and “speaking out” on a regular basis to try to get things “back under control.” They each have Type Six personalities and are predictably anxious about their job security and about the long-term viability of the company. To relieve her anxiety, Diane has taken on extra work to make herself indispensable to the team manager, hoping that will assure that she will not be laid off. She has been working about 50 hours a week and is exhausted, but she wants to be a loyal team player, not uncommon for Sixes. In the group, we talk about good self-care and she gets support from her peers that she will not be judged and excluded for doing less. Don has been having problems at home; he sees himself at a breaking point and “might have to quit his job.” Again within the group we work on tools for managing his anxiety, including giving him permission to quit if he needs to but also helping his coworkers understand how important they are to him. By this time, a high degree of safety has built within the team and during the small group exercises, several Nines within the group (it is not uncommon for team leaders to hire people with whom they are comfortable) have identified their fears about not being able to handle the conflict. I use the Enneagram grid to go through each of the types, identifying typical sources of anxiety and giving some examples of how to best relieve the stress.

At the end of the “stress management” workshop I ask the group to make an anonymous wish-list of changes they would like to see occur on the team. They come up with several very good suggestions, as well as some highly personal comments about the manager’s behavior. In an individual session with the manager, I deliver this wish list. While the manager is shocked by the personal comments, I assure him that the team thinks he is a good person to work for and appreciate his flexibility (comments made within the workshop session that everyone seemed to agree with). Because I am an outside consultant, it is easier for me to talk with him about this sensitive material and to coach him toward more productive behavior. We move on to also identify intervention strategies with a personal conflict between two employees who are related. Later, in debriefing with the Human Resources staff, I talk with the executive coach on the HR team about some possible ways to deliver suggestions to the CEO, after determining that he is probably a Nine surrounded by a diverse executive team.