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Thanks for listening and see you next time. Welcome to Coaches to Know,
a podcast short designed to demystified coaching and help you our audience understand what coaching
is and how it can help you. I'm your host, Jamie, and
today I have the pleasure of being here with Coach Meredith to discuss the assessment
Enneagram. Coach Meredith has been coaching for fourteen years and she has certified in
the Enneagram assessment. Before coaching, she worked for fifteen years and management consulting
at Bain. She has authored two books focused on career development and living and
Leading with Intention. She holds an MBA from Stanford and a degree in the
Religious Studies from Yale, and her clients are executives at investment firms and those
at larger corporations. So thank you Coach Meredith for being here with us today.
Thanks Jamie. We're just going to get right into it as this is
a short podcast and talk about enniogram and so why don't we start with the
very basic question of what is the Anagram assessment and what is it based on?
I love starting at the beginning. So the enneagram is both tests and
subsequently a model of the human psyche that lays out nine interconnected personality types which
really articulate the depth of what motivates people, how they operate their basic fears,
desires, and how they show up both individuals leaders and then collectively as
executives. Great, and do you want to delve into a little bit further
of sort of the origins of the aniogram assessment and what sort of how it
came about. Yeah, I love talking about where any am came from because
it's really different from some of the other personality assessments. So you know,
I come, as you mentioned, from a very analytical bane background, and
the first assessments that I was certified in and that I got to know and
started using with leaders were MBTI and EQI Strengths Finder and things which were robustly
statistically proven from a psychometric perspective. And then it was only later in my
career, probably a decade into coaching, that I came upon amenogram, and
I was originally skeptical because it is not like those psychometrically proven and statistically robust,
but instead it's a model that comes from the wisdom traditions that has kind
of like reflections of showing up in history in different places. And then was
actually kind of codified into its current format in the nineteen fifties and then came
into the work of leadership in the Human Potential movement in the nineteen seventies,
and so I found it very curious and interesting because because it doesn't come from
that scientific background, and at the same time, I find it to be
probably the most powerful model for working with leaders and leadership teams that I've seen.
And the way that it works is that they are, like I said,
nine different personality types, which are all focused around how do you think
about the depths of someone operating So there's usually a basic fear and a basic
desire that each type is operating with. The types are numbered one through nine.
They also have colloquial names that we put against them. They're given numbers
instead of names generally because the names have a lot of power and names have
a lot of association with them, but help the types to be neutral because
there's not a good type. There's not a bad type. There are just
different types in different excuse me, different ways that we kind of operate and
move through the world. And what enneagram does is help us see what's going
on at the depths of our personality and what's going on at the depths of
human interactions. Thank you, Thank you for that. Just a follow up
question, you know you made the conduct that you that you find Nyagraham to
be one of the most powerful assessments for leaders. Why don't we talk a
little bit about what are the best use cases for any A Graham? When
do you recommend leaders teams organizations think about using aniogram and is it is it
applicable to individuals as well? Yeah, so the two best use cases are
individual leadership development and then collective teammates. So from an individual leadership development perspective,
it helps individual The reason why I like it is because it's multi dimensional.
So a lot of assessments MBTI, for example, gives you a type
of I'm an E NTP or I'm an I I N T J, and
they feel a little static in terms of who you are, and that's how
you operate. The thing about the enneagram is that it is developmental, so
you might see that your type, for example, is a type three,
which is what I am, which is someone who's very focused on achieving,
performing looking good. Often the basic fear of a three is being worthless or
not respected. The basic desire of A three is to feel valuable, to
be respected, to have other people respect and acknowledge them, to seek approval.
And so there's something about deeply understanding that which helps me then understand the
path of how do I develop through those things and how do I work through
the things that aren't underneath a lot of my behaviors at a more subterranean level
so that I can evolve in that direction. And so in the enneagram there
are not only nine types, but there's the directionality of my type of A
three, which through growth tends to start to look more like a nine,
or alternatively, lots of the other types that grow in the direction of another
type when they start down their developmental path. And so what I appreciate about
it from an individual leadership perspective is that dimensionality, the direction, and the
sense of development and a little bit of the path where you could go.
That is that's enlightened through thinking about an any Gram assessment. Now, the
second use case to your question is using it in executive teams. And where
I see it is most useful in executive teams is where it's actually laying bare
the underlying behavior that again, the underlying motivations that again explain a lot of
behavior. So I often use any Gram assessments for people to understand themselves and
then talk about the dynamics that are happening in a leadership team around consistent stressors,
consistent triggers, consistent patterns of behavior, and to be able to go
to the thing beneath the thing. So it's not that you're always you're always
over extending yourself, but it's actually that you're a type two, which is
someone who's a helper, a giver, someone who really wants to feel loved
and feel like they're useful to people. And so now we're seeing actually the
way that that person's always over extending themselves or always saying yes to other people
in a deeper way and the reasons why they're doing that instead of just trying
to stay at the superficial layer of the behaviors that we're observing on the executive
team. Cool. That's great, Thank you for explaining that. I did
have a follow up question regarding sort of is there so you laid out for
us the sort of best case scenarios or best uses for that, and I
just want to understand a little more deeply you said, you know, I'm
a three, but I can go and develop to a nine. Is that
like you're choosing to develop to nine and you would work with the coach to
help you change your behavior to develop to a nine. Or it's like I'm
a three and naturally threes will develop into like a nine personality. Yeah,
So as you think through the lens of enneagram, each type one through nine
has unhealthy manifestations of that type, and then the healthy manifestations of that type
to be kind of like reconciled, integrated, healthier expressions of that So take
a nine, for example, a nine is someone who's known as a peacemaker
or a mediator. They're often the one who's seeking harmony instead of tolerating things
kind of going poorly. Now, unhealthy type of that version would be someone
who might numb out or avoid the conflict, right. A healthier type of
a nine might be someone who doesn't numb out or disengage, but engages in
a way that helps actually the group come to harmony. So, first of
all, you think of the unhealthy to healthy manifestations of that type, which
coaching, obviously other developmental work can can help support that evolution. But as
you think about then even evolving beyond that, right, A nine, for
example, will start to take on some of the characteristics some of the characteristics
of a three. So instead of being kind of exclusively harmony seeking, they'll
also try and take the group to excellence as they start to take on some
of the beneficial aspects of the types that they grow into. So there is
a whole developmental path kind of within the type and then beyond the type,
which mirrors the path in a lot of cases of human evolution, becoming more
integrated, becoming more whole, becoming a healthier version of what you are,
starting to mitigate some of the downsides of your strengths, and really integrating who
you are. I love that idea because it really I think hones in on
this. You know, well, I feel like we humans tend to think
of personality as a fixed thing. But something like this that integrates the different
personality and talks about growth around a personality, whether it's unhealthy or healthy.
Is this idea that you actually have the capability to weigh into any probably area
of personality that you would want to grow into. You know, it's just
matching that that personality trait to I don't know if we want to prefer to
demonstrates to that moment, right, But I like the flexibility. Rather than
thinking of personality as the stagnant thing, it's more it's a dynamic thing.
Yeah, I really would fight against the binary definitions of care right that it's
a paradox which seems to be resolved. You both at the same time are
who you are and have a certain set of fears, beliefs, mindset,
orientation, and underlying psyche which you have, you have had, and which
you will continue to have. And at the same time you can also evolve
and develop beyond that and in a different way. Right, So it is
both static and developmental. It is both that you are who you always are
and you will be that, and you can be a different, integrated version
of a human, leader, of an executive. And so it seems like
there's this binary choice between is ecstatic or do you get to completely choose what
you are? And the answer is well, like, that's kind of a
false binary and you both are who you always have been and there's a path
to being different through that. Yeah, And that is one of the things
that I do I really love. But anagram because in all of this conversation.
It just introduces depth. It introduces depth and development and opportunity for being
ourselves and being different. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Are
there any shortcomings to using the aneagram? Like, are there situations where you
wouldn't use it? Yeah? So they're not necessarily situations in which I wouldn't
use it. But I think the thing that I said early on is the
major reason why I see aneagram not landing within a system is that if a
system is highly analytical and not open minded to taking the test and seeing the
value and kind of like proving that for themselves, right, it's not anyagram
is not something that I can give you the linear logical argument as to why
this is the best assessment for you, and I have all the data to
prove why this is the end all, be all for assessments, which is
why I always orient people to an experimental, iterative test and learn approach of
take the ennagram, see what your text is, have a typing conversation with
a coach, figure out whether that resonates with you, Notice what it feels
like to look at the world through that lens, and then figure out whether
that's useful to you and actually driving insights proportionately. When I work with leaders,
when I work with executive teams, they find deep insight coming out of
it. But it is something that you have to experience for yourself, and
you have to be willing to try out, because I'm not going to be
able to convince you that it is the assessment that you should use instead of
another assessment. So systems that are highly analytical or exclusively data driven and not
open to other sources of wisdom, I wouldn't suggest using it because it's too
much of an uphill battle to embed that into a culture. But if there's
a certain open mindedness for wisdom coming from other places and sources, then it's
a It's a great and very meaningful tool to be using. I love that.
I love that. I mean, basically, the minimal criteria is an
openness seeing what this can tell you and what is the what is the nyogram
sort of what's the nuts and both? What's is it a test? You
know? How many questions are on it? How long does it take an
individual to take? Yeah, so there's there's there's a number of tests which
will test for any agram. They're usually about twenty eight to forty minutes long
a series of questions which are all looking to identify what's actually going on underneath
your behaviors. Like I said, when you get that output from the Enneagram
test, it's usually worth having a conversation with a coach because the tests tend
to have, depending on test itself, sixty to eighty percent fidelity and actually
accurately typing you. And that's in part because there's a lot of interactivity between
the types. So you could be like I am I am. I am
primarily a type three. Each type also has a wing, which is a
slight influence from one of the sides. So I'm a three and I'm a
with a wing four, so I have a little bit of four influence on
and threes evolve to sixes, right, and they go to nines in stress.
So you could look at look at my test results and say, oh,
I see a three and a six and a nine and a four,
and there's some differentiation that needs to happen, usually in usually in a coaching
conversation with someone who knows the nagram to say, how do we make sense
of this and how do we actually understand what you're showing up as and in
what context. But yeah, it's a test. And then in addition to
the test, there's the depth of the model. So the model has directions
of stress and directions of growth that you grow in. It has relationships between
the different numbers, and there's a lot of is doom behind each of the
types that even without doing the test, you can go about reading, reading
up on and figuring out which of these resonate with me, which of them
feels like it explains my behavior in a good way. Usually what I find
is that typing is a thoughtful process, but not a hard process, because
usually when we when we find your type, Jamie, you would probably read
the description and feel like a little implicated and a little too seen and maybe
a little angry. Wait wait, wait, like I don't know that about
me? That's not really fair. Yeah, I like that part, I
don't. There's often a reaction with people when they find their type of like,
oh, I don't love being that type because they've lived it for a
really long time and they see both the beautiful parts of it in the and
the hard parts of it as well. And so yeah, usually a test
plus a conversation about it, and then there's the opportunity to just read up
on it. Many resources are widely available online, but the Enneagram Institute in
particular has a great resources that are widely available in free. Amazing, amazing,
And just one last question here before I let you go, because we're
coming to time. Why did you decide to get certified in the Enneagram as
opposed to any of the other assessments that are out there. You know,
I to the point that I just made, I don't think I've ever had
such a visceral reaction to being typed as I did with the Enneagram, a
feeling of I'm seen, this feels right, I don't know where this is
coming from. I'm kind of angry about it and kind of inspired by it.
I felt the most visceral, kind of like juicy reaction to getting typed
in Anagram than being typed in any other system. And it was that feeling
that I really had, and that same reaction that I've seen in other people,
which caused me to say, this is actually a really powerful tool if
people are open minded to it. It's certainly my tool of choice if people
are willing to entertain it. Well, thank you so much, Coach Naradith
for sharing with us your insight about the enneagram, and thank you to our
audience for listening. If you would like to work with Coach Meredith or one
of our other qualified coaches, please visit us at THEIDMMX dot com. Thank
you so much for listening. Thanks Jamie, thanks for listening. Please subscribe
wherever you listen and leave us a review. Find your ideal coach at www
dot VIIDMX dot com. Special thanks to our producer Martin Maluski and singer songwriter
Doug Allen.