Keep It Simple: Using the Enneagram in Organizations, Part 2
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
Albert Einstein
Einstein was talking about scientific theory, but he could have been talking about the Enneagram. A guiding principle of those seeking to use the Enneagram in organizations should be “Keep it simple, but not simplistic.” In this essay I’ll talk about keeping it simple, in the next I’ll talk about not being simplistic.
I offer a variety of services to my clients, from one-on-one coaching to team coaching to in-house train-the-trainer programs. A common request is to deliver a basic Enneagram program for a leadership team as part of their team-building offsite, quarterly team meeting, operations review, etc. The goal they have in mind is to receive useful content with practical tips in a format that can be squeezed into an already stuffed agenda. The agenda is full and time is tight because the participants are senior leaders being taken away from their daily responsibilities and their time is expensive. They have often flown in from another location and they have a lot to accomplish in their time together. My job is to inform and engage them—to provide useful, clear, and applicable content in a way that is enjoyable and stimulating so they don’t get bored and start to resent the time devoted to the session.
Each kind of engagement is different and allows for different levels of depth, but the principle of “keep it simple, but not simplistic” should apply to all of them. If you want to use the Enneagram in organizations, you have to know how to deliver substantive fundamentals in simple language in a short time and you need to have have the ability to expand outward with more detail from those fundamentals when an engagement is longer and more relaxed.
The ability to do this involves creating clear and direct language and concepts to present and, just as importantly, deciding what elements of Enneagram theory to leave out.
By way of analogy, think of watching a Broadway play. The audience is there to be engaged and entertained for 90 minutes or so. They want to walk out at the end having been emotionally and intellectually enriched, feeling that they are in some way better for having spent that time in the theater.
What they don’t generally care about is what is happening behind the curtain or prior to the curtain rising. Generally, they don’t care about the research that went into the writing of the play, the details of the lighting and direction. They don’t care about the acting classes the actors took or the nuances of acting theory and technique that the actors are employing. They don’t care about the scenes or lines the playwright loved but cut from the final version of the play. They care about what happened on the stage.
Yes, there are some who are interested in that kind of behind-the-curtain information, but they are exceptions and it would diminish the play to overwhelm the broader audience with too much information.
A corporate Enneagram audience is very similar. They are not there, with a few exceptions, to become Enneagram experts. They are there to learn something they can apply right away and that will have long-term benefits.
If you are going to teach the Enneagram in organizations, you need to know the system deeply. You have to know its history and you have to be familiar with all the different teachings of the various teachers, even if you disagree with them. As the Enneagram is growing in popularity, people come to it from different places. If, for example, you don’t teach the wings or centers or vices and virtues, there is a good chance someone will ask about them and you have to be able to explain the idea quickly for the rest of the audience and why you are not including it in your session.
But, most importantly, you need a set of fundamental first principles that you can teach in a short time that are simple, but not simplistic.
When I get a request for a short Enneagram program for a leadership team, I start with this basic idea and expand outward as time allows:
The nine Enneagram types are the patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving that stem from the preference of one (out of nine) adaptive strategies, or non-conscious, habitual ways of solving the problems that life brings our way.
I tell the audience that these strategies manifest themselves in a variety of ways (that is, traits can vary somewhat among people of the same Ennea-type), but they provide the underlying “logic” behind someone’s way of engaging with the world.
I frame the core of Ennea-type as a verb—what we do (striving to feel perfect, … connected, … outstanding, etc.) rather than what they are. People feel like they can manage and adjust what they “do,” but often feel like they are stuck with what they are, and focusing on what people “are” tends to lead to stereotyping.
The advantage of this way of describing the Ennea-types this way to a corporate audience is that it means they only have to remember one thing (the strategy) and they can infer the rest. In other words, if I remember that a particular coworker is “striving to feel secure,” his behavior makes sense to me and I can figure out what other behaviors I am likely to see. If I can remember that my preferred strategy is “striving to feel powerful” I am more likely to catch myself in the act of overdoing this strategy and modify my behavior.
From this basic, fundamental idea I can add relevant examples and content such as common strengths and weaknesses, communication and leadership styles, etc., as much as time allows and tailored to the needs of the group I am working with.
Of course, there are times when more depth is either desired or required. Coaching engagements (either individual or team), train-the-trainer programs, etc., allow for more time and content. But, just as you wouldn’t start teaching calculus to first-graders, starting from clear, simple concepts and progressing in logical steps is the best way to teach anything, including the Enneagram.