Trading
Places
by CJ Fitzsimons, with Mary Bast
(published in the May 2005 issue of
Enneagram Monthly)
CJ: In January I hit a wall in a coaching session with a
project manager I’ll call Hans: I couldn’t figure out how to help him break out
of his
Enneagram Eight box. A couple of days later, as I
read the current issue of Mary Bast and Clarence Thomson's
e-newsletter, I decided to take up
Mary's offer of six sessions
to fine-tune my coaching skills with those they describe in their book.
Mary: CJ is
an experienced and successful coach, consultant, and trainer who received his
Palmer/Daniels certification in 2002 and was already using the Enneagram quite effectively
in his practice when he contacted me. My interaction with him demonstrates the best in
collaborative coaching; in particular – from my perspective – how I learn so
much from my clients. C.J., for example, uses psychodrama to a greater degree than
I’ve typically done, and helped me see how effective this can be.
CJ: Hans was livid that his superiors had decided to send him to their
Assessment Center (AC) and that – if he passed – he’d lose a lot of the
freedom he currently enjoys in his job. This deep need for operative freedom is a thread
common to Eights, so I suggested that we work on his statement, "I have to
take the AC." I asked him to imagine standing in the room at the assessment center
and to rate his willingness sociometrically: he stood at 15 on an imaginary scale of 0 to
100 and admitted that more was needed, if he was to pass.
Accepting my suggestion, Hans then held a dialogue between Hans today and Hans
in his new job, after the AC. I got him to assign different places to stand in the room
for each role, and interviewed him in each before letting him dialogue. After a couple of
minutes to and fro (verbally and physically), I asked him how he felt in his new job.
"Not half as bad as I expected. It’s OK," he replied. For people from
Hans’s part of the world, this is the equivalent of "two thumbs up." His
energy set free, he was ready to start work.
We were due to have another session before the AC. One day, Hans called.
"It’s been brought forward to take place before our session. When can we
meet?" We agreed on a ½-day session. I was glad I was scheduled to talk with Mary a
couple of days beforehand – this helped with my preparations; in particular, how to
start Hans’s session. Working with Mary – apart from being a delight – has
enriched my coaching by deepening my understanding of how these Enneagram trances play
out.
Mary: One of the skills from our book that I review in
the six-week teleclinic is how to help clients
move
from either/or to both/and thinking. Often, the either/or
perspective stems from a client’s Enneagram worldview. Eights, for example, operate
from the assumption that "either I’m strong or I’m
vulnerable." In conversation with CJ it became clear that Hans saw the Assessment
Center as a place "where they torture people for several days by observing how they
respond to stressful situations, and then decide whether or not to promote them."
Hans felt he would be at the mercy of the assessors, a vulnerability that triggered his
Eight toggle-switch thinking ("If they’re not with me, they’re against
me").
CJ’s fieldwork for
that week was to help Hans move into both/and thinking, which he did quite well yet
in a different way than I might have done. In coaching it’s important to make the
purpose of fieldwork specific enough that both coach and client can test its
effectiveness. How the fieldwork is carried out may differ from the coach’s
suggestion. The technique I use is to identify the "X" and "Y" that
are apparently incompatible, explore the underlying objectives, and ask the client,
"How can you do both X and Y?" CJ did, in fact, help Hans
reframe the belief that if he was vulnerable he was out of control, but he accomplished
this by getting Hans to do a role switch.
CJ: I knew Hans was concerned that the assessors were "going to seek out
weaknesses and bore into them," which offended his need for fairness. Of course, when
he arrived, he wanted to cover far too much in the time available, so I pushed him to prioritise and suggested we start with his attitude toward the assessors.
I was writing the agenda on the flip chart at this point, so I invited him to
move to my chair, and to imagine himself as his AC assessor. I interviewed the
"assessor" about his approach, how he’d treat Hans, what he’d look for
in his assessment – keeping the questions and tone light. Hans relaxed visibly –
his body going from hunched/defensive to laid-back/open. I let him return to his chair,
asked him how he felt. When my intuition told me that not all concerns were covered, I
invited him to continue the interview from my chair. After another couple of minutes he
grinned, "It’ll be OK. He’s not out to get me. He’s only doing his
job."
Eights have a wonderful ability to decide quickly. Unfortunately that can also
look like shooting from the lip, since most of their decisions seem to be based on
either/or
thinking. Here’s an example to illustrate: "I can only present and represent
that which I believe in. I wouldn’t be able to execute a decision from top management
that I didn’t agree with." During the session, I decided to focus on his binary
decision style for my fieldwork. It transpired that he usually didn’t get the
reasoning behind the decision and had never thought to ask for it. We worked through a
couple of scenarios where he practised asking top management to explain their reasons for
the decision. (Before this, it was accept/reject; after this, it was check first, then see
how much of the decision he could carry out, and look for some nuance.)
Hans took as fieldwork to develop three options before making a decision. He
laughed when I suggested this, saying his wife (he reckons she’s a Seven) is
wonderful at this and he’d ask her for help. A few weeks later he phoned to thank me and tell me he’d passed – the
childlike delight of an Eight in flow was clearly audible.
* * *
Conor John Fitzsimons, Ph.D., born in Ireland, has been involved in
international projects since the early 1980’s, and as an independent coach and
consultant in Germany since 1999. Co-editor of a book on international project management
(in German), in which the Enneagram is introduced as a team model, he specializes in
supporting clients to improve their international project management and leadership
skills. Contact: +49-7221-801-738,
cj@cjfitzsimons.com.
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