Untying the Knots
From Chapter One of
Out of the Box: Coaching with
the Enneagram
My client, Walter
Frazier, was an innovative, idealistic leader.
He held high standards for himself, his employees, and
the company, but he was losing people's respect because of the
angry tirades he unleashed whenever he was disappointed with the
quality of someone's work. Walter came to me only for help in
managing his anger. It would have been easy enough to coach
him on how to use anger-management techniques.
But my questions ran deeper: Why did he feel
so much anger? How could I coach him to break out of the
worldview that kept reinforcing his perfectionism? When I led
him to this deeper level, he learned how to interrupt the inner
patterns of processing information that made him angry. He
became less harshly judgmental and his underlying anger began to
dissipate. I was able to help him accomplish this shift
because of the Enneagram’s power as a coaching tool.
Most people
acknowledge how important it is to act in accord with their
internal needs and values. But they're often out of touch with
their deepest motivations, behaving instead according to who they think they are,
playing familiar roles and piling up trophies from their worldly
successes. Often, the very characteristics that propelled them
to reach personally important goals now get in their way. People
like Walter who are idealistic and quality-minded
standard-setters, for example, may find their perfectionism
and inability to delegate effectively prevent them from
achieving their real goals.
When we started working
together, Walter
held a filtered view of how the world should work. Many
people may ask how to shore up the crumbling mortar of their
personality styles when their usual coping strategies fail them,
seeking help on how to make more money, quit feeling anxious,
change to a more enjoyable job, or find a new boss/lover/spouse.
As with Walter, my coaching will take you beyond your immediate requests to get what
you really want and often urgently need—a way to break “out of
the box” of your habitual perspectives and reactions to the
world.
The Enneagram is a
brilliant diagnostic tool to identify
nine
different ways of viewing the world, each of which has a
common set of patterns. When you know these patterns and how to
interrupt them, you'll consistently experience long-term,
profound changes. For those who do not yet know the Enneagram,
click here for
brief descriptions and follow the links that attract you.
