Teamwork:
"A Seamless Weave"
(Also in Chapter 2, "Business Applications" of
Enneagram Applications: Personality Styles in Business, Therapy,
Medicine, Spirituality and Daily Life)
"We're going to be executing some major changes in the next few
months," said Dick Malone, "and there may be some
psychological effect on the people here. Our whole organization is undergoing
restructuring and there'll be an announcement of my re-assignment around the time of the
team session. But I'd still like to go forward with it. Can we learn about the
Enneagram and help prepare for these changes at the same time? Oh, and can you do
that in one day?"
Phew! I sometimes tell clients I forgot to put my
magic wand in my briefcase... But Dick and I, both
Enneagram Nines, were abundantly optimistic
and eager to collaborate. His team members turned out to be good natured, flexible (they'd been
through many changes already), and earnestly interested in learning about
themselves.
I'd never met the rest of his team, though, and I
don't use Enneagram tests, so I sent
my Leadership Styles
handout before the session along with a
summary based on Robert Kaplan's
Beyond Ambition: How
Driven Managers Can Lead Better and Live Better. (I wish this book were better
known among O.D. practitioners. Kaplan provides excellent developmental case studies of a
One, a Three, and an Eight, as well as a rationale for knowing
ourselves better that's appealing to business executives.) Along with their pre-readings,
I sent participants a form to return
indicating their level of certainty about their Enneagram style. I also asked Dick for a thumbnail sketch of each of them. This
input helped me design a session to meet their particular needs. Below are some
highlights:
-
Unlike the diversity of most groups, this
team had several
clusters – four
Sixes, three Nines (including Dick), two
Sevens,
a
One, and a
Two. Exploring
their
MBTI preferences
explained some variation within Enneagram styles:
all but three were
Extroverts and almost half had a Feeling preference.
This team attributed their cluster of
MBTI extraverted/ feeling preferences and Enneagram styles Six and Nine to
their consulting role with other corporate functions. Most had a collaborative/ democratic style and a group orientation that served them well
in their job responsibilities. The two Sevens were the visionaries. The One
(Two wing) and Two (One wing) wanted to help their internal customers solve problems.
-
We started the day
examining their general coping style and strengths with The
Hero's Journey,
each describing the most difficult situation they'd ever encountered and what they
learned from it, particularly about their own coping capabilities and their ability to
elicit and accept support from others. Individual Enneagram dynamics began to
emerge as they shared their difficulties with each other and how they overcame them. One
of the Nines, for example, recognized her pattern of tamping down her concerns
– only to
discover herself suffering a multitude of physical problems under
stress.
-
Next I asked them to assess their current process of
transition, using a
graph from
Managing Change at Work by Scott and Jaffe. This simple but powerful model emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and working with
internal processes that enable effective change, and outlines strategies to help
individuals and teams move through the four stages of transition. The authors give
examples of signs for each stage:
-
DENIAL (e.g.,
numbness,
minimizing, refusing to hear new information)
-
RESISTANCE (e.g.,
stubbornness,
illness, blaming others, doubting your ability)
-
EXPLORATION (e.g.,
chaos,
indecisiveness, seeing possibilities, unfocused work)
-
COMMITMENT (e.g.,
focus,
teamwork, balance, visioning)
Most members of this team found
themselves in the exploration stage, with occasional lapses back into
resistance
(the Nine mentioned above began to label her physical problems as a form of
"resistance" to change, and set a personal goal to use her
physical symptoms as clues to what was
really going on
with her). They talked about the importance of harnessing the energy available in
Stage 3 by focusing as a group on priorities, setting short-term goals, and conducting
visioning and planning sessions. And at my request they
each listed on a flip chart what kind of support they needed from each other during the
upcoming period of change.
-
A good opportunity for group learning came at this point
when the Two described the "support" he needed as asking that "subordinates
come to me if they have concerns" (two of his subordinates were in the team
session). He was the only member of the group who was unable to identify a need of
his own. He and the others discussed how his helping behavior played out in the
group, and he received some useful feedback about how he contributed to this pattern.
-
It's common practice in team-building sessions for team members to give
each other feedback to identify strengths and barriers to full team
effectiveness. There's something magic about giving
feedback
in the context of the Enneagram in that once individuals have placed themselves by
"number" and explained why, they're able to hear without defensiveness
how their style plays out on the team. Jack, for example, a Seven, had a strong
Five
component. In the context of the Enneagram he could laugh as his boss
said, "You've got to quit going to school and concentrate more on your job!" (There was a hidden message here in that Dick knew
Jack would be his interim replacement and the company needed his full attention.)
-
Their feedback was invited first for Dick, their boss, in a segment
based on the old title of Michael Goldberg's The Nine Ways of Working
-- which was Getting Your Boss's Number. For this team it was
"Getting Dick's Number." In two subgroups they discussed their
organizational climate and Dick's style, determining an Enneagram point for each and why
they chose that number. The two groups then reported out and compared their
analyses. Dick was prepped for this ahead of time (and because I'd worked with him
before we were confident he was a Nine). One group saw the corporation as a
"7"; the other as a "5," which led to an interesting
discussion about how the two points interact and how each team was accurate in terms of
their focus.
-
They struggled with whether Dick was an "8" or a
"9." They saw his orientation toward others and his tendency toward
collaboration, but they had understood from their reading that a Nine's always placid. When Dick
got angry (which was rare) his anger was
Eight-like,
which provide the opportunity to discuss
wings in the context of Dick's Eight wing. They saw he was
more of a take-charge person than the
stereotyped view of a
Nine would suggest and that his anger had a "bull in the china shop
quality."
-
Getting Dick's Number was followed by a panel discussion of all styles
represented on the team, somewhat reminiscent of Helen Palmer's
oral tradition
workshops and somewhat reminiscent of Oprah Winfrey:
-
In the
oral tradition
people learn about the Enneagram by observing and listening to a panel of exemplars.
It's a great way for team members to learn about each other instead of listening to
a lecture.
-
With an ongoing team, there's also
the opportunity to others sort out their primary style by offering
observations that confirm or challenge each other's choices.
So, for example, I could bait a Seven
a little by commenting: "Sevens are said to have a rich fantasy
life--tell us about yours" (this was especially effective in one session
where spouses participated).
On the more serious side, when I ask a
One, "tell us about your inner critic," it's invariably touching for
team-mates to hear the answer. Typically they've only seen the external manifestation of
pushing for perfection and/or lashing out at someone who falls short of perfection.
So the panel discussion is an opportunity for self-disclosure and for
feedback from others. With the Enneagram this is always simultaneously
relationship-building, fun, and only a little bit threatening. I remind my clients
that change occurs most rapidly
in
relationship with others. It shows true courage to open yourself up at least a
little bit in spite of your anxiety, discomfort, or fear.
These sessions can be
serious because people face up to impact on others, so when coaching a team I make sure we
have fun while learning. With one team I awarded T-shirts to the
best exemplars:
-
On the One's shirt
two buzzards were sitting on a branch, one telling the other, "Patience, my ass,
I'm gonna kill somebody!"
-
The Three's shirt depicted a showman
with a hokey smile tipping his red, white, and blue top hat and saying, "Trust
me!"
-
The slogan on the Eight's
T-shirt: "I love animals...they're delicious!"
For this group I found a variety of
Slammers. These "beanie"-type toys say something when
thrown on the table or
floor. When I introduced the panel discussion after lunch I sat nine
Slammers
in positions around the table and asked people to group themselves behind
"their" Slammer. They had great fun with these, sometimes
slamming them on the table to make a point during the discussion. Some
examples:
-
The Six
Slammer was a puppy
dog that shouted "Oh, no!"
-
The
Slammer for the Two had
a big puckered up mouth and when the Two threw it down (or at someone) it made
the sound of a big smacking kiss.
-
When the Nines threw their
Slammer
down it was totally silent!
I once worked with a colleague who described his ideal workshop as one
with a "seamless weave." That idea is very appealing to me.
It seems
important to hold an atmosphere of integration when working with teams: connecting the
parts to the whole, connecting theory with experience, connecting their understandings
from one segment to those of another so that learning and gaining self-knowledge are
constantly reinforced.
Each team session will have its own underlying theme grounded in the
current experience of participants. The theme of this particular session was
"transitions." We had started by looking at their own experience with
change and had woven observations of their own strengths and needs into their growing
understanding of their Enneagram styles. At each point along the way we talked about
the potential impact of their styles on upcoming changes in their organization.
The final segment brought all of this together in a more conscious way
by looking at the points of "disintegration" for each of the Enneagram
styles -- the theoretical predictions of how each might behave under stress. The
arrows in the model below (borrowed from a site called
Awakenings)
indicate the point whose weakest aspects are likely to show up in us under difficult
circumstances:
-
I encouraged them to look in
both directions, because in my
experience we sometimes show the best and worst of both our connecting points. As
a Nine, for example, I'm somewhat anxious under stress (my Six connection and
point of "disintegration"); but I'm also a bit driven to seek recognition for
accomplishments when feeling insecure (my Three connection).
-
The review of these
points led to even more self-disclosure and openness to feedback because
of the trust and understanding that had been building during the day.
-
The Two, for example, acknowledged
and had confirmed that he became bossy and controlling under stress (the down side of the
Eight) -- in fact, he and his two subordinates created an impromptu analogy of "the
Mentor vs. the Beast".
-
The Sixes shared the observation
that their fears for their job security in the face of potential corporate cut-backs led
them all to focus overmuch on "looking good" (the down side of the
Three).
-
I'm happy to report that
all team members kept their jobs after the restructuring. Dick left for another location only weeks after the session, but their transition went
smoothly because of their mutual understanding and emotional preparation for the ensuing
changes. I haven't heard much about their new boss, but you can be sure he's being
educated about the Enneagram!
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