Out of
the Box Coaching and
Breakthroughs with the Enneagram,
Mary R. Bast, Ph.D.
Copyright © 1999.
All rights reserved. Revised:
July 21, 2010
Case Description: Style One
Will Frazier was very idealistic and held high standards for himself, his employees, and the company. When I met him, he was in charge of business expansion at a remote geographical site of his corporation. This job was located far away from his family home, but he had agreed to take it on because it was an experiment that promised to be an inspiration for the parent corporation -- demonstrating the profit potential of functional integration outside of headquarters.
One of Will's innovations was to educate the field salespeople in a dual sales/marketing perspective and to improve their negotiating skills from that larger perspective. Consequently they (and he) had negotiated major contracts that were bringing in millions in revenue beyond business plan projections. However, Will had occasional outbursts of anger with subordinates and/or sarcasm with peers, which stemmed from his disappointment in the quality of their work. These tirades could be quite scathing, even abusive. A subordinate reported, "The bar definitely got raised when he came in, and we're getting better results, so people respect his capabilities. But he rakes people over the coals in public. When he goes into tirades he's usually right about the issue, but not how he handles it." From a peer: "He projects that he thinks the worst of people on the other side of the table. He conveys 'We don't need you, and this is the way it's going to be!'"
Second, Will had difficulty delegating responsibility to his team. He felt compelled to check in frequently on their progress. And, no matter how well they completed a task, it was never quite good enough. "His people have no autonomy," observed a colleague. "They can't release anything without his approval. He doesn't want anything out of the ordinary to show up and if it does, he's on it." Our work together focused primarily on engaging the positive aspects of Will's perfectionism: using his ability to set inspirational goals and standards. But instead of addressing how people fell short of his standards, Will learned to provide positive reinforcement for incremental steps in the direction of those goals. This was especially effective because through this practice he learned to be just as appreciative of his own efforts, instead of constantly berating himself.
One/Nine Relationship Dynamics
Quick Views of Nine Personality Patterns Leadership and the Enneagram
Much more in Out of the Box Coaching Book
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