Working With Healthcare Providers

I'm a psychotherapist and have co-developed an Enneagram workshop for Nurses, Licensed Professional Counselors and Social Workers. Do you have any thoughts or pointers on presenting to healthcare providers? We also have our eye on the business community, as working to change the existing paradigm is important to both of us.

As a psychotherapist, you won't run into a problem that some colleagues of mine have encountered - being told "we run into clinical issues you wouldn't understand and this approach won't work."

I've found professionals in the fields you've mentioned to be very enthusiastic about the Enneagram as a diagnostic tool as well as for personal growth. I have been a bit sneaky, though, by starting off with an exercise that simultaneously honors their experience and demonstrates more is possible than they know. With one group of social workers who counsel mental patients I created a case study from a chapter in Chloe Madanes' Behind the One-Way Mirror, set them off in subgroups to come up with a treatment plan, and compared their suggestions to what actually worked. This had nothing overtly to do with the Enneagram, but it was familiar territory where they could also learn. Meanwhile I was gathering data about their possible Enneagram styles for later use (especially necessary with people I've only just met). Other than that, the only unique design component has been the content (e.g., as above, using case situations relevant to their work). The same has been true for physicians, by the way, though I've only worked with physicians in administrative positions (e.g., CEO's of healthcare organizations).

Regardless of the target audience I always design an early exercise that involves self-disclosure (and reinforces the safety of disclosing) - making it clear their primary learning will be from observing each other, but I don't just talk about it - I have them "do" it. With a group of retirees interested in "relationships," for example, I asked them to review their lives and tell the group about someone they'd been particularly attracted to and someone they'd particularly disliked. I arrayed their responses around a circle on the blackboard before we ever talked about the Enneagram, then asked each one to talk about their choices. Consequently, I had their own data to refer to in "teaching" the Enneagram. Later, when we did an exercise on projection, we went back to their "dislikes" so they could begin to own those parts in themselves.

I do work with one-time "stranger" groups, but I much prefer ongoing workshops with homework assignments, and in organizations I prefer intact work groups (more opportunities to apply what they're learning). My primary objective is always to move them beyond personality typing and toward a path of transformation, so there's always emphasis on "how."  

Regarding having your eye on business - what has worked for me is to market a business need, such as "leadership potential" or "more effective teamwork" and to use the Enneagram in that work, vs. trying to sell myself as an Enneagram teacher or consultant. 

I highly recommend hooking up with someone doing systemic change consultations. If you don't, you may have difficulty selling what you do except as a deficit model (i.e., working with people in danger of being ousted if they don't "shape up"), and/or you'll probably become enormously frustrated at how the system throws up barriers to any individual or team successes. It's also great if you can start at the top so there's a common language and the senior people are modelling the value and effectiveness of the Enneagram.

A particular consultation with Corporate Change Systems involved "re-aligning a mental health services provider around its core processes, including structural changes, work and process design, changes in information and human resource systems, and management and leadership style" (I did the last part, using the Enneagram). 

If I were marketing anew to business right now, I'd use a "learning organization" focus (the organizational equivalent of transformation). In their book How Organizations Learn, DiBella and Nevis define the "learning organization" as "having the capability to adapt to changes in its environment and to respond to lessons of experience by altering organizational behavior." This is very consistent (and drawn from the same theoretical background) as my focus on mutuality in relationships (the equivalent of "learning pairs").

DiBella, by the way, is co - developer of the Healthcare Learning Inventory. Their research demonstrated high overlap between generic learning factors and those specific to health care. The most significant change in labeling involved "Climate of Openness," which health care clients changed to "Trusting Relationships":

"…considered it to be the single most important factor that leads to learning. When you trust your colleagues, you can be open about explaining not only your successes but also your failures ... take risks to learn … errors are more apt to be reported, detected, and corrected…"

They identified three important additional factors:

"Learning Confidence"

"…defined as 'experience in learning from successes, mistakes, and specific events; experience in trying new things; belief that all groups can learn.' … Given the major changes that have occurred in health care over the last fifty years, it is hard to ignore the validity of this factor."

"Shared Vision"

"…is critical to the health care industry because of its historical focus on mission and service to community and humankind ... Given the changes that are occurring within the health care industry now, learning on a team level occurs because values and vision are shared within the team."

"Learning Enjoyment"

"... defined as 'celebrating learning achievements and creating an atmosphere where humor and fun are part of the process of acquiring new knowledge.' Failures and mistakes are life-and-death matters in health care, and unless some humor and lightness can be brought to the sharing of such occurrences, there is apt to be little sharing of the lessons learned from such events."

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