Enneagram: What Motivates Us?

What is the Enneagram?

A few years ago I was asked to speak to a room full of church board members, CEO's,  professors and other leaders in my church community. I will admit, I wasn't sure what I wanted to talk about but then a dear friend of mine reminded me of the one thing I am so passionate about because it has helped me so much in my areas of leadership.  The Enneagram. I assist a team of 30 students at Point Loma Nazarene University for our campus visit program and I am a bi-vocational worship leader in San Diego. While in these simultaneous roles the past five years I have looked for ways to make me the best leader, manager and version of myself. About a four years ago, I discovered the Enneagram.

The enneagram is a personality assessment that was arguably discovered thousands of years ago. In the 1970's, Father Richard Rohr began teaching and writing about it, which brought it to the light. In 2016, Ian Morgan Cron and Susan Stabille penned the book The Road Back To You. This book brought the enneagram down to layman's terms and inspired a podcast by the authors. A spin-off podcast was created by Ian Morgan Cron himself, called Typology. There are many authors that you can seek wisdom on this topic, including Beatrice Chestnut, a licensed psychologist and Father Rohr himself. For me, I have gravitated to Ian Morgan Cron's style over the past year.

The enneagram is complied of 9 Types. 1-9, these types help us to know what motivates our behavior. How many of you repeat a behavior and wonder "Why do I do that? Why do I keep doing that?" This my friend can help you answer that question. Whether your 22 or 82, it will give you an insight into who you are and even a look into those around you. I highly recommend picking up the book The Road Back to You and sitting down with a nice beverage and reading it from front to back because the best way to know your number is to read each description. In most cases, the one that causes a visceral reaction is probably yours. Some types people don't even want to claim for themselves, but the good news is, there is good in everyone and room for improvement in all of them.

Why Is It Different?

Many of you may know your Myers Briggs or your top 5 Strengths from the Clifton Strengths. Maybe you looked into the 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman or you know your Temperament such as referring to yourself as an extroverted Sanguine or introverted Melancholy. I know, there are So. Many. Out there. The difference for me with the Enneagram is that it seems when you know your number along with other's numbers it is like cracking open the soul. It allows us to understand why people react a certain way in certain situations, stress about certain things or are more concerned about money or time than the next. Why is that person a "go-getter" or that person can't get motivated to save their life?? Why is that person so worried about image and that person could care less? This will help you see why and it will also help you understand yourself and reach the best version of you. If you're not convinced let me share with you a couple of stories that in my roles as a leader have found the Enneagram to be vital. (Disclaimer: I am not receiving any money to convince you of this, just hoping to make the world a better place)

Relate: Can we relate better if we know each other's number?

I am a 7 on the enneagram. 7's are known as the Enthusiasts. We love stimulating experiences, new adventures and will do anything to avoid pain and conflict. Let's just say, 7's love to color outside the lines. A dear friend of mine is a 1. 1's are known as The Reformers. They are perfectionist, they are "ethical, dedicated and reliable", but they do not stray outside the lines. This friend and I have been friends for 15 years. We have not always been the best of friends. We have lived parallel to each other; going to the same church, surrounded by like friends and involved in music ministry at our local church for over a decade. Five years ago she and I were teamed up as interim worship leaders in our local church. I was asked to head up the program and she was an amazing support person helping with logistics of everything. As I moved into the role as the director I was on a mission to make the team better and grow the program. Let's just say, I was moving outside the lines and running as fast as I could to the future of this program. My friend was running behind me making sure all the details were taken care of. Slowly but surely miscommunication took hold and began to cause conflict. Any new idea I had she said no. Anything she thought was too new or too progressive I balked at. It wasn't good and our friendship that had been blossoming was now disintegrating.

Until one day. On my drive home I was listening to an episode of "The Road Back To You" podcast about a married couple who were both 1's sharing about their lives as 1's. They talked about how perfectionism drove them. There was literally a voice in their head keeping a to-do list and if that list was not completed at the end of the day they felt they had failed. They hated how much they cared if something was perfect or how they couldn't keep their critical mouth shut at times. They shared how they only could do things they would succeed at for fear of failure. So may things about my friend began to click for me and I felt like I could really see her. I sat in my car and just began to weep. I am serious. Not just a tear ran down my cheek, but crocodile tears and this picture of my friend trying to keep me in her box and me pushing it open every day just brought me to a place of empathy I had never known. I called her up immediately and asked if these things were true for her. She confirmed them and I confessed to her how much I didn't understand her plight and how frustrating I must have been the past year. We spent an hour talking those things out and laughing at our "Ah-Ha" moments. We began to move towards a place of understanding. We also found a messaging technique that worked for us. A big problem in the past was we shot each other down too quickly. From then on if I had a grandiose idea I would "Glide" it to her; she would listen to it, process it and then respond. A day or so later she could respond and say "nope, bad idea" or "yep, great idea." Just this one change made such a huge difference in how we related to each other. Then the trust began to build. We realized no one was out to sabotage each other or trying to choke out creativity. This one shift in our understanding of each other was a game changer. I now see 1's as people who want to make whatever I do the best it can be and welcome their feedback and input.

Communicate: How can we communicate better?

Like I mentioned before I work at a private university in San Diego and I have the privilege of working with our Campus Visit program. I work for an amazing boss who is 12 years my junior. He is a kind soul who strives for the best and is very caring in how he manages his team. He is a 2 on the enneagram and loves to be needed but also has tendencies to do things very linear and his world can be black and white. For a 7 like me, that of course can be a challenge to live in those spaces of structure. (I swear we're not wild animals, just very free-spirited) I have been in this role under my boss as Campus Visit Coordinator for 2.5 years. He hired me not for my computer skills but for my customer services skills and outside the box thinking. We have had a blast making phenomenal changes in our visit program all for the better.

If I didn't mention it before, I am also a mom of 3 teenagers and a husband of 19 years. I live 25 miles from my office and my commute on a good day is forty-five minutes and on a bad day is an hour and twenty. Leaving my house at 6:45am to be there at 8am was and is challenging. I did pretty good the first year. But as I got into the groove of my job, I noticed I was staying til 5 or 5:30 to do parts of my visit job or just to get things done since the office was quiet. A lot of my job in the day is interacting with families and prospective students as well as our student workers. I also noticed that when things went awry in my home it happened between 7am and 7:30am. My son would miss the bus, or I would lose my keys, or my daughter needed the car and so my husband and I had to carpool. I almost must include that my husband doesn't function before 7am... All these things started to make an 8am start time very hard. It began to weigh on me and frustrate me. I would come in at 8:20 and stay til 5 for a few months with no push back from anyone, then a few months later my boss would say, "Let's start our season off right by getting in at 8am." Not to be too dramatic, but I could feel figurative hands choke me when those words were spoken. I felt so trapped between all of these hats I was wearing.

This past summer we went on a trip as a team for our department. We were able to visit a wonderful restaurant called Omeletry on our last day in Vancouver. Everyone was excitedly trying the various omelets. I personally don't care for omelets but these were actually really amazing. I looked down the table and saw my boss with a large bowl of oatmeal in front of him. I was curious why he had chosen that among everything else and inquired. He informed me that he needed to eat oatmeal per doctors orders. I was a bit dumbfounded. I thought to myself, "But your on vacation at the best omelet restaurant in Vancouver and you're eating oatmeal??" As I flew home on the plane I had another light bulb moment. I suddenly realized why it was so hard for him to change the structure that I was trying to bust out of. It may seem silly reading this at this point in time, but it really allowed me to see how his brain worked and that when something was to be done a certain way he would execute it the best way he could. I went to his office the following week and shared with him my "Ah-Ha moment". We started to talk through how my role has changed and how I stay later most days and how it seems to go better on my family when I get in a little later. He explained to me that no one doubted I was doing my job well but that it helped the team know when I was coming and when I was going. We decided that from here on out I would come in at 8:30. If I came in earlier, it was a win! If I needed to come in at 9 to stay later I would put it on the calendar for the team to see. This one revelation allowed us to communicate our needs and wants and frustration with each other. I am so grateful for this discovery with the enneagram I was able to stop and "see" my boss and we were able to stop and assess what was working and what was not. I can honestly say the start of this semester has been a fantastic one with me feeling I have grace and my team sees I am doing my best.

Grace: How do we extend grace?

My latest enneagram discovery was recently with one of my student workers. This student was new to our team and took a few weeks to get to know. We had not worked together prior to our summer team and I was new to independently managing the students. Our students in the summer work our front desk since we are the first point of contact for visiting families and run our daily tours. One of our most pertinent responsibilities is logging off or locking our computer when stepping away. This student would forget almost everyday. It started out innocently and I would remind him when I discovered it but a few days went by and I had to keep reminding him. In other aspects of the job the same forgetful attitude seemed to creep in. I wasn't sure if it was an attitude or a true spirit of forgetfulness. I was beginning to be frustrated that this student was not listening to my direction and my attitude began to shift negatively. It occurred to me one afternoon that he had told me he was a 7 on the enneagram, like myself, and I began to think back to my 20 year old self. How would I want to be communicated with? I remember that when there was a rule, my subconscious would buck that rule or I was so into the next event the present would become blurry. I realized that maybe my student wasn't doing this out of spite but maybe was excited about giving the next tour or ready to hang with friends at lunch that he was genuinely forgetting. I decided to try a different tactic than berating him. I decided to "Hasselhoff" his computer.  The next day I changed his computer background to a silly background with a pun about forgetting to lock his computer. He thought it was hilarious and even though he didn't say much about it he didn't forget to lock his computer again.

I thought about this story as I was creating my speech for my ministry team meeting and thought how exciting it was as a manager and as a leader that through understanding this student's enneagram number I was able to stop and extend grace to this student. I not only was able to extend grace in the sense that I knew he wasn't doing it to make me crazy but then I thought how would I want to be treated. What could have gone on and created a seed of contention turned into a fun inside joke. By the middle of the summer we had a change in our relationship and reached a level of ease and understanding.

Now What?

So now that I've shared how the enneagram has helped me in my journey as a leader I'd like to direct you to how can you discover these nuggets for yourself? You first need to discover your own number for yourself. There are a few ways to go about this. You can read The Road Back To You as I have mentioned and see which description resonates with you the most. You can head to 9types.com and take a quick and free assessment. This way you can find your baseline number. Another avenue is to navigate to the Enneagraminstitute.com and take the test for $12. It is a bit more thorough and trustworthy but of course not free. This same site has many resources and descriptions as well as how other numbers work with your own number. I hope that you take the time to dive into this and allow yourself to see the enneagram as a tool to help you relate to people, communicate better and extend grace.