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Guilt, Shame, Anxiety and their Opposites
What does the Enneagram say about guilt, shame and anxiety? We look to the Enneagram’s main centers – the Gut center, the Heart center and the Head center – for answers.
Guilt emanates from the Gut center – Types 8, 9 and 1. Shame dominates the Heart center – Types 2, 3, and 4. And anxiety famously affects the Head types –Types 5, 6 and 7.
In each center, which type is most acutely affected by these powerful feelings? To answer that, we turn to the Enneagram’s temperament triads using the triad labels in Teamwork 9.0 – the Optimist Triad (Types 3, 7 and 8), the Pessimist Triad (Type 1, 2 and 6) and the Symmetrical Triad (Type 4, 5 and 9).
I make the case that the Pessimist Triad types are those most motivated to avoid feelings of guilt, shame and anxiety, Type 1 actively avoids guilt, Type 2 avoids shame, and Type 6 avoids anxiety. On the other hand, the Optimist Triad types are those that purse the opposites of these strong feelings.
What are the opposites of guilt, shame and anxiety? They are pride, being valued, and happiness, pursued by Type 8s, Type 3s and Type 7s, respectively. That leaves the Symmetrical Triad – Types 4, 5 and 9 – in between, able to be motivated by either pursuit of positive feelings or avoidance of negative feelings.
In summary:
Guilt Avoidance: Type 1 — Pursuit of Pride: Type 8 — Either: Type 9
Shame Avoidance: Type 2 — Pursuit of being Valued: Type 3 — Either: Type 4
Anxiety Avoidance: Type 6 — Pursuit of Happiness: Type 7 — Either: Type 5
This video is an edited version of a talk I gave on this framework.
[Transcript]
Matt Schlegel:
What’s the opposite of guilt and what’s the opposite of shame, because maybe those will also give us some ideas about how this framework might work. But I know there’s another thing that does drive me, and that’s anxiety. So really I’m putting in anxiety into the mix of these strong underlying motivators for our feelings and behaviors. So we’ll talk about each one of those three plus what they look like in the opposite. So let’s look at some definitions. So for guilt, the dictionary definition of that is a feeling of having done wrong or failed in an obligation. And I thought about, well, what would be the opposite of that? Where I landed was pride would be the opposite of guilt, which is a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from something you’ve done. So shame is a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.
Guilt seems to be from an inner sense of having done something wrong where shame, and I don’t know that they’ve captured this very well in this definition, but it seems to be more how the world perceives what you’ve done. Maybe that’s caught in that word humiliation, because humiliation is you need to be humiliated by the outside world. You don’t necessarily just feel humiliated by doing something and nobody else saw you. So I think that that word humiliation in there catches that sense of being assessed by the world for having done something wrong or foolish. Well, what would be the opposite of that? And to me, the opposite would be being valued or appreciated, so being recognized for one’s full worth. So that seemed to be the better definition of anti-shame. And then I added one more, which is anxiety, a feeling of worry, nervousness or unease typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.
What is the word for anti-anxiety? Ataraxia is anti-anxiety, and this is a Greek term, a state of serene calmness. Who feels guilt, shame, and anxiety most acutely? I hear the ones, that was a very common theme for them. I had conversations with twos, they tell me that they really don’t feel shame but they’re so focused on helping other people. Where is the shame? If I am totally focused on helping you why should I feel shame? But why is it that they’re so focused on helping other people all the time? Is it because it’s driving them to avoid that feeling of shame?
For anxiety, I would put the six in the category of the one that feels anxiety the most. These three is that they’re the members of the same temperament triad, of the pessimist triad, the one, two, and six. The anti-shame people might be the optimists, the three, the seven, and the eight, who are most pursuing pride, recognition, and happiness. The eight, nine, and one would be mostly centered guilt. The twos, threes and fours would be centered on shame. And then the five, six and sevens would be centered on anxiety. Is there a role for anxiety and anti-anxiety, for shame and anti-shame, for guilt and anti-guilt?
DEIB Value in the Roaring 2020’s
The Roaring 2020s Speakeasy Team – Authors Kimberly Layne Roberts, Twiana Armstrong and Matt Schlegel – reflect on the changing landscape of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) initiatives in organizations.
Find more about Kimberly, Twiana and Matt here:
Kimberly Layne: https://www.kimberly-layne.com/
Twiana Armstrong: https://linkedin.com/in/twianaarmstrong
Matt Schlegel: https://evolutionaryteams.com
#DEI #DEIB #Leadership #Roaring2020s
[Video Transcript]
0:00 [Kimberly Layne Roberts]
1:18 [Twiana Armstrong]
What’s occurring in workspaces in which we see institutions and organizations contorting or eliminating their DEIB initiatives is a contrived conflation set in motion by outside machinations. Such conflating has these same institutions and organizations undermining their most valuable asset, their employees, while also failing to profitably penetrate new or obscure markets and not fully understanding the needs of their consumers. Making decisions not in the best interest of the company, but in the interest of risk management and partisan public opinion in an attempt to stave off potential monetary liabilities, lawsuits and litigation. Even in the face of proven success. Strategic plans that maximize profits through leveraging DEI and B initiatives should not be thrown out with the proverbial bath water. Leaders should invest in a cultural competence assessment to determine how well you understand not only your workspace environment, but also your stakeholder and consumer environments. Opportunities and profits abound when you are fluent in operating and working in diverse cultures. Assessments will collect data about cultural awareness, knowledge, skills, encounters and desire. I’m encouraging leaders I work with to complete a cultural competence self-assessment. Analyze the data and construct a strategic plan that achieves your goals whether it’s increasing revenue, reducing expenses, recruiting or workforce management.
3:19 [Matt Schlegel]
First of all, I love Kimberly’s story about how building a diverse and inclusive group can be so exhilarating. That’s certainly a great benefit. And Twana, as you point out, the backlash that we’re seeing to DEI efforts lately is quite remarkable.
I would encourage people in DEI leadership roles to be sensitive to your organization’s culture and understand how to really demonstrate the value of DEI initiatives in your context.
Remember, company boards of directors are becoming more diverse at a much slower rate than organizations themselves, and DEI leaders must be sensitive to that dynamic and be able to demonstrate value to their leadership. Especially the financial benefits and positive impact to company profits, both on the cost side and the revenue side.
Your organization will reduce costs if you have a culture where people feel included. It’s going to lower turnover rate, and you will reduce your recruitment fees. Also, if you have a welcoming, inclusive environment, you have a much bigger pool of people to draw on and will make it just that much easier for your organization to find extraordinary talent to help it grow and thrive.
On the revenue side, having diverse staff will help you better position your products to address broader marketplaces. Your diverse team’s perspectives will help you position your products and your services to identify with a more diverse customer base.
Diverse perspectives also reduce or eliminate blind spots that you may have in your marketing efforts, and that will help you grow your revenue and your sales.
So these are just a few examples of how a DEI leader can demonstrate the financial benefits of DEI efforts to their organization.
More VUCA in 2024 and the Roaring 2020s
The Roaring 2020s Speakeasy Team – Authors Kimberly Layne Roberts, Twiana Armstrong and Matt Schlegel – look ahead to the drivers of VUCA – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity – in 2024.
Here’s links to resources Twiana mentions:
https://www.mindtools.com/asnydwg/managing-in-a-vuca-world
https://ifundi.co.za/leading-managing-vuca-world/
https://au.indeed.com/lead/managing-leading-vuca-world
Find more about Kimberly, Twiana and Matt here:
Kimberly Layne: https://www.kimberly-layne.com/
Twiana Armstrong: https://linkedin.com/in/twianaarmstrong
Matt Schlegel: https://evolutionaryteams.com
#VUCA #Leadership #Roaring2020s
[Video Transcript]
[Matt Schlegel]
Happy New Year. So we’re now in 2024, the fifth year of our Roaring 2020’s, and they’re continuing to really roar!
We have a lot of things going on this year that will be diverting our attention here and there, not the least of which is the upcoming election. So we can say that the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity that we’ve been dealing with since the start of the pandemic will be continuing.
And now, on top of elections, pandemics, wars and climate change, we have artificial intelligence really taking off, and there are good things and bad things about that.
I am eager to see how AI can help with team problem solving. I have started a conversation with a person who is using various AI platforms, like ChatGPT, Bard, BingChat, to each build a problem-solving team, and then have those different teams collaborate across each of the AI platforms to come up with solutions for complex problems like climate change. I am fascinated by this work and will be following it closely this year and looking to how I can learn, grow and adapt my teamwork consulting business to utilize these amazing new tools.
What are you two looking to in 2024.
[Kimberly Layne Roberts]
This is a new ERA – where the E in Era will be replaced by “AI”-RA. “AIRA”
Bill Gates said there were two technological innovations in our lifetime that would change the world.
The first we know was in 1980 when he was introduced to a graphical user interface—which became the forerunner of every modern operating system, including Windows
The second we are coming to know is AI. Bill observed the power of Open AI: when he observed AI engine had passed an AP Bio exam consisting of 60 questions with a score of 59/60 correct and it had answered 5 open ended questions correct a (5/5). He thought this was going to change the world and it is! It is a new era that is spelled AIRA.
Yes, Matt and Twiana, VUCA Is alive and well, and I would like to suggest we add a “D”VUCAD for distrust and disbelief. Along with the positives of AI for healthcare, learning, the way we work, and communication, it also is creation a mistrust and a distrust of what is real and what is not.
For example, it is very likely that people will be leveraging AI and digital tools to influence the outcome of the election. We have witnessed deep fake images, and voices, of those in the public eye such as entertainers, and politicians.
What do we believe and what do we not? I think that D should represent defining boundaries, defining regulation, and defining consequences for creating dishonest material.
This is a new AIRA. How are we going to ensure it is to our benefit and not our destruction? I know I will be much more discerning in what I believe, observe, and adopt as reality in my communication, my coaching and in my leadership. It instills in me a strong desire to make sure I continue to lead with strong integrity, trust, and honesty.
Twiana, what are you thinking about for 2024?
[Twiana Armstrong]
Listen up, Leaders, denial is not an option! In this world of VUCA, volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, leading and leadership has changed. Business consultants point to the beginning of the 2020s as another decade of turbulence. As you operationalize your 2024 strategic plan, assess your environment including how you will lead during these times of post pandemic, climate change, political extremism, the evolution of social justice and the revolution of AI. The US military introduced VUCA into our lexicon in the 1980s. As a leadership consultant, my conversations with leaders focus first on understanding their environment to developing a 4-point plan that leads through volatility to vision, from uncertainty to understanding, from complexity to compassioned clarity and from ambiguity to aligned agility. The most critical foundations in each of these pillars are self-awareness and belonging. Three actions to include in your plan:
- Hone your leadership skills – skills of the past are ineffective for success in the future. The world is witnessing a new normal.
- Invest in a robust change management masterplan.
- Surround yourself with team of experts: experts in organizational development, educational and training, conflict management and problem resolution, communication, change management and business analysis.
Below are links to resources about leading through VUCA. On behalf of the Roaring 2020’s Speakeasy Team, cheers to a successful 2024.
Happy New Year!
Psychological Barriers to Decision Making and Problem Solving
There are a number of psychological hurdles we must overcome to engage with a problem. Our brains are designed to conserve our body’s energy resources, and it has a number of tricks it plays on us to keep us from expending energy, even in the face a problem that must be solved. Our continued burning of fossils and the subsequent climate and biodiversity-loss crises pose the biggest threat to humankind we have yet faced. How we humans are responding to these crises expose many of the tools the brain deploys to keep us from taking action and expending energy. These tools are called unconscious biases. In this video I share four unconscious biases that we humans are using to avoid taking action to address the existential crises of our time.
Thanks to Matthew Cahill of The Precipio Company (https://percipiocompany.com/) for his input on this talk.
[Transcript]
I’m giving a brief talk about unconscious biases and how they affect our action or inaction to address the climate crisis. And I’m giving this talk to my ProVisors Networking group, and I thought I would share it with you. So let’s get started.
Unconscious biases serve as an energy saving technique for our brain. If we can avoid expending the energy of making decisions, then that saves energy for the brain to do other things. Unconscious biases serve as one of those tools. These are mostly beneficial, but sometimes they can be harmful when the brain inaccurately assesses risk. And, by not taking action, you will end up preserving a status quo when maybe that’s not the most appropriate thing to do. Media know about our unconscious biases, and people who advocate for inaction and preserving the status quo use our unconscious biases to their benefit to keep us from not taking action. The unconscious biases that I’ll go over today are Normalcy Bias, Bystander Effect, Survivors Bias, and Backfire Effect.
The first is Normalcy Bias. What this one does is trick our brain into thinking that everything is fine, even when it’s not. And, it’s particularly easy to trick the brain when the threat is invisible, like say a deadly virus, or an invisible greenhouse gas. Everything looks fine, so the brain tricks us into thinking everything’s fine.
All right, the next one is the Bystander Effect. Even when our brain does see that there’s some kind of urgent emergency happening, we’ll trick ourselves into thinking that somebody else will take care of it. And therefore, we can avoid expend the energy of making the decision to do something, and the energy of taking action on actually doing something.
And then the third one is Survivors Bias. “I made it this far, so I’m going to be okay.” It’s particularly easy for our brain to trick ourselves when we live in more resilient communities than in less resilient communities, “Oh yeah. So they may have a problem, but we’ll be fine here.” And another thing is, if you live in a place where the climate is particularly mild, like we do here in California, then we can trick ourselves into thinking, “Oh yeah, everything’s fine, there’s no problem here,” while maybe the rest of the nation or the globe is having extreme weather events.
All right. And then the last one I’ll go over is the Backfire Effect. When our brain is confronted with some information that it doesn’t want to hear, then we go into, “la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la,” and we just ignore it and deny it. And that allows us to preserve whatever beliefs or thoughts that we had, without having to expend energy to change the way we think, and perhaps have to take action to address some emerging issue.
So these are just four of the things our brain does to trick us and keep us from addressing the climate crisis because if our brain does accept it, then that next step is you start to feel guilt for not taking action. And so, these biases will have the effect of saving energy, avoiding taking action, and avoiding any feelings of guilt by tricking our brains into thinking that there isn’t an emergency.
All right, thanks so much for listening.