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I am 2% Neanderthal

September 2, 2020 by Matt Schlegel 2 Comments

The 23 and Me result that surprised me the most was my ancestry from 40,000 years ago. Testing positive for 281 Neanderthal variants out of 1,436, I am more Neanderthal than 56% of 23 and Me customers. What I learned next shattered everything I thought I knew about my ancient ancestor.

You Neanderthal

When I was kid growing up, calling someone a Neanderthal was not intended as flattery.  My belief about Neanderthals was that they were, well, stupid.  Clearly, Neanderthals did not survive because Homo sapiens outsmarted them, right?  Every school kid knew that, so it must be right—Right!?!

Not So Fast

It turns out that our schoolyard common sense may not have been correct.  Rutger Bregman in his book Humankind—A Hopeful History provides an alternate model.  Looking at the fossil record, Neanderthals had relatively bigger brains than Homo sapiens.  It’s likely that they were smarter than us.  They were also bigger than us.  So, if they were smarter and bigger, why isn’t the world populated with Neanderthals rather than Homo sapiens?

Lone Wolf

Bregman draws the analogy between wolves and domesticated dogs.  In general wolves are bigger and smarter than dogs, but there are many more dogs than wolves.  Why?  Because dogs are fun, kind and delightful, and we want them around.  Bregman makes the argument that Homo sapiens were the cuddly puppies of the hominid world, and Neanderthals probably liked having us around. They may have protected us.  And, according to my 23 and Me results they mated with us.  But that alone wouldn’t explain why there are so many of us and none of them.

Network Effect

Although Homo sapiens may not have been as smart as Neanderthals, Bregman asserts that we possess a capability that the Neanderthals did not—the ability to share information and learn from one another.  While those smart Neanderthal individuals were trying to figure out things for themselves, Homo sapiens were happy to let one person figure it out and learn from them how to do it.  They would pass that information along to others in a veritable verbal network.  Social media has turbocharged our ability to share our thoughts.  Now, a single individual has the capability to share with millions (perhaps billions) of others. This trait that distinguished Homo sapiens from Neanderthals is as prevalent and important today as it was 40,000 years ago.

Gullible Puppies

While we Homo sapiens may be highly capable of accessing information from one another, we aren’t always good at discerning the information’s truth.  Our critical thinking skills may be compromised for the sake of us all going along to get along. Apparently, lacking the ability to consistently discern truth did not impede Homo sapiens ability to procreate and populate.  The Neanderthals may simply have been overwhelmed by their kind and talkative hominid pets.  Homo sapiens succeeded Neanderthals and spread themselves and their information – both truths and untruths – to every corner of the planet.

Not Invented Here

Once the wheel was invented, humans shared that information widely—no need to reinvent it, right? And yet we so often do just that.  Sometimes that tendency leads us to discovery and innovation. Sometimes it prevents us from accessing pre-existing solutions that would easily solve our problems. I must admit, I do love puzzling things out.  Sometimes I would rather figure something out for myself rather than research and learn from someone else.  When I feel that way, maybe it’s one of those 281 Neanderthal variants guiding me.  On the other hand, it has become exceedingly easy to access information online.  My phone is rarely out of reach and a quick search often leads me to an answer. Whether that answer is correct or not… Well, that’s a different story.  I wonder what my intelligent Neanderthal ancestors would think about my “smart” phone habits.

How do you balance your time between researching existing knowledge and attempting to invent on your own?  How do you determine the truthfulness of information you access, especially information that appears to be “common sense”?  What have been your epiphanies, the ones that have led you to change your perception of the world?

Filed Under: Team Communication

Teamwork 9.0 Book Talk for Provisors

August 31, 2020 by Matt Schlegel Leave a Comment

In this Teamwork 9.0 book talk,  I provide an overview of the book and some of the back story that led me to the discoveries about teamwork that I share in the book.  I recorded this prior to a talk I gave to my Provisors group.

I am very grateful to the support I have received over the years from the amazing group of Provisors professionals.  Writing a book is truly a team effort and my Provisors group was there for me on this journey.  Prior to publishing, I deliberately had someone of each Enneagram type review the book. From my Provisors group, Adrian Bray reviewed the book from the Type 2 perspective and Stephen Dobrow from the Type 8 perspective.  Thanks to them, to the those from my group who attended the book talk, and to everyone who is supporting me on my Teamwork 9.0 journey.

Transcript

Hello, and thank you so much for having me speak with you today. I really appreciate it. And I’m so glad to be speaking with all of my ProVisor friends. First like to do a couple of thank you’s. Making this book was a real team effort for me. And I really tried to embrace a lot of the concepts that I talk about in the book in terms of including a lot of different perspectives. And in the review process of the book, I actually intentionally had one of every Enneagram type review the book and a couple of the reviewers are actually members of our ProVisor group. And so I’d like to give a big thank you to Adrian Bray, who reviewed the book from the type two perspective and also Stephen Dobro who reviewed the book from the type eight perspective.

And I also just want to thank Steven, especially when I gave him the book. He actually made a version of the book and printed it on a T-shirt. So this is the T-shirt that he made for me. And this is actually the book printed on a T-shirt. So if you want the book in the T-shirt format definitely talk to Steven about that because he may be able to get those for you.

Today I just wanted to give you a taste for what’s in the book and then what got me to this. And as many of you know, I started off my career as an engineer, so I was trained to lead electrons, not people. And so about 10 years into my career, my boss came to me and said, “Matt, we want you to become a manager.” And I’m, “Why do you want me to become a manager? I don’t know anything about leading people, I only know about leading electrons.” And he said, don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Well, knowing me, and I’m a type six, I wasn’t fine. I was worried. And like any engineer I took to studying the problem, I got my hands on every single book on leadership and management and teams that I can get my hands on and read those.

And as I was going through that, one of the things that I came across along the way was this thing called the Enneagram. And I’d been exposed by the time I got to the Enneagram, I’d been exposed to a few other systems like Myers-Briggs and Disc. And one of the things that intrigued me about this system was this concept of time. There was an element of time built into it. And because of that, and the fact that it wasn’t a static system, it really appealed to me and got me more curious and got me on this path of exploring it. And no matter how much I tried to take it apart and put it back together, it really held up. And that’s what compelled me to end up writing the book. I discovered some novel ways to use it and that weren’t being talked about that had to do with that element of time in the system.

And so that’s what I wrote teamwork about. So let me just explain a little bit about the Enneagram. So I think many people know of it as a personality system and that’s how most of us are introduced to it. What I learned though, is that it’s actually a lot more than just a personality system, but you know, most people are introduced to it as these nine different personality types. And you could see in the middle, there are these lines and those are called the paths of integration and disintegration. And this is one of the things that really fascinated me about this system, because it does speak to this element of how we change over time, depending on our maturity level and our security level. So as we evolve, we become more integrated, but as we enter into times of stress and insecurity, we can become disintegrated.

And each type is connected to these lines, two different lines. One that goes for a six, one goes to the nine in integration and the other goes to the three in disintegration. And so this non-static way of looking at people, I think really spoke to me and spoke to this sense of, well, I’m not just one person. I behave differently in different situations and the Enneagram really speaks well to that. Well, there’s another element of time that fascinated me. And that was the element of time around the circle in the clockwise direction. And I came to this by asking a question, why are they numbers? Why are they these types numbers rather than colors or animals or something like that. And why are they then in this particular order, why is the one, the one, the two, the two and not, couldn’t the seven be the two or the six be the eight, or, and it turned out as I studied this, that they are numbers because they are in a particular order.

And it’s the order in which humans solve problems. And that was the big discovery for me that got me on the path of really wanting to use the system more with teams and using the Enneagram as a problem solving method with teams and that worked so well that I was [inaudible 00:06:59] to write the book. And so… As I’ve develop this method, I’ve had the opportunity to explain it and I’ve created this story essentially about a Medieval village that is beset by these fire-breathing dragons. And the story talks about the different steps that the villagers go through to solve the problem. And when I first did this storyboard in the nine steps, I had the villagers actually killing the dragon to solve the problem. However, one time I was invited to speak with a group of students at San Francisco State University.

And the theme for their year long course was non violent activism and social policy. And I was like, thinking, well, I probably don’t want to do have the villagers killing the dragon. Maybe there’s a nonviolent way to solve this problem. And so I changed the story for this group, and I ended up having the villagers learn to live along with the dragons and actually learn to fly them. And when I was young, I read The Dragonriders of Pern, so I thought that was a nice little twist to it, but that storyline came out of that, having to present these ideas to that particular group of students, and so this was kind of the big idea in the book that I really wanted to share with the world is this idea that, yes, the Enneagram is a fantastic way of looking at different interpersonal dynamics and with the nine personality dynamics that the Enneagram talks about, but you can also overlay those nine dynamics onto a problem solving process.

And once you do that, then you say, wow, you have a personality dynamic that is perfectly suited for a step in problem solving. So, what does that make possible? What can you do with that? And so, one of the things that comes out of this is this concept of shared leadership, right? Because as your team is working through problem solving, depending on the step you’re in, there will be a dynamic that is a really great at that particular step. So why not let that dynamic really come out and flourish in that step and allow them to essentially take the leadership role in while you’re engaged in that particular step in problem solving. So you get this concept of passing the baton through your teammates, as you move around the different steps in problem solving. And another question that I get is, “Well, I don’t have a team that has all nine types.” Our team has five people on them and two of them are those darn sixes. So, we really don’t have all those types represented.”

And so that the Enneagram actually provides an answer for that as well. And I talk about that in terms of your personal path of growth, because as you grow and go on this, your personal path of growth, you’re able to not only access the types that are on that path of growth represented in any ground by your path of integration. So for instance, for the six, the path of integration is towards the nine. So as I become more secure, then I’m able to more able access the dynamics of type nine. But as you master your ability to kind of live in that area, along your path of growth.

So for me, it would be like living in that nine space. What I found is that allows me to access all the other types. So you’re able to better and better access all the types as you are as you grow. And so that’s what I talk about in the book is each type’s personal path of growth and then how they’re able to access those. Now, there’s going to be more or less ease of access to the other types, depending on your type, some types are going to be harder than others. For instance, for the six, I find the seven dynamic particularly hard to access though when I’m in nine, I’ve easier time accessing it, but it’s still hard. And so, if I really need to do a seven activity, then I want to partner with somebody who’s a seven.

And so it talks about making sure, we appreciate all these others or dynamics and then pull in help when we need it. You know that’s, that’s the thing. And the other thing is that if you don’t… if you have a team that doesn’t have all the types represented, well, if you’re using a problem solving framework and you know, we will need to go through these nine steps, we don’t want to skip the steps because we skip the steps, we’re going to have a problem. We don’t want to spend too much time in any one step, because then we’re going to have a problem and slow down, but we’ll go through each of the steps. And as you go through the steps, you will force yourself to be in that, that space at least for a while, so that you’re not skipping it. And that’s the other nice thing about using a problem solving framework as you work through problem solving.

Well, so now we’ve talked a lot about the path of integration, but what about the path of disintegration? What does that give you in problem solving? And so I talk about that in my chapter on creativity. And you can use this idea of moving along your path of disintegration as kind of a creative engine for driving innovation. So what does that mean? Well, you’ve heard of that phrase. “Mother is,”… excuse me. “Necessity is the mother of invention.” So, necessity essentially is putting you in your insecure state, right? So you’re moving along your path of disintegration into insecurity.

And that is putting you into a state where you’re starting to look out for how to resolve whatever issue is putting you into that state. And then as you start to make progress on that, you move back along your path of, towards integration. And then, and you have this kind of oscillating motion back and forth between integration and disintegration that drives that creativity in each of the types. And each Enneagram type has a distinct creative characteristic or creative energy that is important at each one of those steps in problem solving. And so that’s what I talk about in the relationship between creativity and problem solving and how the Enneagram can help us understand those different dynamics.

Another really interesting thing that came out of thinking about the relationship between Enneagram and teams is how each Enneagram type thinks about time and their perspective on time and the thing that got me thinking about this is when I was having conversations with say Enneagram type two, I would find that the conversations tended towards more reminiscing. They’d be talking about these feeling rich experiences that they had with friends like camping trips or fishing trips, or something where they were with friends and having a good time. And then they were kind of reminiscing about those feelings that they had. And I just thought, wow, these conversations are so different. And the conversations that I have with my type six friends, which are more about the future and thinking about all the different things that could happen and doing scenario planning and just thinking about the future.

And, then I started thinking, wow, each type, based on their focus has a different place along that mental energy timeline. That’s what I ended up calling it, some in the past, some in the future and some right in the middle and those are right in the present. And so then I actually plotted that out through problem solving saying, “Okay, well, you start off, referencing the past and thinking about, Hey, this thing here, doesn’t jive with what my model of what is right and wrong is,” and then how you move through time and go back and forth between the future and the past, through the present to get to some point in the future where your problem is solved and how those varying perspectives bring the team along with you on that journey, forward in time, but actually thinking about either the past or the future, or living in the moment as you’re solving the problem.

And so this, analyzing your teams or looking at your teams and how the, and their relationship with time also gives you a perspective on how they’re going to respond to problem solving. So I have a chapter on that as well. And then, one of the things that… since I’m an engineer I like to have some basis in science for what I’m working on. I like to know that there’s a scientific basis for it. And this is one of the things that the Enneagram when I was first introduced to it, I’m like, “Okay, this is an interesting system.” I use it more. “Hey, this seems to work. Hey, well, if it works this well, doesn’t that mean that there’s something about us humans that we’re wired this way that causes these nine types.”

And oftentimes people say, “Hey, are you forced to be your… Are you really your type? Or can you really be any type?” I mean, can we be multiple types? And the way I look at it is, “Hey, are you left-handed or right-handed?” “Well, I’m right-handed, so my dominant type, my dominant hand is right, but it, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have a left hand. I have a left hand, I can use my left hand and I exercise my left hand and I try to make it, you know, strong so that when I’m doing things, I can use both hands, but, you know, if I have to do some precision work, then I’m going to rely on my right hand to do that.” And so there’s a dominance, and I’ve come to think of the Enneagram types as also, you have your dominant type.

It doesn’t mean you don’t have access to those other types, but it just means that you have a dominant type and in the same way that our brain drives the dominance of right-hand and left-hand. I’ve come to understand that our brain drives the dominance of Enneagram types as well. And there is a great book called Personality in the Brain. And the author is Peter Savage. And he came up with a very elegant model that’s based on his research, studying the brain research in neurology literature, and looking at the behaviors of different brain types. And then coming up with a model that maps those to the Enneagram, very elegant, very simple model based on two parts of the brain, the Amygdala and the Pre-Frontal cortex. And just like, you can be right-handed or left-handed or ambidextrous, you could be right Amygdala dominant, left Amygdala dominant or Ambi.

And there’s three types there. Same thing for the Pre-Frontal cortex, three types there, three times three is nine. And so his model shows that those dominances drive the nine Enneagram behaviors. And that was very satisfying for me. And it really gave me another way to look at these different personality types. Now, not just from any aground point of view, but also a brain function point of view. And those two models are very, very consistent. And another thing that came out of looking at it from the point of view of brain, is that I find in the work place, there are certain groups of people that like to coalesced together and work together, right? And so in the workplace, I would often see like a type one, type four and type seven come together and work together in a team.

Also the two, the five and the eight, and also the three, the six and the nine. And the nice thing about all these types is that, that they all get along with one another, they all complement each other, and they all seem to want to work together. If you look at it from a brain point of view, it turns out that, in those dominances that I talked about, that all the dominances are complimentary. And in each one of these teams gives you essentially two balanced brains. And I thought that was fascinating. And it just provides another way to look at how these teams come together and work together and collaborate because they’re so complimentary.

I also do a chapter on, now that you have all of these tools, what happens on teams? You can start to look at it. So, if you have a team that is say has a lot of type eights on it, but doesn’t have, say a type six or type three, and it was lacking some of these other types, what does that team look like? Same thing with a lot of two or a one in a six. And so you can start to see these behaviors in the teams that are reflected by the constituents on the team. And then you start to see this relationship between those team styles and the sayings, like there’s a saying called “Fail fast,” right? Well, that’s the type eight, type eight wants to get the action, right?

There’s a problem. Come up with an idea, work to solve it. Oh, that doesn’t work. Try another idea. Oh, that doesn’t work. Try again and you iterate quickly to a solution, but you never stop. You never stop to think. You just act. And that’s that fail fast style is classic of a team that is really driven by eight energy. So I have a number of case studies of different types of teams that I’ve worked with. And then, you know, what happens on that team and again, all of these styles, if you deliberately go through the methodology one step at a time and not just jump ahead to say action, type step eight, but you deliberately go around, you’re going to end up with a lot better solution at the end, that will be more resilient, more reliable.

And then finally, I do a chapter on where I put all of these tools together. So for those of you who really like to dig in and understand how to analyze the team, if you know the Enneagram type of your team members, you can put it into these tables and then assess the proclivities of your team in terms of where are they going to do well, where they’re going to get stuck, where you’re going to need to kind of work them through the process so they don’t skip steps. Are they going to be future focused, past focused or present focused? And so you you’ll be able to see your team dynamics based on these tools, which is just something else that you can use as your guiding your team towards solutions. So that is the quick overview of the book. Thank you so much. Please get a copy of the book, leave a review on Amazon. I love you. And thank you.

 

Filed Under: Book, Team Effectiveness

How to Identify Stress in Your Colleagues and Tips for What to Do

August 24, 2020 by Matt Schlegel Leave a Comment

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation on July 27, 2020, 53% of US adults report feeling worry and stress related to corona virus. That’s up from 39% in May.  The effects of this stress may be showing up among your friends, family and colleagues. Here’s how to spot it and tips for what you can do.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-identify-stress-your-colleagues-tips-what-do-matt-schlegel

Filed Under: Enneagram, Leadership, Team Effectiveness

How Attorneys Can Apply the Enneagram to your Practice

August 18, 2020 by Matt Schlegel Leave a Comment

https://lifedesignforlawyers.libsyn.com/episode-10-matt-schlegel-on-the-enneagram-for-team-performance

Honored to be featured in the amazing Charlotte Smith’s Life Design for Lawyers podcast.  Charlotte is an attorney turned executive coach who has a profound connection to the human spirit which she uses to guide her attorney clients to create the best possible versions of themselves, both personally and professionally.  Charlotte lead a conversation about how to apply the concepts in my book Teamwork 9.0 to help attorneys and their law firms.

Find out more about Charlotte and her Executive Coach practice here:

https://www.charlotte-smith.com/

Transcript of Podcast

Charlotte: Hello and welcome to the Life Design for Lawyers podcast. I’m your host, Charlotte Smith. I’m a lawyer turned executive coach who helps lawyers, attorneys, those in the legal profession step away from stress and overload and to really move into lives and careers within the law that work for them.

Hello and welcome to the Life Design for Lawyers podcast. I am your host Charlotte Smith and today on the show we have Matt Schlegel. He is a consultant, and expert in team effectiveness that is an author and he has recently launched a book: Teamwork 9.0 and it talks about the new novel ways that we can use and apply the Enneagram to make teams more effective. So without further ado, I am so excited to have Matt on the show. Matt why don’t you just start by introducing yourself and telling us a little bit more about you and what you do.

Matt: Well thanks so much Charlotte, it’s such a delight to be here. So I guess I’ll start with the fact that I grew up in a household full of attorneys. My grandfather was an attorney, my father was an attorney, my sister is now an attorney, my cousin is now an attorney and somehow or another, I managed to escape the orbit of the law and I think I attribute it to my grandpa because his hobby was radios. So we would spend hours together in his shed after work, looking at radios, and I think I got that bug to become an electrical engineer from him. As I was going through my engineering career, about 10 years in, my boss comes to me and says “Matt, I want you to be a manager.” And I looked at him and said “why do you want me to be a manager I know nothing about managing people” and he said “don’t worry you’ll be fine.” I thought “I’m not fine, I’m very worried” and so it was that point that I started to explore the different ways to understand how teams work and leadership works and that’s how I discovered the Enneagram and got me on my journey with the Enneagram.

Charlotte: Wow, so that’s really interesting and I love the fact that you were surrounded by lawyers but took that different path. Good for you! So tell us a little bit about the Enneagram because I think that some of the audience will have heard of it but we hear about lots of different personality assessments as well so tell us a little bit about what’s unique about the Enneagram.

Matt: The Enneagram is, like you say, commonly thought of as a personality system. It became popularized as a personality system first by a fellow named Óscar Ichazo in the 50’s, and it became increasingly popular in the 50’s and 60’s. It’s now surprisingly popular with millennials, so if you ever search around for Enneagram on YouTube or Instagram, you’ll see big Enneagram communities sharing their experiences. It’s really fascinating. That said, it all started, it has roots in ancient Greece and even Egypt, so it’s been around for a long time. It talks about nine distinct personality dynamics, and while all of us have access to any of these dynamics with more or less degree of ease, each one of us has a core dynamic and I kind of think of it as being right handed or left handed. Are you right-handed or left-handed?

Charlotte: I’m right.

Matt: As am I. Now, it doesn’t mean we don’t have a left hand. I have a left hand, I use my left hand, but definitely my left hand is not my strong hand, and when I go to do an activity I’m likely to just use my right hand. It’s the same way with the Enneagram. You have these nine distinct strategies, but there is a strategy that’s kind of your go to strategy, that you’ll use. It doesn’t mean you don’t have access to the others, but you can definitely, you’ll fall back on your core strategy.

Charlotte: That’s fascinating, and I recently started to explore the Enneagram and started to really dive into this and it was really insightful firstly that you shared that it has been popularized by a lot of millennials, and I did one of those catchy personality tests and I actually found it really interesting. As I started to dive deeper I was fascinated by the history behind this model and how it works and I think that the example that you gave of using your right hand and your left hand, that really resonates and it makes sense that we all have certain attributes and skills that we can access but we do have more dominant skills and elements that we are able to access and I got from a personality standpoint a 4 winged with 3. When I bought a book on the Enneagram and started reading through this, it was like the bible on human behavior. It was so mind-blowing to me how deep this really goes.

Matt: I couldn’t agree with you more. When I first started exploring it, usually most people will take a test, and you take your test and you score high on a few different numbers, and for instance when I scored I scored high on both 8 and 6. At the time, I was in an environment where I had to behave like an 8 so I was answering affirmative on a lot of these questions for 8 but it turns out I was actually a 6. So I always advise people when they take the test is it’s more for figuring out what you’re not than what you are. Take the top two or three, and do a deeper exploration. Once I figured out I was a 6, and after some work, we figured out my wife was a 5, and I went onto a website, I think it was https://www.Enneagraminstitute.com/ and they had this section where they talk about relationships. So, what does the 5-6 relationship look like? I read that and I was like, “how do they know?” It’s like they live with us, and they’re describing us. It’s just your point, it’s just so remarkable how well it describes our behaviors. And for me, that was the aha moment. There’s really something to this

Charlotte: Yeah, I’ll have to agree with you because when I got that book, I proceeded to get my husband to do the test. He humored me, even though he’s definitely not into this kind of stuff and I found out that he was also a 6, which was kind of interesting. But reading the section, I was like “Wow, this is exactly the traits” and it makes total sense, and it helps you. When you can understand what someone’s personality type is, and how they show up in the Enneagram, then you can empathize with them much more clearly and you can understand what motivates someone. What causes them fear, where they go to in stressed situations. I think it’s very fascinating to be able to communicate effectively with different types to yourself.

Matt: Right, right, and even communicating with yourself. Just the knowledge that it gives you lets you understand yourself, and what makes you tick, and I got a couple really big epiphanies out of this. As a type 6, I’m beset with anxiety frequently. Especially in our culture, with “Hey, that’s not acceptable, don’t be afraid” so I was always challenged with okay, I’m not supposed to feel anxiety in this society, but I do. I was always having to deal with that, and it kind of felt like there’s something wrong with me? That I’m feeling this? Nobody else seems to be feeling this and everybody’s telling me I shouldn’t feel this way. But once I understood that I was a 6, I was like “oh no! This is exactly how I’m supposed to be feeling. It’s totally fine that I feel this way, and now that I know that, I can accept that in myself and start to actually name this feeling, it’s anxiety, I get that now, and start to use it to understand ok, what’s my anxiety level, what’s causing it, and how do I address it in a way that’s constructive and not destructive or bad in my day to day life. Just so valuable. Just that little bit for me alone and once you have that understanding about yourself then yes, you can layer on all the other relationships you have in your life, understand other people, and understand “oh they’re behaving that way, well that’s not the way I would behave but now that I know they’re a 4, or a 3, the way they’re behaving is perfectly correct for this situation” and it just allows you to accept everybody else. These are some of the big transformative things that you can do with your life using that knowledge.

Charlotte: Gosh it’s just so powerful it really is. I’m really hearing that the Enneagram helps us with self-mastery and that’s incredibly important. It helps us to accept ourselves for who we are which is just so powerful on so many different levels personally and professionally and it helps us to accept others as they are as well. I’m curious to know how we take this framework, and we apply it to the corporate environment, to teams.

Matt: This was the fascinating thing for me as well. Because as I was starting to understand all this, I was in a corporate environment and I was using it with my team and getting really great results on a personality level. As an engineer, I really liked to deconstruct things and put them back together and I did that with the Enneagram too. I think this is one of the reasons why I grew to have so much confidence with the Enneagram over some of the other systems I’ve encountered such as Myers-Briggs or Disc which are commonly used in the corporate environment. This one just seemed to be more robust and I ended up having this question. The Enneagram, they call the types by numbers, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9, so why numbers? Why not animals or colors? Also, why is the 1 the 1, the 2 the 2? Why couldn’t the 8 be the 3, or the 4 be the 7? And as I studied it, I found that there is a reason for that specific order. It’s the order in which humans solve problems. Not only is the Enneagram a personality dynamic system, it’s also a problem-solving framework. Once I understood that, I started using it in the context of my team to get them to focus on solving problems together, and it worked so remarkably well, that I was compelled to write my book and share that framework with the world. Because it has implications back to people, because you think about all studied problem-solving steps before, there’s dozens of books on problem solving, the scientific method has all these steps. But the unique thing about the Enneagram is that it has a direct link between a step-in problem solving and a personality dynamic. So now you can say, we’re at this step-in problem solving, what’s the dynamic that we really need to embrace in this step, and who in our world can really help us understand that. If we’re in step 4, let’s bring in somebody who’s actually a type 4 and get their perspective on this. It allows you to really appreciate having a diverse team in problem solving and welcome those diverse aspects and opinions during problem solving.

Charlotte: Yeah, ok. You hear a lot about how teams are being built are often compelled to hire someone exactly the same as them, from the same background inherently creates too many of one personality type and it doesn’t create that range of perspectives for more effective problem solving so very cool. I think it would be helpful now for our audience who aren’t familiar with the Enneagram to just go through 1-9 and maybe talk about some of the attributes and how they approach problem solving.

Matt: Yeah, oh that’s great. So very briefly, this is all detailed in the book, but just to give you a flavor of the steps in problem solving and then those dynamics. For instance, Type 1 is often called the perfectionist. They’re the ones who immediately see what’s wrong, how things shouldn’t be, they also tend to be a very innate clear vision of how things should be and how things shouldn’t be and how things should be is a problem definition and goal. Two sides of the same coin, and the first step in problem solving.

Type 2 is called the helper, they’re the people who want to have an emotional connection with you, well the role that the two plays is, okay, we have this problem now, who cares? Who actually has an emotional stake in that problem? This is the step where you get all of your stakeholders together, all the people who have a connection with the problem and build your problem-solving team.

Type 3, they’re the achiever. They’re the ones who are looking forward to seeing, what can I do to get to success? They are really great at just throwing out ideas, they’ll throw out all these ideas just to explore how we are going to achieve success.

I’m going to skip ahead to Type 4 now too, because there’s a dynamic between three and four that happens almost instantaneously, it really needs to be appreciated, that is the four is the type they’re often called the artist or the romantic, they’re the ones that see the emotional content in everything. So when you throw out an idea in step 3, you’re going to have an instantaneous emotional response. That idea is great, or that idea sucks. You don’t even think about it, it just happens. That state is literally the state of four. They’re always reacting to the emotional content of everything and so that combination of three’s idea and four’s reaction, it’s like there’s a saying: throw spaghetti against a wall and see what sticks, that’s the dynamic: When the three throws spaghetti against the wall and the four is seeing what sticks. And you choose those ideas that stick with the team, because those are the ideas that are going to have the most emotional energy, to get the team through the rest of the steps, to the goal.

Now we switch over to Type 5, there’s an interesting thing that happens. 1-4 are on the right side of the Enneagram, and 5 6 7 8 are on the left side of the Enneagram, so you’re switching now to the other side and it kind of matches this idea of left brain, so you’ve gone from right brain to the left brain side of problem solving. So the 5 is where you analyze the idea, where you do the pro con analysis, where you do the cost benefit analysis. You vet that idea to the nth degree to make sure its valid and holds up from a logical point of view.

Once you’ve done that then you need to build a plan around that. That’s step 6. They’re the ones who want to know what’s going to happen so they’re the ones that are going to say okay, well what resources do we need? What people do we need? What’s it going to cost, how long is it going to take? And they’re the planners, they like to plan everything out and get you all the way to the goal.

7 is the enthusiast. They’re the ones that like to take an idea and get everybody excited about that idea so everybody is on board to go forward. So in problem solving, they’re the ones to take that plan and go back to the broader set of stakeholders and say hey, come on! Let’s go! And get everybody excited to get forward.

Step 8, in steps 1-7, all you’ve done is talk and talk and talk. So step 8 is the step where you actually take action. Type 8 is the most action-oriented type of all the types. This is where you actually do the work, implement the solution, solve the problem.

And then, you get to step 9. You’re done, you solved the problem. Well, whenever you do some kind of transformative change, some people will have their feathers ruffled and their feet will be stepped on, and you’ll need to go back and harmonize and integrate what you’ve done with everybody. Nine is the peacemaker, and they’re the ones that go in and listen to everybody, get everybody to calm and settle down, and make sure the solution is working for everybody. And then, in those conversations, inevitably, you’ll find perhaps something that wasn’t addressed completely or maybe a new problem arose that you didn’t think about, and then you’re back to 1. That’s why the Enneagram is a circle and not a line, because it’s a continuous circle of improvement and problem solving. So that’s kind of the overlap between the personality dynamics and the different steps in problem solving.

Charlotte: I love that that is so fascinating, and it makes complete logical sense when you take you take us through that in such a concise, simple way. It’s interesting for myself when exploring who I was in the Enneagram and I was kind of struggling between a 9 really resonating with me as well. But once I kind of dived in it was kind of a whole leading with the 4 but the addition of the 3 in there.

Matt: I would say the 4s and the 9s they do have a lot in common. Whereas the 9 is great at listening and understanding everyone’s perspective, the 4 is great at putting themselves in everybody’s emotional shoes. The 4 often knows how you’re feeling better than you yourself know how you’re feeling. That’s their gift. So I can see how as a 4, looking at the list of the 9 behaviors, you would be able to identify with a lot of those.

Charlotte: Yeah, so what advice would you have for someone who’s in senior management at a law firm and they have a team of people. How do they best utilize the methodology that you’re describing to build a really strong team?

Matt: That’s a great question, always I say the starting point is to really know yourself. This is one of the advantages of the Enneagram, is that it’s a great tool for managers. Because it helps you understand not only what motivates yourself, but also the underlying motivation of your entire team. What they’re going to get passionate about, what they’re going to want to get up in the morning, get out of bed, go and do. Once you understand that, you can start to make sure that you have the right people in the right roles at your firm. The great thing about law firms, is that there’s so many roles, there’s so many different roles, because the law is human problem solving. It literally scopes the whole thing. There are so many ways each type can play in the firm. I’ll just give you a brief rundown. Type 1, the perfectionist. They get passionate about social justice law. So you see attorneys that are really passionate about that are often type 1s. Also, if you want to have flawless documentation submitted to the court, you want your 1 to be on that. Because that documentation is going to be perfect, and it’s going to look good to the judge. Type 2 is the helper, what better world than an office manager to make sure everybody has what they need and everybody is working the best that they can, and just attentive to everybody in the firm to make sure. Type 3, this is the type that really wants to look good. When you’re in front of a jury, you want the 3, great litigators, because they want to win and they want to look good. They make great litigators, and they also make really great expert witnesses. When they’re on the stand, they’re going to tell the story in a way that’s going to make you look good, and the jury is going to totally get it. Then you go to the type 4, they’re the emotional impact. They’re also great when you’re planning how the jury’s going to react to the different messaging. You want a 4 on your team, because they’ll be able to tell you how the jury is going to react, at developing your brand strategy for your law firm, they’re great at marketing. They’re also great as coaches for attorneys, like you! That’s a perfect role for you. Then for 5s, these are your legal experts, they’re the people who are doing research on your case, they’re perhaps the law professor that you go back to and ask for advice. That’s the expert on your team. Then the 6s, I see a lot of 6s in corporate transactional law, these are the folks that are work horses: just get stuff done all the time, they’re okay setting up this entity, then they’re going to set up this entity. They’re going to do that all day long, that makes them happy. The 7s, they want to be around people. They need to be in a role where they’re surrounded by people. They’re going to be in the types of law where they’re meeting lots of people. Maybe immigration law, or maybe a class action suit, or maybe your trust attorney, because they really love meeting with people all the time, that’s what they love. Another fantastic role, both you and I are in a networking group called Provisors. Provisors are predominantly attorneys. It’s a networking group of attorneys and if you look at the composition of the people in Provisors, it’s predominantly 7s. 7s love networking. So if you’ve got a 7 in your firm, get them into Provisors because they’ll be able to network and bring in more business for the firm. Then you get to type 8. Type 8s are master strategists. You want them on your litigation team, you want them coming up with strategy, cause they’re great at finding weaknesses with the opposition’s case and exploiting that. So that’s where the 8s are often found, in litigation roles. 9s are the peacemakers. If you need to go into the mediation, you want to go to the type 9. I also see mediation in employment law issues, and I also see them in patent law as well. Every Enneagram type has a role to play in a firm, and once you appreciate what each type loves to do, and get them in that role, it’s like magic. Everything starts to click.

Charlotte: Yeah, it sounds so incredible, and the visual image I’m getting right now is of a chessboard, understanding your pieces and the resources you have and you can kind of deploy them effectively, it makes everything feel so harmonious and easy. Its kind of interesting, the kind of strategy and figuring out how to deploy all the pieces is not easy but once you can execute that effectively, then how powerful.

Matt: Exactly, exactly.

Charlotte. So, just such incredible work. And you know, I don’t want to go on and on, but I just have so many questions. We could really apply this to how to give feedback to people.

Matt: Knowing the Enneagram type of your colleague helps you tune the way you deliver messages to them. Because you’ll know what they need and you’ll know how to give it to them in a way that they’ll be most receptive to. Feedback is interesting because there’s positive feedback, and there’s negative feedback. These are two different things. This reminds me of when I was managing teams and I was doing all that studying and research and how to be an effective manager and an effective leader, and I came across this one little bit of advice that we are much more sensitive to negative feedback than positive feedback. Just to be neutral, to give neutral feedback, you need to have 7 times more positive feedback than negative feedback. So for every one bit of negative feedback, you better give 7. So I was very conscious and deliberate about doing that. Now, since then, since that was years ago, it’s not 7 to 1. It’s actually 11 to 1. The most recent research says it’s actually 11 to 1. Also, Gallup poll does these surveys that say, “what’s the thing that causes the most job satisfaction,” and its office, my boss. 70% of the feedback is “my boss is awful”. Well, it makes total sense if we don’t know that 11 to 1 just to be neutral in our feedback and your job is to give people feedback, if you’re not giving 11 to 1, then it just seems like you’re giving negative feedback all the time, and you’re not going to like it. You’re not going to like your boss, you’re not going to like your job, you’re not going to like anything. So I kind of looked at it like a bank. Think about depositing positive feedback into the bank. Every day, you got to be deliberate in giving positive feedback to your team. If you know the Enneagram, you can be more specific in how you do it, but just in general: 11 to 1. So that when you have to give some negative feedback, you’re withdrawing from the bank, and knowing 1 is 11, you don’t want to overdraw your account. So that’s one framework that is really important. For anybody in a role where they need to give feedback to people. Going into the specifics of the Enneagram types and knowing those specifically is so powerful, because you’ll know, for instance type 1: They have this little critical voice in their head. Whatever negative feedback you give to a 1, they’ve already criticized themselves 10 times more. It’s really counter-productive to even criticize a 1, it just shuts them down and makes them procrastinate, so the better conversation is “how can I help you? What do you need to be successful?” Focus on that instead of criticizing, and you’ll have much better results with the 1. For a 2 for instance, you cannot give too much positive feedback to a 2. For a 6, if someone starts to say, “you’re doing such a great job, I just love…” after a while I would start to feel uncomfortable, like I get it, I get it. But you can’t do that for a 2, that’s what they need. They need that constantly. Knowing that, you see your 2 in the office, “you’re doing such a great job, I really appreciate what you did for John or Jane the other day,” so knowing that underlying thing can be super helpful in essentially building up your bank account so that you always got something in the account with your team.

Charlotte: Yeah and I think its interesting because some people may think: “Well, why do I need to be concerned with giving feedback, I’m just trying to get the job done in the quickest way possible, blah blah blah blah blah.” But really, being able to effectively give feedback is going to make people perform better. They’re not going to become demotivated. It creates a positive work environment and culture; people are loyal to you. They’re engaged. So it’s incredibly important to think about these things.

Matt: absolutely, absolutely. When you made that comment it reminded me of a type 3. Because type 3s, they are so focused on getting the job done. They minimize how people are feeling about the situation. “We got this deadline, we’ve got to  get these papers over to the court.” Someone might come to them and say, “My kids sick, and I need to take them to the hospital” and the 3 will say “really, now??” They’re just so focused on getting the jobs done they maybe don’t realize what is going on in the person’s life, that maybe having a sick kid is a really dramatic emotional thing. So just being aware, that’s the value for the 3. To know that tendency in yourself, and then to just listen to people when they say I have a sick kid. Even though you yourself as a 3 may not have that emotional reaction to that, just know that your colleague is and you need to figure out another way to get this done so they can go and take care of their important family business.

Charlotte: Yeah, it’s so powerful to be able to hold the mirror up to yourself and see that if that’s a tendency for you as a 3, then you can approach it more empathetically. It’s good business, we hear all the time and see that working in an environment that has this toxic culture, there is a human element of getting the job done and building hours, but there isn’t that buy in or engagement anymore. Being able to hold the mirror up and see is going to create that culture shift that is important.

Matt: Exactly, very well said.

Charlotte: Ok, I know we have talked really about teams but what would you say to maybe just a solo practitioner or an employee that doesn’t have that managerial from an Enneagram standpoint.

Matt: I have a very small team in my practice and once I’ve discovered the Enneagram and once I’ve understood that I’m a type 6 and I understood what roles I really loved and excelled at, I built my practice around my strengths. That’s how I would advise any sole practitioner, is that once they understand their own Enneagram style and their own strengths, build your practice around those strengths and then for the things you don’t like to do, find partners that allow you to offload that work to somebody who loves to do that. You now will have that much more time doing the things that you love to do. Don’t be afraid to delegate, don’t be afraid to build a network of different Enneagram styles, so that you have people to draw on when you need that. That’s how I use the Enneagram all the time in my own practice to just create an effective team, because everybody, even a sole practitioner still has a team of people around them.

Charlotte: Yeah, amazing. So Matt, how do people find a copy of your book.

Matt: You can find that on Amazon or most book platforms. If you want the paperback its on Amazon, if you want an eBook it’s on Amazon and other platforms as well. It’s Teamwork 9.0, and you can just search on whatever platform you use and it should pop right up. You can also find out more about the book on my website, at www.EvolutionaryTeams.com. Evolutionary teams, all one word, dot com. I’m on LinkedIn, twitter, Facebook and YouTube, all those social media platforms as well, where I talk about the Enneagram and some of the experiences I’ve had using this problem solving process and then just how to use this in your day to day life and in business.

Charlotte: Yeah, I strongly recommend everyone check out the book if you have not. Just from our conversation, there’s so much useful information there that’s powerful, and its an investment as well in people’s careers, in people’s businesses that’s going to last the search a long time and allow people to apply some of this strategy. So thank you so much for being here today and giving us your time.

Matt: Thank you so much, I really enjoyed the conversation, thank you.

~End of interview~

Charlotte: Are you a lawyer who is feeling pretty stuck in life? You don’t quite know what to do about it, but it feels like from a career standpoint, from a life standpoint, from a home standpoint thing aren’t going so well. Head to my website and download my life prototyping worksheet. Here I’ll share with you some tools and techniques to help you start thinking about what really is important to you. What your core values are, and it will help you to start envisioning how life can truly be for you. Simply go to www.charlotte-smith.com to download your life worksheet today.

Filed Under: Book

Final Reminder! Online Enneagram Workshop: Time and the Enneagram

August 18, 2020 by Matt Schlegel Leave a Comment

How does each Enneagram type understand and relate to time? Which types focus on the past, which on the future, and which on the here and now? Which types act with urgency, as if there were too little time? Which types think there’s all the time in the world? In this interactive session, we will explore the relationship between Enneagram types and time.

Workshop Details

Date: Tuesday, August 18

Time: 7:30PM-9:00PM Pacific

Access:  Contact Matt Schlegel for Zoom link (matt@evolutionaryteams.com)

Hope you can make it—we want to hear your stories!

Filed Under: Enneagram, Workshop

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