Leadership

Honored to be a guest on the What the HR! podcast with Jessie Novey and Micheal Thul.  We discuss the Enneagram as a team effectiveness and leadership tool as well as how the Enneagram can be used as a problem-solving and change management tool for organizations that are interested in working on their business, not just in their business.

Find the podcast here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-45-the-enneagram-personality-test/id1479349063?i=1000548290237

Learn more about Jessie Novey here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessienovey/

Learn more about Michael Thul here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thulmichael/

[Transcript]

Jessie Novey:

Welcome back to What the HR! podcast. I’m Jessie Novey and HR business partner with C.H. Robinson.

Mike Thul:

And I’m Mike Thul, HR technology consultant with SAP SuccessFactors.

Jessie Novey:

Welcome back to another episode of What the HR! Today we’re joined by Matt Schlegel, and we’re talking about the topic of Enneagram. So, Matt started studying the Enneagram back in 2002, and his realization that the Enneagram can be applied to teams as well as individuals led to the tools and strategies for work team effectiveness, which he describes and talks about in his most recent book called Teamwork 9.0. In today’s episode, we talk about what the Enneagram is, how the Enneagram could be compared to other personality assessments such as Insights Discovery, DiSC, StrengthsFinder, Myers-Briggs, to name a few. We also talked about how Enneagram can be used to help teams communicate and work together more effectively, and also some great resources that Matt provides. In addition to a location, you can go to take the Enneagram for free, if you’re curious what your Enneagram score is.

Jessie Novey:

So, we hope that you love this episode and all of the fun information that Matt shared with us. If you are loving our episodes, please do us a huge favor and go out to your favorite podcast platform, leave us a rating and review so that we can get all of this great information and resources about our guests out to other HR professionals and business leaders.

Jessie Novey:

Well, Matt, welcome to the What the HR! Podcast. Mike and I are really excited to have you here today, so thank you for your time.

Matt Schlegel:

Well, thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be here.

Jessie Novey:

You’re welcome. Well, at the top of the podcast, we gave our listeners a little bit about your background, but would love for you to share too, just a little bit about yourself and even more specifically, since we’re going to be talking about Enneagram today as our topic, if you could share with our listeners how you became to become kind of an Enneagram expert and what you specialize within the Enneagram space.

Matt Schlegel:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, so I started as an engineer and, as I worked through my career, I was promoted to a leadership position and I was wondering, “Why are you promoting me to a leadership position? I don’t know anything about leading people. I only know about leading electrons.” And they said, “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.” And I wasn’t fine. I was worried. So, I started to learn different tools and techniques and read a lot. And along that journey, I discovered the tool that we’re going to talk about today, the Enneagram. And I found it fascinating one, it’s often used as a personality tool and it describes these nine distinct types. And so as I used it, I found that, “Wow, this is very powerful.” It’s very helpful for me to work with my team, understand what their perspectives are, where they’re coming from, how to better communicate with them. So, it’s very rich in terms of how you can use it as a leadership tool.

Mike Thul:

So, I’m curious, Matt, there are a lot of, and I know it’s not just a personality assessment, but there are a lot of tools out there. When you looked into Enneagram, what was it specific about it that it stood out from all the other ones?

Matt Schlegel:

Right. Right. Well, so I think the most interesting aspect to me, and again, going back to the fact that I’m an engineer and I have this engineering training, engineers think about time. They think about how things evolve over time. And a lot of the systems that are out there, like Myers-Briggs or StrengthsFinder or DiSC, they’re more of a snapshot. They kind of just give you this snapshot of how things are at that particular point in time, whereas the Enneagram actually has time built into it. And it can tell you how you might be changing, even during the day, depending on your stress levels. Are you facing something stressful? You’re going to start to behave more this way. If you’re are feeling more relaxed, you’re going to behave more this way. That really appealed to me as an engineer. And then also, as a leader, trying to understand my team and what stresses they’re under and how they’re responding to those.

Jessie Novey:

So, for a listener who’s maybe not as familiar with Enneagram, based on what you just shared, they may be asking themselves “Well, differently from a DiSC or a StrengthsFinder, does my Enneagram score then change based on if I’m going through a season that’s really stressful, or if I’m on vacation and I’m in the best state of mind that I could be?” What would you say to that if somebody asked you that question?

Matt Schlegel:

So, the short answer is yes. The interesting thing about testing is when you’re taking one of these assessments, you’re influenced by how you’re feeling that day. You’re influenced by where you are in the environment. Are you at work or are you at home? And so there’s a lot of influencing factors. I always tell people when they take the Enneagram assessment to use it more as a process of elimination than a determination of your style.

Matt Schlegel:

So, if you maybe score high on two or three different styles, then just focus on those and kind of explore how each one of those feels and fits. Then, from there, you can start to get at what your core, your primary, or starting point dynamic is. The first time I took the test, I scored highest on type eight, and I’m not a type eight, but the environment that I was working in, there were type eights in the environment. The expectation is that you would behave in that way. And so as you’re going through that checklist, you’re like, “Yeah, I do that. Yeah, I do that. Yeah. I do that.” And then you end up testing highest as a type that isn’t necessarily your starting point. Yeah.

Jessie Novey:

Yep. Enneagram also has something that they call wings.

Matt Schlegel:

Yes.

Jessie Novey:

Correct? Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about the wings, and what that means compared to maybe the predominant number?

Matt Schlegel:

Right. Right. So, yeah, so the Enneagram describes nine distinct styles. But as you get to know the Enneagram, you realize, and by the way, I’m type six, but there’s a lot of variation in type sixes. You can meet one type six and they behave one way. There’s another type six can be completely different. And so, within the Enneagram, there’s some tools like wings or subtypes that help you understand the variations within that core dynamic. So, specifically to wings, the best way I’ve come to think about wings is as a determination of whether you are more introverted or extroverted. If you go around the Enneagram, so type six, on one side you have type five, and the other side is type seven. So, those are the wings. It’s the numbers on either side of your main type.

Matt Schlegel:

So, if you are a type six and you are more on the introverted side, that starts to feel more like that quiet, observing type five. And if you’re more on the extroverted side, then you’re going to look more like that enthusiastic type seven. And pretty much, if you go around the Enneagram, you’ll see that one side is a little quieter and another side is a little more outgoing. And so that’s one way I use the wings to kind of describe the variations in extroversion and introversion that you’ll see with any type.

Mike Thul:

So, I’m going to be the person on this podcast who doesn’t know anything about Enneagram and asks very basic questions. And so starting, kind of taking a step back, can you talk about the types, maybe not in detail, but you mentioned you’re an eight?

Matt Schlegel:

Yeah, well, I’m actually a type six.

Mike Thul:

You’re a six, right? So, what are those types mean, and how do they apply to you as an individual? And also, thinking about somebody listening who maybe wants to leverage this in their business, how does it apply in the business world, as well, to a manager or just teams in general?

Matt Schlegel:

Right. Right. Well, so the interesting thing about the Enneagram is it’s really a tool to understand human dynamics. And so, if it’s true, if it’s a real thing, you should see it everywhere that you see humanity. And you do. And you start to these patterns. So, the Enneagram starts out with nine distinct types, but you can also think of it as three groups of three. So, there’s the gut people, who tend to rely on their instincts; and the heart people, who tend to be driven by their feelings; and then the head people who are more in their thoughts, right? So, you have these three dynamics. And then in each of those three, there’s three different styles. So, you essentially have the three groups of three, which is the nine types.

Matt Schlegel:

Now, one place that this really stands out is the Wizard of Oz, right? Because now you have Dorothy, and she’s being counseled by these three archetypes. It’s the Lion who wants courage, it’s the Tin Man who wants a heart, and it’s the Scarecrow who wants a brain. Right? So, those are the three main dynamics that are talked about in the Enneagram. Here’s another really interesting thing, because we have all of these in us, right? So, type six, for instance, my starting point is in my head, I think. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings, and it doesn’t mean I don’t have my instincts and my guts. It’s just that I have that starting point. And so you have all of these, and you can even think of them as intelligences, right? You have your head intelligence, your feeling intelligence, and your gut intelligence. In the Wizard of Oz, one way to look at it is you have Dorothy walking around and her three intelligences are counseling her on her journey through Oz. So, that’s kind of the way you can look at it.

Mike Thul:

How does it apply to building teams? I guess if I’m going to leverage this tool and I want to build, whether it’s a more diverse team or just a better performing team…

Matt Schlegel:

Yeah.

Mike Thul:

Do different types work better with others? You mentioned it’s just a starting point. So, it’s not kind of the end all be all?

Matt Schlegel:

Right.

Mike Thul:

But how does it relate, in terms of maybe conflict resolution within the workplace or just strategy in general?

Matt Schlegel:

Right. Well, so now you’re getting into what really fascinated me about the Enneagram and why I became so passionate about it, why I wrote my book Teamwork 9.0 is to highlight this teamwork aspect of the Enneagram. So, you have these nine types and they all have their nine strengths, but how do you get them to all work together and contribute to problem solving. One of the things that you’ll notice in the Enneagram is that it looks like a clock. It looks like a circle with numbers around it. So, one of the questions I asked myself was “Why are they numbers?” Why aren’t they colors or letters or any other number of things? Well, in researching it more, I found that the reason why it’s numbers is because it represents steps in a process. It’s literally the process by which humans solve problems.

Matt Schlegel:

And so I detail that in the book of how you can use the Enneagram as a problem solving process.

Mike Thul:

What…

Matt Schlegel:

But now that you have a problem solving process with nine steps and also a personality system with nine types; and there’s a one to one mapping you can start to realize, “Oh, who’s going to lead at this step in problem solving? Who’s going to be the natural leader?” And so, as a problem solver, you can start to appreciate how each one of these dynamics contributes to the team in that distinctive way. It really brings out that importance of style diversity on teams. If you want to build a resilient, robust team, that’s able to handle any number of situations, then you really want to have a team that has all that style diversity built into it.

Jessie Novey:

Yeah.

Matt Schlegel:

So, that’s one way. And then you can also use it as a diagnostic tool as well, you know? So, when you’re working with a team and they get stuck in certain ways, right? We have words for these things, like paralysis by analysis, a team that overthinks the things. Well, as you work through problem solving, right? What do people want to do? One, they want to play to their strengths and go to the thing that they love to do. And then the hardest style for any Enneagram type to do is the next higher number. So, if you are an analyst and you’re a type five, so that’s one of the names for the analyst, right? So one, you want to go to that point in problem solving where you’re analyzing everything, and that’s your comfort zone.

Matt Schlegel:

So, the next higher number is the six. The six is the one that says, “Okay, I now see the path forward to get to the goal.” And they make a decision, “Let’s go in this direction.” The five, though, is still kind of immersed in all of the nuance and detail of all the information they’re collecting, and they don’t have that same inclination to say, “Okay, I got it. Let’s go forward.” So, by having a diverse team, then you can help the team. One, you can acknowledge when they’re going to really contribute strongly, but then you have the other styles that say, “Okay, we spent enough time here. Let’s move to the next step in the problem solving process.”

Jessie Novey:

Yeah, I see it.

Matt Schlegel:

Does that make sense?

Jessie Novey:

Yeah, those are really great examples, Matt, and as you were talking through those, there was two things that were coming to mind as any good team is comprised of an individual who leads with their heart, an individual who leads with their mind, and an individual who leads with their gut, so that they can all play devil’s advocate with one another and add those specific pieces of value to the team. And then as a result of that, given that the majority of our listeners are HR professionals, there’s a lot of work that we do in our industry around communication and change management. We’re always needing to half the time where our business hat, half the time wear our people hat, mostly having our people hat on. And when you think about people, you also have to be thinking about “How is this going to impact somebody’s head, their heart, and their gut,” as we’re rolling out a project or impacting something from a change management perspective. So, I think the way that you describe that, I’m obviously simplifying those really great examples that you gave, but those were a couple of things that came to mind.

Matt Schlegel:

Yeah. It’s really interesting because you can’t always expect to have a team with nine people and perfectly balanced, right? It just doesn’t happen. So, how do you put together teams that do have all three of those intelligences in play? One of the things that I noticed, just working with different teams over the years, is that there’s this natural affinity for certain types to come together. So for instance, you’ll see the type one perfectionist, the type four artist, and the type seven enthusiast come together. Now, when you look at those, you’ll notice that one, there’s one from each one of those groups, right? And in the same way, I also see the type two, the type five, and the type eight come together. And they form a really good working team where they’re very complimentary. They all get along, one from each group.

Matt Schlegel:

And then the final one is the three, the six, the nine. So, I love working with threes and nines. It’s just like falling off a log. It’s so easy. There’s very little conflict. It’s very complimentary. It’s great that we all have these instincts to work with people that we like to work with. And there are these groups of three that we can work with and really form a very balanced team where we’re including all intelligences in all perspectives.

Mike Thul:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jessie Novey:

Yeah.

Mike Thul:

So, in terms of applying this to the business, I’m a frontline manager, let’s say, I got a team of six people and we do this, I find out everybody’s scores or everybody’s types, what do I do now? How do I leverage the information that I have knowing the types of people I have on my team? How do I put into practice?

Matt Schlegel:

Right. So, and here’s one of the things that I really love about the Enneagram for leaders, if you are a leader of a team, then I think, more than any of the other tools, the Enneagram is the best because it speaks to underlying motivation. Okay. So, if you are a leader and you are trying to figure out how best to motivate a teammate or someone on your team, the first thing that most leaders do is they just look at the way they’re motivated, right? And they just assume that “Well, I’m motivated this way, so everybody else is going to be motivated the same way as well,” but that’s not true. There’s actually nine distinct motivations. So, as a leader, you want to know your own style, but you don’t want to impose your own motivating forces on other people because it often won’t work. So, that’s where a leader, once you’re down at the level where you kind of know the styles of your teammates, you can use it in that way to have conversations with them, to frame objectives in a way that makes sense to them and motivates them to reach the goal.

Mike Thul:

Yeah. So, I think of, when you say that, I think of a lot of like hoorah stuff that whether it’s motivating videos or quotes of the day, some people find that great, and some people find that off-putting.

Matt Schlegel:

Yes.

Mike Thul:

Right?

Matt Schlegel:

Exactly.

Mike Thul:

So, that’s what you mean by understanding the different types, and how it motivates other people.

Matt Schlegel:

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So, what might motivate one person really well might have no meaning at all to another person. This is where conflicts can arise as well, right? Because now you’ve got this tension and this misunderstanding, because you are not meeting that person where they’re at, and you’re not framing it in a way that makes sense to them. So I think, as a leadership tool, that’s one of the most valuable things.

Mike Thul:

So, then what do you do, as a leader? You got six people, let’s say, on your team, you like…

Matt Schlegel:

Yeah.

Mike Thul:

I don’t have enough time to go to every single person. So, is it how you build your team?

Matt Schlegel:

Well, once everybody knows their style, right? And if you do it as a team, then, “Hey, you are a one, you’re a two, you are a three.” Everybody kind of starts to know, and you can give your team the vocabulary now to talk about these style differences. And so the one is the perfectionist, right? They’re thinking about, “I’ve got to get this right. I’ve got to get it right.” And they’re always going to be coming at it from that perspective, but that’s not necessarily what needs to happen at other points in time.

Mike Thul:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Matt Schlegel:

And so, if everybody knows that, “Oh, hey, John is a one.” Say, “John, you’re being a one again.” John’s going, “Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you’re right. We can move on.” Right? Another thing is the two. The two is called the helper, and they often know more than you do, what you need. That’s just the way they’re wired. So, they’re always trying to help, and what they need is appreciation. Appreciation for the two is almost like oxygen. And so if you don’t feed the two the appreciation, they’re going to get grumpy. So, if you know that, then when you see the two doing something, say, “Hey, thank you so much for doing that. That was awesome.” And honestly, you can’t thank a two enough, you really can’t. So, thank them all the time.

Matt Schlegel:

For six, if somebody starts to thank me too much, I start to feel a little creepy. It’s like, “Why are you thanking me? It’s just my job.” Right? That’s, the way a lot of people think, but for the two, it’s like, “No.” It is like, “Yeah, bring it on. Thank me more. I know I’m a two. I know I need appreciation. You can appreciate me all you want.” [crosstalk 00:26:49].

Matt Schlegel:

I’m hoping I’m answering the question.

Jessie Novey:

Yeah.

Mike Thul:

You are.

Matt Schlegel:

It’s really about getting to know your team at that personal level, so that it just becomes natural and you don’t have to think about it. You just know, and here’s the other thing, people love it when you really get to know them, when they really feel like you know them and they’re being heard. That’s one of the most important things you can do as a leader, and so now you have this tool, this framework for getting to know people at just the most fundamental way. And people really respond well to that.

Jessie Novey:

Well, and you kind of were going down a little bit of this path too, Matt, I believe, in terms of not just about what the manager is getting out of understanding what each of their employees Enneagram number is, but the value of an entire team understanding what each other’s Enneagram numbers are. Because as Mike was asking questions about effective teams and working more effectively and building teams, sometimes my personal belief, and you can play devil’s advocate with me if you would like, Matt, is it’s less about taking the results of somebody’s assessment and saying, “I’m going to grab everything that I think creates the silver bullet of a perfect team, and pull this group of seven people together. And I know when I pull these seven people together, I’m always going to have an outstanding product.” And it’s more about, “Okay, I know where my weaknesses, or maybe not even weaknesses, but just things that don’t come as naturally to me.” As an engineer, I would suspect that you’re very detail oriented, and you indicated that you’re very analytical. That’s not the natural space that I work well in.

Matt Schlegel:

Right.

Jessie Novey:

So, if you were on my team, Matt, if I was working on something that was really analytical, required a lot of synthesizing of large amounts of data, I would reach out to you and say, “Hey, Matt, do you have the capacity to help me with this?” Or maybe you’re really good with Excel formulas, and you can help me take this data and synthesize it into a way that I can make sense of it and share it back with my business.

Matt Schlegel:

Right.

Jessie Novey:

So, that’s how I see where things like an Enneagram, for example, can really be so valuable amongst a group of people.

Mike Thul:

Yeah.

Matt Schlegel:

Yeah, absolutely. So, just a quick story, I worked with an Enneagram type seven. So, the Enneagram type seven, they’re the enthusiast. And they love to do work that is engaged with other people. They love interacting with other people all the time. They like doing new, fun things all the time. So, they work in that space where they need to be interacting. It might be project management, it might be marketing, it could even be engineering, but they’re the ones who are kind of outwardly engaged.

Matt Schlegel:

So, I worked with this one type seven engineer, and he did a lot of travel and meeting a lot of people. Over the months, he started to accumulate expense reports. So, I was getting calls from the accounting departments, “We need him to submit his expense reports because he is backed up on submitting them.” And so I would go to him, and I’d say, “Hey, we need you to submit these.” And he’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll do it.” And then he doesn’t do it, right? Because doing expense reports is this detailed work with no interaction with other people, right? Just does not even make sense to the type seven at all, to sit down and do that. And so he just never did. There was always something more exciting and fun and engaging to do with other people than to sit down at his desk and grind through all that and get receipts and everything. Tens of thousands of dollars that the company owed to him. And in spite of that, that still wasn’t enough motivation for him to sit down and do that.

Matt Schlegel:

So finally, we found somebody who would sit down and go through this with him, and do that detailed work, which he was happy to sit and work with somebody else and do it. He just didn’t want to do it by himself.

Mike Thul:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I can relate to that. Expense reports are so boring.

Matt Schlegel:

Right. You may be a type seven, Michael.

Mike Thul:

Yeah. I don’t know. I’m curious what anybody’s guess is, but I do want to say something based on what Jess was saying around understanding the types of your teams. And I imagine it kind of goes this way is there’s probably a lot of interactions between teammates who don’t understand another person’s type, where they maybe walk away feeling like, “Well, that wasn’t a very fun experience or that person just isn’t a nice, they’re not very nice, they’re not very helpful.” When, in fact, you’re asking them maybe to do something or approaching them in a way that just doesn’t fit into their type. Whereas if you know, and I go to Matt and it’s something completely, it’s outside of six, it’s a seven, and you don’t seem very excited about it, I already know this. I already know why you’re not excited. And it builds empathy amongst the team. Is that fair to say?

Matt Schlegel:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I want to also just mention that a lot of people, they, and I’m just talking about not necessarily the leaders, but just general employees, they haven’t necessarily thought about that there are all of these different styles. So, just awareness of that alone is valuable. And if you are going to be doing like a team building workshop where you just want to get people to understand that there are different styles and not everybody is your style. You may not need something as involved as the Enneagram to do that. You can use DiSC is a great tool for doing that, right? And you’re going to get the team to come away with that understanding, “I’m a D with some I or an S.” They’ll understand their own strength or approach, and they’ll start to appreciate that other people have these different approaches. So, they’re not assuming that everybody is like them. Because when you do that, then you start to think, “What is wrong with you?” And there’s nothing wrong with them. That’s just their approach.

Matt Schlegel:

So, that’s why I like the DiSC system for that purpose of just starting that conversation. But when you get to the point where you are a leader, and you want something a little more sophisticated, and you want to be able to get to those underlying motivators, that’s where it’s really valuable as a leader. Then once the leader of a team understands it and can have those conversations and kind of build your team to have that same understanding and vocabulary, that’s when the inter-team conversations can happen, and they can start to troubleshoot and problem solve any kind of conflict that might arise on their own, without the leader being involved, which is where all leaders want to get to I think, eventually.

Jessie Novey:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, agreed. Well, before we wrap things up here today, Matt, I want to help our listeners who are not familiar with Enneagram. Send them to the right place on where they can take the Enneagram. My understanding is that there are quite a few sites where you can do the Enneagram at no cost.

Matt Schlegel:

Yep.

Jessie Novey:

It’s free, but then there are probably a place or two where you can go to pay a minimal fee. So, I would love your insight into the accuracy of the free sites versus paying a minimal fee to take Enneagram. And then just as a side note for our listeners too, we obviously took a professional spin on this today because that’s our expertise here on the What the HR! podcast. But if you find yourself kind of geeking out on Enneagram and really loving the tool, there are some incredible books and resources for how to use Enneagram in personal relationships, like friendships and partnerships. Also, great resources on how you can use Enneagram with your kids. So, just know that there are an abundance of resources out there, depending on how deep you want to go with Enneagram.

Matt Schlegel:

Right. Right. So, on the test itself, so I’ve tried several of these. I have one that’s… I have a complimentary one, my myself. It’s at nessurvey.com. So, people are welcome to use that. And I’ve had people take my tests and other tests, and very consistent results with other tests as well. So, I’m pretty confident that it’s a good one, but with the caveat that none of these tests is definitive. It takes the work of picking those top two or three, to then do that deep dive into what motivates you. Then once you know that core motivator, then you’ll say, “Oh yeah, I’m the six. I’m, I’m motivated this way, rather than the eight who’s motivated that way.”

Matt Schlegel:

So, that’s that. And then, if I may, the Enneagram can definitely be used in a professional setting. That’s why I wrote my book from that perspective. It’s very… It has a brief overview of the Enneagram itself, but then it goes into the practical applications of how much of the stuff we talked about today, but down at, for each type, how you can use it to work with teams in the workplace. And so, if you are just interested in a brief introduction to it, there’s Enneagram Made Simple is a great book, a great starting point. And then, yeah, it just goes from there. There’s so many resources out there.

Mike Thul:

Now, so what’s… Can you talk… Can you do a quick shout out for your book? What’s the name of it? Where can people find it?

Matt Schlegel:

Right. Right. So, it’s called Teamwork 9.0, and the subtitle is Successful Workgroup Problem Solving Using the Enneagram. You can find it on Amazon, and it’s both on Kindle and paperback.

Mike Thul:

Okay. We’ll link it in the show notes. And then…

Matt Schlegel:

Thank you.

Mike Thul:

In addition to when somebody understands Enneagram, do you work, do you do consulting with businesses then to implement it? I’d love for people to know how they can reach out to you as well.

Matt Schlegel:

Right. Yeah. So, thanks for that. So, my website is evolutionaryteams.com. Yes, so I work with teams to help them understand the Enneagram. I also work with teams just to facilitate problem solving. The tool, as a problem solving process, is really well designed for conducting initiatives at companies. For instance, if you want to implement a new software system, right? You need to bring together a cross functional group of people from throughout the company to implement that system, and you don’t know what their Enneagram types or anything. So, but if you use that step by step process, you’ll bring all the way through the people, the team all the way through, from the beginning to the end. So, that’s another thing I helped teams with.

Mike Thul:

Great. And then, as far as connecting with you on social media, I’m guessing kind of the major, LinkedIn, Twitter, et cetera.

Matt Schlegel:

Yes, and I’ve been doing a number of interviews with Enneagram Aware Leaders of each type. So, people can find those interviews on YouTube. And then also I’m on Instagram, Twitter, and then you can also reach me at my website.

Mike Thul:

Awesome. Well, Matt, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Matt Schlegel:

Thank you. I really enjoyed speaking with you today, and thanks for all the great questions.

Mike Thul:

You bet.

Jessie Novey:

Thanks, Matt.

Jessie Novey:

Thank you for listening to this episode of What the HR! If you want to hear more episodes like this, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or whatever platform you’re listening through now. If you enjoyed the podcast, do us a favor and share with your network, your boss, or your CEO. Help us get this podcast in front of anyone who wants to know what HR looks like when done well. Also, if you have any questions for show topics or people you’d like us to interview, please email Mike and I at podcast@tcshrm.org, that’s podcast at T-C-S-H-R-M dot org. If you want to find out more about Twin Cities SHRM or our upcoming events, please visit our website at tcshrm.org. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And finally, if you’re not already a member of Twin Cities SHRM, please use code WHATTHEHR at checkout to receive $20 off your membership. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next episode.

#podcast #leaders #communicationskills #emotionalintelligence #enneagram

Every teammate brings a distinct energy to the team, and the team leader – like the conductor of an orchestra – directs the team members to create successful outcomes.  Author and Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Brynn Saito is an Enneagram Type 4 leader.  Of all Enneagram types, Type 4s may be most in tune with the emotional energy that each teammate brings to the team, and Brynn uses her knowledge of the Enneagram to direct those energies in the most productive ways. She also shares how the Enneagram has become so integrated into her processing that it’s become intuitive—representing movement along her path of integration towards Enneagram Type 1.  You will enjoy this interview with a creative Type 4 leader.

Please click on the YouTube video’s Thumbs Up and subscribe to the channel to get notifications of future episodes—thanks, I appreciate it!

Find more about Brynn and her work here:  https://brynnsaito.com/

[Video Transcript]

Matt Schlegel:                   Thanks for joining me in conversations with leaders who are using the Enneagram as a leadership tool and a tool for personal growth and development. Today, I’m speaking with Brynn Saito, an author and an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at California State University at Fresno. Brynn has also held various leadership positions at the California Institute of Integral Studies. And as an Enneagram Type Four leader, she shares how she uses both her feelings and her intuition with her team. And now for the conversation. Today, I’m speaking with Brynn Saito. Brynn is an author and is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at California State University at Fresno. Her two books of poetry are Power Made Us Swoon and The Palace of Contemplating Departure. Brynn has also held various leadership positions at the California Institute of Integral Studies. And I’m so delighted to be speaking with you today, Brynn. Thank you for joining me.

Brynn Saito:                        Thank you for having me, Matt.

Matt Schlegel:                   It’s great to have you here. So let me start off by asking how and when did you first discover the Enneagram?

Brynn Saito:                        I discovered it through a mutual friend, Roger Morimoto, who now is, I guess he’s directing a new spiritual life foundation project and program. But when I met Roger, he was a pastor. He was the pastor of the church I was raised in here in Fresno, California, the United Japanese Christian Church. And yeah, I was lucky to cross paths with someone like Roger, because I was always interested in spirituality and religion. And I have a Buddhist father and a Christian mother, and so I was exposed to lots of different religious cultures growing up. But Roger, of course, introduced all these other kinds of things to us as young people, including the Enneagram. So I believe I was in high school when I first learned about the Enneagram.

And similar to the workshops you’ve led and Roger has led, we would sit in a circle in the church fellowship hall and he’d introduce this personality system. And we’d talk about our different personality quirks, and we’d learn about all the numbers. And I think being 14 years old, 15 years old and being a Four on the Enneagram, it was very helpful for me at the time because I just, probably like a lot of young people, just wrestled with a lot of feelings and hormones and situations and struggles. And being introduced to a psychological system that kind of gave me a starting point for how to move through the world and think about myself and think about others was really helpful. So I was very young when it was introduced to me and continued to kind of explore it as an adult.

Matt Schlegel:                   Right. Right. Well, that is so fascinating. I mean, it’s fantastic that you were exposed to it that early on and how it helped you kind of navigate those turbulent years as a teenager, especially. Teenagers have a lot of feelings and emotions they are going through and amplified on top of that is, being an Enneagram Type Four, just all that much more emotion that you have to process. So that’s great. So as you were discovering the Enneagram, what is it that you learned about yourself that you may not have known before?

Brynn Saito:                        I think a big one, I remember Roger used to tell me this too, was you are not your feelings. And that was a big one I think for those of us on the feeling triad and for the Fours. I would identify so close with all the big feelings I was having, and I would feel sort of stuck or beholden to them or trapped or just this feeling was never going to go away. And it would just kind of consume me. And so I think the Enneagram allowed me to just take a step back and sort of see outside of my feelings, but also just my personality and my reactions.

Later, I became more and more interested in Buddhism and Zen Buddhism in particular and all those themes of non-attachment and equanimity. I think I had learned early on maybe with the Enneagram and striving for that, especially as a Four, I think has been helpful to kind of move towards equanimity or move towards a sense of kind of balance and detachment from sort of the intensity of my inner world. So that was probably one of the most helpful things and continues to be, I’d say.

Matt Schlegel:                   Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just allows you that perspective that helps you put your feelings into context in a way that you can look at them more objectively rather than just swimming in it.

Brynn Saito:                        Yes. That’s a good way to put it. Swimming in it.

Matt Schlegel:                   Wow. Right. That’s kind of the way I visualize Fours is just swimming through this sea of feelings.

Brynn Saito:                        Yeah, pretty much. You could be a poet. You could be a poet.

Matt Schlegel:                   Well, if I take one of your classes, then maybe I can. So tell me, how have you used your knowledge of the Enneagram in your leadership roles?

Brynn Saito:                        That’s a great question. Until we started talking about this interview, it wasn’t something I had thought about. I think I had used it more intuitively or just used it kind of subconsciously even. When I interact with people, when I meet people, I think I was on a just subconscious level sort of thinking about what their type might be and how to best kind of create different context for them to grow and to grow as an employee and as a person. But a lot of that I think was just kind of intuitive. I didn’t realize I was even kind of doing it until I started thinking about this interview and sort of reflecting on some of your work. But yeah, I think I do that. I think I kind of, I do start to wonder what people’s types are and that probably informs maybe different projects we collaborate on or different roles I assign or different gatherings or programs we do.

I might think, “Oh, it’d be really great to have a Seven here to kind of help lead this or do the opening. That Seven energy. Or somebody like a Five or a Six, very methodical, I maybe might have them work with different documents I need a close read.” Just different minds kind of suited for different tasks. And I don’t do it too consciously, but I think over the years, I have been working with it in that subconscious way, especially I guess too navigating conflicts and thinking about how to facilitate those conversations. Yeah. Some of that I think has come into play for me.

Matt Schlegel:                   Yeah. You’ve been using it. You’ve internalized it since it was a part of your youth. You’ve probably just internalized it to the point where it’s almost natural. The way that you describe how you think about working with teams, it’s almost like you’re the conductor of an orchestra, right? It’s like, “Oh, I need this instrument here and this instrument here.” And you’re just getting everybody to move into a space where they can naturally flourish, and it sounds like it’s almost become instinctual for you.

Brynn Saito:                        I think so. And maybe that is a factor of just having been introduced to it so young in those formative years, because I think it became a helpful tool, both in my work setting but also of course in relationships and with family. And yeah, I think I had sort of internalized it early on. Yeah.

Matt Schlegel:                   Yeah. That’s fascinating. Well, so what advice would you give to other Enneagram Type Four leaders who might just be coming to the Enneagram now? And what advice would you give them for how they might want to incorporate it into their lives?

Brynn Saito:                        Something for myself, I think as a Four, I realized I struggled with was taking things really personally, just being so sensitive. And when I’ve been in different leadership positions, I realized I had to think more like an Eight or like a Three and kind of hold the vision and not make it about myself and my feelings. So I remember different instances. When you’re the director or when you’re the leader or the CEO or whatever, you get criticism and you get feedback and you get pushback and there’s conflict. And being such a sensitive person, a poet, a creative, a Four, initially, that was just so hard for me. I just would shrivel up inside, and I’d go home and I’d feel real despondent.

And like, “Oh my gosh, everyone hates me. And I’m doing so bad and I feel so guilty.” All that Four shame, guilt stuff. But I think using the Enneagram as a tool to both assess myself in those situations and then think about other people, again, helped me find that distance. And just that I think that strategy of acting like different numbers or sort of putting on that Eight hat, it’s like, “Okay, what would an Eight do in this situation? They wouldn’t care. They would just move forward with the vision.” And if you feel like you have the right answer or right way, just go for it. And so that practice of trying to kind of integrate and try on and play with the different personalities, that’s been really helpful for me as a leader I believe.

Matt Schlegel:                   Right. Right. Yeah. The Type Four has the connection to the instinctive group through Type One. So the path of integration of Fours is to the Type One. And it was really interesting how it almost sounds like you’re tapping into those instincts as you’re working with teams, and then you’re also using the emotional distance that you can access from Type One when you get to the point where you’re just working on principles, not emotions. And that also sounds like a movement towards a Type One type of dynamic.

Brynn Saito:                        That must be it. I think that’s what’s happening. Yeah. I like that, the prince moving towards those principles and ideas and standards as a guiding force versus just, “Oh, this feels good or bad or I feel this or that.” Yeah. That’s it.

Matt Schlegel:                   Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that is so interesting. Well, thank you, Brynn, so much for sharing your experiences and your stories with us today. I really appreciate the conversation.

Brynn Saito:                        Thank you, Matt. And thanks for all the amazing work you’re continuing to do with the Enneagram. And it’s just so exciting to see the different programs coming through and very happy to have been here today. Thank you.

Matt Schlegel:                   Oh, thank you. Thank you. It’s a complete delight. Thanks. Thanks for watching. Brynn learned the Enneagram as a teenager, so it’s fascinating to see how the tools become so integrated into her processing. I appreciated how she shared her journey about rising above her feelings so that they don’t define her, which represents fantastic growth for an Enneagram Type Four. I also noted how the Enneagram had become so integrated into her processing that it’s almost become a part of her intuition. I think this represents motion along the path of integration towards Enneagram Type One. And finally, I like her description about the energy that her teammates of various Enneagram types bring to a project and how she can use those energies like the conductor directs the musicians in an orchestra. So if you like this, please click on the thumbs up and subscribe to the channel to get notifications of future episodes. And if you have any comments, please leave them in the comment section, and I’ll respond as soon as I can. Thanks again.