In this episode of the Being Human is Good For Business Podcast, we meet a young leader with an international pedigree who found her experience of working with a leadership coach to be transformational as she sought to transition from her job with one of the Big Four accounting firms to work that she finds a lot more meaningful.
Our guest, Patricia Njoya, connected with Trilogy Effect founding partner Wendy Appel through a not-for-profit organization called The Coaching Fellowship, an organization dedicated to developing young women social impact leaders.
Patricia Njoya, Accounting & Finance Senior Manager, Pur Projet
“I’ve volunteered with The Coaching Fellowship for a number of years now,” explains Wendy. “I’ve found it to be super rewarding because it blends two of my passions: social impact and supporting young women leaders.”
In this interview, Patricia shares how working with Wendy as her leadership coach taught her a lot about herself both as a person and as a leader. She describes how she uses the Enneagram framework to understand her own reactions, behaviors, and perfectionist habits to make better choices.
Patricia also discusses how this coaching experience has taught her to be more open to others’ ideas and points of view, which allows her to be more adaptable to changing situations. She's now in her dream job with an organization called PUR Projet, a progressive environmental services company based in Paris.
“I had heard about the Enneagram and although I was curious about it, I was also a bit skeptical of its value,” says Patricia. “But once I started working with Wendy, I soon learned that I’m a Type 1, and I feel that this is 100 percent accurate. I have come to understand my blind spots and motivations, and this helps me better relate to others in my workplace.”
Listen to the podcast to learn:
Techniques to be your best self at work
About tools to gain greater self-awareness
How finding meaningful work is the key to career success
Links to helpful resources and information about some of the tools and concepts mentioned on the show:
Trilogy Effect’s free leadership guidebook to be as your best self as a leader
Our free newsletter, full of leadership advice and practical tips.
InsideOut Enneagram: The Game Changing Guide for Leaders, by Wendy Appel
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Machine Generated Transcript
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Being Human is Good For Business Podcast Featuring Patricia Njoya
Sherrilynne: Hello, I'm Sherrilynne Starkie, and welcome to Being Human is Good for Business, the podcast for business leaders who want to build high performance teams. Today, I'm joined by Wendy Appel, a partner with the leadership experts at Trilogy Effect, and the author of Inside Out Enneagram, the game-changing guide for leaders.
This podcast is about helping people who manage people, discover who they are as a leader, and as a human being. This episode features a young leader with an international pedigree, who found her experience of working with Wendy to be transformational. Wendy works with some of the largest, most well-known companies in the world, including Johnson and Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, EA, Genentech and many others.
So coaching today's guest, Patricia Njoya, at one of “Big-Four” accounting firms is typical, in some ways, but in many other ways this coaching relationship is quite different. The two were brought together by the Coaching Fellowship, where Wendy has been volunteering with this non-profit, dedicated to developing young women, leaders for a few years now and has coached many of its fellows.
In this episode you will learn how coaching helped Patricia learn about herself and supported her as she transitioned from working with a global accounting firm to join a smaller team at a social impact organization. You will see how Patricia uses the Enneagram Framework to understand her own reactions, behaviours, and perfectionist habits to make better decisions.
Patricia also shares with us how this coaching experience has taught her to be more open to other's ideas and points of view, which allows her to be more adaptable in changing situations. She's now with an organization called PUR Projet, a progressive environmental services company based in Paris.
Welcome to the show, Patricia.
Patricia: Hi Sherrilynne, hi Wendy.
Sherrilynne: How are things in sunny Paris in springtime?
Patricia: Very beautiful, it actually a sunny day today. It was a bit cloudy this morning, but it’s sunny now, but still a bit cool.
Sherrilynne: Well, let's get started by you telling us a little bit about yourself and your background.
Patricia: Sure, so as you mentioned, my name is Patricia Njoya and I was born and raised in Cameroon, a country in West Africa. I was raised there until I went to college in the United States where I majored in accounting.
After I graduated from college, I worked with a “Big-Four” accounting firm for ten years, primarily in financial audits and then the last couple of years I worked with them in a consulting capacity. I was very lucky to travel with them and worked in Houston, Luxembourg, and ended my career with them in Paris. .
Once I hit the ten-year mark with my company I had, an internal reflection. I then decided that I wanted to dedicate the next phase of my career to using my experience and competency in a field or in work where I felt I was contributing to improving the world we live in.
I know it's kind of ambitious or pretentious to think that you would have an impact, but that's definitely what I sought out to do. That's how I came upon PUR Projet, where I've been working for the last year. I work in the Finance Team, helping with day-to-day accounting and audits, and lately I've been helping with the structuring of our finance and legal entities.
Sherrilynne: Tell us a little bit about, I’ll try my French accent here PUR Projet, what is the, what is this organization and how does it work?
Patricia: Sure, PUR Projet is an environmental services company that works with our clients to regenerate the ecosystems that they depend on for their supply chains. How we achieve that is primarily through the management of agro-forestry projects. Agro-forestry is the planting of trees on agricultural lands, typically on a coffee farm. What agro-forestry will do is provide shade that will help the coffee plants to grow better and also improve the soil.
The idea and the objective of our company is really working to improve the ecosystem as well as improving the livelihoods of the local communities that are benefiting from these projects we’re working on.
Sherrilynne: So that aligns with what you talked about in having a change in your career trajectory.
Patricia: Yes, here I see my role as more in a supporting role to our operational teams that are doing the work on the field.
Sherrilynne: It's all important work, and you play an important role.
Patricia: Yes, for sure.
Sherrilynne: So are really happy with the change in your career?
Patricia: I have been, but I will admit that in the first few months of doing the change, because I had spent ten years being in an accounting firm, and being in a corporate setting, it was a scary change at first. Yet, I also felt, because I am working with an organization where everything I'm doing, helping with constructing and structuring the central support function, so I really saw the change. I still see the change, in that, I'm helping my organization directly. Whereas, before, as a consultant, you were telling your clients what to do, you were providing some recommendations, but you were not necessarily always part of implementing the changes that you were recommending.
Sherrilynne: You and Wendy met through an organization called the Coaching Fellowship. Can you tell me a little bit about that organization and what that experience was like?
Patricia: Sure, I was part of the Coaching Fellowship Program that started in October and ended this past March, and how I learned about this organization was through a friend of mine that is based in Houston.
The reason I was very interested and keen to be part of the fellowship, was that I was excited to meet other women that were in the social impact field. Last year, at the time I was looking into applying, I was eager to learn as much as I could from other women.
Also from a coaching perspective, the transition that I made from a consulting capacity, for primarily corporate clients, to a smaller organization that was directly involved in social impact initiatives was a transition, and for me, a change that I needed to work on.
The working styles and value systems are not always the same in the two systems. So I was really looking forward to, initially learning about myself, and learning how to navigate this transition. Then, as I joined the organization, and as Wendy and I were working through the coaching program, I had a leadership change within my team.
Then my coaching experience went from, I'm trying to navigate this transition from “Big-Four” to an environmental service company and now I have a change within my team. I have a change in the scope of my role, and how do I navigate this change right now? So that’s how Wendy and I got to work together.
Sherrilynne: Wendy, how did you become aware of the Coaching Fellowship and tell us a little bit about your experience with them?
Wendy: I think it was very early in the existence of this organization called the Coaching Fellowship and I had been want to do some pro-bono to supplement my corporate work with Trilogy Effect. It was interesting because I had this, where do I put my energy— social impact, or working with young women leaders—because young women leaders are really a passion of mine to give back to and support by helping to lift up young women leaders, but my heart is also with social impact. So here the Coaching Fellowship comes along actually meeting both of my needs, so it’s been really super rewarding experience for me.
Sherrilynne: Patricia, did you have an opportunity to network with the other fellows?
Patricia: Yes I did and I'm actually still in touch with several of them, and I will say that in addition to meeting Wendy, that aspect of meeting other women in social impact has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my career, so far.
Sherrilynne: Let's change track here a little bit. You guys worked together using the Enneagram Framework, correct?
Patricia: Yes.
Sherrilynne: So can you tell me a little bit, Patricia, about what you learned about yourself, and yourself as a leader, by learning about your Enneagram type?
Patricia: Sure, so before I worked with Wendy, I had heard about the Enneagram and I was curious about it. I have to admit that when I would read people who say the way they behaved, made a lot of sense once they understood the Enneagram type, I would just roll my eyes and say yes, sure. Then I started working with Wendy and we started going through and identifying my Enneagram type and I have to confess that it is correct.
So much of how I would react to things, of how I'd behave, of how I perceived certain situations made sense once I understood my Enneagram type. So really what it did for me was, it helped me understand myself better, it helped me understand how I relate to others in the workplace. It also helped me know that, even though I still have some of my habitual tendencies that have not completely disappeared, it at least helps me to take a step back and pause and think about why I acted that way and how can a better relate to others?
If I can illustrate my point, I'm a perfectionist and being a perfectionist I have a tendency to want to do things right. I tend to feel triggered, if in a communication, my work has been criticized or it’s been implied that I have not done something correctly. My answer to that is to want to respond and say, ‘you're wrong, I am right, and this is why I am right’. So understanding the Enneagram and my type and really understanding that the reason I would respond in this manner to people, whether they're supervisors, or people that I was supervising, it helped me to know when I would receive such a message, it helps me to take a step back, ask myself, ‘why am I feeling frustrated about this message’?
To ask myself, ‘what is the person trying to tell me.’ and what I tend to do more now, instead of directly responding by email, especially saying, “you're wrong, I am right, and this is why,” I now ask people to get on the phone and have a discussion, so that I can better understand where they're coming from and what it is they are trying to say and then, based on that, I can adapt my response, so it really been helpful.
Sherrilynne: So it made work a little bit easier for you, but less stressful?
Patricia: It has made work a lot easier for me. I will say one other aspect is helped me with is, at the end of the day I would reflect on my day and if I felt I had made a mistake somewhere, or if I felt I had a shortcoming somewhere, overthink it, beat myself up and tell myself I'm going to do better next time and this is how I am going to do better. I just spent so much time over-thinking on how I need to improve.
Whereas now I recognize, and I acknowledge that when I'm doing a task, or when I'm asking someone to do something, I'm doing my best at the time with the resources that I have available and if there is a mistake made, it’s okay that a mistake was made. It’s not the end of the world.
Sherrilynne: Well, I think all of us want our accountants to be a perfectionist, so I'm not surprised to hear that you are one. Wendy, can you, reflect on that a little bit and tell us if you if these kinds of behaviours and tendencies are typical for the, perfectionist, is that Enneagram 1?
Wendy: Yeah, but what I would say is Patricia isn't a perfectionist in terms of putting a box around her, it's just an orientation she has to the world. Patricia is way bigger and way more than that. Where we are gifted, we are also challenged, right? She's gifted at tuning into details and the rules and, as an accountant, like you said Sherrilynne, that’s critical. Yet at the same time a perfectionist can get into what Patricia was saying, it’s this dualistic thinking, it's either this or it's that and missing shades of color. Patricia is reacting to ‘there's one way to do things and I know the right way,’ which is the orientation. In many, it’s one of several that she is pointing to, but the orientation of the perfectionist, and then to get angry about it and then to beat themselves up about making mistakes, staying awake at night and it has all sorts of physical consequences on the body, I'll say, as well. So just hearing Patricia say, ‘you know what, I'm going to sleep and I'm putting that idea and that mistake to sleep and I'll address it in the morning.’ The perfectionist orientation is to get angry and frustrated when they can’t control things, or things aren't done the way they think they should be, because they have a high need for control.
This has to do with a deeper belief that they hold about the world, but she's catching herself and not going there. I'm guessing Patricia, didn't say, but when you said ‘let's jump on the phone and get to a conversation’, I'm guessing what you thought was going on for that other person was not necessarily what you found out when you got it.
Patricia: Exactly.
Sherrilynne: I know that the Enneagram 1 is also known as the Reformer and I feel that, maybe this is somewhat related to your career change, wanting to have an impact on the world that you're in. Would you concur?
Patricia: I would and it did resonate with me when Wendy had mentioned, during one of our sessions, that Type 1s typically have the strong desire to want to change the world, I don't know if it's the exact words you used, but that was the general thought and it did make sense because, I will say the change of career that I made did not make sense for a lot of people around me. I was not dissatisfied with the job that I had. I had good relationships with the people that I was working with and I was paid very well. It’s just that I felt I was lacking a sense of purpose and that's what I told myself that I wanted to have in whatever next path that I was taking. So, it was very important to me to work for an organization that is dedicating its time to having a positive impact on the world.
Sherrilynne: Wendy, would you say that this is typical of some of the other Enneagram 1s that you've worked with over the years?
Wendy: Most of them, whether they're doing it through their day job or they've got lots of outside activities. They really want to improve the world, that's their orientation, and they have high ideals. I can think of several Type 1s, a friend of mine who was also a colleague, she dedicated every Monday night, for months, calling to get out the vote.
There's a certain commitment and discipline around taking action. A lot of people talk, but Type 1s take action around it. There’s another friend who is all about, protecting animals, so she's on a board for working to protect wildlife and the animals that come to this organization that are in need and so also she raises money. This is not her day job, so they pretty much every Type 1 in my life has got a social cause somewhere, somehow, some way.
Sherrilynne: For our listeners, Wendy for whom this maybe the first episode they've tuned in on and they haven't heard about the Enneagram Framework before. Can you just give us a brief overview of what is the Enneagram Framework?
Wendy: Sure, I've mentioned a little bit about it, but it's nine archetypes that you find throughout the world and these archetypes have an orientation to the world. It's a worldview, it's like pair of glasses that they wear and it focuses their time, attention and energy. It's all undergirded by different beliefs that they have about themselves, about others and the world around them.
Often they don't know that they have these glasses on. When you work with the Enneagram you can actually help them take off the glasses and see the world from a much broader perspective. It helps them recognize that there are different approaches and different ways to be in the world and think about the world and that they don’t have to act and react in a habitual automatic way. It helps them see, I hate this cold word, but the “machinery” that’s operating inside themselves, that’s just on, it switches on and it's just been going all their life. It kind of helps them turn off the machinery and take a look and take a pause as Patricia spoke to, and to make a different choice that's going to get them more of what they want in their lives and to be more content about how they're showing up in the world.
Sherrilynne: I know that you're working with young women leaders, who are millennials, through the Coaching Fellowship, as well as in your own practice. Are these new generation of young leaders, coming up, any different in their leadership attitudes and practices, than some of their predecessors?
Wendy: What I would say, and one of the reasons that it's so gratifying to work with this generation, is that, and you can hear it in Patricia, the openness, the hunger, and the taking it on. It's not like ‘this is who I am, this is how I am, and this is how I'm going to be. They're very like, ‘yeah, bring it on,’ they’re very open to these ideas about the Enneagram and what it is and what it can contribute to them.
Obviously, we do way more and I do way more than working with the Enneagram, that's just one significant tool in my toolkit. Yet, whatever I'm working with the leaders on, these young women, they’re so open and available to it. It’s not a hundred percent and clearly there's a sorting mechanism of who wants coaching going on here, but the ones who want coaching, man, they just take it on. It’s just like, just listening to Patricia, we had 11 coaching sessions and she went from, you heard her beginning, to where she landed, I mean, that's huge.
Sherrilynne: It accelerates change and your ability to conceive of change in your personal life and your career and make things happen for yourself.
Patricia: Exactly, I would agree.
Wendy: Absolutely and it's just to be able to be a guide and a witness for that is such a privilege and brings me such joy.
Sherrilynne: Patricia, if you could name just one thing, what would you say is the single biggest lesson you've learned from this experience?
Patricia: Whew, just one thing? Openness, I would say, I think I came into this and I was willing to do the work, but I was not expecting to evolve. I don't see myself as a static human being that is one way and that is not capable of adapting to a situation.
What I did learn from this experience is that I can be open to others. I can listen to what others have to bring, and I can change and I can adapt to different situations.
Wendy: That's my experience with Patricia and I really felt very little, if any, resistance. She was having lots of insights and then I'd give her homework and Patricia would do the homework and she reflected and she would try new things, because it's all about, you've got to try stuff on, you've got to practice stuff.
Nothing happens without application and practice, and Patricia would practice and she'd come back and she would tell me what happened when she tried something new on. It was just like a snowball rolling downhill and it just kept gathering momentum.
Patricia: I will say it was me doing the homework was my perfectionist side, because I did not want to show up to the next class and have you be disappointed. So that's where we are gifted.
Wendy: Where we are gifted, we are challenged and you were, it was the discipline, it's beautiful, I have to learn it myself.
Sherrilynne: Thank you both for joining us today and sharing your experiences of coaching and leadership and thank you, Wendy, for continuing to volunteer for such an important organization and continuing to pay it forward. Thank you to all you leaders out there who are listeners and make sure you check out the show notes because I'll put in some links to some of the resources and tools that we talked about today on the show and make sure that you never miss an episode by subscribing to the podcast.
Please leave us a review or a rating, because that will really help more people find our podcast. As well, please recommend us to friends and families or anyone that you know who wants to become a better, stronger, more effective leader. I'm your host Sherrilynne Starkie. And this has been, the Being Human is Good for Business podcast.