This episode was originally published almost two year ago and holds many lessons for those among us who tend to make decisions based on our gut feelings.
In this episode of the Being Human is Good for Business Podcast, we discuss Enneagram Types within the instinctive center, also known as the belly or gut center. These the leaders have a strong to their “gut feelings”. While it can be advantageous, it comes with distinct challenges when leaders act too impulsively and without self-awareness.
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ENNEAGRAM TYPES EXPLAINED
Trilogy Effect uses the Enneagram framework to help leaders grow through self-awareness and to surface untapped potential in their teams. The Enneagram is comprised of nine distinct personality Types which fall into triads based on specific strengths and liabilities.
This show features the leadership experts at Trilogy Effect explaining Enneagram Types 8, 9, and 1, all of whom value autonomy about just about anything. They are also known as the “don’t mess with me Types”!
Join leadership development experts Heather Marasse, Wendy Appel and Mary Beth Sawicki as they explain how:
Enneagram Type 8 leaders are great at carving a path forward
Enneagram Type 9 leaders are both grounded and grounding
Enneagram Type 1 leaders are authentic, caring and noble
Listen for:
Tips leaders can use to harness their own gut feelings
Strategies to develop leadership skills
Insights on why being human is good for business
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Machine Generated Transcript
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Being Human Is Good for Business Episode 30
[00:00:00] Sherrilynne: Hi, it's Sherrilynne today, I'm bringing you an episode of the Being Human Is Good For Business podcast. That's designed to give you a better understanding of the Enneagram, which grounds Trilogy Effect's work. The leaders, they work with, use the Enneagram to become aware of their own automatic patterns of seeing and reacting to people in situations.
This episode was originally published almost two years ago and holds many lessons for those among us who tend to make decisions based on our gut feelings. Enjoy
[00:00:38] Voice Over: Welcome to the Being Human is Good for Business podcast. In each episode, the leadership development experts at Trilogy Effect explore how the process of self-discovery unleashes potential in us all. Now here's your host Sherrilynne Starkie.
[00:01:06] Sherrilynne Starkie: Welcome to the Being Human is Good for Business podcast. starring the leadership development experts at Trilogy Effect I'm your host Sherrilynne Starkie. The team at trilogy effect works to surface the untapped potential in people and organizations and their work is grounded in something called the Enneagram, which is a transformational development framework, which provides a lens through which all of us can see or become aware of our own.
Patterns of seeing and reacting to, to people in different situations. So in our last episode, we touched upon the concept of embodiment and leadership. And I encourage you to check that out because it's provides some context for what we're about to discuss that. I put a link in the show notes for that.
Today we're going to take a deeper dive into the instinctual center or the belly center. This describes leaders who tend to rely on their guts when they're making tough decisions. So my first question goes to Heather
[00:02:07] Sherrilynne Starkie: Marasse, who is Trilogy Effect's Managing Partner. Heather, can you provide us with an overview of the assets and the liabilities of this instinctive center?
[00:02:19] Heather Marasse: The first thing to know about the instinctive center types is that it's Types Eight, Nine and One of those types are ultimately in search of autonomy. They have three different ways of going after it, but ultimately that's what they're trying to achieve through their ego structures. And they're often called the don't mess with me types.
They're the little one who starts to say no, you're not the boss of. And I have three different strategies that I employ to make sure you know it. And I know it. So the assets of these three types are that, first of all, they're in the instinctive or the gut center.
So they tend to be very grounded. There's a gut intelligence that they are connected with that has them sense before they even have words or feelings around what the right action might be in a situation. So it's very instinctive, you know, it's kind of the. I should fight. I should flee, or I should play dead here.
It's very sensate. It's quite body oriented. So those are the assets, you know, there's a sort of gut level physical intelligence that they have a strong connection with. And the liabilities you can probably imagine is that because they're more in, they're connected with a right action. Sometimes they can either take too much action, like type eights will be excessively taking action.
Almost compulsively, take nines, may withdraw and forget to take action, try and hope it'll go away. And the type ones will be kind of in this dutiful, I'm trying to contain things so that I'm taking the right action, but it's a very constricted relationship with what needs to get done here in this. And we'll go into all of them more in more detail, but that's kind of the short version of it.
[00:04:25] Sherrilynne Starkie: And so these personality tendencies are hardwired. You said about toddlers. So it's something that's hardwired from birth from when your personality starts? Its most basic formation.
[00:04:38] Heather Marasse: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you'll see with each of the intelligence centers that there's kind of a developmental phase.
That you'll recognize for all human beings. And in this, these types of developmental phases, that separation, it's the boundary making. It's I'm me and your you putting up the boundaries and it's in three different ways and all types go through that. Develop all human beings, have that developmental. So,
[00:05:06] Sherrilynne Starkie: okay.
Let's learn more about the, about the gut center. So, up next it's, Wendy apple, who's a Trilogy Effect partner. And is the author of Inside Out Enneagram: The Game-Changing Guide for Leaders, Wendy, they call Enneagram type eight, the challenger. Do you think that's a good name for that type? Why do they call them?
[00:05:28] Wendy Appel: Yeah, it's a good name. It kind of captures the essence and also the bosses, the other working name that, people use. And the reason that a type eight is often called the challengers because people feel challenged by type eight, you know, they they're, they're constantly pushing on you challenging your thinking, challenging your actions.
They're trying to find out where your boundary is. So they're always searching for other people's boundaries. So they're always pushing, you feel this, their energy pushing up against you. And, mostly eights are unaware that they're having that impact on other people.
[00:06:09] Heather Marasse: When I've
[00:06:09] Wendy Appel: coached Type 8s.
What, you know, people I'm just trying to get to a good answer. They just kind of very unconscious of the way that, they impact others. So some of their, assets are this. Forward action forward movement, and the challenger also has another meaning, which is they actually like to take on big challenges.
They're not afraid of big challenges. They kind of carve a path forward for other people to follow them. And when they're in their healthy, more awake, aware state, people want to get red line up right behind him and follow. They're more of what we in Western culture anyway, would think of as archetypical leaders.
[00:06:56] Sherrilynne Starkie: Can you give us a couple of examples of some famous Enneagram eights?
[00:07:00] Wendy Appel: Well, yes I can. Now I just want to put the caveat in here that we don't know this for a fact, you know, Heather, Mary Beth, and I are always very at a certain ethos around typing other people. It's really up for people to kind of go inside and, and discuss.
There are best fit type for themselves. All we can do is say how people present, you know, in terms of historical people,
[00:07:27] Heather Marasse: how they, that they may present
[00:07:29] Wendy Appel: as a type eight, the boss, the challenger. So, but we, I don't want to state this as this is. Okay. That's fair. All right. So from what would appear to be a more
[00:07:40] Heather Marasse: healthy type
[00:07:41] Wendy Appel: Eight?
I would look to a Martin Luther King.
[00:07:46] Sherrilynne Starkie: One of the most famous, most respected leaders of modern times.
[00:07:51] Wendy Appel: Really. Exactly. And what Heather did mention, which is important to say here is the other things that, that the belly center got center instinctive center types have in common as they wear a pair of glasses through which they.
See the world and make choices around their actions. And so there, the, the glasses or the filter is, is this fair? Is this right? Or is this just, and Martin Luther King was out there looking for justice, right. Doing what was just in the world and took right action and took action based on. And, and, and, and did carve that path for other people to follow.
[00:08:34] Heather Marasse: So he, he appears based on how
[00:08:36] Wendy Appel: he lived his life as a type eight type 8s can show up in any kind of profession. Probably Dame, Judi, Dench. It's likely a type eight. And what you put forward here is the intensity eights have a certain kind of intensity and a groundedness. You know, she spoke clearly, slowly, there was this gravitas, she's an actress.
And, but you feel her intensity. So just as another, type of
type
[00:09:07] Heather Marasse: 8
, yeah, you also feel her don't mess with it.
[00:09:11] Sherrilynne Starkie: Could you maybe give us an example of a strategy that a type eight would use to help build their leadership
[00:09:20] Wendy Appel: qualities? Yes. Yeah, because you wanted to talk about the assets and then there are the liabilities, right?
So couple of liabilities are pointed to it a little bit, this challenging energy to be aware that they have a lot of force . Behind them a lot. They use a lot of force that other people can, you know, their hair gets flown back. So it's, it's really kind of using the dial to dial it down a little bit. You know, there is a volume control.
There is an energy control and really modulating. For different situations, this isn't a one size fits all. Sometimes you don't need to use as much force as much energy. You don't have to push so hard. It's really kind of bringing people along with you. Don't feel, don't feel like it's all on your shoulders.
Share the weight, share the burden, engage. So lots of things we could say, but you know, that's what comes first to mind.
[00:10:21] Sherrilynne Starkie: Oh, it sounds like really good advice,
[00:10:23] Heather Marasse: . There's something that comes to mind here too. And that there is an underlying emotional engine that starts to rev, when they lose awareness, if you like, and it's anger, we have this relationship with anger.
Like it's a bad emotion, but it's just an emotion and it is an emotion that helps fuel. Action. And with the type eight, it's often said that a lot of that excessive force is from not being aware of the anger, this kind of passion that's rising. And with the type eight, the challenge developmentally is to stop expressing our anger and to start feeling it.
And that starts bringing you back.
Yeah, Mary Beth has a favorite saying for, for that one.
[00:11:18] Mary Beth Sawicki: Oh, anger is sad's body guard. Yeah.
[00:11:23] Heather Marasse: Easier like that. I
[00:11:25] Sherrilynne Starkie: love that.
[00:11:26] Wendy Appel: Very accurate.
[00:11:27] Sherrilynne Starkie: Yeah. Well, let's bring Mary Beth into the conversation here. She's also a partner at Trilogy Effect and she works with many large companies to help develop their leaders.
So Mary Beth, tell us about the peacemaker or the Enneagram type nine.
[00:11:41] Mary Beth Sawicki: I would love to. So the peacemakers are peacemaker. Friends are the mediators. Of the Enneagram, their gifts are, are around being accepting and inclusive. They're inherently patient kind, stable leaders. They tend to be both really grounded and grounding.
I know that when I'm around a type nine leader, I can feel myself exhaling and, you know, feeling my feet on the ground. And I just. Stable and secure and grounded. They're excellent. I'd seen all points of view and making sure that they're hearing all points of view. Yeah, so those are some of the assets and the gifts of our type nine friends and where they can get tripped up.
I'll just, tag back to Heather's comments about for type eights. It really helps them to. Feel their anger versus expressing it for our type nine friends. It would really be great if they could express it as they tend to suppress their anger because harmony and, you know, keeping the peace is really important to someone who's a type nine.
And they'll have this feeling that if they express their anger relationships can be harmed or. Ruined. And what happens is by not expressing it, they get what they most fear, right? It actually turns little mole Hills into giant mountains. Yeah. Expressing their anger, expressing their own needs would really benefit the type nine.
And we'll say type nines while they heard these incredibly kind accepted. Wonderful people. They're also the most stubborn people that I've ever met. I mean, ever really something like you might think that if you look at the challenger or the boss and the peacemaker, that if they were in conflict in some way that the challenger would win the type times, we'll just close up, like a little class.
And withdraw completely instead of addressing, you know, the, the conflict that is going on in the moment. And I should also say, that this is not when nines are at their best, what I'm describing. You know, kind of more average behaviors. So yeah, that, that conflict avoidance can really shut down what might be productive conflict and keep things moving because to Heather's earlier point about anger, fueling action.
What nines can do is end up shutting down that action, even though they're in the belly center, they can get a bit complacent and withdrawn. And so these are growth opportunities for the type nine is to really express. That anger express. What's true for them. Have conversation around whatever the conflict is and move forward.
[00:14:22] Sherrilynne Starkie: Can you give us examples of somebody famous that presents as.
[00:14:28] Mary Beth Sawicki: I confess a nervous about doing this because several presidents present as type nines can I do like to avoid political conversations, but I'm just going to list them all. And so President Reagan and President Lincoln, the President Ford and okay.
Examples that come to mind as leaders who appear to be type nine. And I'm on the more, I don't want to say creative side, but I just said it, or, you know, in the entertainment industry, Walt Disney presents nine. So that the other thing about type nines is they tend to be very positive, upbeat rose colored glasses, and what's, you know, very happy and what's a happier place than Disney.
I mean, I haven't self, but it's what I hear.
[00:15:18] Sherrilynne Starkie: Can we talk a little bit about strategies that type nines can use to help develop their leadership qualities?
[00:15:25] Mary Beth Sawicki: Sure. I mean, I think it tacks back to a bit about what I've said around expressing the anger, first of all, recognizing it because it's so deeply suppressed that they're not even aware that they're angry.
My closest friend is a type nine and when she first started looking and working with the Enneagram. Anger. I'm not angry. I'm not suppressing anger. She's pretty angry. Once you start working with it and recognizing it in yourself and then. Trusting that people can handle that from you. It may require practice with it like a trusted friend or a trusted business associate where you just say, look, I'm I'm, this is a new muscle I'm flexing.
It's going to be as awkward as the first time I tried a leg exercise at the gym. Can I, you know, have this conversation with you and work with someone who can hold that and hear that with that? Damaging the relationship. And then it becomes something that the type nine is more comfortable with. I will say, have I in my business life, in my personal life, I have several type nines that I've seen really get in touch with their anger.
And I love it.
[00:16:33] Sherrilynne Starkie: I think we're all thinking about people. We know that might be a type nine right now, based on what you've shared
[00:16:39] Heather Marasse: with us today. What, what tends to happen? I find with the type nine is Mary about the set and. Less at their best. And they, they start to lose their awareness. They can kind of disappear.
They become almost invisible. Like they don't, they are so not wanting to disturb the peace that they disappear themselves. And when they get more in touch and stay with you in a conversation or in present in the situation, you'll see more of their spark show. They get more interesting. Actually, it's actually more and they can be quite.
And very engaging. So you just, you want to, you want to actually get to know them more. They don't they'd stopped disappearing and you get curious. So they're very engaging.
[00:17:22] Sherrilynne Starkie: I think that's reflected in the list of presidents that Mary Beth mentioned, like they were all very well-liked and, engaging leaders.
You know, that, the whole world looked forward to Obama doing the press. Dinner every week, every year, because he would get up and do a bit of standup and
[00:17:39] Heather Marasse: exactly. Now Ronald Reagan, they were there quite humorous and they also are big picture people like they're very holistic in their purview. Yeah.
[00:17:50] Wendy Appel: I just want to add about Obama too, that there was so much conversation in the Enneagram community about what people thought Obama's Enneagram.
It is, or was I heard everything from 9 1, 3 5. So it's, you know, and this is why we don't generally talk about, you people's type because what we see from the outside is not necessarily what's going on in the inside and what distinguishes one type from another is, are their driving motivations for.
They're coping strategies, which is what we experienced on the outside. But none of us know what's going on on the
[00:18:33] Sherrilynne Starkie: inside. That's right.
[00:18:35] Heather Marasse: That's right. Except inside of us. And even that takes work right.
[00:18:42] Sherrilynne Starkie: Heather, this brings us to the Enneagram. ones the reformers sometimes called the perfectionist and many of us might have someone like this in their lives.
Can you explain to us who these leaders are and how are they when they are.
[00:18:57] Heather Marasse: Yes, the type one, the reform are sometimes known as the perfectionist. , the deepest fear of somebody who is a dominant type one is of being somehow flawed and are not good. Most type ones will present as very good decent people.
There about the good, the common good often as well, they can be quite idealistic and yet I've never met one who didn't tell me that on the inside, they do not feel good. There's always something that they see. Isn't right. Isn't perfect. You know, there's always a gap that they're living with.
So you can imagine if that's what's going on in the inside. All you ever see when you look around at the world is what isn't quite right. What needs to be reformed. And because I'm a good person, I am going to absolutely take responsibility for everything I can do and provide in order to put things to, right.
So you get this sense of, real, authentic care and concern for what. Could be for the ideal for what's best. And, there's a nobility, I mean, most type ones, you'll notice there's kind of this nobility even of their carriage and their posture. They're willing to be unpopular for what they know is fair.
And just so, the assets here are there there's high integrity with the type one. There's a certain, I call it a clean. There's a purity in there, their way of operating the refined. They tend to have a lot of refinement and great discernment. They have quite an, a capacity for discerning things.
What they're like as a boss, as a leader, For somebody to work with or live with because of that discernment and that fine attention to detail and to seeing what could be, they can sometimes come off as critical judgmental, even perhaps nitpicky and a little compulsive about what still needs to be done so they can become quite serious.
Like they can never re-ask. So you can imagine. I mean, what if I really were to look at life through the lens of what's not quite right yet, there's a lot of work to do in the world and the growth, the developmental work, all of their lives for a type one is to soften is to get some distance from that inner.
Just to ceaseless unending criticism about what needs to be perfected and to start to lighten up a little bit, to actually start seeing the perfection in the imperfect sounds complicated. Yeah. There are kind of a complicated type and, you know, you see, such great nobility and such willingness to give of themselves on behalf of the greater group.
And you'll see a lot
[00:22:11] Wendy Appel: of people drawn to politics, who are type ones who want to reform. It was one of the other names where the type one is the reformer on a reform, the world they want to make change in the world. You know, Hillary Clinton, whether she is, or she's not, we don't know, but she presents as type one and she really wanted to take on health care reform. And people kind of see type ones as a little boring.
You know, not that super charismatic necessarily. And you know, Hillary, you know, every here, so she's not likable . Well, she wasn't trying to be like, she is trying to do the right thing. She was trying to make change in the world. She had she's very mission-driven type ones are six mission. So they're drawn to politics.
They're drawn
[00:22:59] Heather Marasse: to being a police, police, chief, the FBI. I wouldn't
[00:23:04] Wendy Appel: doubt that James Comey pristine, he presents as he's going to do the unpopular thing, that
[00:23:09] Heather Marasse: what he perceives as the right thing.
[00:23:12] Wendy Appel: People like it or not. So, so they're drawn to kind of these enforcement or reform or, you know, they
[00:23:19] Heather Marasse: make Jake big change
[00:23:20] Wendy Appel: jobs.
Yeah. As well as, you know, compliance, regulatory, jobs as well. .
[00:23:28] Heather Marasse: They tend to be very detail oriented and very high performers. They will suffer a quantity for quality. It's about quality
[00:23:39] Wendy Appel: in, in addition to what we're saying, type ones have a strong predisposition to put structure and process to get around things.
So when we come through this COVID crisis, I would look to type in. For the people who will have some great ideas around how to change and put new structure to replace. What was the old structures that have fallen apart? They just great that I've been just
[00:24:12] Heather Marasse: gifted at that.
[00:24:14] Sherrilynne Starkie: Yeah, that sounds to me like we all need some type ones in our lives.
Oh yes.
[00:24:20] Mary Beth Sawicki: Yeah.
[00:24:22] Sherrilynne Starkie: Well, thanks to Heather and Wendy and Mary Beth for joining us today on podcast. And also thanks to all you listeners. Please look at the show notes because I've put some links in there that you'll find useful. And please subscribe to our show and tell your friends about it, please. To that end, we'd really love it.
If you'd rate us on iTunes or iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, because those ratings really will help other people find out. So, thanks once again for joining us, this is the Being Human is Good for Business podcast.