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Working Woman article
on The Enneagram
Management's New Numbers Game
A hot new management
idea has arrived on the scene. . Introduced to the West around 1940
by Russian mystic G. I. Gurdjieff and derived from ancient teachings
of the Sufi Muslims, the enenagram is a personality-typing system that
groups people into 9 categories...
Executives
from companies such as Motorola and Marriott have attended workshops devoted
to the enneagram system, and it's part of the continuing education program
at Silicon Graphics. The CIA has even held enneagram briefings on the
behavior of world leaders....
Enneagram
adherents believe that what we call our personality is really the sum
of our defenses. Our characteristic self-protective mechanisms identify
us as one of 9 types.
Supporters
insist that the enneagram transforms communication, eliminates turf battles,
resolves conflicts and builds trust. Ellen Levin, a San Francisco-based
management consultant, lauds the enenagram as "an incredible management
tool." As part of her work with the sales and marketing staff of
a large magazine, Levin presented the typology over several training sessions.
"The vice president of sales was an Eight" - bossy, controlling,
combative..." and the people who worked with in were nervous around
him," she explains. The seminars helped the boss learn his number
and helped the staff learn not to take his behavior personally - it was
just his essential Eightness manifesting itself. "It free them to
communicate better with him and to focus energy on their jobs instead
of on him, " says Levin.
Palmer, Levin
and other experts want it clearly understood, however, that you're supposed
to use the enneagram to figure out how YOU tick, not to get inside someone
else's head. And beware of typing anyone, including yourself, prematurely.
Unlike the Myers-Briggs type Indicator, a personality-assessment tool
that relies on conclusions drawn from a paper and pencil, multiple-choice
test, enneagram typing is a lengthy process. Before you recognize your
chief feature, you may have to spend a year attending workshops at which
panels of "exemplars" - representatives of the nine types -
discuss themselves and their ways of dealing with the world.
Experienced
enneagramers like Maryann Hedaa, assistant dean of executive education
and professor of management at Columbia Business School, and Dale Knutsen,
a software architect at Xerox's Plao Alto Research Center in CA, respond
with enthusiasm to the value of the Enneagram. But if a team member has
trouble fitting in or adapting to his or her role, Hedaa thinks the enneagram
can play a useful part in one-on-one counseling sessions. Knutsen says
the enneagram system helps him decode "what management's, coworkers'
and subordinates' concerns are - sometimes ones they're only dimly aware
of. But if someone uses it as a way to whip people into shape, it's worse
than useless."
By Nancy
K. Austin, management consultant, Working Woman, 11.95
Any issue
can be examined through the objective map of the Enneagram to re-frame
challenges into opportunities for growth and understanding.
Working as
a guide, coach and instructor, Wendy Rae Zaritsky utilizes the tool of
the Enneagram of Personality Types to assist clients to discover the unconscious
motivations behind their behaviors. Bringing these patterns into awareness
empowers clients to a heightened level of self-understanding and understanding
of others. From this empowered position, clients are able to redirect
and eventually transform habitual behaviors. Wendy works with people around
the world through telephone consultations.
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