The Enneagram is at its best when it helps people discover and apply their insights to improve their lives and their teams. While it's certainly a fun tool for self-understanding, merely understanding how you work without applying it to your life can turn this insightful tool into a party game.
There's almost no better place to apply the Enneagram than in areas where you are leading others. Whether you are a team leader at work, a business owner, a parent, a coach, or a committee head, being able to apply the insights from your Enneagram Type can transform your leadership style from good to great.
In the last post, I discussed the benefits of understanding and managing your triggers as a way to become a more transformed leader. In this post, I will discuss how we can use our unique communication styles to become more aware and, therefore, more effective as leaders.
Communication Style: What Is It?
Our communication style is not only the words we say but also the way we say them. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's imperative as leaders that we understand how we are showing up and what we are really communicating to others through our unique communication styles. As you might have guessed, each Enneagram Type has certain communication tendencies that are common among the Type. Each Enneagram Type also has preferred ways of being communicated with that impact their ability to receive and interpret information. In other words, our communication style (how we talk to others) and our interpretation of others' communication styles affect our ability to communicate and receive information.
Talking to Others: Watch Out for Triggers
Our style of communicating with others is entirely unique to ourselves but shares characteristics with others in our same Enneagram Type. Typically, each Enneagram Type prefers to receive communication in the way that they give communication. For example, Type Eights are very direct and prefer very direct communication in return, whereas Type Twos are very warm and relational and prefer to receive communication that is very warm and relational. Type Eights would be less responsive (and probably more annoyed) with communication that was warm and relational, and Type Twos would dislike direct, no-frills communication so much that it might be considered offensive.
As a leader, it is your job to communicate information in the most effective way possible. Though I am not condoning changing yourself and your preferences to manipulate the best response from others, I am suggesting that adding awareness to your communication in the form of emotional intelligence will help you communicate without triggering others. This requires the leader to have an idea of the triggers and communication preferences of the person they are communicating with. This isn't manipulation but an investment into who their team is deep down and caring enough to modify their preferences to communicate effectively.
This subtle shift of being aware of others' preferences becomes more important the more sensitive the conversation is. Low-stakes conversations (the weather, weekend plans, project brainstorming, etc.) require less emphasis on conducive communication styles than high-stakes conversations (negative feedback, reviews, managing conflict, etc.). For example, if a short-phrased, direct Type Eight needs to give feedback to a warm, relational Type Two, they would be most effective in delivering the feedback in a warm and relational way—not because the Eight wants to manipulate the Two, but because the Eight knows the Two will not be able to hear the feedback and make adjustments if they have been triggered to believe they are unwanted by overly direct communication.
Others Talking to YOU: Watch YOUR Triggers
As the leader, you have the added responsibility of being aware of how you become triggered by others' communication styles. Are you a Three who hates it when your team wastes your time with insignificant details? Are you a Five who would rather that the team never communicate with you? Great, that's your preferred method of operating, but it's unlikely that as the leader of your team, you will get to operate this way all the time. Many times, you will need to be aware that you are feeling triggered and choose to listen anyway.
This goes back to the previous post: the best way you can transform your team is to be aware of your triggers. As you listen to your team, become aware of the ways you are triggered and choose to see it for what it is—an automatic, personal interpretation of words that the other person is saying, which triggers deep-seated wounding messages you internalized. When you can take a breath and realize that you are triggered (without knee-jerk reacting), you will be able to respond instead of reacting and will be able to ask for what you really need—maybe it's space to think about what was said, maybe it's boundaries on when your team can access you, maybe it's a system that will help you process in your own time. Whatever it is, you've just taken your power back. No matter what someone says to you, you are able to look at what is said and what is interpreted with more distance and compassion, and enact and ask for changes that truly help you (instead of firing everyone who annoys you).
For more information on how you can transform your leadership style, contact me at enneagramreflections@gmail.com
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