Cultivating the Art of Leadership

If you' already an Enneagram enthusiast, I am an "8" (Challenger) with a strong "7" wing (Adventurer), which means:

• My primary center is the body (or instinctual) center (my 8 home base)
• A close second is the head (or intellectual) center (my strong 7 wing)
• My developental work is in the heart (or emotional) center (my integration point at 2)

The emotional center. Cultivating ever greater sensitivity to what's arising emotionally in others and also sensing emotional currents and their meanings in myself. It's life work. For some 8's, there's a real "eew" factor in moving into the heart center, where softness and subtlety are more pronounced than sheer will and boldness of action.

All of us have our integration point, which evokes the recognition that, yes, that's where we don't pay attention, or at least not enough attention. We recognize that place as one that we may not even value so fully.

For Enneagram 6's (the Loyalist), smack dab in the middle of the head center (and common in academia, including academic medicine), the challenge is to become more grounded and peaceful, like a healthy 9.

I'll never forget one 6 client, with a zillion credentials, wondering why all the "new age" talk about grounding and centering in our work. Over time, the value became apparent, as this client shared, "I'm not saying such different things, but people pay more attention to me now."

I'm not surprised. I can feel the difference in her presence, and she acknowledges the value of her daily morning practices that help her focus on trusting herself and moving more instinctively toward what she wants versus spending so much time feeling anxious and "in her head."

An ambitious 3 (Achiever) that I'm working with admitted to being a "driver" on a lot of things, but also feeling "disconnected" to the rest of the team. In fact, the 3's integration point is at 6 (Loyalist), where individual contribution is complemented by fostering greater connections with others who are working on "something bigger" than mere personal advancement.

When I first studied the Enneagram, I was initially confused by the heady 7's (Adventurer's) integration to point 5 (Observer), another head center type. It seemed like the last thing a 7 needed was more thinking.

I grew to understand this path the more I studied my fun-loving 7 friends (I have many 7 friends). The dramatic breadth of ideas can explode like popcorn from 7's, and this excessive breadth becomes shored up with a more disciplined, more structured, and deeper understanding of cause and effect or mastery at point 5.

I've been dealing with my mom's recovery from a bad fall, a fractured ankle, and a bad wound. She's still in a nursing home, and she worried today about short-term memory loss from the bump to her head. I assured her I wasn't so worried about the fall as her daily practices, which have always been a bit flakey.

As an Enneagram 4, my mom is often lost in her own world of imagination and feelings and easily loses touch with things like schedules, commitments, etc. Her integration point is to 1 (Perfectionist) where reliability and results count, and where self-discipline stands out as a core quality.

If you have Enneagram questions with respect to leadership, drop a line. I love chatting about this profound personality system, with its powerful and explicity pathways to personal development.

Labels: Enneagram, leadership

Three centers of wisdom. Intellectual, emotional, physical. Head, heart, body.

In the early 1900s, George Gurdjieff, talked about humans being "three-brained" beings and promoted the idea that human development required work on all three centers. Gurdjieff introduced his 4th Way work as an advancement over eastern wisdom traditions that emphasized development of one center over others -- the body (the way of the fakir), the emotions (the way of the monk), or the mind (the way of the yogi).

Today, Dr. Candace Pert --known for her discovery of the opiate receptor and research on endorphins and peptides -- continues to document the biochemical basis for how the "bodymind" functions as an interdependent network of communication across multiple centers. As Dr. Pert likes to say in speeches, she is documenting the science behind the ancient chakra system, which distinguishes seven centers of intelligence.

For leadership work, however, let's stick to the three centers of head, heart, and body.

In each of us, there's a palpable quality that signals which center is home base, where we look first for answers, how we respond to challenges and opportunities, and the impression we typically make on others. Are we oriented to data and theories (head)? Are we more oriented toward feelings and relationships (heart)? Or are we more oriented toward instinct and action (body)? And, as important, what center are we neglecting?

If we don't know, everyone around us certainly does! For leaders it's important to cultivate all three centers and not get stuck in any one habit of paying attention or interacting with others.

The Enneagram is a powerful personality system that illuminates the patterns of all three centers and offers practical ways to develop greater capacity in each center.

As a coach, I prefer the developmental aspect of the Enneagram to the more strictly descriptive personality typing systems, which tend to contribute to "stuck" states ("I'm an intuitive feeler, you can't expect me to deal with data" or "I'm an introvert, please don't expect me to speak up in meetings").

If you are interested in exploring more on the Enneagram, I recommend The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Riso and Russ Hudson (it's a brilliant reference that stands the test of time). If you want an easier (more fun) way to start, try The Enneagram Made Easy by Renee Barron and Elizabeth Wagele.

For leaders who are interested in understanding their style, I recommend the Sikora Strategy Preference Indicator instrument for assessing Enneagram type because the SPI provides concise language that busy executives appreciate. Also, the Sikora report you get offers explicit leadership pointers and implications, including:

• Map of Strengths in all Nine Types
• Description of Primary Type and Primary Anxiety
• Communication Style
• Leadership Style
• Derailers
• Efficient Use of Other Strategies
• Awareness to Action Model
• How Change Really Happens

Write me if you're interested in a leadership development forum with special emphasis on the Enneagram and exploring and cultiating the three centers of wisdom.

I've had interest among my clients (who hail from all parts of the country) and am in the process of putting a program together for 2008.

There is a genre of business book called the "leadership fable" (think: Leadership and Self-Deception).

Patrick Lencioni's Death by Meeting is another such book. The core premise is that bad meetings, mis-managed meetings, in fact all the meetings we would rather not attend share two things in common:

• A lack of drama - avoiding constructive conflict and passionate exchanges creates boredom
• A lack of context and structure -- mashing different types of meetings together dulls the edge of each topic

Lencioni likes to ask us why we can sit mesmerized for two hours at a movie, when the content and the characters are entirely irrelevent to our lives, and yet we loathe regular one-hour meetings, when the content and characters impact us directly, and the format is interactive.

The first answer is "drama." A movie has conflict and unfolds along an emotional story line that moves toward resolution of tension among its characters. This keeps us interested.

In most business meetings, however, conflict, tension, and emotions are seen as getting in the way of moving through "the list" (the agenda, the action items, the reports, etc.) and being efficient. Lots of conflict stays subterranean, emerging in private conversations outside of the meetings where we had an opportunity to move toward resolution but opted to stay silent.

A lot of leadership work comes back to enrolling people around "why care" -- why care about the vision, customers, and, yes, even meetings. Lencioni talks about this as the equivalent to a "hook" or the "plot line" in a movie. Without mining for conflict, we can't move toward any kind of resolution.

When leaders talk about "increasing profitability," the conversation is not always framed in terms of market needs, strategic initiatives to be funded, or the competitive landscape that keeps changing. Instead, belt-tightening exercises can feel punitive if not placed in a frame of "why care" (the "drama" piece).

The second habit that creates such dreadful meetings is the lack of useful context and structure. Information is different from debate, which is different again from strategic reflection on priorities and goals. Lencioni argues that most organizations need four different kinds of meetings (yes, more meetings), each with its associated dramatic element:

1. The daily check-in meeting (news headlines (5 minutes)
2. The weekly tactical meeting (weekly sitcom, drama series - 1 hour)
3. The monthly strategic meeting (movie - 2 hours)
4. The quarterly off-site meeting (mini-series - 6 hours or more)

Even if you divide out the information sharing from the tactical resolution of project obstacles from the strategic initiatives and personnel reviews, to be effective, your meetings should clearly be in service of your explicit goals and objectives.

With the possibility of more initiatives than resources, it's always important to keep organizational goals and objectives in view, asking: "How are we making progress -- and how do we know?"

You may need to call a meeting, but a compelling plot line helps you stay focused on making progress and not just "getting through" yet another boring meeting.

I've been struck by feelings of joy as I've reconnected with people I care about but don't see that often, especially on two recent trips to San Francisco.

It was fun to see my friend, and the person who brought coaching to my world, James Flaherty, a couple of weeks ago. I was his student at his integral coaching school, New Ventures West, in 2001-2002.

James buzzed me in to his blue Victorian on Duboce in the Castro district of San Francisco. We sat on a big sectional couch in his living room and chatted -- about a kooky book of drawings he has by an ex-advertising guy, about my latest scheme to rent a room in the Bay Area so I can hang out and work in the city for a few days every couple of weeks, and the questions I've been in of late, especially since my dad died in July.

I wondered aloud about being in midlife crisis. Drawing a quick picture, James likened midlife to a rocket engine that is burning up the last of its fuel -- for the spacecraft to continue its journey, it requires a next-stage engine and propellant. I always enjoy the metaphors James uses.

We listened to music, including Herbie Hancock's River: The Joni Letters with Norah Jones singing an amazing version of "Court and Spark." James recently started appreciating Eric Clapton's music and gave me the history behind Eric Clapton's love song, Layla.

I told some irreverent stories -- about life in one of the reddest states of the union, about a West Virginia congregation that consistently spaces out whenever the minister talks, about my dad's crazy affairs, etc.

I actually made James laugh. I always recall it going the other way, with him making me and everyone else laugh. James said something like, "You have a lot going on, but you seem feistier than ever."

What was different was a greater sense of ease. I had never been fully at ease around James because he had been in a position to evaluate me, first as a student and then as a faculty member in training. I blurted out and not in jest, "It's the first time I haven't been scared of you!" James made one of those slightly perplexed faces of his and we both laughed again.

It's funny to remember how anxious I could be around people I admired and respected like James. So much energy wasted on being afraid-- of what someone else will think, how they will respond, whether we are getting it right, etc.

In the 4th Way, we study a concept called "internal considering," which describes a highly-subjective, quite mechanical, and entirely inner focus on self and how we believe we are being perceived.

The goal in 4th Way work is to always be moving toward more objectivity and responsiveness in life. To do this, we have to practice what the 4th Way calls "self-remembering," what we as integral coaches point to when we give our clients self observations and journaling assignments in our coaching programs.

I started on my path of deeper self awareness just after 9/11, as America was redefining its sense of self in much more contracted ways. In dramatic contrast, New Venture West's integral coaching method cultivates a less rigid sense of self, a greater capacity to observe ourselves and make new and more fulfilling choices in life.

It takes time to catch on to internal considering, to notice our internal considering of how we'll look, to notice our propensity to focus on what others will think of us.

Far better to be focused on the results we want to achieve, the qualities we long for, the futures we find inspiring and worthy of creating.

If you would like to catch on to yourself a bit more, then consider studying your own internal considering: When are you taking actions (or not) based on how others will perceive you?

Let me know how you make out!

Labels: internal considering, self-remembering