Having coached people from the insurance industry where the Enneagram has largely been touted as a way ‘to get to know yourself better’ and ‘to build better team dynamics’ and ‘to be able to identify your client’s type so that you can serve them better’ (this last one really rankles me and it deserves a post on its own), I have found these three main takeaways my coaching clients have that has disturbed me for the past few years.
And of course, it is not just those clients from the insurance industry that have told me this, I have had clients from the media industry, the stockbroking community, teachers, business owners who have shared similar stories over the six years I have been doing Enneagram work as a trainer and coach and I know it is time for me to say something because I only see it getting worse as the years go on.
So let’s get into it.
#1 You walk away seeing just your Enneagram Type and not you as a person.
Yes, during the foundational building of your Enneagram knowledge, I would need to tell you what your Enneagram Type at its basic instinctual aspect looks like, which then leads to it looking like I am speaking in stereotypes. I get that.
However, if you didn’t walk away from your last Enneagram course knowing the difference between the instinctual behavioural traits of your Enneagram Type, which is governed by your core motivational way of seeing the world; and the conditioned traits you have picked up that corresponds to the other eight Enneagram Types that have been gifted to you by your upbringing, school culture, family culture and even family dysfunction, then you didn’t get the full picture.
The Enneagram is only useful for self-improvement and self-development when it takes everything that makes you the person you are into consideration. Banging into you what the strengths and weaknesses of your Enneagram Type and how can others support you as your Enneagram Type cannot be the whole meal course, it is only the appetiser portion of your Enneagram journey. Enneagram wisdom pertains to the WHOLE person – instinctual and conditioned aspects of your personality; and working with the Enneagram to get to your next best self requires active participation on your part to honour who you were born to be (being gifted your core motivation at birth) and integrating the lessons of your conditioned past that has shaped you to be the person you currently are.
#2 You came away from the course feeling negative about yourself and your Enneagram Type.
Learning the Enneagram has been one of the most difficult and yet uplifting inner work practices I have ever participated in, to improve myself as a person. I can safely conclude that as true for me because of my initial years trying to find meaning in who I was through DISC, counselling sessions that used Cognitive Behavioural Techniques (CBT), reading countless of self-help books etc etc …
So I always feel a sting in my heart when somebody, who has just attended an Enneagram talk or worse a full two-day course saying that they are the worst Enneagram Type and they don’t see any hope in how they can function usefully in their lives as that Type.
The sting then becomes anger in me when I hear that last part:
The Enneagram ALWAYS brings hope.
Yes, uncovering your blindspots in the unhealthy range of your Enneagram instincts is tough work mentally and emotionally – like come on, who wants to be told that they were in their toxic era by anyone?
But if it is done by a so-called Enneagram ‘expert’, then that is where I draw the line.
If these self-proclaimed ‘experts’ really understood the Enneagram, then you should feel both the sting of your unhealthy instinctual traits AND feel the hope of being able now to have pathways out of unhealthy instincts to healthier instincts. That is what teaching the stress and security lines are for!
And when I do show people that both unhealthy and healthy instincts are available to them and that there are pathways for them to be more aware of how they can move from unhealthy to healthy, you start to see hope creep back into their eyes.
THAT is what Enneagram wisdom SHOULD help people do. It should bring hope and not destroy it.
#3 You have no idea what to do next.
This one disturbs me because what do you mean by ‘you don’t know what to do next’ after coming out from a full two-day course that you paid good money for? You should come away with at least some useful ways of seeing how your instincts and your conditioned parts of who you are can be applied into your real life situations, right?
Unfortunately for most Enneagram trainings I have personally encountered in Singapore, that isn’t the case.
Everyone seems to just talk about the strengths, weaknesses, connecting lines, wing theory of the Enneagram system. I get it, I started that way too. But if that is all they talk about and don’t relate it back to how these Enneagram instincts can come up in the Wild West we call our real life, then that’s all it is – just theory, no application.
Of course then some Enneagram trainings say, ‘ Of course we can teach you the next steps, come join us for our Level 2 course and the sign up fee is $XXX ‘ and that requires more money out of your pocket.
Everyone who has attended my courses have always said that it is very content heavy. And yes, it is.
Why is it content heavy? Because I need to help build that bridge between the concepts of your Enneagram type and how you can build awareness with it, to how you can apply it in your real life. I may not show that connection on the Powerpoint slides, but I do show it through using real life coaching tips I give to my clients as a segue into how each Enneagram Type can use Enneagram knowledge (even in a ‘basic’ course) in their own lives.
Come on Jarrod, you don’t have coaching stories for every Enneagram Type.
But I do. Over the past six years, I have encountered every single Enneagram Type instinct and I have experience coaching them through their basic instincts, validating the lessons of their past pains growing up that gives them the conditioned aspects of their personality and integrate them.
And during my courses, I try to bring at least a sliver of that knowledge to help contextualise real life application from Enneagram theory and that allows my participants to come out with some ‘what to do next’ steps after they leave my course.
I will end with this …
Let me be clear. I am sure there are Enneagram practitioners like myself who do not do the three things that I have discussed in this post. I just have’t encountered them yet. And if this somehow reaches one of you and you also are rankled by these things, please reach out, I would love to connect.
For those practitioners who take umbrage to this post, good. That means then instinctually you know that you may have done these things and I am also open to meet with anyone of you to have a healthy discourse on what can be done to help your clients better with Enneagram wisdom done the right way.
I just want the standards in teaching the wisdom of the Enneagram become better for the people who seek it in SIngapore. So that everyone can benefit from this beautiful system that I hold dearly in my heart.
I know I will still make mistakes whilst doing this work with my clients. The difference here is this:
I am still learning and upgrading my Enneagram knowledge from credible teachers in the US,
I am still upgrading my questioning techniques by being trained in the International Coaching Federation (ICF) framework and learning to become a paracounsellor so that I can use these skills to be more accurate when I am coaching my clients; and
I am humble enough to know that because the Enneagram framework is so dynamic, there will always be a deeper level for me to uncover in my journey with it.
And more importantly,
I get called out by my clients when I say something that they know doesn’t fit well in the soul of their Enneagram instincts, and they then teach me the more accurate way to say it, and I learn from them to get better in seeing the world of their Enneagram Types from their eyes, not mine.
That’s my promise to my clients and that is how I know I am bringing my best to them every single session I have with them.
