Carmen, a successful biotech executive who led with Enneagram Type 3, shared the benefits of her growing self-awareness. “Through learning the Enneagram, I’ve started to see how my need to achieve impacted my behavior and the quality of my interactions at work. I used to easily prioritize my goals and to-do lists over people.” She described her unrelenting drive to be the absolute best at everything she did. She always went above and beyond expectations and achieving goals came naturally to her. “My lists had lists and my days were structured to efficiently check off each task to get me closer to my targets.”
During our coaching engagement, Carmen was not surprised by the 360 feedback describing her as a self-assured, accomplished leader who drives for results. She was surprised that the 360 feedback also described her as hard to get to know outside of her role, somewhat transactional, and self-promoting vs. team-promoting. She started to observe how she had overdone her strengths of efficiency and achievement.
Over the next year, she intentionally invested in building better relationships at work. She spent time getting to know her people beyond the surface level. “It never occurred to me how sharing about myself and making time for informal conversations could positively impact the team and build trust.” Carmen acknowledges that catching her tendency to focus on success instead of people is not automatic. It is something she deliberately tries to build into her day. Carmen’s commitment to building her self-awareness enabled her to positively influence her team. Now she works smarter, not harder.
Time and time again, Thrive 360 data has shown that the best predictor of leadership effectiveness is understanding how one’s behavior impacts others. Leaders cannot successfully manage people if they don’t understand their own tendencies. Similarly, leaders can’t be successful without recognizing the different types of interpersonal strengths and individual development opportunities on their teams. The Enneagram is an easily accessible development tool for leaders. It helps leaders understand themselves and the people with whom they work and provides a way to strengthen their self-awareness.
Learning when to leverage inherent strengths and shore up potential blind spots is essential to moving careers forward. As a Thrive Leadership workshop participant wisely explained, “Leadership isn’t about technical skills; it is about leading people towards a common goal. The better you understand yourself and others, the more effective and efficient you can be at moving others towards that goal.”