Question 12: As a coach of the same style as your client, what challenges or opportunities arise and how do you deal with these effectively? Do you think it is a benefit or a problem when coaches and clients are the same Enneagram style?

My answer: One challenge that arises is that I need to make sure that the client doesn’t lose me in one of their distractions. It’s my job to make sure that they either stay on their path in the coaching conversation, or alert them that they are drifting from what they wanted to talk about and let them make the call about where the conversation goes.

One opportunity is that I can bring the acceptance of true understanding for their turmoil and confusion. I know it myself. When they want to use the Enneagram as part of the coaching process, I can let them know that we share the same Style. When the Enneagram is not explicitly part of the process, I can let them know, through a couple of brief examples that I do understand.

I find that being of the same Enneagram style can be a benefit. If it were a consulting relationship, then it could be more problematic – since we share the same natural perspective of the issues and run the risk of “group think”.

If you’d like to see the other eight answers to this question, head over to the Enneagram Learning Portal. If you’d like to share your answer to the question, or discuss my answer, please leave a comment or trackback.

Question 11: Can you share a surprising coaching story about a coaching client of your style?

My answer: I began coaching someone of Style Nine, who was very unclear even about for what she wanted coaching. It seemed to me that I was listening to different people talking. So, I introduced Schulz von Thun’s Inner Team model into the conversation. This is a very helpful way to identify “the different souls that beat within one breast”. Then, it’s usually possible to find a way to help them to live in harmony.

Within minutes, she had identified 14 different team members in her Inner Team (such a large number is typical for people of Style Nine), among them The Pointing Finger, The Panther, and  The Clown. The coaching turned into a session on how she could manage her team and reconcile the differences between the members, so that they would co-operate with each other. In less than an hour, the paralysis of the previous months had vanished, and she began quickly to find answers to his questions and to draw strength from the diversity in her team. Five years later, they still support her and the positive results continue to be visible.

If you’d like to see the other eight answers to this question, head over to the Enneagram Learning Portal. If you’d like to share your answer to the question, or discuss my answer, please leave a comment or trackback.

Question 10. What development activities have you found that work really well with clients of your style, activities they can do on their own?

My answer: The first one is to practice either Tai Chi or Aikido on a regular basis. Tai Chi has helped me a lot and I know several people of Style Nine who are positive about the effects of Aikido. These martial arts help them to improve their awareness of their body and to get centered in their body.

A second activity that works well, is to practice Morning Pages for several weeks. Morning Pages involve sitting down, first thing in the morning, and writing three pages long-hand (it doesn’t work as well, when people type) about whatever thoughts are coming into their head. Uncensored. Over time, they recognize patterns and themes in these early morning thoughts. These pages can also throw up ideas for solving challenges that they are facing in life and help them to identify and explore metaphors that unleash their power.

If you’d like to see the other eight answers to this question, head over to the Enneagram Learning Portal. If you’d like to share your answer to the question, or discuss my answer, please leave a comment or trackback.

Question 9. Suggest a metaphor for clients of your style that coaches can use with them to illuminate something important for clients to learn? Why do you choose this metaphor and how would coaches best use it?

My answer: I’ve experienced a lot of discomfort working with metaphors. I often felt like I was invading the client’s space, injecting them with something. For about a year now, I’ve been experimenting with Mary Basts’s Mettapohoria approach, where the metaphor emerges from the client’s own descriptions and language. My job, as coach, is simply to support the client in exploring their own metaphor. Here’s an excerpt from a conversation with soemone of Style Nine, who had difficulty in getting her business going:

Coach: And when you get going?

Client: Mountains turn into molehills?

Coach: And when mountains turn into molehills, that’s like …

Client: It’s fun! … Satisfying!

Coach: And when it’s fun and it’s satisfying, how does it feel?

Client: Achievable.

Coach: And when you get going, where are you?

Client: On a path!

For the next several minutes, the conversation went on to support her in fleshing out the description of this path and what she found as she moved along it. As coach, I didn’t need to understand or suggest any part of the metaphor. Within days, her block had dissolved and her business is now thriving.

If you’d like to see the other eight answers to this question, head over to the Enneagram Learning Portal. If you’d like to share your answer to the question, or discuss my answer, please leave a comment or trackback.

Question 8. What special techniques – either counter-intuitive ones or ones that create breakthrough moments – do you suggest for coaching clients of your style? How should these be used and when is the best time to use them?

My answer: Several spring to mind! Two simple and effective techniques are the following: guided relaxation and centering breathing.

Many people of Style Nine have difficulties in getting in touch with their body; they don’t recognize where they end and the rest of the world starts. A simple relaxation exercise, in which they focus their attention on different parts of the body, one after the other, can be very helpful. It is useful to debrief them after the exercise, to check which parts they visited. In many cases, it is the first time that they have thought about the back of their knee, or their left elbow. When they don’t recall visiting certain parts, you can help them to identify whether their focus of attention went to their thoughts (which usually has something to do with focusing outside themselves) or whether they simply dozed off (which is the classical metaphor of Style Nine being asleep to themselves.)

The second technique is helpful when they face a difficult decision or have something important to say to someone with whom they feel themselves to be in conflict. First, help them to breathe deeply to their Belly Center and to bring the focus of their attention there. Once their attention is there, remind them of the decision or the situation and ask them to say the first thing that comes to their mind. It is invariably a key sentence that helps them to decide or to communicate clearly with the other person. In addition, it is invariably a surprising and deep moment for  them!

If you’d like to see the other eight answers to this question, head over to the Enneagram Learning Portal. If you’d like to share your answer to the question, or discuss my answer, please leave a comment or trackback.

Question 3: What do clients of your style most need from their developers – managers, mentors, or coaches – why do they need it, and what do coaches need to do to demonstrate this to clients of your style?

My answer: We benefit most when we receive gentle clarity. Since Style Nines don’t respond well to in-your-faceness, a nudge is more effective than a shove or a threat. Clarity helps, as we often lose sight of our goals in an ennui of priority, due to our external focus.

As a developer, you need to make sure that we have actively agreed to our goals: silence does not mean assent! It’s sometimes difficult for us to articulate what we want. If this is happening, just ask us what we don’t want. A client of mine took part in an Open Space meeting; one breakout session was run by a manager of Style Nine, who needed to define an interface for working with their supplier. For almost 30 minutes he wrapped the group in a fog of saga. As I walked by, my client asked me what he could do: I suggested he ask what the manager didn’t want in the solution. Within 90 seconds they had a complete “negative” list, which they could flip to reach the desired solution.

Even when we have agreed to goals, it’s helpful to remind us of them from time-to-time, for they will disappear from view, lost in a whirl of ideas, sensations, requests, conversations, where was I’s?

Which brings up a second facet of clarity: communicate clearly with us. Short, declarative sentences are good. It models a style other than our saga-based natural style. Keep your own focus, so that we don’t lose you in the fog of saga. And point this out to us, by commenting on the style of communication in the conversation. You can even turn it into a game and ask us to notice ourselves, when we are drifting towards sagadom.

If you’d like to see the other eight answers to this question, head over to the Enneagram Learning Portal. If you’d like to share your answer to the question, or discuss my answer, please leave a comment or trackback.

The second path to curiosity for leadership is to view things from another person’s perspective. It’s a common pitfall not to do this. In a recent coaching conversation, a manger was telling me about how one of their direct reports had turned hostile and rude. They couldn’t understand why. As we talked further, it became clear that this hostility had surfaced after a meeting in which the manager had helped their direct report reshape their project (and in the process handover a good chunk of the responsibility to another colleague). All very logical. Once they began to think about how this looked from the report’s perspective, they realized what had gone wrong and how they could raise this topic and get the relationship back on track.

Good questions to ask yourself include: What do they think about this? How do they feel about it? How does it impact them or others? Many leaders find it difficult to answer these questions. They protest that they have no clue what their people are thinking or feeling. Perhaps not. However, that’s an invitation to start learning and take the time to get to know their people. Some people protest that they don’t have time for this. Yet they never stop to count the cost in time, results and frayed nerves to deal with what results from not having invested in these relationships.

A word to the wise: only make this investment in your leadership, if you are genuinely interested in your people.

Photo: Sarahnaut / flickr

Managers have answers; leaders ask questions.

Lawyers only ask a question (in court) when they already know the answer; leaders ask questions to which they don’t have the answer. They are curious. This curiosity pays dividends.

By asking questions, leaders engage their followers and tap into the knowledge and experience of their team. They have let go of the need to have the answer. Instead, they focus on being able to recognize the answer when they hear it. Certain types of questions hinder this curiosity, others support it.

Let’s start by looking at a couple of types of questions that hinder. The first type is closed or yes/no questions. They suffer from two main drawbacks. First, they require no thought or reflection to answer. Second, the presuppose the answer and strait jacket the search for answers. The very opposite of letting go.

The second type of question that’s not very helpful is “why”. It doesn’t help to promote understanding, since, in many cases, it can trigger defensiveness. If you don’t believe me, just observe your own inner response when someone asks you why you did or didn’t do something. The idea behind the question is to gain understanding. to do that, we need to ask other questions.

Questions that support curiosity come in different forms; they all strengthen leadership. One basic form is the open question, where we probe for more information by inviting the other person to give us information. Notice the difference between the following two questions:

1. Will  the report be finished by Friday?
2. What else do you need to do, to complete the report?

The first one is a standard yes/no question. It can be answered without the person needing to think. Since many people find it difficult to say no, you get the default answer of “yes” and are none the wiser. The second question, however, requires the person to think for a moment. As they begin to outline what else they need to do, you can begin to see whether or not you need to probe more deeply for information, or whether you need to take supportive action to help them achieve the goal.

Tomorrow, we explore another form of question that supports curiosity.

Photo: Marek Uliasz / iStockphoto

When leaders operate under the illusion of control, it’s a sign that their ego is running the show. Sometimes this is a good thing (it reminds them to get to a meeting on time), sometimes it leaves no space for a good way to emerge to meet their current challenge.

However, this show running comes with a hefty price tag: we end up investing a lot of our mental bandwidth thinking about what has already happened — and we can no longer change – or what might happen – and we cannot truly influence. Maybe it would be more accurate to replace “thinking” by “worrying” in the previous sentence.

A simple tool to pull our thoughts back to the right here, right now, is simply to focus our attention on our breathing. This helps us to allow our leadership to emerge. Breathe deeply and slowly. In. And out. In. And out. After a few deep, slow breaths, the mental chatter drops several decibels. We begin to notice what’s happening inside. On a good day, we can enjoy a quiet mind for a moment or two. Then it becomes clear what to do or say. I was introduced to this technique about twenty five years ago, at a time when I had spent days worrying deeply about how to solve an at-the-time big problem. Within a few minutes of starting, I had no chatter in my mind for the first time in a week, and in a further thirty seconds, I could see a clear path to a solution.

A typical problem with this simple technique is that, sometimes, our thoughts don’t quieten. My experience is that that occurs when my attention stays with my thoughts instead of moving to my breathing. It’s like, when you go for a walk in the park and a puppy bounds over to you, wanting to play. If you studiously ignore him, he’ll eventually give up and go look for a different playmate.

What happens, when you ignore your puppy?

Photo: Felix Möckel / iStockphoto

During my integrative coaching training, I experienced, for the first time, the power of a tool, “The Left-Hand Column”, based on an article by Rick Ross and Art Kleiner in “The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook”. Here’s how you can use it to help you develop some powerlessness. Choose a difficult problem from the recent past (perhaps, something from your “Powerlessness Inventory”) that involves an interaction with someone else and describe it briefly, in a few sentences.

Now divide a sheet of paper with a line down the middle; label the right-hand column “what we said” and the left-hand “what I was thinking and feeling”.Record the conversation you had in the right-hand column. If it’s about a situation in which you only held the conversation in your mind, write that down. (In either case, you may need more than one piece of paper.)

The next step is to review the conversation and, in the left-hand column, write down what you were thinking or feeling, but didn’t say.

The fourth step is to reflect on the two columns. Sometimes it helps to put the pages away for a few days and then reread. Through the distance of time, it is easier to notice and learn. Sometimes it’s helpful to discuss the pages with a coach. Some questions to help your process of inquiry:

• How have I contributed to this situation?
• What stopped me from saying what was in my left-hand column?
• Over what was I powerless?
• How might the conversation be different, if I allowed myself to be powerless? (Write down the new version of the conversation.)
• How do I intend to behave in the future?
• What do I need to support this behavior?

Give yourself some time to complete the exercise and reward yourself afterward for a big step forward.

Photo: Andreas / flickr