This is the Too Many Trees newsletter, where I share what I’ve been writing and reading in the realm of leadership and personal development. My coaching practice is centered around the idea that we are more effective in moving towards our goals when we become more conscious and intentional in focusing our time and attention, and learn how our unconscious patterns are holding us back. If you know somebody that could benefit from my perspective, please forward this to them or let them know they can set up a free intro chat with me.
I recently got involved on the Rands Leadership Slack in a discussion about the Enneagram, where people wanted to dismiss it as pseudo-science for typing people, and others thought it was actively harmful because some people used it to justify not changing because “that’s just the way I am”. I thought the readers of this newsletter might appreciate my edited response below.
For what it's worth, every coach I know who has trained in the Enneagram resists using it as an identity typing tool. As I understand it, the point of the Enneagram is to help people on their development path, and to understand the form of the "prison of their own making", as the Enneagram Prison Project describes it. So it's not meant for "I'm a type 2, so I'm this way", but more as "I get myself in trouble with these situations because of these type 2 traits, and if I cultivate more type 4 traits, that would be healthier for me."
I find the basic fears and desires for each type to be illuminating for understanding what different people are avoiding and and what they yearn for. That knowledge helps me to meet people where they are, rather than say they are "wrong" to act as they do.
When I first encountered the Enneagram, I typed myself and decided I was a type 9, the Peacemaker, as several aspects of it felt right to me. A couple years later, a friend was doing the Enneagram training and I volunteered to be interviewed by her as she practiced identifying people’s types. Surprisingly, she suggested I look into type 1, the Idealist. I massively resisted it, as I didn't like the image I had of type 1s as know-it-alls that judge everybody else and find them lacking.
But once I reflected on it more, I realized that a good/bad framing is how I tended to see the world. In everything I do, I try to be “good” (aka perfect) and any evidence that I’m not “good” is very threatening; for instance, if my wife points out how I could be a better father, I immediately get defensive and angry as it feels like she’s calling me a “bad” father. Treating everything as binary “good”/”bad” leads to holding myself to impossibly high standards, because any lapse risks me being “bad”, which is unacceptable to my Inner Judge. So that realization of how type 1 patterns manifest in me has been helpful in learning to let myself off the hook occasionally and realize it's okay to be an imperfect human.
And as I've studied the Enneagram a little more, I believe we all have aspects of all types in us, so I use it less as identity typing, and more as seeing how I am falling prey to different type pitfalls in different situations. Sometimes I'm conflict avoidant (type 9), sometimes I get obsessed with being seen to have achieved things (type 3), sometimes I'm protective of my energy and just want to be left alone (type 5), sometimes I sacrifice my own well being in the hopes of helping others (type 2), etc. Type 1 is where I tend to get myself in the most trouble, but it does not define me.
In other words, the Enneagram is not a perfect typing tool, and it’s not meant to be. Every model is going to work for some people (generally the people that designed the model), and it won't work for others. Trying to force people to fit into any single model is a guaranteed way to dehumanize people, and convert their rich multidimensionality and humanity into a set of numbers along the small set of dimensions that the model values. But, to me, that’s a result of people misusing the model rather than a fault of the model itself.
I have an obvious bias here in that I get paid by people to custom tailor tools and models for them so they can improve themselves as leaders. I don’t think any one model is sufficient for my coaching work because people are different. They are different in experiences, in motivations, in fears, in dreams, in personality, in personal development, etc. Meeting people where they are, with tools designed for their specific situation, helps them to feel supported and seen, and only with that foundation can change begin.
And now for the normal personal development content:
LinkedIn: These are ideas or questions that help my clients (or myself), and that I share via LinkedIn to help a wider audience.
Do you focus on what you do well, or what you don't? If you stopped beating yourself up for not being the leader you think you "should" be, what strengths might you leverage as the leader that you are?
What’s the cost of not changing? People are so resistant of change that the default choice will always be to not make a change. And yet that choice to not change can have a big opportunity cost, so identifying that cost can help break the inertia of not changing.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Many people believe “This is just the way it is”, and as a result, they never see the way their choices reinforce their status quo. Identifying new possibilities creates more agency in realizing “It doesn’t have to be this way” if you made different choices.
Articles and resources I’ve found interesting:
Together, Change is Possible - the nobl.io team writes “we’ve found the biggest obstacle to organizational transformation is rarely a lack of strategy, inadequate funding, or even overstretched teams. It’s the shared belief that change is impossible.”
Once you do decide to change, though, Julie Zhuo shares a Twitter thread discussing the challenges of picking appropriate metrics, ending with “Picking the right goal metrics is as much art as science. … Make sure it truly measures what matters.”
Speaking of metrics that matter, I loved this article by Chelsea Troy articulating why your efforts to make your company inclusive aren’t working. She notes that people aren’t incentivized or promoted for creating an inclusive culture. If people’s promotions depended on skills that build inclusivity (she suggests moderation, soliciting opinions, attribution, assuming other people’s expertise, and capitalizing on alternate perspectives), their behavior (and the company culture) would shift accordingly.
And another story on metrics of sorts: how David Fizdale, an NBA coach, shifted how he measured his life: “when you love your son no matter what, not as a means to an end, then maybe you can coach for the simple fulfillment of helping young men realize their dreams. … “I want to come back to the game with my mind totally on service,” Fizdale said. “Service without means to an end. I’ve never coached that way before.”
Thanks for reading! See you in a couple weeks.