EnneagramCentralBlog

I’m recommending two of the people I’m coaching that they read a book on negotiation. One is a Nine and he should read the book to learn techniques of assertion- always a problem for some Nines – that don’t require in-your-face confrontation. So negotiation techniques will give Nines tools and options. Many of the “techniques” are just making friends, which Nines do nicely.
The other client is a Seven. The book I recommended uses reframing a great deal. This is a chance for man not yet familiar with being Seven very long to see how he can use the Seven’s gift of reframing to advantage. When you do something unconsciously, as Sevens do with reframing, if you employ it consciously, it becomes a masterful tool.

I don’t have issues. I behave badly or I feel strongly about or I’m upset about the way you or they or both behave. When we talk about our Enneagram style, we can easily slip into abstract nouns that don’t have any obvious or helpful link to experience. If someone says she is a 7, that neither excuses or adequately explains what she is talking about. Instead, your response, especially if you are a coach, therapist, friend or family, is “How do you do your seven defense?” Do you escape and how do you escape? Or, “How do you deny, rationalize, reframe or otherwise muck up the communication process? How do you do that?” Maybe you’re not a seven, just grotesquely immature!
When we use the Enneagram as a defense, a common way we do it, is to describe ourselves in these abstractions. Issues or fixations or even neuroses need to be dragged, with the help of transitive verbs, into the real world of action and experience.

Focusing is central to the understanding of the Enneagram. Here’s a problem with focus: once we make a decision, we tend to ignore information that challenges that decision. We become more sure of ourselves as time goes on, because we don’t want to be distracted by conflicting demands, even if those demands contain information that is important. And the less comprehensive our knowledge, the more certain we are that we are right. In an experiment about confidence, college students who did the poorest on a test were the most sure of their answers.
So value focus – it is how things get done. But value conflicting information – it’s how you correct a focus. The Enneagram is so helpful because you can learn to look for information that your Enneagram style habitually ignores. For example, I’m a Seven, I focus on possibility, my tendency is to see what can work. So I have to consciously seek out negatives – what can go wrong here? Several of my best friends are Sixes, so I just ask them. It is amazing what they see that I didn’t either see or didn’t think was important.
Right now my computer is acting up. When I first bought it, my friend’s first question was “Where do you take it to get it fixed?” I thought that a bit strange at the time. Now…not so much.

Here’s an interesting abstract of a psychological experiment about self control.

The present work suggests that self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source. Laboratory tests of self-control (i.e., the Stroop task, thought suppression, emotion regulation, attention control) and of social behaviors (i.e., helping behavior, coping with thoughts of death, stifling prejudice during an interracial interaction) showed that (a) acts of self-control reduced blood glucose levels, (b) low levels of blood glucose after an initial self-control task predicted poor performance on a subsequent self-control task, and (c) initial acts of self-control impaired performance on subsequent self-control tasks, but consuming a glucose drink eliminated these impairments. Self-control requires a certain amount of glucose to operate unimpaired. A single act of self-control causes glucose to drop below optimal levels, thereby impairing subsequent attempts at self-control.
The psychologist is Gailliot, a researcher at Florida State U. Translated into street talk, he says that self-control (what used to be called, sweetly, resisting temptation,) uses up the sugar in our blood so when we run out of sugar, we can’t control ourselves as well.
That’s why it is important to know our enneagram patterns. What interferes with our patterns depletes our blood sugar. We can’t just say “No.” We run out of glucose. A Two who says No to helping someone will get tired, where as an Eight might get a burst of energy (Eights routinely mis-match – their instinctive reaction is to fight, to say no). think that’s why I find some preachers and cheerleaders tiring. They urge me to do what I don’t want to do and so tire me out.

Does Louis Tartaglia, PhD, MD, ever need the Enneagram! His book, Flawless, is practically a confession that he is a style One, telling the rest of us how to be perfect. Like many self-help books, it is about trying to heal the Enneagram style of the author. Here is the table of contents: 1) Addicted to being right. (Whom do we know that has that as a lifestyle?), 2) Raging indignation. (Think style One, for example Lou Dobbs or Bill Maher), 3) Fixing Blame and nurturing resentments. All right, I won’t beat you over the head –the last 7 are variations on a theme and the theme is style One. The title of his book already had my antennae quivering.  Who is most concerned about being flawless?
The premise and promise of the book is that you can fix these flaws. His idea of fixing is to describe the flaw, then show why you shouldn’t have it, and then tell you to stop it. He is also a grade school fundamentalist evangelical so he says that if you pray, then God/grace will take away the flaw. He is an MD but doesn’t recommend chemical interventions and for that we thank God. American Puritanism, an overlay of style One in much of the US, is also a style One, so many readers will find this approach familiar, whether Catholic or Protestant. Or Muslim, unless they are more familiar with the style 8 of their Middle East culture.

Most New Year’s Resolutions are frequently medium length whips we beat ourselves with near the end of January. Here’s a way to make one work, if you would like. Pick out a favorite bad habit, inclination, pattern. Then create one very small symbolic expression of what you want to accomplish that breaks that pattern. Don’t grimly resolve “I’m going to be more patient.” Instead, say and resolve “I will not kick the dog.” Be ready for resistance, but because it is so small, you can probably handle it.

The No Child Left Behind legislation “has turned out to be the worst federal education legislation every passed. (NY Review of books, Dec 24, 2011). The reason it is so bad is that it  is scientific and objective. The New York Times article assessing the objectivity says “Claims of “objective” and “scientific” always occur within contextual and cultural assumptions even as both depend on a faith in their NOT being contextualized to garner their power.”
Our enneagram style is one context that frames all our “facts.” This Christmas season, families will get together and solemnly and silently agree not to talk about certain things because their frames are different enough so that civil conversation is nearly impossible. Every fact has a (usually unacknowledged or unrecognized) context that makes claims of “scientific” or “objective” somewhat precarious.  Arguments are often frame clashes more than any exchange of information.
So when we coach, the enneagram is enormously helpful because it describes an interior world that is an important context.

Artificial intelligence has one major problem that has prevented much headway – yet. The computer, when faced with real life problems, doesn’t distinguish between information that is influential and information that is extraneous. They call this problem, the “Frame problem.” Humans select from a bewildering array of data and select some and reject most others. In conversation, one might ignore ceiling heights, time of day, color of tile etc etc.
This selectivity comes at a cost. We decide too quickly and confidently what information is important.  This isn’t an either/or importance; it is more like a graded valuation of whatever we encounter.  We see what we look for and prize what we find.

Our Enneagram style is one of our crucial frames. Widening, softening, altering with unaccustomed information – these are all ways of becoming healthier, wiser and happier. We don’t get rid of the initial frame, but we work valiantly at weakening its exclusivity and narrowness.

Our men’s study group tackled Ayn Rand the other day. She is highly influential: Clarence Thomas, Paul Ryan (architect of the Republican budget) and others require their staffs to study her. Allan Greenspan was a member of her salon. So her philosophy lives on in her disciples. As we discussed her philosophy of selfishness (her term) in Atlas Shrugged it became clear that she is an Enneagram style One. The low sides of style One were evident: literal thinking, black and white opinions, the division into good and bad (good and bad ideas, good and bad people, good and bad social structures and in her other book, The Fountainhead, good and bad architecture), scorn for sensual weakness with back door indulgence of same and an unnerving conviction that not only is she right, but she is totally right.
It was remarkable how her philosophy was a clear elaboration of her ego structure. I was not surprised, tho. In the history of philosophy it is surprisingly easy to identify the enneagram style from the philosophy. For the high side of style one, read Emmanuel Kant, the German philosopher whose works are cherished by anyone studying ethics.

A group of boys decided to harass a man in the neighborhood by playing very noisily in his yard. The man was really irritated so he went out and told the boys he enjoyed their playing so much he gave them a dollar. They were delighted so they came back a second day. This time he gave them only fifty cents. They played again. On the 3rd day he refused to pay them anything so they said they would not play for nothing and quit playing in his yard.
A new book, “You are not so smart,” (thanks for the tip, Rich Litvin) describes how if we get paid for doing something we often lose interest even if it is something we originally loved. So much for the promise most coaches make, “Make money doing what you love!” Apparently what happens is what they call “overjustification.” If we get too much of extrinsic motivation, it weakens our intrinsic pleasure.

If you are a coach and are interested in creativity, I recommend a new e-letter by my friend, Peleg. Check it out at hello@pelegtop.com It is a new e letter. If it is of the same quality as his coaching work it should be superb!