The worldwide Enneagram community is constantly refining, deepening and completing the incredible wealth of collective knowledge we have around the Enneagram today. Rooted in the oldest spiritual traditions, it is a method that has not yet given up all of its secrets: only in the past 100 years have we really started to research them. So we keep finding new ways to work with this remarkable tool in the development of individuals, teams and organisations. It continues to amaze me how easily the Enneagram can be applied in a wide range of contexts and interventions. From quick fixes to lasting transformations and profound transitions. The Enneagram is both a profound and an easy-to-understand tool.
The Enneagram is becoming an ever more popular coaching instrument worldwide. Yet in the business world it is still nowhere near as well known as, for example, Insights -even though it offers a hundred times more depth and a multitude of possibilities. Those who have heard of it often have an incomplete or incorrect picture of it. The Enneagram is, after all, a system for typing people, and we do not like being put in boxes. But that is precisely the point of the Enneagram: a signpost to get ourselves out of the box we have unconsciously locked ourselves into since childhood. In other words: the whole point is to free us from the stifling fixation and reactivity of our Enneagram type ...
The Enneagram as a fresh coaching tool
Although the Enneagram is thousands of years old, as we use it today it is a relatively young model that first appeared in psychology in the 1960s as a guide to nine personality types. It is a nuanced and layered system of self-knowledge that zooms in with precision on our own inner, often invisible world, which drives how we act, feel and think. It highlights our unique perspective on the world and shows how this shapes our beliefs, our self-image and our relationship with others. It makes us aware of patterns, strategies, blind spots and defence mechanisms that both serve and sabotage us. The modern, fresh and scientifically grounded ‘Integrative Enneagram’ aims to create new development paths or neurological connections so that the client also sees new possibilities and makes better choices. No other tool contains everything as completely as the Enneagram does to give people the clarity they are looking for. The Enneagram is efficient, fresh, contemporary, future-oriented and absolutely sustainable as a coaching tool.
One validated online questionnaire, many applications
The iEQ9, worldwide the questionnaire -with a 40-page report- as the foundation of the ‘Integrative Enneagram’, is an incredible eye-opener for individual clients. For business clients too, it offers a fine framework that can be applied at all levels of the organisational system. It gives astonishingly clear insight into a wide range of processes in organisational development. With the questionnaire, all the data needed for personal leadership development, team development, culture change and engagement are available, to name just a few. It helps managers and employees to see the connections between various development points in the organisation and creates a common language for leadership, growth and development.
From autopilot to wakefulness and ‘presence’
The challenge for each of us is to get out of the trance, the autopilot of our Enneagram type. With the Enneagram we coach clients to wake up, show presence, have more compassion for themselves, connect with their true head, heart and gut intelligence and let go of limiting habits. They then discover how our unconscious, internal programming limits our ability to see the world clearly, to stay aware and to build authentic relationships.
So ...
Over the past decade, enormous efforts have been made to establish the Enneagram as a reliable and effective tool. The Enneagram of the 21st century is an ingenious, versatile, dynamic and incredibly powerful instrument. There are countless coaching applications, methods and approaches for working with the Enneagram.
