Reframing Spiritual Emergency as Positive Change

So if you're experiencing psychospiritual/ transformational crisis, don't assume you're crazy. Tell your story to someone who will listen, an experienced coach or counselor who understands the nature of spiritual transformation. ("Spiritual Emergency: When 911 Can't Help")

In the post from my Evocative Enneagram Self-Coaching Tips blog where the above is cited, I encourage anyone on a path of deepening self-awareness to reframe a rapid, forceful shift in perception as a "good" thing, so it doesn't necessarily become destabilizing.

Anyone helping clients loosen ego bonds, personality patterns, and defenses also needs to be on the alert for spiritual emergencies that may turn us upside down, but also lead to deep, positive change.

These major shifts from "normal" reality may appear in a variety of forms, many of which I've experienced in myself and/or seen in some of my own clients.

Becoming more familiar with the deep changes that are possible can help you hold steady when your clients describe one or more of the following:

1. Powerful sensations of heat and/or energy pulsing through the spine, sometimes accompanied by an embodied sense that "something big is happening -- I don't know what!"
2. A peak experience, mystical sense of awe, or feeling within profound love.
3. Awakening of extrasensory perception, including precognition and telepathy, increased occasions of synchronicity or more than usual "coincidences."
4. Feeling "possessed" by an archetype, a heretofore unknown and unfamiliar persona.
5. An initiatory crisis, the sense of self as a "wounded healer" -- facing into our deepest wound to receive its blessing.
6. Experiencing what we commonly know as "the dark night of the soul," a sense of something dying and not knowing what's on the "other side," even questioning one's own sanity.
7. Similar to a peak experience but a more profound feeling of being at the center of or part of the cosmos.

What first brings confusion and fear can lead to profound healing. Spiritual emergency "shatters your entire world only to rebuild it again. It occurs because it is time for the individual to awaken."

If you're interested in a personal assessment or to delve further into these concepts, check out The Questionnaire Measurement of Spiritual Emergency (scroll through to Appendix).

See also:

Evocative Enneagram Stories  &  Self-Coaching Tips 

My Books at Amazon.com

"Do I Belong?"

I found The Instincts Dialogue at the 2018 Enneagram Global Summit to be the most actionable discussion for coaching, exploring the instinctual aspects of the self-preservation, sexual, and social subtypes--"reptilian, biological, unconscious, automatic impulses to survive" (Bea Chestnut), "drives and also sensation, known to the body and important to know what they feel like" (Russ Hudson). My main takeaway was to pay less attention to subtype descriptions and to ask instead, as Hudson suggested, "What's my habitual relationship with this drive?'" 

I've simplified the subtype distinctions as defined by three key questions:

• Self-Preservation instinct: "Am I safe?"
• Sexual or One-to-One instinct: "Am I loved?"
• Social instinct: "Do I belong?"

In my practice, every coaching call in some way addressed one of these questions. You want your clients to find a YES to all three: "I am safe." "I am loved." "I belong." And deeper understanding of a client's instinctual subtype preference will heighten your effectiveness in helping them answer these questions--not with a series of prescriptions but by encouraging them to ask, "What's my habitual relationship with this drive?"

Bea Chestnut offers an inspiring personal example on her web site, with a deep look at her Enneagram Two self-preservation instinct. And we learn from her story that growth arises from staying present, observing ourselves without judgment, becoming conscious of what has been unconscious and automatic:

... I felt something sweep through my entire body--an emotional and energetic recognition that told me he was right. I couldn't argue with him, even though my pride wanted to. If I was really honest with myself, I did feel like I needed protection. I wanted to say I could protect him, but I felt, so clearly, in my body, it wasn't true. So, I went and sat in the group with the other Self-Preservation Twos.

Of special interest to me has been the "Do I belong?" question because several of my clients explored how Enneagram patterns help or hinder connection to the world community--mostly through political or environmental concerns. As Bea Chestnut said in The Instincts Dialogue, "We've lost touch with the fact that in primitive people, being part of a tribe was essential to survival."

I'd been reading about the physiological and neurological aspects of our instinct to be part of a tribe (activating social connectivity via the ventral vagal nerve system in The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, and the effects of social connectivity on gene expression in "The Social Life of Genes"). So where does this curiosity lead me? As did Bea Chestnut in her story above, I have typically explored the practical aspects of a concept through self-observation:

• Historically, my one-to-one instinct had been the strongest influence on me at point Nine ["At Best, bonds with others, supportive of their ideas, gets buy-in through consensus; At Worst, lives too much through another (parent, spouse, boss, friend, client)"].
• I'd developed some fairly deep self-awareness and found my own agenda in relationships to a much greater degree than previously. Then my aging mother's need for help gave me an advanced course in staying present. During the 17 years of caring for her, our early life relationship dynamics threatened to define the two of us again. Exploring those triggers helped me further loosen the unconscious hold of my one-to-one instinct. 
• At the same time, my least-preferred instinct, the social, was being further compromised--by increasing responsibilities for Mom (she lived to be 104!), my natural introversion, and--with the burgeoning of the internet--the opportunity to maintain all my interests (phone coaching, reading/writing, painting) almost exclusively within these four walls. 
• So, I've felt the pinch of a lack of social connectivity, wanting to be part of a tribe, wanting to feel in my bones, "Yes, I belong," yet also asking What's my habitual relationship with this drive? Noticing when I've stopped myself, and also noticing circumstances that help me to connect--groups of moderate size, groups where the discussion is centered on something I want to learn, groups where there's no pressure to speak but interaction is facilitated, groups whose members share my most fervent beliefs.
• One step at a time.

The Play Within the Play

(from Out of the Box Coaching with the Enneagram)

The coaching relationship is a mini-laboratory for breakthroughs. Whatever inner dynamics brought your clients to coaching will most assuredly be acted out with you. And don't forget you have your own habits of attention. Always ask yourself if you're behaving in ways that help or hinder your clients' growth. Be aware that how you interact with them makes a big difference in their progress.

For example:

• Clients with Enneagram style Three seek approval from outside themselves. They typically list their accomplishments during each coaching meeting. Will you reinforce that in-the-box behavior by approving or will you help them see this habitual behavior as it occurs with you?
• Clients with Enneagram style Six seek authority and then challenge it. Will you be caught in this pattern? Will you let them turn you into an authority or will you comment if you see the pattern?
• Clients with Enneagram style Nine rely on others to provide structure. If you ask a probing question and find these clients somewhat confused, will you jump in with a suggestion or will you be patient and encourage them to start anywhere--an arbitrary choice, a set of alternatives, or even a list of what they do not want to do?

Those you coach will approach potential breakthroughs either as frightening ventures into the unknown or as potent explorations. How they move forward rests in the quality of your coaching. Transformational coaching requires you to:

1. be receptive, provide a safe harbor, listen deeply and with empathy, 
2. take a stand for your shared vision and challenge their self-limitations [this is especially important when they (or you) are most discouraged].

This quality of coaching requires devotion to your own transformation. As you learn about your Enneagram style, you can use your gifts more consciously and observe how your own patterns limit both of you. Then you can allow whatever occurs in the coaching relationship to be data for discussion.

While coaching Jean (Enneagram style Two), for example, I pointed out her retreat from discussing what she felt as a criticism from me, even though she was clearly upset. Tied to her pattern of focusing on my needs and feelings, she diverted attention away from her own.

After that call Jean wrote me an e-mail saying she felt I'd betrayed her needs (a recurring theme for style Two). She wanted to stop coaching after the next session. My first reaction was defensive. As an Enneagram style Nine I worried I might have been too blunt, not kind enough to Jean. But I managed to stay centered, to not take her attack personally.

In her next coaching session, we were able to discuss the dynamic we'd created and explore how this same pattern showed up in Jean's other relationships. During this discussion I helped her express her needs openly (difficult for style Two). When she tried to move the conversation back to me, I gently pulled her back to her own feelings. Jean subsequently decided to continue with me as her coach.

Change Blindness

I recently tuned in to a discussion among coaches of assessment results for a client whose profile indicated he knew he was charming and likeable, but lacked depth of detail and follow-through. In spite of his self-awareness, I was concerned about his future in that company. His low ratings among peers and senior management suggested he's seen as  a "lightweight," a perception that can be very difficult to change, no matter how effective the coaching or how committed he is to balancing his influence style. I've seen change blindness on more than one occasion:

Change blindness – a phenomenon in visual perception where large changes are undetected by the viewer.

How many times have you made what felt like significant changes and no one noticed? How often, when working with clients, have co-workers or friends and family failed to observe, appreciate, and reinforce changes? This blindness occurs because others' ability to perceive something new is hampered by what they think they already know. This is often such an unconscious process they might not acknowledge their own change blindness (yep, denial of change blindness is called "change blindness blindness"). 

In a follow-up data-gathering session for a client who'd made significant changes in the previous six months, he and I pondered the fact that others I interviewed were highly focused on some problems from months earlier, even though I specifically asked them how this person is different in the present. 

A way around this phenomenon is to set clients up for success by coaching them to engage others in the process:  

“These are three specific behaviors you'll see that are different for me, and please, when you see me behaving in these new ways, tell me so I'll know I’m on the right track.” 

Three Motivational Styles

According to the theories of David C. McClelland, we all draw to some degree from each of three motives, but one will be predominant and may reinforce our habitual way of operating. We initially respond best to the approach that fits most closely with our dominant motive. However, if you're in a managerial or coaching relationship, you could unwittingly strengthen a motive that's not in the person's best interest. For example, if someone constantly looks to you for approval and you give it, that person will be satisfied but continue to rely on you for approval, and won't develop independent standards. 

AFFILIATION MOTIVE – Being with others, expressing feelings and ideas, and getting others' approval. People primarily motivated by affiliation are often friendly and work best when they feel appreciated and their work environment gives them the opportunity to interact with others. This motivation is reinforced and maintained by providing work where cooperation with co-workers is required, time for personal interaction is encouraged, and team building efforts are valued. Positive feedback that's not specific will satisfy and/or develop peoples' affiliation motive because it lets them know they're liked and accepted, but will not develop their achievement or power motive. 

ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVE – Standards of excellence are clear, with opportunity to set goals and perform successfully against those standards (includes problem-solving about how to overcome obstacles to performance). People primarily motivated by achievement are usually competitive and work well independently. This motivation is reinforced and maintained by providing challenging work that stretches capabilities, along with concrete standards for success and clear, unambiguous feedback. Specific and descriptive feedback will provide people with a tool to satisfy and/or develop their achievement motive because it allows them to set their own goals and give themselves feedback about the degree to which the goals were accomplished. 

POWER MOTIVE – Impact the surrounding environment; persuade and/or influence others.  People primarily motivated by power usually have an interest in moving up in an organization and are often fluent in their communication style. This motivation is reinforced and maintained by allowing personal control over work pace and methods, as well as opportunities to influence – especially if they can deal directly with people higher in the organization. Encouraging peoples' involvement in problem solving and decision making will satisfy and/or develop their power motive because it gives them influence over their work and other people.   

Beyond Ambition

In his well-worn but not outdated book, Beyond Ambition: How Driven Managers Can Lead Better and Live Better, Robert Kaplan referred to expansive leaders as those who are vitally concerned with gaining mastery over their environment. These top leaders are highly motivated and usually ambitious, even driven, and many depend too much on success as a primary means of reinforcing their sense of self-worth.

His research at the Center for Creative Leadership showed that moderately expansive executives mobilize the organization to attain its objectives without weakening or destroying it in the process, but overly expansive executives focus too much on winning -- they're unnecessarily competitive, lacking in perspective, unrealistically ambitious for their organizations, often compulsive, controlling or even exploitative, too hungry for rewards, and resistant to criticism and change.

Managerial expertise and business knowledge matter, but the basic character of leaders powerfully affects the way they run an organization. Those who succeed are distinguished from those who derail not by absence of weakness, but by the ability to learn from their experience, including mistakes and failures.

When leaders seek a significant breakthrough in their effectiveness, there's much to be gained by looking beyond personality traits and behavior to the leader's character -- the set of deep-seated strategies used to enhance or protect one's sense of self-worth -- including basic driving forces. Such fundamental change, though difficult, is possible. Being coached to an inner character shift brings an attitude of relaxed concentration, where one is more highly effective, but at lower rpms.

Kaplan offered three prototypes, case studies that link to three Enneagram styles (he doesn't refer to the Enneagram in the book's text, but does include it in his list of references):

Striver-Builder (Chapter 2, "Bill Flechette"): No-nonsense attitude, gets things done, specializes in building organizations, plans for the future, drives toward implementation, strives for a world-class organization, competitive, drawn to be exceptional, interested in looking good (overly concerned about being the best/impressing higher-ups; subordinates sense their function is to meet Striver/Builder's objectives), articulate communicator (to the point of creating own reality), defensive, resists becoming aware of weaknesses/disputes feedback data (can't bear to admit feelings), self-deceptive, narcissistic.

Self-Vindicator Fix-It (Chapter 5, "Rich Bauer"): Authoritative and commanding, use of power stands out above all, physical presence radiates power, visceral need to rectify dysfunction, leads by attacking what's wrong, energizes "this isn't good enough" approach, specializes in turnarounds, gruff and direct, intimidating (with underlying warmth and good will), gets mad/gets over it quickly, doesn't support people enough, doesn't have soft touch, doesn't tutor/coach, judges people as either having it or not.

Perfectionist/Systematizer (Chapter 11, "Lee McKinney"): Devoted to principles, dedicated, hard-working, results-oriented, effective, loyal, adept at order/systems, durable under stress, over-manages, can't ever be pleased, difficulty discriminating between important/unimportant tasks, difficulty taking other points of view, needs to be right/beyond reproach, internalizes a host of shoulds, self-punishing and punishing of others.

One, Two, Three, Grow

I was in the “City of Power Politics” with vested interests and terrified people intent on maintaining the status quo. Though I could do a cost-benefit analysis and was pretty good at organization, I had absolutely no idea what was really going on, why, or how to change it. This was crazy, and I didn’t have the foggiest idea of how to deal with crazy. For sheer survival, if no other reason, I concluded I needed to understand crazy (Ed Morler, Preface, Finally Growing Up: Living an Authentic Empowered Life).

My day brightened considerably when I read those words. In a world of thieving investment bankers, human trafficking, and strategically planned warfare, I applaud Morler’s conclusion that the ultimate causal factor in human behavior is integrity, or the lack of it.  

Growing Up, which integrates the Enneagram with his Six Levels of Emotional Maturity, is about “consciously choosing to be responsible, and in that process, doing our best to discover and live our noble potential.” Morler recognizes increasing self-awareness as the path to greater emotional maturity:Integration is the result of a willingness to face and go through our fear, an exponential expansion of our willingness to be responsible and behave proactively, which broadens and deepens our sense of empowerment. It often tends to manifest as a dramatic, positive shift in our awareness of our being, doing and having. It is thus a major letting go of the compulsive, limiting aspects of personality (p. 216).

Morler proposes six levels of perceiving and responding to life’s situations, each level with characteristic emotions and set of filters, with 26 categories in each such as "Chronic Patterns" and "Willingness to Confront. Along the path of emotional maturity, he suggests, our questions change from “Am I getting enough?” to “Am I good enough?” to “Am I learning, growing, being enough?” to the secure realization, “I am enough.”

In this article I’ll illustrate the growing up of “Jake,” an Enneagram style Six, as an example of how Morler’s categories are grounded in real life. I do this in part because I learn best by trying things out, which – by the way – places me in Morler’s category of Learning Capacity somewhere between Level 6 (“...quick study”) and Level 5 (“Open to concepts supported by experience...”). So for today, I feel emotionally mature. [Sometimes, when confronted with highly theoretical abstractions, I dip to “rejecting new concepts as threatening” (Level 3) or even “It’s impossible, why bother?” (Level 1).]

Because Jake’s self-realization in this particular aspect of his life centered on his willingness to confront, the following outline will provide a frame of reference for his progress. Here are Morler’s six levels of emotional maturity in the category of Chronic Patterns, as well as descriptions of each level in Willingness to Confront, and Enneagram-specific descriptions for style Six:

Level 6 – LEADER Chronic Patterns: “High integrity. Comfortable presence. Clear focus. Big picture. Considerate of real needs. Positive action and results. Appreciates and enjoys life. Life is an adventure. Humor.” Willingness to confront: “Will confront whatever needs to be dealt with. Observational abilities finely tuned. Willingness to explore other beliefs and reassess one’s own. Great presence.”

Enneagram Six at Level 6: “Creator of security in and for others. Dynamic interdependence. Open. Perspective. Committed. Engaging. Playful. Integrates primarily to positive 9 and also to positive 3.

Level 5 – DOER Chronic Patterns: “Conscientious. Positive, provided claims are substantiated. Pleasant. Proactive devil’s advocate.” Willingness to confront:“Selectively confronts. Fair to good observational abilities. Cautious progress.”

Enneagram Six at Level 5: “Highly practical. Organizationally effective. Analyses. Tenacious. Troubleshooter. Constructive critic. Devil’s advocate.”

Level 4 – COPER Chronic Patterns: “More an observer than a participant. Casual, mellow. Takes the path of least resistance. Careless.” Willingness to confront:“Minimally confronts. Observational skills minimal. Difficult situations are avoided or ignored.”

Enneagram Six at Level 4: “Dutiful. Cautious. Security oriented. Skeptic. Ambivalent. Indecisive. Evasive.”

Level 3 – OPPOSER Chronic Patterns: “Sees world as hostile, threatening. Narrow emotional range. Best defense is an offense. Angry person. The debater.” Willingness to confront: “Attacks others to avoid confronting own irresponsibility. Tends to back down quickly when threats do not work.”

Enneagram Six at Level 3:“Phobic – Anxious. Pessimistic. Defensive. Looks toauthority figure. OR Counter-Phobic – Daredevil. Cynic. Blamer. Rebel. Antagonistic.”

Level 2 – MANIPULATOR Chronic Patterns: “World is so threatening that must hide own fear, hostile intentions and behaviors. Highly self-absorbed. The con man. The gossip. The martyr. The two-face.“ Willingness to confront: “Covertly manipulates and misdirects to avoid confronting and owning any responsibility.”

Enneagram Six at Level 2: “High anxiety. Immediately discounting of anything positive.  Everything is a crisis. Self-disparagement. Denial.”

Level 1 – VICTIM Chronic Patterns: “Cry-baby. Complainer. Whiner or just numbed out. Poor me. Yes man. The victim.” Willingness to confront: “Avoids almost all issues. Too inwardly focused to observe much at all.”

Enneagram Six at Level 1: “Whiner. ‘Continual unsolvable problems.’ Masochistic.Persecuted persecutor. Projection. Disintegrates primarily to negative 3 and also to negative 9.”

When Jake first sought coaching, he was new to the Enneagram. As he identified with the Six’s driving force of fear, he reported times in earlier years when he’d accepted others’ negative attributions of him, endured several emotional crises, and suffered high anxiety, sometimes to the point of depression, all more characteristic of levels 2-4 of the Six’s emotional maturity. Subsequently, through his own tenacity and desire to outgrow his fears, Jake had developed many Level 5 qualities, celebrating outstanding successes as an expert in his field. In addition, he’s extremely bright and self-aware and his life experiences had created great readiness to learn more about himself and to develop his full potential.

Primarily a phobic Six, Jake explored his behavioral patterns in the context of the Enneagram, particularly some ambivalence about his career choices – which had opened up the possibility of much greater responsibility based on his past successes. As he learned how to be more present, he had many moments of facing and moving through his fears. On the strength of that foundation, Jake embraced the opportunity to take an executive position in a turn-around situation, and entered that job at a level of self-awareness that placed him solidly in the 5th level of emotional maturity, with some signs of level 6, particularly in his desire to be a manager of others instead of a lone troubleshooter. We’d supported this vision and anticipated his new level of responsibility by exploring, rehearsing, and reinforcing the attributes and responsibilities of leadership.

During the first six months of Jake’s new job, however, the organizational dynamics threatened to trap him in the City of Power Politics described by Morler. The following comments capture Jake’s description of his shift into empowerment during his first six months on the job, as he continues to deepen his self-awareness and broaden his perspective.

“I realized I was very scared around people at higher levels in the company,” Jake began (illustrating his self-observation that he’d been selectively confronting at Level 5). “There are several very, very angry, insistent senior VPs in the company, and some of them I’ve known for ten years or more. But now that they’re at the top, I found myself saying “Yes, sir!” Jake was not the only one reacting to the organization’s top-down culture: “I got to the root of why the company is messed up – when they see something dysfunctional they ask the person reporting to them to find out what’s wrong and how to fix it. That results in many hours to prepare a summary, then the VP casts off what they’ve brought and says “You have to do twice as much.” People reporting to VPs say “Yes sir,” and then go flog the troops.” 

Jake related this dynamic to “child abuse” and we talked about how he was beginning to think systemically (Level 6’s “finely tuned observational abilities”). We identified what Peter Senge  (The Fifth Discipline) would call the organization’s archetype as most likely a version of “Fixes that Fail.” In this archetype, managers aim their responses at the symptoms rather than spending time identifying the underlying, systemic problem; with the unintended consequence that the quick fix exacerbates the initial problem symptom (William Braun, The System Archetypes).

Having analyzed the organization’s dysfunctional pattern, Jake found the courage to confront the VP: “If we look back at the insecurities I had, they were coming from all those people asking me to do things my gut told me not to do. So this week I’d been silently sitting there, taking a beating, when I finally decided the worst thing he could do was fire me. And I stood up to the VP, with my boss in the room. I acknowledged the company’s needs and the urgency, then said, ‘Here’s the reality of the organization you have today. . .’ I told him what we can do, which is focus on things with the broadest appeal and realize it may not be perfect immediately. The room was silent. The VP then turned his attention to someone else and started yelling at him!” Note that the VP – at best – was operating from Level 3, OPPOSER, in Morler’s lexicon of emotional maturity (“Best defense is an offense. . . Tends to back down quickly when threats do not work”).

As Jake’s story continues, you can see him gaining firmer ground in Level 6 (“Will confront whatever needs to be dealt with...”): “I stood up to the VP,” he said, “because it was the right thing to do. And it worked! So I started doing it with everybody. My boss asked me for some calculations, which had left no time to do my job. So I told him ‘I’ll be glad to keep you posted, but from now on, I’m going to spend my time doing what you hired me to do.’”

I asked Jake how he came to respond with such integrity. “There were a whole bunch of things I did,” he acknowledged, “but one sea change – I said what I believed to be true instead of holding back out of fear.”

Jake then planned a five-day team building agenda. He would bring his whole team in from around the world to be face-to-face, some of them for the first time. We agreed he would facilitate the session instead of bringing me in, to support his role as coach, not boss. He would embody empowerment and model a change from the historically hierarchical culture to one of collaborative interdependence. 

After exploring several concepts of team building, he adopted the Drexler Sibbet team performance model, addressing the first five stages during their week together: (1) Orientation (WHY am I here?), (2) Trust Building (WHO are you?), (3) Goal clarification (WHAT are we doing?), (4) Commitment (HOW will we do it?), (5) Implementation (WHO does WHAT, WHEN, WHERE?), (6) High Performance (WOW!), (7) Renewal (WHY continue?).

After the team’s week together, Jake’s e-mail to schedule a meeting with me was short and sweet: “The week went tremendously! Very interesting culture.” From the moment I picked up the phone it was evident he was enjoying Level 6 qualities (“High integrity. Comfortable presence. Clear focus. Big picture. Considerate of real needs. Positive action and results. Appreciates and enjoys life. Life is an adventure. Humor”). 

He started our conversation by joking, “I think they were afraid I was going to come in with Velcro suits and foam bats, so it was a little scary on Monday morning, but I used a simple, get-acquainted exercise where they interviewed each other in twos, then reported out about the person they’ve been talking to.” During Monday afternoon and all day and evening Tuesday, Jake brought in the company Vice Presidents to “to say directly why my team’s mission matters.” (He had been smart enough to give each of the VPs 30 minutes and talking points in advance; the rest of their time was to be for discussion.) “That turned things around,” he said, “to see that I had the VPs’ trust and the VPs took time to talk and answer any questions from team members.”

“I told my team the goal was for each person to have ownership in the results, and by the end of the week to have an entire plan with everyone knowing what they own and how they’re going to do it. Then they all sat at attention waiting for me to tell them what to do! I acknowledged that empowerment had not been the culture here, and said we had to completely let go of the way we’d been doing business: 'You’ve been told we have to do these things by these dates. I’m turning the meeting over to you now to solve these problems and decide how you want to be set up as an organization in order to do it.’ And it worked! I didn’t realize until the middle of the week how important it was to them to be treated like professionals. I kept in mind to model empowerment and, when they saw me not taking over, it would reinforce what I said. So I intentionally stepped out of the meeting more and more as the week wore on.” 

You can see evidence in the following comments of Jake’s moving back and forth between Level 5 (DOER) and Level 6 (LEADER): “I did find I had to keep monitoring myself. I kept wanting to solve problems that were on the table, but I think I did OK on that. At the beginning of the week I found myself diving in too much. Then as a gauge, I knew when I was feeling frustrated it was time to step back.” Describing the week’s outcomes, Jakes summarized: “We had two difficult things we needed to get done: to determine how long it would take to meet our goals, and how much it would cost. In the beginning, everyone on the team said we could not accomplish what we were expected to do in the given time frame, but by the end of the week they’d figured out how to do it! We’re still on a scary precipice, but as long as the family is tight and they know where they stand on things, we’ll be able to accomplish what we need to do.”

Jake also coached his team on how to do what he had done to interrupt the old pattern of top-down blaming and time lost preparing reams of reports. “I believe I’ve taught them how to respond when upper management starts getting on our backs again: ‘If you’re not proactive, they’ll keep doing it more.’”

In follow-up conversations there was every indication the collaborative change Jake encouraged and modeled was holding. “When I came back to work the following week,” he reported, “everyone was working and invigorated. I’d been wondering how to present to upper management what we’d done, and when I walked into my office found a presentation on my desk from one of my team members!” 

“My biggest challenge,” he concluded, “is to change this culture, and to do it by example, as if I’ve walked into a black and white company and I’m able to pour color all over it.” 

Collaborative Consulting

What's the best way to work with clients who want their problems solved, when our goal is to help them learn how to solve their own problems? Social science research suggests they'll learn best if we collaborate with them instead of offering expert recommendations. The more the change process is self-defined, self-monitored, self-evaluated, and self-reinforced by those who have to make the changes, the greater the likelihood of enduring effects.

These same values predominate in other fields, as well. Collaboration has been embraced by many practitioners of medicine (mutual participation), leadership (motivational management), teaching (student-centered), and psychotherapy (client-centered). Why? Because taking the expert role in any of these situations can stifle self-initiated action. Medical patients, for example, are less likely to comply with a treatment regimen if they're told what to do without being involved in the process.

But there's a problem. If we value collaboration, we expect to work conjointly with people to diagnose, plan, and carry out actions that will solve their problems, resulting (we hope) in their greater commitment to the process of change and stronger ownership of results. We also assume the process of collaboration itself will generalize to other relationships. Historically, however, most organizations have been competitive in orientation and authoritarian in implicit expectations (some organizations still use such terms as chain of command).

Thus, if a client system is hierarchical and authoritarian, we might as well acknowledge that we're attempting a revolution.

As it turns out, that's not an issue very often, because we often fail to develop the kind of collaboration we believe in. And when we fail, we too often blame our clients; citing their resistance, for example. Instead, we need to look at the subtle ways we contribute to the problem by unwittingly taking an expert role.

The dictionary defines collaboration in two ways:

• Where people cooperate voluntarily it means working together or acting jointly.

• Where values are different, as when a conquering government takes over a country, to collaborate means to comply with.

It is in this second sense that collaboration in consulting situations can be compliance with the coach or consultant's wishes, because our clients often operate implicitly from more traditional, hierarchical modes of interaction.

How does that happen? Because we value collaboration so much we tend to insist on it, missing the point that this very behavior constitutes a bid for dominance. Telling someone "We're going to collaborate" is a paradoxical communication: clients are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they "collaborate" by going along with us, we may be praising them for in fact doing as they're told (this is a do as I say, not as I do scenarios). If they choose not to collaborate, we give them a negative label (resistance) for taking self-initiated action, the very outcome we say we're seeking. No wonder our clients sometimes seem confused.

I believe it's important to create an integrated set of values, building on the initial beliefs and expectations of both. It's possible, then, to negotiate an approach where collaboration occurs in the process of uncovering and integrating differences.

Transcending Personality

In Masterful Coaching Robert Hargrove distinguishes between incremental learning (embodying new skills and capabilities), reframing (reshaping patterns of thinking), and transformational learning (shifting frame of reference):

While change at the incremental and reframing levels is quite common among my clients, I've found transformational change to be more of a challenge. Among the many reasons,

• it's difficult to see implicit patterns that underlie our human systems,
• seeing these patterns "unmasks" us, shows how what we've been doing isn't working, and
• we resist facing up to anything at odds with our self-image.

The Enneagram is a powerful tool to help us see and transcend those personality patterns. The following three levels of learning illustrate each stage of potential change (new skills, shift in attitudes/behavior, shift in point of view) as exemplified by a client with Enneagram style Six:

1. Incremental (Single-Loop) Learning refers to learning new skills and capabilities through incremental improvement, doing something better without examining or challenging underlying beliefs and assumptions. Let's say "Joe" is concerned because his boss sees him as negative, and he agrees to practice a creative problem solving technique. Instead of saying, "That won't work because it will take too long," Joe learns to incorporate his concerns into a solution statement ("I think that could solve our problem. Let's talk about how we can shorten the production time.") His boss compliments him on being more positive and Joe's happy to no longer be criticized. He may still tend to focus on the negative side of things, but he knows how to mask that behavior and keep himself off the hook in his job.
2. Reframing (Double-Loop Learning) occurs by fundamentally reshaping the underlying patterns of our thinking and behavior so we’re capable of doing different things. This level of learning often enfolds single-loop or incremental learning, but goes beyond it. This is the level of process analysis where people become observers of themselves, asking, What's going on here? What are the patterns? It's still largely an act/react cycle, but it can get the underlying psychological superstructure to start wobbling. This is where most individual and/or organizational change takes place. This is also where the Enneagram provides a powerful road map for what to observe.

Joe, for example, might become aware of his general tendency to focus on what could go wrong, to look for hidden agendas. So, in addition to learning how to approach problems with solutions, he begins to see how his pattern of thinking tends to leave out what could go right. Now he's able to step outside himself a bit and notice how he filters out the positive. He's no longer defending himself from his boss's criticism – he "gets it" that in this way, he is negative.

When he finds himself focusing only on the negative, Joe might take out a piece of paper, write down all the negative possibilities in the left-hand column and counter these with positive possibilities in the right-hand column (a single-loop skill applied in a double-loop context).

As Joe observes this pattern consistently over time, he may spontaneously notice both sides of the equation and show this change in his language and in problem-solving capabilities. If so, the experience of reshaping his thinking and behavior has automatically taken him to the transformational or triple-loop level. In this one respect he is no longer the same person he was. Joe now experiences himself and his environment differently.

3. Transformational (Triple-Loop) Learning is a shift in our context or point of view about ourselves. Something we thought and felt (and had manifested in our behavior) has come into question. We may feel exhilarated, stunned, shocked, humiliated, disoriented, and/or depressed at points during this process; the change may happen gradually or all of a sudden; but in this particular context, we will never be the same (there are other contexts by which we operate and which are still open areas for exploring assumptions, etc.).

Joe, for example, may have felt embarrassed to own up to his negative focus because he's always seen himself as optimistic. When he continues to observe this habitual pattern as it occurs, he'll find he begins to notice it without judgment, and eventually will see things differently, as indicated above. Or, he might worry about it for days, putting himself in a tailspin because his self-image is suffering. If Joe stays stuck in this place, he won't make the shift from reframing (double-loop) to transformational (triple-loop) learning. He might conceivably even deny the validity of the feedback he's been given and shift back to the level of single-loop learning, still able to use the new techniques he's learned, but accusing his boss of being unfair, or defending himself from the possibility that he isn't who he thought he was.

Some clients have the tenacity and guts to hang in and incorporate these unfamiliar and often unwanted aspects of themselves. For those who might otherwise be stuck, it helps to reassure them that what they're feeling is natural because they're letting go, in part, of an idealized self-image that has helped them cope since childhood. This difficult part of the passage can be reframed in a positive light. You might say, for example, "This is great. This means you've really shaken up a part of yourself that served you well in the past, but has been keeping you from using your full potential. Your whole view of yourself is changing, and this is exactly where you should be. You’ll find your perception of the world and feelings about yourself shifting in a very positive way."

I always hold it as my goal to encourage transformational learning. Rather than marketing "the Enneagram," I consider it a tool to aid in the process, emphasizing its practicality, describing my own experience, and sharing anonymous examples of how others have benefited. 

Clients are eager to learn more about themselves and what makes other people tick, in the hope of reducing frustration and making their lives more fulfilling. So it's fairly easy to achieve double-loop learning. 

Transformational learning may take a while. For one example, read "Take Time to Celebrate," where I applaud a client of more than six years, recognizing the time and effort involved in truly freeing herself, how she can breathe a little deeper each time she expands the confines of her personality's box. For other examples, read the eighteen stories in Somebody? Nobody? that show how observing and releasing habitual patterns is a complex and continuing journey.

(More about the three levels of learning in Chapter Two of Out of the Box Coaching with the Enneagram) 

Laying Down the Armor

Each Enneagram worldview has some consistent patterns when in the box. For example, unexamined style Eights tend to view the world as a war zone and seek power to avoid feeling vulnerable. There's typically some toggle-switch thinking (“Whose side are you on?”), a fair amount of confrontation (it’s actually a search for truth), and a tendency to believe they’re seeking justice when in fact they want revenge.

All Enneagram styles operate from polarities that maintain their worldviews. Here, it's "Either I'm strong or I'm weak." One coach described a female with these patterns who didn't know why everyone thought she was so tough and asked, "Do I have to bleed all over everyone to be vulnerable?" This sounds like a challenge, but it also reveals the weakness/strength polarity. Notice how she went to an extreme. If she isn’t strong, she’ll “bleed all over everyone.” Clients with this style respond well to humor: “Maybe just a cup of blood!”

One of my clients tried to engage her style Eight husband in a conversation about being less aggressive with friends and business associates. He replied, “What do you want me to do, jump off a cliff?” A natural tendency, in the face of such a response, is to presume the person is ridiculing the issue, or simply being ridiculous. Not so. Underneath their tough exterior, these are the most vulnerable of all the nine Enneagram styles. Hence the need to bluster. They’re reluctant to show vulnerability because they think it really might require jumping off a cliff. 

They like it when you're direct. You could reflect back their either/or assumption and suggest, “Let’s talk about how showing vulnerability can be a strength.”
 
Another client I’ll call Mike said, “I’m working with a therapist who believes I have MUCH anger suppressed in me. As I was mulling this over, I remembered reading we're an anger-based type. I don’t really feel angry. Nor do my close friends see anger in me or from me. How do I access and/or release my anger?” 

Style Eights who lack awareness of their inner workings don’t understand how anger motivates their behavior. For example, they might criticize someone harshly without being aware of any inner rancor, yet the recipient experiences them as fierce and hostile. They may be surprised and apologize if people who feel attacked reveal their pain, because usually they don’t intend to hurt.  

Mike said his friends didn’t see him as angry. A key pattern of this style is to be protective, even compassionate with a few trusted others, so he probably shows his vulnerability and not his anger to his closest friends. I recommended he seek specific feedback from people who aren’t close to him and who therefore may not typically experience his softer side: “You can pay close attention to others’ nonverbal reactions to you and probe for specifics; e.g., ‘I can tell by the look on your face, you’re struggling with what I just said. Is it the content that’s troubling, or how I said it, or something else?’"
 
Asking for descriptive feedback is a good idea for all of us. We can’t know for sure how we come across until we can see ourselves through others’ eyes. This is especially important for style Eight. These clients typically feel innocent inside, as Mike did, yet their intimidating demeanor may keep others from giving them the feedback they need.

I affirmed this with Mike, and suggested he could help people be honest with him by saying something like, "I have somewhat of a weakness in understanding what makes people tick, and I need your help." I also told him: "LISTEN to their feedback without a rebuttal. Ask for specific examples and don’t argue with them." 

The Paradoxical Approach to Problem Solving

In a recent blog post "Alter the Interaction, Not the Other Person," I describe a couple caught up in a self-fulfilling negative cycle, and how to interrupt that particular dynamic with paradoxical problem solving. 

Below are key components of this approach, drawn from work at Stanford's Mental Research Institute (The Tactics of Change, Fisch, Weakland, and Segal).

The Importance of Reframing

• Sometimes "more of the same" increases resistance to change; e.g., a colleague who resents you telling her what she should do will not be easily influenced by your telling her she should not resent your comments. Your attempted solution is part of the problem, creating more of the same dynamic.
• Far more effective is to lift yourself out of the situation and examine all behaviors, including the usual attempted solution, as problems to be solved.
• Reality is only what a sufficient number of people agree is real. Paradoxical problem-solving redefines or "reframes" reality in a way that's compatible with the worldview of each person involved.
• Paradoxical problem solving depends on the element of the unexpected. In the example above, asking your colleague what she thinks should be done is far more likely to be a source of influence than telling her what she should do.
• Reframing a situation actually changes your perception of it. You're finding ways to influence the other person more effectively; at the same time you're being influenced as you come to see the world from the other's perspective.

Underlying Assumptions

• It isn't necessary to find fault.
• Nobody has to win; nobody has to lose. (People who come from win/lose positions are polarized ("Either I do what I want, or I'll have to do what you want"), which blocks the possibility of an unanticipated, creative option.
• If what you're doing isn't working, do something else.

Some Paradoxical Change Strategies

• Less of the Same: When a pattern maintains the status quo instead of bringing about change, systematically discontinue it, interrupt it, do something different.
• Making the Covert Overt: Covert behavior has enormous power to maintain and reinforce an adversary relationship, and people are reluctant to talk about conflict openly, even when the problem is apparent. Often this is because we're not aware of how our own behavior contributes to the situation. Use this tactic only if you're willing to hear about and examine your own behavior.  :-) 
• The Tai Chi Method (also called Prescribing the Symptom): Instead of fighting a particular behavior, consciously engage in it.

Bite the Bullet

I’ll have to bite the bullet,” said Sandy, an entrepreneur who hated day-to-day paperwork. He transformed that negative, energy-draining metaphor to one he, who loves Jeeps, could use to greater advantage: "I'll jump in the Jeep!" How did he do that? By going on a creative excursion, a symbolic side trip into an arena seemingly unrelated to his stated problem. 

There are three key steps in this technique: 

First, identify the elements of a problem you haven’t been able to solve. Sandy was impassioned about a new project but bored with the mundane details of his business plan. “I guess I’ll have to bite the bullet,” he repeatedly groused. He knew the phrase refers to how soldiers took their minds off surgical pain before anesthetics were available. In parallel, he found it agonizingly painful to take those necessary steps to achieve his goal and had to “bite down” to help himself bear it. He wanted to break through his pattern of avoiding those details.

Second, go on a mental excursion for several minutes, letting your imagination explore a seemingly unrelated arena. If you need to stimulate ideas, you can brainstorm a list of anything imaginable – such as archaeology, biology, cooking, espionage, oceanography, parenting, space travel, transportation – then pick one arena that feels intuitively interesting. Sandy picked "transportation," and settled on cars. As he played with aspects of driving a car – velocity, heading toward a destination, traveling in an enjoyable way – he exclaimed, “I love Jeeps!”

Third, do a force fit; bring the novel ideas gained in the symbolic excursion to apply to the original problem. Sandy explored the similarities and differences of a bullet and a Jeep. Drawing on the image of enjoying a Jeep ride across bumpy ground, he created the metaphor "jump in the Jeep" to replace "bite the bullet." Same benefit – a reminder to get busy exploring some difficult terrain – but with an image that attracted him. This seemingly small shift released new energy in Sandy to approach the nitty-gritty details with more pleasurable anticipation.

Now look for the above three steps in this additional example:

New coach Alicia had completed her coach certification, was clear about her business vision, had defined her target market, and was working on her web site. “I’m on overload,” she sighed. “I see a lot of coaches farther along than I am in marketing to my target audience – they have their web sites, their newsletters; they’ve been there for so long. What does little start-up me have to offer that hasn’t already been said?” Alicia identified her key issue as "exhaustion with the process." She took a symbolic side trip into areas of experience where exhaustion occurs in pursuit of a goal.

A picture came to her mind of a mountain and a peak. "I think I was brought here," she said, "because I enjoy hiking and backpacking. There's always this mind game of 'Oh, it's so far' but once I get up there, the feeling I'm going to have!" Alicia let this picture work in her mind. "There's no short-cut," she concluded. "You can take a helicopter or drive your car up, but when you make the climb on your own, you're so much more proud of yourself."

A Moment's Insight

While in graduate school, I awakened every morning to a large poster on my bedroom wall with the quote on the left. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was not the well-known poet of "Old Ironsides" and "The Chambered Nautilus" -- that was his father. Holmes Junior was an associate Supreme Court Justice and one of the most cited 20th century American legal scholars. 

True to what may have been his intended meaning, the poster mainly symbolized my many intellectual aha's as a Ph.D. candidate in social psychology.

But there's is a deeper and equally meaningful interpretation of the poster. 

The butterfly, of course, represents an obvious and compelling transformation in its metamorphosis from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to gorgeous flight. And the word "insight" means grasping the inward or hidden nature of things.

If I were limited to recommending only one skill to coaches, it would be to develop a finely honed intuition. There are many traditional approaches to intuition training, but my path has been a bit unconventional. I've written elsewhere about my insights using Silva methods. Later, inspired by Carl Jung, I began using the I Ching when feeling stuck on how to approach a client situation or consulting project.

For example, because of my work with a toy company's plant manager and his team, his boss (the parent company's VP) invited me to his annual retreat for all plant managers, to review the MBTI from their previous year's retreat and teach them the Enneagram. It is a BIG company. This was a MAJOR opportunity for me. Except for my client and his boss they were all STRANGERS to me. I only had ONE day to cover two complicated systems. Can you put yourself in my place, and feel the pressure to my ego, the anxiety rising?

I couldn't seem to focus on how to design the retreat, and was actually considering backing out. So I got out my I Ching workbook and threw the coins. I do not remember which hexagram resulted; it might have been #13. I was barely aware of it even then, because shifting my focus to invite my intuition freed me from logical attempts to understand, and I "heard" the clear message to quit worrying what they might think of me, and focus on their needs (yes, duh!).

I called the VP and asked for a thumbnail sketch of all the participants, made some educated guesses about their range of Enneagram styles, bought amusing t-shirts as prizes for "best in type" (on the perfectionist's t-shirt two buzzards sit on a branch, one telling the other "Patience my ass, I'm gonna kill somebody!") and created a client-centered design they appreciated and enjoyed.

You could argue that I might have designed an effective workshop using pure logic. Sure. But I was blocked and needed to get out of my head. Since then I've learned to tune in without props. Whenever I hear myself thinking "Yikes, not sure where to go with this..." I take a deep breath, imagine myself completely in tune and connected with my client(s), and picture (da dum) a butterfly.