SPEAKER_01 0:01

Where did the Enneagram really come from? Is it actually 2,000 years old? Who helped create the Enneagram? Is the Enneagram spiritually based? Is there any science behind the Enneagram? Is the Enneagram more accurate than some of the other tools out there? Colby, Disk, Myers, Briggs, etc. We are getting into the answers to all of these questions and more with a very special guest today who will be sharing not only the origin of the real origin, we're busting through myths and misconceptions, the real origin of the Enneagram, and we are also going to be talking about the evolution and what to expect in the future with the Enneagram with my Enneagram mentor, teacher, Miriam Socora. Now we dove into the history. We also got into the history of some of the pieces of the Enneagram, such as wings, and that is a really fun story and something you probably have never heard of before. So we get into that. And then, like I said, we kind of look at where has the Enneagram, how has it evolved and changed, and what changes can we expect in the future. So this is actually going to be a two-part interview with Mario Socora. Now you've heard me talk about Mario before. He is the um founder president of Enneagram, or I'm sorry, Awareness to Action International, which is the methodology that we use here at Enneagram MBA. Mario has a long list of accomplishment and he has been around for a long time. He has over 25 years of experience, experience, not just in the Enneagram, but specifically in performance improvement, in clear thinking, and in decision making. So it's just not, you know, random facts about the Enneagram. What I love about Mario and what really drew me to his work was the application piece, the um the clear thinking, the usefulness of the way that he talks about the Enneagram. He is a trusted leadership advisor and executive coach to senior executives all over the world. He also, with um his company Awareness to Action International, has a global network of coaches, consultants like myself and then other HR and uh talent development professionals inside of organizations inside of organizations, um, where he's able to help all sizes of companies from all over the world develop effective leaders and teams using his awareness to action Enneagram model. He has created an innovative approach to the Enneagram that combines psychological, behavioral, and leadership insights. So that's what I'm saying when we're we're talking about very real-world application uses to the Enneagram. Um, he uses these insights to help both individuals and groups reach their full potential. He has advised and trained leaders and their teams in various industries from manufacturing, pharmaceutical, security, banking, finance, private equity, and venture capital. And he is the author or co-author of five different books. Um and he is a leader in the Enneagram community, including former being former president of the International Enneagram Association. He is also a dad to four boys and a husband to a wife, where they all live out in Philadelphia. And like I said, he is my go-to Enneagram teacher and mentor. So I am very excited, honored. We're we're all um, I think privileged to be able to hear from Mario um specifically on this topic. So after this, I said, Me and we we got our credits for our Enneagram history 101. So without further ado, I will see you on the other side where we will hear from Mario on the real story about how the Enneagram came about. You're listening to the Enneagram at Work Podcast, a show about understanding people at work, including yourself. I'm your host, Sarah Wallace, and I'm looking forward to diving into this week's episode with you. Would you give us just a little bit of background on kind of how you how you got into the Enneagram? I know you've been doing it for a while. So if you're willing to share that and kind of set the stage for this.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Sure. I'll even put dates on it. Uh yeah. I I have I have no real shame about my age. So uh yeah, you know, but uh so um yeah, so I was introduced to the Enneagram in 1994, and um I was doing corporate communications at the time and uh for a company and kind of fell in love with the Enneagram, like you know, a lot of people do. Uh I think that the Enneagram is one of those things that people become passionate about, right? Either they're indifferent to it or they're passionate about it. You rarely see people who are just you know kind of in between somewhere. And um, you know, I was interested in personality models at the time, uh, but this one just sort of blew me away, right? I mean, I, you know, my first exposure was, you know, some friends introduced me to it, and then uh I started reading Don Riso's first edition of Personality Types. And uh as I was reading it, I was just you know amazed at how accurate the description was of me and you know how it was much deeper than anything else I'd ever encountered before. So I kind of became obsessed with the Enneagram. And um, you know, back then it was pre-internet basically, and there were a handful of books, and there were some major teachers who would do trainings and even cassette tapes, you know, if any, you know, you remember cassette tapes that were, you know, people were uh using back then. Um so I started consuming everything I could. Um then in 1997 I took a role with a little boutique consulting company that was doing executive coaching and team building. And uh um so I started with them and then realized immediately that the Enneagram would be a really powerful tool for um, you know, those sort of activities. And um, so I started integrating the Enneagram into the work that I was doing there. Um and over time you start to realize that, you know, particularly going back to the literature at the time, which was much more limited than it is today, um, you know, the the material was great, but it didn't necessarily transfer to the business world very well. And uh so when I started using it in organizations, I started to see limitations, um, what I felt were some inaccuracies, what I felt were some dubious, you know, philosophical and scientific statements being made. And so I started looking for a way to, you know, think about and talk about the Enneagram in language that felt right for me, uh, both personally and intellectually and in the corporate world. So I ended up, you know, really doing a lot of work with um, you know, approaching the Enneagram from a different angle and uh you know, stepped on a lot of toes doing that. And uh, you know, and it took a while for a while. I was kind of you know the black sheep of the Enneagram world. And then, you know, for whatever reason, I got asked to be on the board of directors of the International Enneagram Association and eventually became well, quickly actually became president of the organization and sort of became more mainstream. So um, you know, I've been working with the Enneagram for 30 years now, and um, you know, it's uh a fundamental tool to pretty much everything I do with my clients.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Okay. I and uh I am glad I talk a lot, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:25

So I, you know, bear with me though. Feel free to jump in and say, okay, boring story, old man. Let's move on.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

It's all good stuff, it's all good stuff, and I'll do a proper intro uh into this, but I I will also add, um, you know, Mario, I I consider you my Enneagram mentor in uh in all of this. And um, so I've enjoyed learning from you, and I'm I'm looking forward to sharing you with the with the podcast listeners to also um learn from you. So we have the history kind of on your um end 30 years using the Enneagram specifically in the workplace. So lots of time to figure out what works, what doesn't. And I want to I want to maybe dig into that a little bit. Um, but now I'm curious to hear the the real story on the history of the Enneagram. Um, because I get asked this question. We I read about it in other books. And so um I thought we could talk about you know the history of the Enneagram and maybe then maybe some misconceptions about it. So where where the heck did the Enneagram come from?

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Yeah, sure, sure. And um if you don't mind, I want to uh address something else first. And this is one of my annoying habits of talking about what I want to talk about rather than the question I'm being asked. But just, you know, even though I primarily work in organizations, you know, I have a background in theology and philosophy. And, you know, I work in, you know, I teach the Enneagram in other arenas beyond uh just the business world. So, you know, some of the changes that I've made to the way I teach the Enneagram are not just to adopt it to the business world, right? Because that's something I get accused of a lot. Well, he just does it that way because it's you know the business world. But some of my you know concerns are more related to philosophy and you know science. And so I, you know, I just like to kind of bring that out uh because it helps people understand that I have a broader perspective and just you know using it in companies. Okay. So uh yeah, so uh again, you you know, part of being you know around for a long time is that you get to witness a lot of the history firsthand, right? So uh, you know, and then um, you know, there are a lot of people who are not as active in the Enneagram world, you know, some of whom have you know become inactive or even passed away, who you know I knew and you know had opportunities to talk to and that sort of thing. So uh there's a lot of discrepancy between what the sort of popular history of the Enneagram is versus what the real history of the Enneagram is. And one of the problems is because you know there are multiple ways to use the word Enneagram. And um, so very often when people are talking about the history, they're talking about different things, right? So there's the Enneagram of personality, okay, which is the Enneagram as a model of nine distinct personality types. Okay, so that's one Enneagram. There's the Enneagram as a diagram, okay. So that drawing, you know, that funny drawing with the nine points and the nine lines that people use for a variety of purposes, you know, as kind of a process model, for example, right? Um, so you know, there's the Enneagram of process, the diagram itself. And then there are idea there are ideas that pre-existed the Enneagram personality that the main, you know, uh people who started the Enneagram personality drew from, right? So it's kind of like, you know, you you can uh take a school of psychology, okay, that, you know, a school of psychology, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, for example. I think it was Aaron Beck who, you know, first came up with that and popularized it and systematized it. You know, he's drawing on sources from other places, right? A little Freud here, a little William James here, a bit of Socrates here, you know, that sort of thing. But that doesn't mean that Socrates was teaching cognitive behavioral therapy, right? Just because Beck drew on that for you know his ideas. And so when we're talking about the history of the Enneagram, we have to ask ourselves first, okay, exactly what do we mean by Enneagram in this case? Um, so obviously there are ideas drawn. So it the Enneagram personality started with Oscar Achazo. Okay. Oscar Acchazo was a you know Bolivian mystic, died a few years ago. Um, based he had moved and opened a kind of a wisdom school in Arica, Chile, a small city in the north of Chile. And he was the first one to say, okay, I'm going to start mapping dynamics of personality and other things, but dynamics of personality to this diagram. Okay. Diagram existed before him, but nobody had ever said this point represents this personality type, this point represents that personality type, et cetera. Okay. And there was a big legal case, and you can look this up where um uh Echazo sued uh Helen Palmer, who, you know, one of their early Enneagram teachers, um, over copyright issues, right? It's a very famous intellectual property lawsuit that a lot has been written about. And it was determined in that case that the you know the Enneagram of personality legally started with Echazo. Now, it wasn't something he could copyright, okay, um, because the judge said, you know, Achazo claimed, I'm just describing laws of the universe, I'm just describing, you know, human phenomena. And the judge said, Well, you can't copyright that, so you know, you can't copyright the Enneagram. Now, that said, Palmer did have to put a disclaimer in the first edition of her book saying that yeah, this idea has originated from a chazo. Okay. So the Enneagram of Personality as we know it started with Achazo in the 1960s. Now, one of his students was a guy named Claudio Narano. Claudio Naranjo, another, well, a Chilean, but the Chazo was from Bolivia, but uh Naranjo was from Valparaiso, Chile. Um, a very well-known gestalt psychologist and one of the early people, along with Timothy Leary and John Lilly in the uh uh the psychedelics era of the 60s, right? His first books were actually on psychedelic drugs and you know their uses and that sort of thing. So he was a psychiatrist and he took inspiration from Dechazo and said, okay, there's some good ideas here, but it needs work. And he started associating psychological principles. Uh he started looking at the DSM of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and thinking about these types in terms of these um psychological phenomena. Now, he took some of the more traditional stuff from Achazo, this idea of centers, for example. He took some stuff from Gurjeef. You know, Narano was a big synthesizer, right? So he took things from Idris Shah and from you know the Buddhists, and he kind of put together this uh uh school he called Seekers After Truth or Sat, part of which used the Enneagram. But it's a different version from Achazo. If you read Achazo's writings about the Enneagram and you read Narano's, they're different. And Ichazo said, you know, Narano doesn't know what he's talking about, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Um, I'll back up before I go into the more into the history of personality. Let's talk about the diagram. Okay. Okay. So the diagram itself, the earliest uses of it that we know about are with Gurjiv in the early 1900s. So G.I. Gurdjieff was a Russian-Armenian mystic and spiritual teacher. Very popular in some circles, quite frankly. You know, I I don't think all that much of his work. Um, you know, uh some of it's a little bit crazy, some of it's decent, but the stuff that's decent you can find other places. So but anyway, very, you know, influential person in some circles. He used the diagram to describe processes, right? The laws of the universe and you know, the way things unfold. But he did not use it as a model of personality. Okay. Um, so it's just a process model. Now, again, there are ideas that all of these people took from way back, just like any school of you know, any body of knowledge does. But the Enneagram doesn't exist prior to that.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

There's this story that it came from the Gnostics, there's this story that it came from these people or those people. It didn't. What they were teaching was different, okay, similar. You know, people talk about one person, Ramon Lull, who, you know, oh, Lul drew the Enneagram sort of thing. No, he didn't. It looks kind of like the Enneagram, but Lul talked about 16 vices instead of the nine that we have in the Enneagram literature, right? So the reality is, is even though there are old ideas holding to what people teach about the Enneagram, the diagram starts with Gergief as far as we have any evidence whatsoever. And as a personality model, it starts with a chazo.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Where does the 2,000-year-old ancient Sufi system come from?

SPEAKER_00 17:52

So let's start with the Sufis. And you can find a video on YouTube if you search on Origin of the Enneagram and Claudio Naranjo, where he's talking to these two other guys, E.J. Gold is one of them, um, in what looks like somebody's basement, about the origin of the Enneagram. And Naranjo there admits that he just made up the connection to the Sufis. Okay. I have a good friend who is a Sufi scholar and a Sufi Sheikh. And, you know, we became friends because he had reached out to me about my book, was interested in some of the things I was doing. And he said to me, Mario, why do people talk about the Enneagram being a Sufi model? I am a scholar of Sufism. It just ain't there, right? Some people have, you know, glommed on to this idea. Where did the idea come from? Naranjo admits to just making it up in order to promote his ideas. He very specifically says in the video, I took a lesson from Oscar Wilde, who said, if you want people to think what you're saying is important, say somebody important said it or somebody famous said it. So Naranjo was studying with Idris Shah and some of the other uh Sufis at the time. Uh and he said, No, I'm gonna say the Sufis made it up. So it's all just BS. Okay. But people love a good story.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Right. And people people need, you know, you know, in in logic, there's the um uh the argument from uh uh antiquity, okay, which is this tendency to say, oh, something's old, so it must be good.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Well, you know, there's a lot of things that are old that aren't that good, okay. They used to bleed people as a medical treatment. Okay, it's not a great idea, even though it's an ancient idea. And um so you know, people just love to, you know, make things exotic and mystical. And instead of feeling confident in the value of the idea, they feel this need to root it in antiquity for some reason. And uh, you know, and I've got news for you. I mean, you know, we we we don't go back to doing things the old way because they're naturally better, right? I mean, I'm I'm talking to you on a fairly recent uh Apple computer. Okay, it's a few years old, right? But I'm not going back to a Commodore 64 just because it's older and that's therefore it's better, right? I mean, that's silly, okay? So um, yeah, but you know, it's just this it's two things. It's a desire for importance and substance and justification. And the Enneagram draws a lot of people who, you know, are kind of fantasy prone, quite frankly. You know, they love to, you know, it's like in a beautiful mind, you know, the movie, or, you know, or even with some conspiratorial mindset, it's this need to connect dots, okay, even though those dots are really, really tenuous, and you know, but it makes me feel good to think that I am part of some ancient wisdom tradition. Okay, but it's not.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Yeah. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

So that's losing friends with every moment of this uh podcast. I know, but that's but that's okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Well, we we want to we're we're here to set the record straight. And um, you know, this kind of makes sense because I've I've looked at other things like the disc, for example. I think it uh originated in like the late 1920s, maybe early 1930s. Um, so again, it's not like this ancient 2000-year-old system either. Um, you know, kind of going back to this question of the the copyright um case with Helen Palmer and and kind of what's legally, you know, what we're able to to use. Um, this is a question that I get as well. Cause sometimes when I teach the Enneagram, they'll say, Oh, uh, you know, is this is this yours? Like is, you know, and and um Whereas the DIS, the cold, I think almost every other system that I'm familiar with has originated with one person. Can you talk a little bit about how the Enneagram is different in that way?

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Yeah. So that's I think one of the blessings and the curses of the Enneagram is that it's not a proprietary model, right? It's not one person who said, you know, okay, this is the Enneagram, you know, there, you know, and this is, you know, the holy dogma, you know, or something. Um now, because Achazo kind of made the claim that all I'm doing is describing natural phenomenon, it took away his ability to copyright the concept. Okay. But he could copy copyright his terminology. Okay. So he has specific terminology that fall under the copyright rules of you know everybody else, right? So, you know, for example, yeah, you know, I have uh you know very specific names for each of the types, right? One is striving to feel perfect, two is striving to feel connected, etc. Now, technically, I mean, I c you know, those belong to my copyright, okay. And, you know, I publish them in books and in articles and that sort of thing. And by doing so, and you know, copywriting that, okay, that's mine. Now, I don't, you know, sue people who start to use my terminology without my, you know, I mean, I don't really care about that, right? But um, but you know, there was a lot of litigiousness early on in the Enneagram world, uh, which is why, you know, everybody had their own set of descriptors around the diagram, right? Because, you know, uh, you know, Chazo had his and then said, Hey, you can't, I can't copyright this idea, but I can copyright the this pattern of words, right? And I will sue you and win if you use them, right? And that's sort of filtered down. And there were a lot of lawsuits and threats of lawsuits in the early days of the Enneagram of personality, which, you know, so everybody started using their own names, you know. Palmer and Daniels called, you know, the sixth loyal skeptic, for example, right? And I forget what Rhyso and Hudson call it, you know, and Jerry Wagner calls it something else, and I call it something else, et cetera. Um, you know, again, it's just basic copyright stuff. Um, but they all sort of point to the same thing, which is good. Now, with the other tools, you know, Myers-Briggs, Disc, et cetera, it's different because they're the ones saying, hey, this is our tool, it's copywritten, this is the official language, et cetera, et cetera. You know, you can't change it, it's branded, you know, all these sort of things. Um, so it's protected. Again, with the Enneagram, the cat got out of the bag. And so, you know, everybody just started saying, Well, I want to write a book about this, but I can't use, you know, this person's terms or that person's terms, so I'm going to come up with my own.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

You know, some that are good. You know, I like to think that mine, you know, improve upon the system, right? But, you know, that's that's my opinion. And um, you know, but uh and other people might think that theirs improve upon the system and so forth. But you know, it's a it's a it's uh kind of a subjective call on that. But it does create confusion.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Yes, it does, it does.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Yes, and there are also, you know, along the way, these different um, you know, um different dimensions of the model started to accrue. So, for example, wings.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

I would just that was my next question.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Yeah, so you know, so there's wings, there are different triadic groupings and you know all these things that different teachers would come along and say, um, well, you know what, here's what happens. And so I've got these three triads and you know, all that sort of stuff. And other people look at that and say, Yeah, well, you know, I don't find that that useful, I don't find that that accurate, so I don't use it. But there are people out there who assume this is part of the quote-unquote Enneagram, even though it's just so-and-so's Enneagram. So I think it's important when we're studying the Enneagram or teaching the Enneagram, we're clear on saying, I'm taking this approach, right? It's the Enneagram Institute approach or the narrative approach or the you know, whatever approach, so that people know it's not apples to apples all the time.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Yes, wings, um, tri-types, the like all yes. And so it you're what you're saying is they've kind of other people have kind of added to it.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yes, they're bolt-ons.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

As we go, bolt-ons, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:39

Um you want to hear the story of the wings?

SPEAKER_01 26:41

Uh yes, I would. I think I think the listeners would as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Yeah. So um, so when Oscar Chazo uh he spoke Spanish, okay, and um, you know, I think he spoke a little bit of English, but his English was limited. And um, so you know, like anybody who's speaking in a second language, they often you know try to make do with the best words that they have to explain something. And so what he was you know trying to do at some point was explain um the traditional uh you know vices of the types because the types were under Chazo's perspective, each type represents a you know one of nine vices, okay. And uh so he said, in order to understand these vices at a deeper level, it helps to think of the two vices on either side of the diagram folding in like wings onto your um point. Okay, so you as a seven, if you think, okay, what is gluttony? Okay, what's one another way of thinking about gluttony? I think of the lust at point um eight and the uh the fear at point six, and those two things sort of fold in, okay, and there's an anxiety, a desire mixed with an anxiety. So I don't have the intensity of the eight in going after that one thing. So instead, I'll go after a lot of things, right? But with less intensity, right? So you know, and so gluttony is I want a little this, a little of that, a little that, a little that, you know, and and so forth, and I want more, and so whereas lust is I want that, and I want it bad, and I'm not gonna stop until I get it. So again, he was helping, he was trying to illustrate what these vices are like, and he had this language of winks. So, um, or something he called winks. And now Claudio Naranjo, after studying with the Chazo, uh, goes to uh Berkeley, California and decides that he's gonna do a 10-week Enneagram training. It's gonna be one night a week for 10 weeks, and each night he's talking about a different topic. And on week number eight, he says, Next time we're gonna talk about Oscar's idea of the wings.

unknown 28:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Now there was a Jesuit um professor named Bob Oakes in that training, and after week eight, he had to go back to Loyola from Berkeley. Okay. So he was not at weeks nine and ten of the training. So he goes back to um Loyola, starts teaching what he had learned to lots of different people, they become fascinated with it, talking about it, all this sort of stuff, and they start noticing discrepancies. Why is this seven not like that seven, etc.? Okay. And so at some point he says, you know, it must be that wing thing that Claudio mentioned. And maybe the reason this seven's not like that seven is because, you know, it's this wing. It's a seven with an eight-wing versus a seven with a six-wing. Okay. Now, here's the problem. Number one, that's not what Oscar was teaching, and it wasn't even what Claudio Naranjo was teaching. Claudio Naranjo didn't talk about eight with a seven-wing, eight with a six, you know, the nine-wing, etc. That's not part of his teaching. It wasn't part of Helen Palmer's teaching, who was one of the early students. It came out of the Jesuit approach. All right. Now, in week 10, Naranjo talked about the three instinctual subtypes. Okay. And but Bob Oakes had no clue. He didn't know anything about the subtypes. So what he was seeing without realizing it and without having a language for it was variation based on subtype. But since he didn't have that language, the only language he had was this idea of wings. So that became the theory. Now, here's what happened with me. So my initial understanding of the Enneagram was through, you know, the the kind of the more Jesuit tradition that came down through Don Riso and Russ Hudson. Uh and, you know, Russ is still a very good friend of mine, and you know, we've taught together and all these things. Um, and this idea of wings became really solidified. You know, Don really did a lot of you know uh work on this. And Don was not a big subtypes guy, you know, he didn't even learn about it until very much later on. And even when he did know about it, he didn't, he just didn't think about it that much, right? Russ much more focused on instinctual biases. But this idea of there being two types of sevens and two types of eights had already taken root. And what I started to notice was a couple of things. Number one, people were always arguing about what wing am I, right? Am I this wing or that wing? And no, I think you're that wing, and I think you're this wing, and all this sort of stuff. So it was always kind of an uncomfortable idea. And most people didn't feel, or a lot of people felt like they didn't quite fit into either wing description. I know I'm a nine, but I'm not a nine with an eight-wing, I'm not really a nine with a seven, you know, or a nine with a one-wing. What's going on? And then when you go back and you read the descriptions of the wings in, you know, particularly the you know, the Rizo Hudson work, I can look at it and say, all right, when you're talking about an eight with a seven wing here, you're talking about what I call the transmitting eight, right? But again, they you know didn't have the language at the time. Don didn't have the language, so he was, you know, just giving it a different name. The problem is that they were taking three characters and squeezing them into two boxes, so it never really worked. Okay. Now you can rationalize anything, right? I mean, once you have a model in your head, you can do confirmation bias and fit into it. But what I started to realize, number one, people always got into arguments about wings when I was teaching it in organizations. So I just stopped teaching it, right? And then I started to realize, well, wait a minute, it's actually a redundancy, and it's not, it's a less accurate redundancy because the instinctual subtypes describe the differences so much better and so much more clearly. Okay. So I don't teach the wings because number one, they they they don't clarify, they actually muddy things. And it's a, you know, it's what engineers would call a clues, right? It's a piece of duct tape around a wire instead of you know fixing the wiring and something. Okay. So it's just not feasible long term.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Well, and this might be a good time to kind of start moving into your description of those three, what some people might know as subtypes, and just kind of start talking about the evolution of the Enneagram and some changes that you've noticed, some changes that you have made yourself. And one of those um is I think what what drew me to your awareness to action approach was the three um instinctual biases. All right, that is going to be it for this part, part one with our interview uh with Mario. And then next week we are going to get to hear the rest of this interview and really look at the talk about the evolution of the Enneagram and what trends or what uh future expectations Mario sees for the Enneagram. So I hope to see you again for part two next week. Until then, have a wonderful week and we'll talk soon.