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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. In today's episode, I'm going to share some of our more recent feedback that we have received from a couple of different workshops. Um, and one of which was led by one of our visiting facilitators, Dee. And uh I hope to have him on the podcast again. He's been on the show before several months ago talking about the instinctual bias uh that we call transmitting and how that shows up for him and specifically how that overlays with his type three. So I will uh I'll have to link that interview um in the show notes. And I'm hoping to have him back though to talk about some interesting topics. Um, but for today, I'm gonna be sharing some of the feedback his group shared and then a couple of recent uh groups that I have had. And I have said this in other episodes, so you may have heard me say this before. Uh the feedback that I'm about to share, it's it's kind of cool because this is this is very common from what I have seen over the course of the years of doing this at this point. Yes, of course, people will here and there say, Oh, I, you know, I liked the slides, or you know, the facilitator. You know, Dee had some great comments about his facilitating. I've had some things people say about the facilitation style. Um, people will talk about how important some of the self-awareness that they are taking away was, how sometimes brutally honest, it was brutal truths that they're taking away. Um, and they they are, of course, are taking away self-awareness insight. But the most common piece of feedback, time and time and time and time again, has to do with people really enjoying sharing, having the opportunity and the space to share about what's resonating with their type, or really just, hey, here's I get to share a little bit about me. And I want you to be able to understand me a little bit better. And that does feel so good. As human beings, we want that. We want to feel seen, we want to feel understood. So having the opportunity and the encouragement to say, hey, talk about yourself, share about yourself. What, what, what about this resonates, what doesn't, uh, it can feel really good. And then the other part of that is I really enjoyed learning about the people that I work with day in and day out. That was really helpful. I I see now why we met a but might have butted heads in this situation, or I really have so much more empathy and understanding now for this person. Or um, that was really kind of funny. Now we now we joke about our differences rather than get really frustrated by them. So I'm gonna share some of the feedback. And if you have been one of our workshop attendees before, hopefully you can relate to some of this feedback. Um, and if you haven't, you may still find yourself thinking, oh yeah, I could totally the in this is what the Enneagram has done for me too. I really appreciate that. And so wherever you are on that, if you appreciate it and can resonate with it, um, I'm also gonna give you a couple of, let's say actually have five kind of DIY ways to continue some of the conversations within your team, inside your own organizations. And we have done an episode, let's see, episode 126 in the past called Enneagram Discussion Questions for Your Team. I'll link that in the show notes as well. This is the fifth most downloaded episode of all time in the history of our Enneagram at Work podcast, I guess, since 2022. Uh, so if you have not listened to that one, you'll definitely want to check that one out. And I'm gonna give you five other ideas. Some of it's discussion questions, I guess. Um, some of them are just kind of ideas for how to keep some of these really meaningful conversations that people are really enjoying going, how to keep them going. So I want to share this feedback with you first, though. And uh let's see here. The question is, and we asked this after every workshop, it's evolved, it's changed, but I think in the last year or so, the question has been which part of the workshop did you find the most helpful or engaging and why? So I'm gonna read some of these from um Dee's workshop and my recent workshops. Somebody said the most helpful or engaging thing was at the end when we got into groups and discussed our preferences and who we work really well with, and then who we had some more challenging times working with and why that is, and then what can be changed slash adjusted for to work better together. Somebody else said at the end, the discussion between our types and which type work well together and where there might be challenges and why. So very similar, uh, right there. Somebody else said, I enjoyed the group breakouts where we broke out into the same type where we were with our same type team members. It was comforting to know others overthink like me. And this is, I love this piece of feedback. And there's some version of this feedback that we get where it's like, I loved where we broke out into the same types because it was so validating. It was like therapy. It felt like I wasn't the only one. Turns out I'm not crazy, or if I'm crazy, there's other people that are crazy too. So I I love, I always love seeing that one. Uh, somebody else said, I enjoyed all of the open discussion. It was very encouraging and very insightful. Learning how the different traits interact and are perceived and each other perceive and perceived each other was fascinating. Somebody else said the sharing portion was the most helpful. It was great to see how others understand from different perspectives. Uh, this next one might be one of my favorites uh this year. It's they said, you know, although it was a little awkward, I thought that the group discussion was very insightful and opened up a larger conversation to have in the future. Oh my gosh, so much about this one I loved. Um sometimes, you know, it is a little, it can be a little awkward to have these conversations, but I think that comment right there is a testament to the culture of this specific team that, you know, some of these conversations might be a little weird, they might be a little difficult, but they have created this culture where, hey, it's okay. You know, we don't all have to be robots. It's okay to speak up, share us how you share how you're feeling. Obviously, do it in a respectful, kind way. Um, but we're able to kind of talk about, hey, you know, kind of really get into it so that you can get through some of that tension. You can resolve some of those issues and move forward and learn from them and probably have them again, but maybe now you're better equipped to get through them faster or more productively or with less stress or frustration. Um, and then I also really loved how they they they spelled it out and said the discussion during the workshop was really insightful and it opened up a larger conversation to have in the future. And so that, especially when we're just doing one workshop, you know, it's like going to the gym one time, you know, it's like, okay, that felt good. It felt really good to get a workout in, sweat a little, work my muscles, you know, I might be sore tomorrow as I work so hard. But if you don't go back, right, you're not gonna see the results. And so, you know, uh, this team is already thinking, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna go back to the gym, you know. Maybe Sarah won't be there, maybe Dee won't be there with us for this next conversation, but now we have some some guidance on how to go about it. And the door has been opened to have that. So I really like that for those clients who are just able to do one workshop, at least in the beginning. Uh, let's see, somebody else had said the team discussion was my favorite. Small groups able to discuss how we can do things better to enhance our relationship with the different types who have different strengths. Somebody else said my it was most helpful breaking off into groups, joyed the round tables. Uh, somebody else said, let's see, uh it was helpful to talk about, to talk about and compare the ways our different types on the team interact with each other. Somebody else said, I really enjoyed the group discussions. I learned a lot about people in general and my co-workers. I enjoyed breaking, somebody else said I enjoyed breaking out into our same number teams and discussing how we fit in that number. It was interesting to see how vastly different personalities can still have the same number or type on the Enneagram. I really liked that one too. Um, and so I I guess I guess I'll I'll leave it there. Um there's there's more, but you you get the picture. Um, people are really uh into, yeah, somebody else said breaking out into groups with our types to discuss our strengths and our struggles. Um and so you you get the picture, right? People want to talk to each other. They enjoy whether it is in a mixed type breakout group, whether you're with your team members, maybe who are made up of different types, or you're having a larger department discussion, depending on the group dynamic, the group size, where different departments are sharing, different types are sharing, and people are really enjoying the group opportunity where they're with the similar Enneagram type and where they feel like, oh, I feel seen, you know, it's not just me kind of thing. And so what I heard, and and hopefully you did too, um, is that hey, I like to learn about my coworkers, and I also like to have a space to be able to kind of share, you know, more things about me and just having the space. And so a lot of times um this is potentially the kickoff to hopefully more conversations, a bigger conversation. And I've had people say, you know, I've I've worked with this person for over a year now, or we've worked together for 10 years now, and we just have never had these types of conversations. And that is awesome, right? Whether it's the Enneagram, whatever, whatever the prompt is, and that's what this is. It is, it is some guidance, it's a prompt, it's an opening to say, hey, it let's talk about this stuff. And we're going to close our laptops for the most part. We're gonna, you know, put away our phones for the most part, and we're just gonna be here together talking about how we can work better together, you know, and it sometimes I know for some of the types, different types, it can seem like gosh, I would really love to be, you know, calling on my clients or I got work to do towards this really tight deadline that's coming up. And I know the sacrifice that people make to be in that room and to be engaged in the room. It's not like nobody else has anything going on and they're like, oh, I'll just pop in. No, I know people are are very busy, and so it is always um inspiring to see people settle in, get into it, be open, be willing to share. And again, it it's maybe a little bit uh of us, but really it's a testament to the team culture and the leadership that they have created, this environment where people feel like, hey, I can share, I can talk. Um, and you know, that's that is um, I find that very um hopeful, encouraging, I guess inspiring. Uh with that there's teams, organizations, leaders out there who are doing a lot of this, um, and who want to get results, hit goals, make big things happen, and take care of people along the way. Um encourage people to learn about themselves, learn about each other, grow in that emotional intelligence, uh, grow in empathy, grow in in self-awareness. So um I I I always say this. I I really love all the groups that we get to work with because we've we don't have to work with a lot of toxic organizations. They're not bringing things like this in. Um, but it always is really cool to give those teams who do have that sort of leadership, who do have that culture, some additional tools, resources for their for their tool belt uh to continue to work better together, to make work where they spend so much time and the coworkers and those relationships that they spend so much time in, um, hopefully that much more productive, but also that much more enjoyable or at least less stressful. So we've caught we've talked about people love to talk with one another. I have 10 discussion questions, actually 14, I believe, discussion questions for you in that uh, let's see, episode 126. I think there were four bonus ones in that one that I'll link. And I'm gonna give you five other ways to keep the conversation going, kind of some DIY post-workshop discussions or recommendations. And the first one, the first one is around creating regular, this might be quarterly or maybe even monthly, creating space for these quarterly, short, informal team conversations where people are encouraged to talk about their communication preferences, their project stressors, um, anything that has continued to come up for them about their Enneagram type. Maybe they were stuck between two or three after our workshop and giving people space to say, you know, hey, what have you learned? What have you thought about with some of that self-reflection? Maybe you've talked to coworkers, what did they see in you? And just giving people that space. Um and making, again, this is just like a workshop. Somebody is gonna have to lead it. We're gonna have to assign, I don't know if it's the manager, or maybe you have an internal Enneagram champion or um advocate, and they're leading these conversations, putting them on the schedule, but making space for these. Maybe you bring in donuts and have some coffee, maybe you break out into smaller teams or small groups, depending on the size of your department or team that's going through this process. Um, but encourage, and you don't have to answer all these questions at once. And in fact, I I would I would not recommend it. Um, because most likely, you know, you're not gonna have a half a day to have all of the these questions, these discussions. You're probably gonna have what, maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour, maybe, maybe, you know, an hour or two. Um, so and you want to make sure that everybody has a chance to share. And so maybe one quarter, it's hey, we're gonna come and share our communication preferences. And we can talk a little bit about how that shows up based on what we're learning about our Enneagram type. And at the end of the day, our Enneagram type is really there to give us some kind of a shortcut um to understanding ourselves and others, to give us some language to describe what we're thinking and feeling and what irks us and it's like, oh, that's a thing. Um, but when we want to take it and make it helpful and applicable in real life, we have to think, okay, what are the things that we are doing in real life where this Enneagram insight can be helpful? And so communication. Um, you could also add in here, like, what are your meeting preferences? Is there anything that we should be um tweaking, considering based on, you know, what would work better for you or what we should stop doing, start doing? And, you know, you I know you we gotta be careful because it it's hard to please everybody all the time. But I do think opening it up and saying, um, you know, we may not be able to do all of these things. And of course, somebody's gonna share their communication preference and we're gonna forget, we're gonna get it wrong, where there's gonna be a heated moment, we're gonna frustrate them because we didn't communicate with them in the way that they prefer to be communicated in, even though they told us, you know, two months ago or whatever. But having these conversations can can be helpful still in feeling seen, feeling understood as the person being able to share. And it it really is growing in your relationships, growing as a person, it it is not one ginormous epiphany. It's lots of little little things. And it just might be the the hi, how are you in an email? That's a really little thing, but for somebody who that means a lot to you, and you start doing that over time, that's gonna do something for your relationship. Hopefully in the for the positive. Um, it may not be this ginormous grand gesture. So anyway, hosting, hosting time, bringing in donuts, maybe um virtual, whatever, whatever your team dynamic is, find a way to kind of make it fun and then offer up a specific topic, like communication preferences. Um, you can also talk about appreciation preferences. Um, an optional prompt to this might be what helps you feel appreciated and supported at work. That could be a really great question. And people can bring their Enneagram insights, uh, their Enneagram books if they've gone through one of our workshops or what they know about the Enneagram. Um, and use that potentially to give them some ideas. Um, but ultimately it it is just, hey, whether you identify with a one or or a 13, tell us a little bit about what makes you feel appreciated. What should we know about how to support you at work? What makes you feel supported? Okay, that's that's idea one. Idea two is oh gosh, where'd it go? Okay, is mixing up your uh breakout pairings strategically. So this might mean like kind of project, um when you're organizing your project teams, moving forward when you facilitate team conversations or your brainstorming or your problem solving, intentionally group people across different types or roles in order to build awareness, kind of stretch that those communication styles, stretch the strengths of the group and put people who might seem like polar opposites and and and kind of see what happens, be very, be very intentional about hey, we're gonna start a new project. And um, we want to have this person and this person, this person based on not just their Enneagram type, because you know, we we gotta be careful with this as well, because a lot of times people mistype or we wanna be careful about labeling people and thinking all eights would be great for this or all threes would be terrible for this, right? We gotta be careful, but knowing it the Enneagram. Can kind of just help you give give you a shortcut and say, hey, okay, okay, that we got let's get a direct communicator on this. Let's also get somebody who's gonna be really customer focused and on this, and we'll just kind of bring all these strengths together for this particular new project that we're working on. So being intentional about that. Um, the third idea is to encourage cross-type coaching, or uh there was an issue of the Association of Talent Development. Um, several months back, there was an article about skillmates. So rather than having mentors find a skillmate. So somebody who was really good at negotiating, um, seek them out and then bring your strength that they might be able to learn. Maybe you're really um organizational, politically savvy, and you can kind of share experiences, examples, ask for advice. And so this is kind of that same idea: cross-type coaching, cross-type skill mate, whatever you might want to call it, but encourage your teammates to reach out to others that they're curious about or who might challenge their style and encourage them to schedule 15, 20 minute, 30-minute chats um to share, you know, like I just said, examples. We have a How to Work With Me blueprint that we will recommend people hang on to and use questions from that um to continue conversations with their teammates. And uh one specific question here might be what's one way I could collaborate better with someone like you? What should I know what about understanding you better, working with you better, collaborating with you better? The fourth idea is to encourage ongoing reflection, build this culture of ongoing reflection where um a lot of groups will say, Hey, I I really I really enjoyed learning about myself. I really enjoyed learning about other people. So to kind of reinforce the things that people are saying that they really enjoyed, like this feedback that I shared with you at the beginning, um find ways to kind of bake that in to the things that you do daily so that it actually happens. Um find opportunities to reflect on the self-awareness, the coworker insights. Maybe it's starting team meetings with just a quick question like what's one small change you made and how you worked with someone this week? That's a great question. I love that question. Um you could also ask something like, What did I learn from a teammate's communication style? And I really like this idea because people are, it sounds like gaining their own insights from having these skillmate conversations or um being put into groups with various types. And then when the group comes together, you also have an additional sharing opportunity, learning opportunity for that person who got to be in that experience, have that skillmate experience with a different type, have that project, group project or uh leading a meeting uh with somebody different than them. Um, they had the experience of learning that, and then they get to come back and share it, and others get to learn from it. So I I really like, I really like these kind of what have you learned about yourself? What have you been learning about your teammates? What's an example? What's a way that this has showed up? And and you could even say, you know, it doesn't have to be all serious. What's something funny that came up that um you know you learned about somebody today or you learned about yourself this week? And then the last one is looking for ways to leverage the Enneagram as a shared language. And this is something that many companies will say, especially for the organizations where they're bringing us in to work with multiple departments within their organization. And they have said, you know, it's kind of like we're learning a new language, we have a new language. Um, you know, these other three teams have learned it, and these other three teams over here are feeling left out because they don't yet want to get everybody on board uh with this new language, and so you can kind of start to normalize referencing the types and feedback and appreciation and the way that you plan for things. And again, you want to be you wanna be careful, you want to be responsible with this. But you could say things like, you know, let's make sure that our type fives have enough to have enough time to reflect before the next meeting. There may be somebody in the room that says, hey, let's can we meet tomorrow morning? And if possible, you might say, Hey, I know there's some of us, um, and you may want to call it the type, you may, you may not, um, but it's you could just say kind of that type five is short for, hey, for those of us who need a little bit more time to think and process, uh, let's give them, let's give them some additional time before we meet again. Uh, you could also say something like, you know, rather than doing it this way, I know we have a lot of threes in the room. And so let's try this approach that might really appeal to their appreciation and focus on efficiency. Or for those in this room that really appreciate efficiency, you know, moving, moving forward fast, uh, let let's do this for them. Let's make this part work. So the the the shared language is where you kind of get to use the hey, for our type eights, for our type threes, and you kind of know what it means. Um, and it's gonna mean something different for every human being. So we we have to be careful that oh, all your threes uh would love this approach or would see this uh approach as being efficient. Because also, maybe threes really value efficiency, but their definition or what they believe to be efficient might vary and will probably vary from person to person. So we want to be careful about that. And you know, going back to the type five example, we also we want to be careful because one type five might feel like, yeah, I just need until the end of the day. That's enough time for me to process. Somebody else might say, Oh, I need a week to process and to look more into this. And so, you know, we want to we can use the shortcut where we can say, Oh, you know, I I gotta go home and and feed the dog, and and we know what that means. We don't have to say, I gotta go home and I have this mammal that has four legs and fur and um and even a mammal is kind of uh is kind of short, but I got this creature, oh he has four legs of fur. Um, he weighs about 75 pounds, you know, pointy ears, tail. No, we just go home and say, I I got a German shepherd or I got a dog, I gotta go home and feed. And okay, that gives us some information. We don't know the demeanor of the dog. We don't know how old the dog is, we don't know the the exact color scheme of the dog. Um, we don't know how it reacts to other dogs, we don't know how it reacts to kids, right? There's so much that we don't know about this, but we have an idea and we didn't have to explain it. And that's kind of this this idea of a shared language. It's like, oh, there are three. Okay. Uh just kind of basics, efficiency. They they like you to get to the point. Okay. Type fives, okay. I know that they really appreciate information. Um, okay, type sevens, I know that they have a tendency to um kind of want to focus on the future and the possibilities. And so as I bring up my concerns, I'm gonna position them in this way. And one seven is gonna be very different from the next seven. So we we want to be careful about how we use this, but there are opportunities within our day-to-day for us to use the language of the Enneagram and start to um and start to use it as a as a language. Um, and these ways, so that was that was number five, all of these are ways to start thinking about how can we bake this in to our day-to-day. And ideally, you don't want to add a lot of extra, you know, uh, activities to an already very busy schedule that I know all of you have. And so you don't want to be saying, oh, I'd add a quarterly meeting. Um, you can do it maybe quarterly. I don't know that you need to do it weekly. Um, but there may be opportunities for your weekly meeting before you start for somebody to share a strength that they saw somebody use um in their day-to-day work, or hey, you know, we had this and a moment. It could just be a minute. Does somebody have a something they want to share about an insight that they learned about their coworker? And you could, you know, we have the Enneagram information now, we have our self-awareness information, um, but it doesn't have to be limited to that just that, and that's really how to keep it alive after a single workshop and how to um use it in quote unquote real life, which are some of the questions uh that we get a lot. So with that, if you have any other ways that your organization, your team has used the Enneagram after a workshop, or how you're using it, or how you're using a different maybe personality tool that um could be also used for those groups that are using the Enneagram or want to use the Enneagram, share it with me. I would love to hear about it and um I'll sh I'll share it on a future podcast episode as uh as a as a tip best practice for somebody else who could who could learn and will continue to add to this list. So this list is by no means the the only things that you can do. I'm sure that there's other ideas um out there, but this will give you plenty plus those discussion questions, plenty of uh prompts and ideas for continuing the conversation. Um and you don't have you don't have to have gone through an Enneagram workshop to get curious about somebody's communication style, to get curious about how they feel appreciated and supported at work. The Enneagram just gives you a little bit more insight, so you're not starting from the very, very beginning. Um, it gives you some additional words, maybe, gives you some um, yeah, so it just gives you a little bit more, but by no means it's like, well, we haven't done anything with the Enneagram, so our team couldn't benefit from this. No, I think there's multiple questions, multiple activities, ideas on here that your team could use, whether they've ever heard about the Enneagram or not. So let me know if you have future uh, or let me know if you have any other ideas to add to this list and I'll pass them along. And then if you feel like, oh man, I would really love for our team to have some of these discussions that these other people are saying that they got so much from. I'm gonna invite you to check out our workshop options over at enneagrammba.com. Um, we do have half day, full day, and in some occasions, um, a group only has, you know, two hours. And while that is hard to get a lot in and to have some of these meaningful discussions that people are saying, um, there are things that we can do. So all of those uh options, additional information about each of those, um, as well as our five series workshop programming, it's all over at anyagrammba.com. So I'm gonna invite you to check that out. As always, thank you so much for being here, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.