Successful Leaders Balance Personality Strengths
Self-awareness predicts things like effective leadership, successful relationships, and overall well-being. But what exactly is “self-awareness?” Self-awareness is being aware of your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors while they are occurring. It also includes understanding the impact you are having on the people around you. All the Thrive Leadership development programs focus on strengthening this important skill. In our experience, learning the Enneagram is one of the most effective ways to build self-awareness.
The Enneagram describes nine different ways people think, feel, and behave and sheds light on what motivates our behavior much of the time. Each personality type has its own unique strengths; each type also has challenges that can become derailers when not acknowledged. The Enneagram explains the habitual patterns in which we can get stuck. Each personality type has common mental fixations, emotional reactions, and behavioral patterns that run automatically. As we build self-awareness, we are more likely to recognize these patterns. This awareness gives us an opportunity to pause our “autopilot” approach and shift to a healthier and more mindful approach.
Discovering your Enneagram type will help you quickly pinpoint where you can invest efforts to achieve high-impact gains. For professional development, a leader can consider their inherent strengths — those things that come naturally and with ease. The chart below highlights the signature strengths of each Enneagram type. However, when strengths become overused, they can impede effectiveness. The chart also suggests one way each type can consider implementing for better balance.
Carmen, a successful biotech executive who led with Enneagram Type 3, shared the benefits of her growing self-awareness. “Through learning the Enneagram, I’ve started to see how my need to achieve impacted my behavior and the quality of my interactions at work. I used to easily prioritize my goals and to-do lists over people.” She described her unrelenting drive to be the absolute best at everything she did. She always went above and beyond expectations and achieving goals came naturally to her. “My lists had lists and my days were structured to efficiently check off each task to get me closer to my targets.”
During our coaching engagement, Carmen was not surprised by the 360 feedback describing her as a self-assured, accomplished leader who drives for results. She was surprised that the 360 feedback also described her as hard to get to know outside of her role, somewhat transactional, and self-promoting vs. team-promoting. She started to observe how she had overdone her strengths of efficiency and achievement.
Over the next year, she intentionally invested in building better relationships at work. She spent time getting to know her people beyond the surface level. “It never occurred to me how sharing about myself and making time for informal conversations could positively impact the team and build trust.” Carmen acknowledges that catching her tendency to focus on success instead of people is not automatic. It is something she deliberately tries to build into her day. Carmen’s commitment to building her self-awareness enabled her to positively influence her team. Now she works smarter, not harder.
Time and time again, Thrive 360 data has shown that the best predictor of leadership effectiveness is understanding how one’s behavior impacts others. Leaders cannot successfully manage people if they don’t understand their own tendencies. Similarly, leaders can’t be successful without recognizing the different types of interpersonal strengths and individual development opportunities on their teams. The Enneagram is an easily accessible development tool for leaders. It helps leaders understand themselves and the people with whom they work and provides a way to strengthen their self-awareness.
Learning when to leverage inherent strengths and shore up potential blind spots is essential to moving careers forward. As a Thrive Leadership workshop participant wisely explained, “Leadership isn’t about technical skills; it is about leading people towards a common goal. The better you understand yourself and others, the more effective and efficient you can be at moving others towards that goal.”