Enneagram Unleashed: How to Use the Enneagram To Lead and Sell

Better leadership helps you build a better team. Then that team helps you build a better organization, which leads to a better level of customer service, which leads to profit! You can use the power of the Enneagram to help you become a better leader. In this episode, I talk about why I use it as a self-development tool for myself and how I use it with clients.

2:28 - What the Enneagram is and why it’s a game changer

5:35 - One of the most valuable skills you can have as a leader

7:27 - Xena and the Origin of My Time as a Terrible Leader

10:53 - The three intelligence centers of the Enneagram system

12:35 - What it looks like when you’re stuck in patterns that inhibit your growth

18:18 - A little secret about Enneagram tests online

Find me on Instagram or LinkedIn or email me at hello@lesliedlyons.com.

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Transcript for Enneagram Unleashed: How to Use the Enneagram To Lead and Sell

Hey boss, I am Leslie Lyons, your embodied leadership and sales coach, and this is Pleasurable Profits. This podcast is ideal for owners and leaders of tattoo shops, permanent makeup studios, cannabis businesses, movement studios, sex toy shops, and other industries that are too often left out of the leadership conversation. If you’re looking for a woo meets strategy approach to defining your strengths and values, designing a business that supports you, and creating a soul-driven, and of course, pleasurable plan for profitability, then let’s get started.

Hey, party people. It’s Leslie, your embodied sales and leadership coach. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thank you for asking. Today's conversation is a leadership conversation. You want to kind of buckle in if you have a team. If you are aspiring to grow your team and get more productivity from your team, this is going to be an episode for you. This is also a snippet from one of my signature talks that I do. In case you did not know, I am also a speaker.

If you are looking for someone who brings a very unique approach to leadership conversations, specifically about how to leverage your personality to get more productivity from yourself and your team, I'm your girl. This talk I always call Enneagram Unleashed. It's really a conversation around how do we use the power of the Enneagram to help you become a better leader. In turn by you becoming a better leader, how do you build a better team, which builds a better organization, that builds a better level of service for your customers, and so on and so on? Of course, as always, that's how we get to the back.

So I wanted to talk about why I use the Enneagram as a tool for self-development for myself, first and foremost, and then how I use it with clients. Some of you might be like, “What is this?” The Enneagram is a personality typing tool, especially if you come out of corporate spaces, you may be more familiar with Myers Briggs, or even DISC. If you've ever done any type of multi-level marketing, even in a sales environment, DISC is very common, but it's really a tool to help you understand who you are. But unlike Myers Briggs, Strength Finders, or DISC, the Enneagram doesn't just focus on what you do, more importantly, it focuses on why you do what you do. That is what is the frickin game changer for me when it comes to using this as a tool for leadership development.

Because so often as people, but also as leaders, if you have success in doing something, we get very stuck in the way that we do things. We like things done a certain way. If it's worked in the past, we figure why do we need to change it. Well, when it comes to leading and managing a team, you are dealing with people who are changing every day. Their personalities, the way they respond to things are impacted by life. While we can't control other people, and that's the lesson that I had to learn when I was a very immature leader is I sought to control people, I've learned what I tell people all the time is you can't lead anybody else until you effectively learn to lead yourself.

More importantly, you can't control how other people respond. You can only control how you react. This tool will give you insight into why you do what you do. If you're stuck in certain patterns, if you ever find yourself being like, “D*mn, why did I say that again? Why did I allow that customer complaint to take me to the 20th level?”

One of the things I always say is what are the ways to really trigger me when I owned a brick-and-mortar business was for a customer to accuse my policies of being unethical. There's something about when someone charges me with being unethical that takes me to a whole nother level. Now you can say you didn't like the product. You can say you thought it was overpriced. You could say whatever. You can have all types of comments about it. You're entitled to that and it won't bother me.

As a matter of fact, I will look into that and take some of that feedback to see if there's an opportunity for me to improve. But when somebody says that I'm doing something unethical, I'm doing something shady, that takes me to another planet. I didn't really understand it until enter the Enneagram. As a leader, you know that one of the most valuable skill sets you can have is EQ, emotional intelligence.

I remember being back in HR, we prided emotional intelligence over actual intellect because we've all met really smart people who have horrible social skills, who say things inappropriately, or don't know how to say things. They have no awareness of how people engage with them, how people experience them, and those people make very terrible leaders.

In order to get people to follow you, for lack of a better term, but to engage and get on the same page and get behind your mission, your values, and your vision, you have to be the type of leader who, number one, manages your feelings well, and more importantly, manages how you respond to situations. We've got to go from reacting to everything to being able to respond. The Enneagram will help you with that.

Number two, you have to be able to empathize with other people. You have to be able to not only listen to your people at a surface level, you have to be able to listen to them at a very deep understanding level. Then third, you have to be able to navigate situations with skill and sensitivity. A leader who has great command over themselves is able to really have moment-to-moment awareness of who they are and why they're doing what they're doing.

This goes beyond self-awareness because you can be self-aware, you can be reflective, you know how they say hindsight is 20/20, I remember a time when I was just a terrible leader. I remember the origin of where I became a terrible leader, like what had been modeled before me in terms of leadership. Back when I was in corporate sales, I had this manager, and I'm going to say her name because I ain’t protecting the guilty. Her name was Xena. I called her Xena, the warrior princess.

This woman, her and I had a volatile relationship from the get-go. When I was doing the interview process, I literally turned down the job after meeting with her. She was like the fifth or sixth person that I needed to meet with. She was like the last on the wrong, it was her and one other person that I needed to meet with. No, it was just her. That's right. She was the last. She was the branch manager. I remember because I got the job offer after that.

I remember turning down the job. My mentor, you guys have heard me talk about him before, Fred Gets, he was like, “What's going on? This was going so well.” They just knew that I was going to accept. Everything had gone well up until that point. Well, I just knew in meeting this woman that she was somebody who I would not be able to work for.

Well, long story short, they moved her around. What I didn't know is that in this company, they moved to another branch and a couple of years later, she was back in my branch. Guess what? I didn't like her still. Now she had odds against me because they basically went back and told her when I turned down the job that I turned it down because of her, not the best leadership there either.

But anyway, rewind, fast forward to when she had this abrasive style about her that she was a really short person, really small person, and she was always trying to get people to respect her. I can't even tell you what happened. But I just know that she hopped a little behind up on my desk literally. I need you to see this. This woman is talking, we sit in the bullpen, her and I are going back and forth about some client about something and she decides to stand up on my desk and start yelling at me.

I don't know what happened but I blacked out. That's all I can always say to the day, I blacked out but in the midst of it, [inaudible] from here to the Himalayas. In 20/20 vision, after that was over, after I had been fired, after I was driving home, I was reflective. However, if I would have had more control in that moment, so moment to moment, just awareness of, number one, why am I getting ready to respond to her the way that I'm responding? If I could have just taken that pause, if I could have just broken my tendencies, which is to fight back, I could have possibly made a different choice that would have kept me from getting fired truthfully.

What does all of this have to do with the Enneagram? So glad you asked. The Enneagram basically shows you why you do what you do. It's a system of nine different personalities. I'm not going to go into all nine of them because I don't want to go that deep into this. Maybe I'll do that in another episode. But right now, we believe in the Enneagram system, that there are three centers of intelligence. There's the head triad. Those are people who think through things logically. You have to think about things. You have to analyze things. You have to do pros and cons before you make decisions.

Then there are heart triad people who literally think about how they feel and how others may feel. These people look at things through the lens of empathy. Then there are gut triad people, like myself, who go based off of our instincts. We have very strong gut responses that we typically follow. I feel it in my body, and I follow those impulses. Once you figure out what your number is and what triad you fall in, each number has its strengths, and it also has its shadows.

I want to focus on the shadows for this conversation. Because I believe that the power for growth, for inspiring your team, and all the things that you need to do to get to the next level lies in you really mastering your shadow. What does it look like when you're not doing well? What does it look like when you stay stuck in response patterns that inhibit you from growing? The Enneagram gives you a very clear picture of what those look like.

Let's just use myself. I'm an Enneagram 8, so the numbers are from 1 through 9. I'm an Enneagram 8. I told you I'm in the guts center, meaning that I make decisions from my body. I trust my instincts above all. Now we use all three centers as human beings, but we have a primary way that we make decisions. I bet if you think about this, you would know just right off the top of your head like, “Do I think through things? Do I feel things? Or do I just go with gut responses?”

The dark side to me as an eight is that I can see people, because I want to focus on the leadership side of things, as transactions. I can see people as disposable. I can see people as a means to an end. What does that look like? That looks like me telling team members, and I'm telling you I'm being fully transparent with you, telling team members that this train is moving, you can either get on it or ran over by it.

Because for me, I always felt like there was no one monkey didn’t stop no show. I remember giving advice to other leaders earlier in my leadership development and I would say that I was the Puff Daddy, a pole. If you know anything about Diddy, Puff Daddy, I think his name is Love these days, who knows? I do this trip. But one thing you will know about him is that he used to create these bands, these R&B/pop groups. They literally all were the same. They could be an all-male band. It could be an all-female band, but they all kind of had the same style.

But more importantly, they all kind of hit the same shelflife, meaning they will be hot for a season and then you won't ever hear from them again. 112, Day 26, Danity Kane, any of these folks, I'm going to link to some of their songs in the show notes, these people, he literally would just recycle this idea over and over again. He showed us that it didn't really matter who the people were, he had the Midas touch, he could recreate those folks over and over again. That was my approach to leadership, like I don't need you. You don't bring no special sauce to this. I created you and I can go create another you. Terrible, I know. Don't judge me. Judge your mama.

I'm being honest. I'm super embarrassed by it. Now I'm making light of it, because we're on a podcast and I don’t want to get all heavy. But the truth of the matter is that's who I was. The Enneagram showed me that that was an armor that I had built up to keep me safe very early on in life, to keep me safe from people hurting me or walking out of my life, leaving me. In order for me to cope with that, I had to say that I didn't really care about people leaving me, people walking away. When the truth is I care deeply about people leaving me.

Trust is extremely important to 8. We have a very small circle of people that we trust. When we let you in that circle of trust, what was that movie? Don’t know that movie. That Adam Sandler, what was the name of that movie, you're like, “This is a circle of trust and you're outside of it.” I can’t think of it. It'll probably come back to me afterwards. But y'all probably already know who it is. Email me. Tell me who it was. Tell me what that movie was. But I have those circles of trust. Once I let you in, I will go to the wall for you. My loyalty runs deep for people who I really let into that circle.

But if I'm ever betrayed, it's so hard for me to come back from that. Well, the Enneagram taught me that. The Enneagram showed me that this defense mechanism was helpful at one point, but it was no longer serving me if I was truly going to walk into the leader I was destined to become, what I was being called to be in my business. Using this tool, I not only got to see my blind spots and my condition patterns, but more importantly, it showed me a way forward.

It shows you what you look like when you're integrated, when you're grounded, when you're operating at your highest self. That loyalty becomes me helping people. It becomes me standing beside people who are underprivileged or disenfranchised. It allows me to pave a path for others to go forward. That sounds like beautiful leadership to me. All nine of these personality types have a similar story.

If you're curious about what are the patterns that you naturally default to, to keep yourself safe, which is also limiting your effectiveness with your team, which is going to limit how much revenue you can make, I would encourage you to take an Enneagram test. I will link in the show notes to a free test that you can take just to get an idea, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret, 70% of the tests that people take online return inaccurate results because the test is only as good as you are self-aware.

If you're interested in it, I do a Soulful Values Session which can help you get to the place where you understand who you are and how you can move forward in your leadership. It's no longer enough for us as leaders to just feel like, “This is who I am.” You are being called to a higher standard. You are in leadership for a reason. You have a responsibility to yourself first, to your people second, and to your customers third, to bring the best to all of those situations.

Using this tool will break down those blocks so that you can really achieve those goals that you're going after in 2023. My question to you is, are you going to be the same leader you were in 2022, or are you going to look to ratchet it up a notch? Are you going to look to take your business to the next level? The secret to doing that is unlocking the potential of your leadership. If you need help with that, you know how to reach me. You can hit me up on IG @lesliedlyons. That's my favorite place to communicate. You can hop over to the website, beunshakable.co. Until the next time. Stay well. Stay vigilant. Stay the course. Grace and peace.

Hey, party people. I am super excited to tell you about something that I'm going to be offering that I think will make your 2023 get off on a great start from an emotional, spiritual, mental place as an entrepreneur in these crazy straits. I am going to be offering what I am calling Entrepreneurial Energetics Live. Stage, lights, action, camera. I'm going to be bringing you my most popular embodiment tools that I use with my paying clients typically, only with my paying clients, I'm bringing it to you for free. These tools will help you get clarity. They'll help you calm your nervous system down. They're going to give you space. They're going to give you vision. It’s going to give you focus, and most importantly, it's going to infuse pleasure in your life. Join me. Head on over to beunshakable.co to add your name and information to the waitlist so that you can be notified when these free sessions are going live. I love to help you get started your 2023 on a calm, spacious, abundant note. Want to join me? I'll see you then.