It’s the Journey, Not the Destination

This week, I was reminded how important it is to help people understand that when you choose to work with the Enneagram, you are taking a journey. This came to light for me a couple of nights ago when I co-hosted a tweet chat with Lolly Daskal #leadfromwithin and again, the next evening when I lead my Insight to Action workshop on How to Conduct a Typing Interview.

The Enneagram is a journey of self-discovery. Claiming your Type is just the beginning. AND the discovery process is a journey unto itself. If you are in the business of helping people discover their Type, don’t pressure yourself or them to land on their Type right away. Some may and many don’t. So much can be revealed just by the process. When I use my Enneagram Typing Cards to do a typing interview, this initiates my client’s inner-observer–to self-reflect and to begin seeing herself and others more clearly, as a part of that discovery process.

Don’t rob people of the experience, or worse send them down the wrong road by telling them what you believe is their Type, despite the temptation.

My approach is to honor their process and if I think they may have mistyped, I keep it to myself. I have been wrong often enough to be humble about this. I am not in someone’s skin and don’t have access to their inner world. They do–when their psyche is ready to reveal it to them.

What I do is set my clients off on a journey. I offer them areas of focus for self-reflection, give them some reading assignments in my book that can offer additional insights,  and ask them to journal about on specific topics–all based upon our Typing interview and where they feel there is gold to be mined.

When someone does discover their Type, the journey becomes more focused — knowing your Type is having access to a divining rod to locate where the veins of gold are located.

In my work with clients, the most important practice I instill is the practice of presence. Without this, it is hard for people to know what or how to shift their behavior. Up until this point, most of what they know is that something needs to change; that their success formula is not working like it used to.

The practice of presence can yield a full, rich and rewarding life. It is also a practice for becoming a very successful leader.

Why? When you are present to your inner-self, you are awake to your inner dialog / your reactions / your patterned responses /your inner-critic. The more aware and awake, the more you can take control of your life rather than let your subconscious run the show.

Will you act from habit and react to triggers OR will another response get you a better result? The more present, the more choiceful, the more choiceful the more agile, and therefore the less you are doing your Type and the more access you have to a broader range of feelings, actions and ways of seeing and experiencing the world. Your begin to shift perspectives and open your peripheral vision.

This is where the journey expands again and you begin to more fully explore all of the Enneagram Types and mine them for untapped riches.

Today, June 14 I join Dr. Roxanne Howe-Murphy of the Deep Coaching Institute on her tele-seminar. She will interview me about my book and work in the corporate world; particularly my work in the Middle East. I love to support Roxanne’s work and the Deep Coaching Institute because they have a strong emphasis on the practice of presence–to be here in the now both for self and other. This is when we have flashes of insight, the doors of learning open and the journey begins. Please join Roxanne and I, won’t you?

Update: My interview with Dr. Roxanne Howe-Murphy of the Deep Coaching Institute went wonderfully! You can download an mp3 of the interview here.