Leadership and the Enneagram:
The Enneagram as Leadership Attribute Model
By Mario Sikora
Copyright 2005/Mario Sikora. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in the
August 2005 issue of The Enneagram Monthly.)
While the most popular use of the enneagram is to map personality styles, the model can
also be used to map any number of processes or experiences. This article will discuss an
approach to using the enneagram as a framework for leadership. While the focus here is on
leadership in organizations, the ideas laid out are applicable to leadership in politics,
community groups, schools, families, or any other area.
Walk into any bookstore and you will see row after row of books devoted to leadership.
There are probably two reasons for this: the critical importance of leadership in every
aspect of our lives and the elusive nature of what leadership actually is. Is leadership about
charisma or is it about execution? Is there one best way to lead or are there many equally
valid leadership styles? Is leadership an art, a craft, a science, or all of the above? You will
find books advocating any and all of these points of view—and the books are all correct.
The skills and talents needed for effective leadership are varied, often-contradictory, and
ever-changing depending on the dynamic needs of the environment. It is incumbent upon
leaders to become life-long learners who continue to hone their talents and learn new skills
related to leadership.
At the risk of adding clutter to an already glutted market, it seems that there is room for an
approach to leadership using the enneagram as a unifying framework that can then serve
as a reference point for lifelong leadership-skill development. Rather than try to map a
specific leadership skill set to the enneagram, however, it seems to make more sense to
map leadership attributes and dynamics to the model. Before describing this leadership
model, we must first define some concepts as they are used in this article.
Let’s begin with the term “leadership.”
There are as many definitions of “leadership” as there are leaders, but one that has served
the author well in his work in executive coaching and leadership development is:
“Successful leadership is the act of influencing others to effectively achieve a desired result
consistently and over time.”
Let’s look at some components of the definition:
Effective implies both efficiency and ethics; it means doing the right things quickly,
economically, and accurately.
Consistency implies a repeatable (and repeated) methodology and/or a pattern of success.
Over time implies that the “followers” are not alienated by either of the twin evils of abusive
tactics and lack of inspiration. (Abused employees may get the task done today but they will
find a new job tomorrow; uninspired employees will eventually drain of their natural initiative
and cease to perform or move to other companies.)
We must also clearly understand the difference between skills and attributes. A sports
analogy might help:
Dribbling, dunking, and shooting a basketball are specific skills; singular tactical actions that
can be improved with practice and repetition. They are performed under specific
circumstances and expected to achieve a specific result. Scoring more points than your
opponent is the goal of basketball; dribbling, dunking, and shooting are some of the skills
you use to achieve that goal.
Speed, endurance, and strength are attributes—general innate or developed qualities that
support a variety of skills. They are not goal-related skills, but they make your application of
your skills better.
In the same way, moving others toward an objective is the goal of leadership.
Communication, inspiration, setting direction, and a multitude of other tasks are the skills of
leadership; they help the leader achieve the goal. The qualities laid out on this model are
the attributes of leadership; they help the leader apply the skills more effectively.
The Enneagram Leadership Attribute Model
This model identifies attributes in three broad areas: Leadership Behavior, Leadership
Relationships, and Leadership Thinking. Each of these areas is represented by a triangle
embedded within the enneagram and will be addressed separately. Please note that this
model is a subjective construct developed by the author. It is neither part of some mythical
“ancient enneagram tradition” nor the final word on how the enneagram can be used in
leadership development.
Leadership Behavior
At the heart of leadership behavior is flexibility. Good leaders are candid and forceful in
some situations; gentle and supportive in others. They know that some situations require
quick, decisive action and that others require caution and deliberation. They know that
sometimes they must charismatically lead from the front and other times quietly lead from
the rear.
The leader needs the flexibility to develop the new skills and behaviors that are required by
the situation he or she is facing rather than being trapped in habitual behaviors that feel
comfortable but fail to get the necessary results. For example, an Eight may habitually act
on the impulse to drive and push people when her staff really needs sympathetic
understanding and coaching. A Nine may smooth over conflict when his team really needs
to air competing concerns. Flexibility helps leaders out of these kinds of traps because it
gives them the ability to consciously change behaviors to meet the circumstances they face.
In the book, “From Awareness to Action: The Enneagram, Emotional Intelligence and
Change” (University of Scranton Press, 2004), Bob Tallon and I discuss what we call the
“enneagram change cycle.” We explain how the reader can use a process of practicing self-
awareness, developing authenticity, and taking action to overcome habitual reliance on
ineffective behaviors. This cycle is represented by the inner triangle of the enneagram that
connects points Nine (Awareness), Three (Authenticity), and Six (Action Bias). (See Figure
2.) These three attributes allow the leader to develop the flexibility of response so critical to
success. We’ll define each and then show how they can be used.
Awareness consists of three components:
1. Presence—the capacity to stay conscious to one’s immediate experience,
2. Discrimination—the ability to objectively identify and analyze those things one is
conscious of, and
3. Mapping—the ability to create a goal for change as necessary.
Authenticity is also multi-faceted. In this context, it means:
1. Ownership—the willingness to assume responsibility for all that one does and all that
happens within one’s sphere of influence;
2. Integrity—the ability to identify and resolve inconsistencies and conflicting commitments.
Action Bias is:
1. Maintaining a mindset focused on solutions rather than problems; and
2. Creating and executing action plans that bring about those solutions.
Taken together, awareness, authenticity and action bias allow the leader to let go of the
habitual behaviors that are proving ineffective for the task at hand and adopt appropriate
and effective behaviors. This same process can be used to modify the behavior of groups
and individuals.
Let’s look at an example of a leader who applied this process to his own behavior:
Harry, a Five, is the vice president of engineering for a large telecom company. Fives
interact with the world by striving to be detached and, like most Fives, Harry is highly
analytical, cerebral, and introverted. He is well-liked despite his slightly aloof manner and
widely respected for his technical expertise. However, his team is floundering because Harry
fails to communicate strategic direction to the people below him. His team sees a
challenging business climate but no real roadmap to success. Harry sees the roadmap, and
it is a good one, but simply does not think to effectively communicate the direction to others.
Harry receives feedback from the general manager that the engineers are disengaged and
anxious about the company’s future, which comes as a surprise to him.
Committed to resolving this dilemma, Harry begins to apply the awareness, authenticity,
action model.
First, he starts to observe the ways in which he detaches and withdraws from others in the
organization when he is thinking about strategy. He understands that this is a typical Five-
ish behavior, that Fives deal with their world by striving to be detached and that stress
accentuates this detachment. He sets a broad goal of communicating strategy more
effectively to the team.
Next, Harry applies authenticity. He acknowledges that this is his problem and that he is
responsible for resolving it. “I shouldn’t wait for people to come to me for information,” he
says. “And it is not their fault if my strategy is not clear to them; it is mine. I must take
ownership for communicating to them and making sure that they are receiving my message.”
Harry starts to notice resistance rising up in himself at the idea of going out among the staff
and having the conversations necessary to make the group’s tensions go away. “I am
naturally shy,” he says, “and the idea of undertaking the communications effort—conducting
all-hands meetings, walking around and talking to the engineers—made me uncomfortable.
I was resistant to doing it.”
Harry had identified a conflicting commitment. He was committed to communicating more
effectively because he knew it was the right thing to do, but he was equally committed to not
communicating because communicating in certain circumstances makes him uncomfortable.
“Once I identified these conflicting commitments, I became free of the paralysis they were
causing. I saw that by having the conversations I used to avoid I would ultimately reduce the
conversations that I really dreaded: mediating conflicts, disciplining non-performers, holding
exit interviews with engineers who quit, and so on.”
Next, Harry leapt into action. Well, “leapt” is a strong word—he is a Five, after all—but he
did create and execute on a plan for communicating his strategic vision to the team and
morale and performance gradually improved.
While Harry was focused on modifying his own behavior, leaders can apply the same
awareness-authenticity-action model to the way they get a group to modify its behavior. At
the risk of over-simplifying, the process tends to go like this:
• Awareness: Identify and communicate the desired goal.
• Authenticity: Take responsibility for doing whatever needs to be done to move the team
toward the goal. Align resources; i.e., make sure the right people are in the right roles and
that they have the right organizational structure. Identify hidden resistance to the goal and
resolve it.
• Action bias: Oversee the development of an action plan and hold people accountable for
completing it.
The ability to flexibly respond to one’s environment is by far the most critical competency a
leader can have. The next two pieces of the Leadership Attribute Model are important, but
leadership can simply not be successful without the ability to flexibly modify behavior. The
attributes of awareness, authenticity and action bias enable leaders to be flexible.
Leadership Relationships
While the triangle found at points Nine, Three, and Six represents the attributes related to
intrapersonal or intra-group dynamics, the triangle formed by points Five, Eight, and Two
represents the attributes related to interpersonal dynamics. These points correspond to the
attributes of Detachment, Power, and Compassion, respectively, in this model. (See Figure
3.)
The 3-6-9 triangle is closed and allows for circular movement. That is, one goes from
awareness to authenticity to action and back to awareness in a potentially endless loop.
The 5-8-2 triangle is incomplete; there is no line connecting points five and two. Power,
represented by point 8 rests in the center, balanced by detachment and compassion. This
central position is appropriate because power is the sine qua non of leadership. Power is
the ability to produce an effect; leadership is impossible without it.
We tend to demonize power. Take a moment to think about the sayings commonly
associated with this attribute: “power corrupts,” certain people are “power hungry,” “power
lies in the barrel of a gun,” etc. However, we cannot have an honest discussion about
leadership without admitting to the necessity of power. Without it, a leader cannot motivate
people, negotiate solutions to internal conflicts, add the necessary leverage to solve
problems, remove roadblocks… the list goes on and on. If power is the capacity to have an
effect, then successful leadership is by definition an act of power.
While power is at the center of a leader’s relationships with others, it cannot be the only
attribute that informs the leader’s interactions with others. In fact, power is dangerous if it is
not balanced with detachment and compassion.
Detachment enables the leader’s application of power to be judicious and measured. It also
provides the emotional balancing needed for making tough but necessary decisions such
as cutting funding for a popular but unprofitable project, closing an obsolete plant, or firing
an under-performing subordinate.
Power and detachment alone can lead to cruelty. Compassion, which for the sake of this
model means the ability to consciously and empathically connect with the needs of others,
keeps power from being heartlessly applied. Compassion allows leaders to reach out to and
connect with followers; to understand their fears, hopes, and aspirations. It allows a leader
to communicate in emotional and symbolic tones that resonate with peoples’ hearts and
bellies and not just their heads. Compassion enables one to lead rather than push because
people will follow someone who considers their interests and well-being.
On the other hand, power and compassion alone can lead to irresponsibility. Without
detachment, leaders can neglect their fiduciary responsibilities to the whole (stockholders,
customers, society, etc.) by becoming too focused on keeping subordinates happy and
content or protecting a small cadre of insiders at the expense of effective and efficient
execution.
Space does not allow for a detailed example of the application of these attributes. At the risk
of oversimplifying, leaders are interpersonally successful when they simultaneously:
1. Wield the power necessary to drive business results;
2. Exercise the compassion to connect emotionally and symbolically with people and
consider their needs when making decisions; and
3. Have enough detachment to make tough decisions and give up power when appropriate.
Leadership Thinking
The third triangle of this leadership model is the one found at Points Seven, One, and Four.
These points, for our purposes, represent the attributes of curiosity, rigor, and creativity,
which are the three critical qualities of a leader’s intellect. Again, we have an open-ended
triangle where the leader’s intellect centers on rigor and is balanced by curiosity and
creativity. (See Figure 4.)
Leaders are rarely the smartest person in the room. In fact, good leaders strive to surround
themselves with people who are smarter, more knowledgeable, and more competent in
specific technical areas than they are. Without rigor—the ability to exercise strict precision
and discipline—a leader may be misled by those on her staff and make poor decisions. The
leader must constantly prod and probe, questioning details that seem incongruent,
demanding candor and consistency, and holding her staff accountable for the accuracy of
their views and the performance of their teams.
However, rigor can become paralyzing if it is not balanced with curiosity and creativity.
Curiosity, for the leader, is the need to understand things outside of the normal scope of his
experience. “How do other companies solve similar problems? How do customers in China
use our products differently than those in the U.S.? What are college students listening to
on the radio or watching on television?” The list of things a leader should be curious about
is endless.
The Buddhist concept of “beginner’s mind” is another facet of the leader’s curiosity; it is the
willingness to start from a position of humility and lack of preconception, free from
expectation and judgment. Effective leaders start from the assumption that they are the
least informed person in the room and they strive to absorb the knowledge and insights of
the people around them before making decisions.
Rigor keeps the leader’s curiosity in check by instilling the discipline to make decisions
when they are needed and keep the leader from falling victim to unnecessary navel-gazing
and “paralysis by analysis.”
The final attribute of the leadership intellect is creativity, which serves to keep rigor from
becoming a limiting rigidity. At its core, creativity is the desire to bring something into
existence—a product, a vision, a new solution to an old problem. A “leader” who is not
consumed by this creative drive has no business leading others.
Creativity also involves resourcefulness—the leader’s ability to unshackle himself from the
traditional ways of solving problems when those methods are not adequate or when a new
solution provides a competitive advantage. A lack of resourcefulness ultimately leads to
stagnation and obsolescence, conditions that no leader or organization can survive.
Again, rigor is the regulator against an overabundance of creativity. It is ineffective to be
creative for the mere sake of creativity when a more mundane (or faster, cheaper, or
simpler) solution will bring about the same result. A rigorous leader keeps people focused
on solutions and results.
The leader’s intellect helps to shape the course of an organization. Even the smartest
leaders will not be able to take their organization in the right direction if this intellect is
lacking a healthy dose of rigor, curiosity, and creativity.
Leadership Attributes and Personality Type
It is easy to see the connection between the attributes plotted on this model and the
personality types typically identified with the enneagram. (It is easy to see, for example, that
“power” at Point 8 is going to resonate with Type Eight, who’s fundamental orientation to life
is “striving to be powerful.”) It is a mistake, however, to focus only on certain elements of
this model at the expense of others because they correspond to one’s personality style.
The goal of this leadership attribute model is to provide a framework that a leader can use
to become balanced and well-rounded, not to reinforce habitual preferences and traps.
It is also easy to see that leaders of particular personality types can be predictably weak in
certain areas. (For example, Eights will struggle with compassion; Fives will struggle with
power, etc.) The reader is urged to step out of the paradigm of enneagram as typology and
into the realm of enneagram as structure and process when working with this leadership
attribute model. Doing so will allow for the broad and balanced development of the
attributes and skills that make for effective leaders.
An Ongoing Exploration
Because of the unique demands of leadership—leading often diverse people with varying
interests in an ever-changing environment—any list of leadership attributes will be
incomplete. One could argue that optimism belongs on the list at Point 7, executive polish at
Point 3, competitiveness at 8, caution at 6, etc., and one would be correct. This model is a
framework that begins a process of exploration for each leader to examine the demands
she faces and structure a personal improvement plan.
The Enneagram as Leadership Attribute Model
By Mario Sikora
Copyright 2005/Mario Sikora. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in the
August 2005 issue of The Enneagram Monthly.)
While the most popular use of the enneagram is to map personality styles, the model can
also be used to map any number of processes or experiences. This article will discuss an
approach to using the enneagram as a framework for leadership. While the focus here is on
leadership in organizations, the ideas laid out are applicable to leadership in politics,
community groups, schools, families, or any other area.
Walk into any bookstore and you will see row after row of books devoted to leadership.
There are probably two reasons for this: the critical importance of leadership in every
aspect of our lives and the elusive nature of what leadership actually is. Is leadership about
charisma or is it about execution? Is there one best way to lead or are there many equally
valid leadership styles? Is leadership an art, a craft, a science, or all of the above? You will
find books advocating any and all of these points of view—and the books are all correct.
The skills and talents needed for effective leadership are varied, often-contradictory, and
ever-changing depending on the dynamic needs of the environment. It is incumbent upon
leaders to become life-long learners who continue to hone their talents and learn new skills
related to leadership.
At the risk of adding clutter to an already glutted market, it seems that there is room for an
approach to leadership using the enneagram as a unifying framework that can then serve
as a reference point for lifelong leadership-skill development. Rather than try to map a
specific leadership skill set to the enneagram, however, it seems to make more sense to
map leadership attributes and dynamics to the model. Before describing this leadership
model, we must first define some concepts as they are used in this article.
Let’s begin with the term “leadership.”
There are as many definitions of “leadership” as there are leaders, but one that has served
the author well in his work in executive coaching and leadership development is:
“Successful leadership is the act of influencing others to effectively achieve a desired result
consistently and over time.”
Let’s look at some components of the definition:
Effective implies both efficiency and ethics; it means doing the right things quickly,
economically, and accurately.
Consistency implies a repeatable (and repeated) methodology and/or a pattern of success.
Over time implies that the “followers” are not alienated by either of the twin evils of abusive
tactics and lack of inspiration. (Abused employees may get the task done today but they will
find a new job tomorrow; uninspired employees will eventually drain of their natural initiative
and cease to perform or move to other companies.)
We must also clearly understand the difference between skills and attributes. A sports
analogy might help:
Dribbling, dunking, and shooting a basketball are specific skills; singular tactical actions that
can be improved with practice and repetition. They are performed under specific
circumstances and expected to achieve a specific result. Scoring more points than your
opponent is the goal of basketball; dribbling, dunking, and shooting are some of the skills
you use to achieve that goal.
Speed, endurance, and strength are attributes—general innate or developed qualities that
support a variety of skills. They are not goal-related skills, but they make your application of
your skills better.
In the same way, moving others toward an objective is the goal of leadership.
Communication, inspiration, setting direction, and a multitude of other tasks are the skills of
leadership; they help the leader achieve the goal. The qualities laid out on this model are
the attributes of leadership; they help the leader apply the skills more effectively.
The Enneagram Leadership Attribute Model
This model identifies attributes in three broad areas: Leadership Behavior, Leadership
Relationships, and Leadership Thinking. Each of these areas is represented by a triangle
embedded within the enneagram and will be addressed separately. Please note that this
model is a subjective construct developed by the author. It is neither part of some mythical
“ancient enneagram tradition” nor the final word on how the enneagram can be used in
leadership development.
Leadership Behavior
At the heart of leadership behavior is flexibility. Good leaders are candid and forceful in
some situations; gentle and supportive in others. They know that some situations require
quick, decisive action and that others require caution and deliberation. They know that
sometimes they must charismatically lead from the front and other times quietly lead from
the rear.
The leader needs the flexibility to develop the new skills and behaviors that are required by
the situation he or she is facing rather than being trapped in habitual behaviors that feel
comfortable but fail to get the necessary results. For example, an Eight may habitually act
on the impulse to drive and push people when her staff really needs sympathetic
understanding and coaching. A Nine may smooth over conflict when his team really needs
to air competing concerns. Flexibility helps leaders out of these kinds of traps because it
gives them the ability to consciously change behaviors to meet the circumstances they face.
In the book, “From Awareness to Action: The Enneagram, Emotional Intelligence and
Change” (University of Scranton Press, 2004), Bob Tallon and I discuss what we call the
“enneagram change cycle.” We explain how the reader can use a process of practicing self-
awareness, developing authenticity, and taking action to overcome habitual reliance on
ineffective behaviors. This cycle is represented by the inner triangle of the enneagram that
connects points Nine (Awareness), Three (Authenticity), and Six (Action Bias). (See Figure
2.) These three attributes allow the leader to develop the flexibility of response so critical to
success. We’ll define each and then show how they can be used.
Awareness consists of three components:
1. Presence—the capacity to stay conscious to one’s immediate experience,
2. Discrimination—the ability to objectively identify and analyze those things one is
conscious of, and
3. Mapping—the ability to create a goal for change as necessary.
Authenticity is also multi-faceted. In this context, it means:
1. Ownership—the willingness to assume responsibility for all that one does and all that
happens within one’s sphere of influence;
2. Integrity—the ability to identify and resolve inconsistencies and conflicting commitments.
Action Bias is:
1. Maintaining a mindset focused on solutions rather than problems; and
2. Creating and executing action plans that bring about those solutions.
Taken together, awareness, authenticity and action bias allow the leader to let go of the
habitual behaviors that are proving ineffective for the task at hand and adopt appropriate
and effective behaviors. This same process can be used to modify the behavior of groups
and individuals.
Let’s look at an example of a leader who applied this process to his own behavior:
Harry, a Five, is the vice president of engineering for a large telecom company. Fives
interact with the world by striving to be detached and, like most Fives, Harry is highly
analytical, cerebral, and introverted. He is well-liked despite his slightly aloof manner and
widely respected for his technical expertise. However, his team is floundering because Harry
fails to communicate strategic direction to the people below him. His team sees a
challenging business climate but no real roadmap to success. Harry sees the roadmap, and
it is a good one, but simply does not think to effectively communicate the direction to others.
Harry receives feedback from the general manager that the engineers are disengaged and
anxious about the company’s future, which comes as a surprise to him.
Committed to resolving this dilemma, Harry begins to apply the awareness, authenticity,
action model.
First, he starts to observe the ways in which he detaches and withdraws from others in the
organization when he is thinking about strategy. He understands that this is a typical Five-
ish behavior, that Fives deal with their world by striving to be detached and that stress
accentuates this detachment. He sets a broad goal of communicating strategy more
effectively to the team.
Next, Harry applies authenticity. He acknowledges that this is his problem and that he is
responsible for resolving it. “I shouldn’t wait for people to come to me for information,” he
says. “And it is not their fault if my strategy is not clear to them; it is mine. I must take
ownership for communicating to them and making sure that they are receiving my message.”
Harry starts to notice resistance rising up in himself at the idea of going out among the staff
and having the conversations necessary to make the group’s tensions go away. “I am
naturally shy,” he says, “and the idea of undertaking the communications effort—conducting
all-hands meetings, walking around and talking to the engineers—made me uncomfortable.
I was resistant to doing it.”
Harry had identified a conflicting commitment. He was committed to communicating more
effectively because he knew it was the right thing to do, but he was equally committed to not
communicating because communicating in certain circumstances makes him uncomfortable.
“Once I identified these conflicting commitments, I became free of the paralysis they were
causing. I saw that by having the conversations I used to avoid I would ultimately reduce the
conversations that I really dreaded: mediating conflicts, disciplining non-performers, holding
exit interviews with engineers who quit, and so on.”
Next, Harry leapt into action. Well, “leapt” is a strong word—he is a Five, after all—but he
did create and execute on a plan for communicating his strategic vision to the team and
morale and performance gradually improved.
While Harry was focused on modifying his own behavior, leaders can apply the same
awareness-authenticity-action model to the way they get a group to modify its behavior. At
the risk of over-simplifying, the process tends to go like this:
• Awareness: Identify and communicate the desired goal.
• Authenticity: Take responsibility for doing whatever needs to be done to move the team
toward the goal. Align resources; i.e., make sure the right people are in the right roles and
that they have the right organizational structure. Identify hidden resistance to the goal and
resolve it.
• Action bias: Oversee the development of an action plan and hold people accountable for
completing it.
The ability to flexibly respond to one’s environment is by far the most critical competency a
leader can have. The next two pieces of the Leadership Attribute Model are important, but
leadership can simply not be successful without the ability to flexibly modify behavior. The
attributes of awareness, authenticity and action bias enable leaders to be flexible.
Leadership Relationships
While the triangle found at points Nine, Three, and Six represents the attributes related to
intrapersonal or intra-group dynamics, the triangle formed by points Five, Eight, and Two
represents the attributes related to interpersonal dynamics. These points correspond to the
attributes of Detachment, Power, and Compassion, respectively, in this model. (See Figure
3.)
The 3-6-9 triangle is closed and allows for circular movement. That is, one goes from
awareness to authenticity to action and back to awareness in a potentially endless loop.
The 5-8-2 triangle is incomplete; there is no line connecting points five and two. Power,
represented by point 8 rests in the center, balanced by detachment and compassion. This
central position is appropriate because power is the sine qua non of leadership. Power is
the ability to produce an effect; leadership is impossible without it.
We tend to demonize power. Take a moment to think about the sayings commonly
associated with this attribute: “power corrupts,” certain people are “power hungry,” “power
lies in the barrel of a gun,” etc. However, we cannot have an honest discussion about
leadership without admitting to the necessity of power. Without it, a leader cannot motivate
people, negotiate solutions to internal conflicts, add the necessary leverage to solve
problems, remove roadblocks… the list goes on and on. If power is the capacity to have an
effect, then successful leadership is by definition an act of power.
While power is at the center of a leader’s relationships with others, it cannot be the only
attribute that informs the leader’s interactions with others. In fact, power is dangerous if it is
not balanced with detachment and compassion.
Detachment enables the leader’s application of power to be judicious and measured. It also
provides the emotional balancing needed for making tough but necessary decisions such
as cutting funding for a popular but unprofitable project, closing an obsolete plant, or firing
an under-performing subordinate.
Power and detachment alone can lead to cruelty. Compassion, which for the sake of this
model means the ability to consciously and empathically connect with the needs of others,
keeps power from being heartlessly applied. Compassion allows leaders to reach out to and
connect with followers; to understand their fears, hopes, and aspirations. It allows a leader
to communicate in emotional and symbolic tones that resonate with peoples’ hearts and
bellies and not just their heads. Compassion enables one to lead rather than push because
people will follow someone who considers their interests and well-being.
On the other hand, power and compassion alone can lead to irresponsibility. Without
detachment, leaders can neglect their fiduciary responsibilities to the whole (stockholders,
customers, society, etc.) by becoming too focused on keeping subordinates happy and
content or protecting a small cadre of insiders at the expense of effective and efficient
execution.
Space does not allow for a detailed example of the application of these attributes. At the risk
of oversimplifying, leaders are interpersonally successful when they simultaneously:
1. Wield the power necessary to drive business results;
2. Exercise the compassion to connect emotionally and symbolically with people and
consider their needs when making decisions; and
3. Have enough detachment to make tough decisions and give up power when appropriate.
Leadership Thinking
The third triangle of this leadership model is the one found at Points Seven, One, and Four.
These points, for our purposes, represent the attributes of curiosity, rigor, and creativity,
which are the three critical qualities of a leader’s intellect. Again, we have an open-ended
triangle where the leader’s intellect centers on rigor and is balanced by curiosity and
creativity. (See Figure 4.)
Leaders are rarely the smartest person in the room. In fact, good leaders strive to surround
themselves with people who are smarter, more knowledgeable, and more competent in
specific technical areas than they are. Without rigor—the ability to exercise strict precision
and discipline—a leader may be misled by those on her staff and make poor decisions. The
leader must constantly prod and probe, questioning details that seem incongruent,
demanding candor and consistency, and holding her staff accountable for the accuracy of
their views and the performance of their teams.
However, rigor can become paralyzing if it is not balanced with curiosity and creativity.
Curiosity, for the leader, is the need to understand things outside of the normal scope of his
experience. “How do other companies solve similar problems? How do customers in China
use our products differently than those in the U.S.? What are college students listening to
on the radio or watching on television?” The list of things a leader should be curious about
is endless.
The Buddhist concept of “beginner’s mind” is another facet of the leader’s curiosity; it is the
willingness to start from a position of humility and lack of preconception, free from
expectation and judgment. Effective leaders start from the assumption that they are the
least informed person in the room and they strive to absorb the knowledge and insights of
the people around them before making decisions.
Rigor keeps the leader’s curiosity in check by instilling the discipline to make decisions
when they are needed and keep the leader from falling victim to unnecessary navel-gazing
and “paralysis by analysis.”
The final attribute of the leadership intellect is creativity, which serves to keep rigor from
becoming a limiting rigidity. At its core, creativity is the desire to bring something into
existence—a product, a vision, a new solution to an old problem. A “leader” who is not
consumed by this creative drive has no business leading others.
Creativity also involves resourcefulness—the leader’s ability to unshackle himself from the
traditional ways of solving problems when those methods are not adequate or when a new
solution provides a competitive advantage. A lack of resourcefulness ultimately leads to
stagnation and obsolescence, conditions that no leader or organization can survive.
Again, rigor is the regulator against an overabundance of creativity. It is ineffective to be
creative for the mere sake of creativity when a more mundane (or faster, cheaper, or
simpler) solution will bring about the same result. A rigorous leader keeps people focused
on solutions and results.
The leader’s intellect helps to shape the course of an organization. Even the smartest
leaders will not be able to take their organization in the right direction if this intellect is
lacking a healthy dose of rigor, curiosity, and creativity.
Leadership Attributes and Personality Type
It is easy to see the connection between the attributes plotted on this model and the
personality types typically identified with the enneagram. (It is easy to see, for example, that
“power” at Point 8 is going to resonate with Type Eight, who’s fundamental orientation to life
is “striving to be powerful.”) It is a mistake, however, to focus only on certain elements of
this model at the expense of others because they correspond to one’s personality style.
The goal of this leadership attribute model is to provide a framework that a leader can use
to become balanced and well-rounded, not to reinforce habitual preferences and traps.
It is also easy to see that leaders of particular personality types can be predictably weak in
certain areas. (For example, Eights will struggle with compassion; Fives will struggle with
power, etc.) The reader is urged to step out of the paradigm of enneagram as typology and
into the realm of enneagram as structure and process when working with this leadership
attribute model. Doing so will allow for the broad and balanced development of the
attributes and skills that make for effective leaders.
An Ongoing Exploration
Because of the unique demands of leadership—leading often diverse people with varying
interests in an ever-changing environment—any list of leadership attributes will be
incomplete. One could argue that optimism belongs on the list at Point 7, executive polish at
Point 3, competitiveness at 8, caution at 6, etc., and one would be correct. This model is a
framework that begins a process of exploration for each leader to examine the demands
she faces and structure a personal improvement plan.
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