EP254: The Power of Understanding the Stances of the Enneagram - Going Deeper with the Enneagram

Welcome to the Leadership Formula podcast, where you will learn the secret sauce behind achieving massive success. I'm your host, Tracy o', Malley, multimillion dollar entrepreneur, your Enneagram expert, master performance coach, and mom to millennials. Do you want deep, meaningful relationships? To wake up every day with purpose and make money doing something you love? Well, you've landed in the right place. Every week, I will teach you how to get exactly what you want in life by strengthening your emotional intelligence. Using a combination of the Enneagram framework, live life coaching sessions, and real talk from yours truly. It's time to transform yourself into the ultimate leader of your life. Let's do this thing.

I know if you're listening. You have become somebody that has fallen in love with the beautiful tool of the Enneagram. You want to know more? You love putting the puzzle pieces of life. Who you are, who other people are, leadership, all the things you love, putting it all together. And today, we're going to dive a little deeper into another one of the tria that is within the Enneagram. And many of you guys already know about the triad called the centers of intelligence. It's like the main category of the Enneagram. And I've talked at length about this, that understanding the centers of intelligence is probably the most important thing you could do moving forward if you want to use the tool of the Enneagram to understand other people. Because quite honestly, not everybody's going to take an assessment. And even if they did, a lot of times you've heard me say it's inaccurate, right? But how I got so skillful in understanding who was in front of me without ever saying the word Enneagram or having anyone taken an assessment or saying, hey, what's your Enneagram? Was understanding the centers of intelligence. Now, that being said, there is another triad within the Enneagram that you may not know about, called the stances or the social styles. And this doesn't change your Enneagram type. It doesn't change your wings. It doesn't change any of that. However, these social styles, these stances will help you understand your Enneagram type and the other Enneagram types even further. Right? When you talk about accomplishing goals, a lot of times, coaches, teachers, whatever, will lump everyone together as if, you know, everyone has the same innate ability to set and achieve goals. But that's not true. Like, how I tackle a goal or an achievement is very different than my son, my best friend, my daughter. Your Enneagram type and the stance your number is in can greatly Affect how fast you move through the world and where you focus your attention. Right? So the triad of the stances will allow you to understand and see how you show up as what you do to get what you want. Right? This is all subconscious. You don't even realize you're doing it. But me understanding this, when I really get frustrated with the people that maybe aren't moving the way that I would. My son, the guy that I'm dating, my best friend, all three are in a different stance than me. My daughter and I happen to fall in the same stance, which is why, although we can drive each other crazy when we are moving towards something, when we are going after something, we move very similarly. Right? So this triad, the stances or social styles, they're also called the Hornevian groups. It's based on the work of a psychoanalyst who said that there are three primary ways that we interact with others to meet our needs and to soothe that inner conflict. Right? So the three stances, like the centers of intelligence, each stance has three Enneagram numbers in it. So there are the three categories. The assertive stance, the compliant or dependent or dutiful stance, and the withdrawn stance. Okay, so in the assertive or aggressive stance, some people are naturally future oriented and wired to go after what they want. In Enneagram land, they are known as the assertive or aggressive stance. So the types that fall into this category are the Enneagram 3, the Achiever, the Enneagram 7, the Enthusiast, and the Enneagram 8, the Challenger. If you notice, there is one of them in each center of intelligence. The three falls into the heart, heart or feeling center of intelligence. The seven falls into the head or thinking center of intelligence. And the eight falls into the gut or body center of intelligence. These three types know what they want and have no problem going for it. High energy action takers who don't make a ton of space for feelings, right? They assert themselves and move against people to get what they want, meaning that they charge forward. So, you know, imagine the slow walkers at the mall. It's so funny when I'm with my daughter, we move very, very fast through a crowd, right? These three Enneagram types just kind of move through and power through, right? So if you're a leader or know somebody in this stance, just be mindful that the other people may not move as fast as you get their opinions and explain what you're doing if you want them to buy in. This was something that I really needed to understand. This was really, really powerful, that even Some of the other Enneagram types that are go getters, they don't necessarily go after it the same way. Doesn't mean that they're not less take charge. You know, I'm thinking like the Enneagram ones, they're very, very instinctual, right? But they fall into one of the other stances. And knowing that I'm in the assertive stance, especially, you know, two of the most important people in my life fall into the compliant one. And you know, the, the man that I'm with is in the withdrawn stance. Understanding this allows me to be a lot less judgmental and allows them to trust me more that I see, hear, understand and value where they're coming from. Now, the compliant or dutiful stance, also known as the dependent stance, is comprised of enneagrams 2, 1, and 6. The helper, the improver, or the sheriff, like I call you, or the loyalist and the loyalist. So the compliance stance tries to earn what they want. They move toward people and are present thinking, who or what needs my attention this very second. And for these three types, and I'm very close to two and six in my life, I. It can be very, very challenging for them to move forward because of perfectionistic tendencies, trying to make everyone happy. And that worst case scenario, what if thinking, right? So if you're in this stance, if you're a one, two or six, or if you love or lead one, understanding that they need to stay mindful of sticking to your plan instead of dropping everything to do what's in front of you, right? That worst case scenario, thinking the people, pleasing the perfectionists, that can keep you from taking action to move forward. So if you're working with one of them, when they're in a zone, it can be very challenging to move them. And so for somebody like me who's in the more assertive, go after it. This is where my biggest challenge is in dealing with these three types, quite honestly, because I'm just like, suck it up, just go for it. But really understanding that these three are very present, thinking and in the moment, instead of just like knowing that it's going to turn out okay. Very, very important to understand. Now, the withdrawn stance.

Past oriented. The three types that fall into this one are the four, the five, and the nine. The four which is the individualist or the romantic, the five which is the investigator, and the nine which is the peacemaker. The four falls in the heart triad, the five in the thinking triad, and the nine in the instinctual triad. For the compliance stance, the ones are in the gut, the two are in the feeling, and the six are in the thinking. Now, with the withdrawn stance, the people in this stance are slower moving and do not like to be rushed. In fact, you try to rush them, they will procrastinate on purpose, even if they're not conscious of it, right? They need time to process. They do. They're dreamers in their own world and can often come off as introverted, shy. These Enneagram types move away from others and look inward, past thinking, right? They withdraw to get what they want. They are thinking, what happened in the past that can inform what's happening now? Where are the receipts? What has history shown me? And if you're in this stance or know somebody that is, notice the tendency to procrastinate and create a plan or consider working with someone to help you stop the overthinking and start taking action, right? Really, really. This is, you know, being in a relationship with somebody that is in this stance, I have to exercise a lot of restraint and patience. Not because they aren't taking action in a different, you know, they're taking action in a different way than me, but because I'm just such an assertive type. I'm like, okay, see the goal, Hit the goal. What do we need to do to change this? Where anybody in the fours, fives, and nines have to really think about it first, right? So it's really, really important. So each enneagram type within each stance is driven by a different motivation. That's part of their personality pattern, right? So here's how each enneagram type acts according to their stance, right? And this is categorized by their intelligence center. So the instinctual center, the eights, the nines, and the ones want autonomy, right? So the eights demand autonomy, nines withdraw to gain autonomy, and ones attempt to earn autonomy, right? So this is where the centers of intelligence become really, really important. They're all driven and motivated by a need for independence and autonomy. But how they get it is very, very different. Now, in the feeling center, the heart center of intelligence have the 2, 3, and 4. They want significance and attention. Twos try to earn attention. Again, they're in that compliant or dependent stance. Threes demand.

Assertive or aggressive stance, and the fours withdraw for attention. That withdrawing stance, you see the patterns. It's pretty cool once you understand how this all flows. Like I've said before, the Enneagram is not complicated, but it is complex. All right? And finally, in the thinking center, the head center of intelligence, the fives, the sixes and the sevens, they want certainty or security.

Fives withdraw to have it, sixes try to earn it and sevens demand it. Right. So that's just a quick overview of the three stances. I think it was really, really important that yes, it's cool to understand what people's Enneagram type is. Yes, it's awesome to understand how their wings and subtypes come into play. But this is an extra kind of layer of understanding for yourself and for other people. I would love to hear what you learned about this. This is something that isn't talked about a ton, but when you know somebody's Enneagram type and know that just because they're like a three doesn't mean that they're just significance driven and what that is. Or two, yes, they're driven by significance, but how they go about getting it can look very, very different. Or how they go about their motives and their fears and how they protect their fears. And we'll get into that on another episode. But I would love to hear what you learned about yourself and any aha moments that you have had. I go into this kind of thing in the Enneagram Kickstart sessions where we get you typed properly, the most powerful 90 minutes that you can have. If you want to know for sure Your Enneagram type, 65 to 70% of you are mistyped on any of those online assessments, even the paid ones. And to have 90 minutes to not only get typed properly, understand your wings, your subtype, which is your instinctual response to life, we also go into the stances, which is your social response to life. We talk about your growth number, your stress number, and how to integrate all that information personally, professionally, individually, relationally. All of it. It is amazing. It is my favorite, favorite, favorite thing to do. I also do this within teams and organizations. If are part of a team or an organization and would love this to be brought into the dynamics of your team. I love helping you put all the puzzle pieces together so that you can have a more cohesive, beautiful, communication, bulletproof kind of team. It is amazing. You can hit me up on Instagram traceyomalley, if you want more information on that or if you know you're ready to spend 90 minutes with me and do an Enneagram Kickstart session. You can go to trac, o'malley.com, the work with Me section. It is that Enneagram Kickstart thing. I promise you, you will love every second of it. I've heard a lot and I'm not claiming to be any kind of like psychologist or therapist. I didn't go to do that for a reason because I wanted to be able to share all of my truth with you too. Every therapist, all nine of them said I should be a therapist. But I specifically wanted to be more of a success and performance coach so I could share all the juicy details of my life. So you can see that actually walk my talk. Not saying therapists don't, but I find that I can move help you move the needle a lot faster in this work and that's why I've chosen to do this. But I have heard quite often that this has helped. 90 minutes has helped more than many years of therapy for a lot of people and that's pretty awesome. It's probably some of the greatest compliments I've ever received. As somebody who's been in therapy for over 20 years, I don't take that lightly. I see the value in therapy, but this is just another thing to add to your toolbox to help you become the ultimate leader in your life, in your homes and in everything you do. I love, love love the work that I am so blessed to be able to do. I never get tired of it and if that is something you want to dive deeper into with me, I also have private one on one coaching that I take you through next level Enneagram and all the methodology that I have picked up over the 22 years of my own performance coaching. I've really crafted up my own methodology and really have developed a great system to help thousands of you on your journey, heal the past, move forward in the future and really savor the very thing that's in front of you right here and right now. Go to traceyomalley.com work with me section for more details. Or you can always hit me up and I'm always here for you. I love what I do and I'd love to take you through the journey. Until next time you guys Foreign.

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