If you'd like to take what you hear today further, Enneagram MBA offers standalone workshops, retreat experiences, and team-development programs that can be customized around communication, collaboration, and working styles.

If you’d rather lead the experience internally, the DIY Enneagram Workshop Kit includes a slide deck, facilitator guide, sample agendas, icebreakers, and tools to help you bring the conversation to your own team.

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Better communication doesn’t always mean more communication.

Teams already have more ways to stay connected than ever: email, messaging platforms, video calls, project-management tools, AI-generated summaries.

But... none of those automatically mean people understand one another better. Sometimes the most useful shift is becoming more aware of the person on the other side of the conversation.

In this episode, we look at five common reasons communication can break down even on good teams:

• Different priorities shape what people hear and pay attention to
• Communication style can easily be confused with intention
• Teams often have unspoken expectations they assume everyone shares
• People respond to stress, tension, and disagreement differently
• We make assumptions about what is driving someone else’s behavior before we actually know

Using examples from real workshop feedback, we explore how the Enneagram can help teams move from assumption to curiosity and better understand what may be underneath a coworker’s communication style, questions, pace, or reactions.

You’ll also hear three questions you can bring into your next team meeting:

1. What helps you receive information clearly?
2. What is one communication habit you have that others might misunderstand?
3. What is one thing we could do differently to make communication easier across our team?

The goal isn’t to get everyone communicating the same way. It’s to build enough awareness and shared language that people can better understand one another and work through differences with less friction.

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NEW RESOURCE: Download the free Enneagram Workshop Planning Kit for ideas, sample agendas, planning questions, and practical resources to help you design the right experience for your team.

Have a request for a future episode? Drop a text here!

Planning an end-of-year or beginning-of-year team experience?

If your team is looking for a meaningful way to reflect, reconnect, or start the new year with a stronger shared language, learn more about Enneagram MBA team workshops and kickoff experiences.

You can also download the free Enneagram Workshop Planning Kit for ideas, sample agendas, planning questions, and practical resources to help you design the right experience for your team.

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Not everyone processes ideas by talking them through.

For Enneagram Type 5s, thinking often happens internally first - observing, gathering information, making connections, and deciding what is worth contributing.

In a workplace that often rewards fast responses and visible participation, that can sometimes be mistaken for aloofness or disengagement.

In this episode, we explore the strengths Type 5s bring to teams and what managers can do to make better use of those strengths.

We cover:

• Why Type 5s often want time to understand before they respond
• How silence can be mistaken for disengagement
• Why many meetings naturally favor external processors
• Simple ways managers can get better input from quieter team members
• The Type 5 tendency to protect time, energy, and attention
• When gathering more information becomes a reason to delay participation
• How Type 5s can contribute before every thought feels completely finished

The bigger takeaway: participation doesn’t always look like immediate verbal participation.

The person who hasn’t said much yet may still be doing some of the most important thinking in the room.

Have a request for a future episode? Drop a text here!

Planning an Enneagram workshop for your team?

Before you decide on the agenda, activities, or even how much Enneagram content to include, there are a few bigger questions worth answering first.

In this episode of the Enneagram at Work Podcast, you'll learn five questions that can help you plan a workshop that is not only interesting in the room, but useful once everyone gets back to work.

Whether you’re bringing in a facilitator, planning an internal team experience, or facilitating Enneagram workshops yourself, these questions can help you think more intentionally about what you want the experience to accomplish.

In this episode:

• What do you want people to understand differently after the workshop?
• What do you want people to do differently afterward?
• Who is actually going to be in the room - a leadership team, intact team, cross-functional group, new team, or multiple departments?
• How much Enneagram content do people really need?
• What will happen after the workshop so the Enneagram becomes more than a one-time experience?

You'll also hear about one of the biggest mistakes she made early on as a facilitator: trying to teach too much Enneagram content instead of creating enough space for reflection, discussion, and application.

The goal isn’t to turn everyone into Enneagram experts.

It’s to help people become better experts on themselves, and on the relationships they navigate at work.

Free Workshop Planning Kits

If you’re currently planning an Enneagram workshop, retreat, team development session, or kickoff meeting, Enneagram MBA has two free Workshop Planning Kits designed to help.

Path One: For HR, L&D, people leaders, and internal Enneagram champions:
Get sample agendas, planning questions, room setup ideas, guidance for getting leadership buy-in, and more.

Path Two: For Enneagram coaches and facilitators:
Get sample agendas, workshop preparation questions, pricing considerations, facilitation guidance, and ideas for what happens before, during, and after the workshop.

Explore both free resources at:

EnneagramMBA.com/resources

Have a request for a future episode? Drop a text here!

Type 1s bring something incredibly valuable to the workplace: high standards, reliability, precision, follow-through, and a natural ability to see what could be improved.

But those same strengths can become heavy.

A Type 1 may notice the typo, the missed deadline, the unclear process, the skipped step, or the work that is almost right - and then quietly become the person who fixes it, checks it, follows up on it, or takes it back over.

Over time, responsibility can turn into over-responsibility.

In this episode of the Enneagram at Work Podcast, we'll explore together what can happen when a Type 1’s desire to do things well starts creating extra work for themselves, and sometimes extra pressure for the people around them.

The question at the center of the episode is:

Does this actually need to be improved, or is it simply not how I would have done it?

You'll also hear about in this episode:

• Why Type 1s are often the people who notice what everyone else misses
• How responsibility can quietly become over-responsibility
• The invisible workload Type 1s may take on without being asked
• Why “I’ll just fix this real quick” can add up to a much bigger workload
• How resentment can build when a Type 1 feels like they are the only person who cares
• Why different approaches do not necessarily mean someone is less committed
• Why delegation can be especially difficult when “done” isn’t the same as “done the way I would do it”
• How high standards can unintentionally make teammates feel constantly corrected
• Practical questions Type 1s can use before stepping in, redoing, correcting, or taking something back

You'll also hear about three useful categories for evaluating someone else’s work:

1. It is actually incorrect.
There is a factual, legal, safety, requirement, or outcome-related issue.

2. It genuinely needs improvement.
Something is unclear, inconsistent, likely to create a problem, or does not meet the agreed-upon standard.

3. It is simply different.
The approach, style, order, process, or execution isn’t how you would have done it, but it isn’t actually wrong.

That third category can be one of the biggest growth opportunities for Type 1.

Because different people can be committed to the same outcome while valuing different parts of the process.

Different does not automatically mean less committed.

Questions for Type 1s to consider

Before correcting, redoing, or taking something over, ask:

• Does this really matter to the outcome?
• Is this actually my responsibility?
• Was this standard clearly communicated?
• Is the outcome wrong — or just different?
• Am I fixing this because it needs fixing, or because fixing it lowers my own discomfort?
• What happens if I let this be good enough? edit-video2986942878

The goal isn’t to stop caring or lower your standards.

It may simply be learning that not every detail deserves the same amount of energy, not every task belongs to you, and not every different approach needs to be corrected.

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Want to go deeper into your Enneagram type?

Enneagram MBA now offers individual typing, coaching, and workstyle sessions designed to help you better understand your patterns and actually apply what you’re learning to your work, leadership, and workplace relationships.

Our 1:1 Session Options:

1. Typing Interview
2. Understand Your Type + Instinct
3. 3-Session Deep Dive
4. Coworker Translation Session
5. Leadership Strategy Session

Learn more at:

EnneagramMBA.com/enneagram-coaching

Have a request for a future episode? Drop a text here!

Not everyone walks into an Enneagram workshop excited to be there.

In fact, there are usually a few skeptics in the room, and that’s okay.

In this episode, I’m sharing a recent experience from an Enneagram team workshop in Nashville. One participant admitted that he didn’t want to attend the workshop and didn’t want to take the Enneagram assessment. But after receiving his results and learning more about his Type 8 pattern, his reaction changed completely. He described how surprisingly accurate the Enneagram felt, not only in identifying his strengths, but also some of the things he knows he struggles with.

And it gets even better.

He went on to become one of the most engaged people in the workshop, asking great questions and adding perspectives that made the experience better for the rest of the group.

It was a great reminder for managers, HR and L&D professionals, and anyone facilitating the Enneagram with a team:

Skepticism doesn’t have to be the enemy of a good workshop.

You don’t need everyone to arrive already believing in, or even liking, the Enneagram. You need to create an experience that is credible, relevant, useful, engaging, and strong enough to earn their participation.

In this episode, I share:

• Why I don’t try to talk skeptics out of being skeptical
• What changed for this particular participant after taking the assessment
• Why his skepticism ultimately contributed to the workshop
• What managers can learn from this experience when they’re worried their team won’t “buy in”
• Why an Enneagram workshop doesn’t require everyone to walk through the door excited about personality typing

If you’ve thought about bringing the Enneagram to your organization but wondered, “What if some people on my team are skeptical?” this one is for you.

Thinking about an Enneagram experience for your team? Visit Enneagram MBA to tell us a little about what’s going on with your team, and we’ll help you explore an experience that fits.

enneagrammba.com

Have a request for a future episode? Drop a text here!

“But what happens if…?”

“Have we thought about…?”

“Who’s responsible for…?”

“What if this doesn’t work?”

If you work with an Enneagram Type 6, you may be familiar with the questions.

And depending on how those questions are delivered or received, they can sometimes sound like resistance, negativity, or a challenge to the person leading the conversation.

But what if the Type 6 question isn’t really just a question?

In this episode of Enneagram at Work, we're looking underneath a common Type 6 workplace behavior to understand what may actually be happening.

For a Type 6, striving to feel secure can mean looking for potential problems, unanswered questions, missing information, or risks that everyone else seems ready to move past.

In other words:

What sounds like resistance may actually be risk detection.

And that can be incredibly valuable to a team.

Of course, there's another side to it. Question after question without the ability to eventually move forward can slow down a decision or frustrate coworkers. That's why the goal isn't to label questioning as either a strength or a weakness, it's to understand the pattern underneath it and learn to use it more intentionally.

In this episode, we explore how Type 6 questioning can show up at work, why managers may misinterpret it, the value a Type 6 can bring by pressure-testing a plan, and how both Type 6s and their coworkers can translate those questions into more productive conversations.

For the Type 6, try:

“I want to pressure-test one part of this before we move forward.”

For the manager or teammate, try:

“What's the biggest risk you're seeing that you don't think we've accounted for?”

Sometimes a better conversation starts when we stop reacting to the question and get curious about what's underneath it.

Bring the Enneagram to Your Team

Tell us what's going on with your team, and we'll help you determine the right place to start.

enneagrammba.com

Have a request for a future episode? Drop a text here!