The Enneagram is a powerful roadmap for profound change.  It is a dynamic personality system comprised of nine distinct patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting.  Each of the nine patterns is based on an explicit perceptual filter, which determines what you pay attention to and how you direct your energy.  Underlying each of the nine patterns is a basic proposition, or core belief, about what you need in life for survival and satisfaction. As you discover your Enneagram type, you will understand more about the unconscious motivation from which you operate and recognize the strategies that keep your automatic behaviors, or habits, in place. 

The first step in Enneagram coaching is to help you identify your Enneagram type.  Once you’ve identified your type, we explore the aspects of your type that are most challenging to you and pinpoint areas where you would like to develop a greater range of emotional and behavioral responses. Maybe you would like to delegate more in your job, be more effective with your clients, or learn to put your own agenda first. You’ll be asked to consider the following questions:

• As you think about this upcoming coaching experience, what would you most want to achieve as a result of our time and effort?
•  Please help me understand why these matter so much to you.
• What personal and/or professional benefits will you gain when you achieve these goals?

Then, together, we decide an approximate amount of time we expect to work together to achieve the desired outcomes.  This varies by client and coaching goals. 

We meet every 3-4 weeks, for 60 minutes, in person, by phone or Skype.   During our sessions together, we explore the observations you have made about your type, what’s working and what’s not, and what your experience has been practicing your new range of behaviors.  The Enneagram provides the blueprint for our work.  For example, if you are a type Three, your focus of attention is on tasks or goals.  We may work for several sessions on observing what that focus of attention provides, how it helps and how it hinders your effectiveness.  From this self-observation study, we work together to identify new behaviors you would like to develop, and what you can practice between sessions.

 Over time, if you are willing to reflect on your assumptions and beliefs, and to practice new behaviors, you will become more conscious and have a wider range of behavioral choices.  In essence, this process allows you to move from being unconsciously constricted by your Enneagram type, to being more aware and able to interrupt your automatic behaviors.  You then have the strengths of your type available to you as well as the freedom to make more conscious choices about your behavior, rather than repeating habits. 

The Enneagram provides a lifetime roadmap for growth and development; however, you will choose to complete your coaching experience when you have created enough internal space to really see, with fresh eyes, the key patterns of your type and when you are able to think, feel, and act in new and different ways.  You will come to know how these patterns serve you, their blindspots and resulting consequences.  This new worldview will help you lead a more conscious and compassionate life.