Episode 16 | December 19th, 2023

Understanding the Enneagram Types, Its Deadly Sins & the 3 Triads

In this compelling part two episode, A2O Digital invites Ed Hesling back to discuss each Enneagram style as well as their deadly sins attributes, and the 3 Triads. Ed and his team have a vast understanding of all the Enneagram types, and it has created a successful employee retention rate for his organization. Listen to this episode to see what types would be a great fit for roles in your business and how to understand each one.

Doug 00:00

Okay, so Ed welcome back to our second part here. When we finished our last episode, I was talking to you about an issue that I had where we had a training class for our employees. And I had two people that no showed. And I said, you know, what would you do? Knowing what you know about Enneagram and all that type of stuff, what would you do in that situation? And your first question back to me was, well, what's their Enneagram styles. So, I've had a chance to be able to pull it out and I and you've got the results in front of you right now. And just to give you a little more backdrop, one of the guys was excused from it, it was a two day training thing. He was excused for it the first day because it was a day off, and we totally expected him to show on the second day, the other guy did not show for both days. But they're co employees, so there's a little bit of a story behind that too. But I got the Enneagram styles in front of you, and we had a chance to like reveal them a little bit. And I really wanted to hear you talk further about it. What would you do now knowing their styles, and let's talk about maybe each of those people.

Ed 01:43

Okay, perfect. So what I would do, if I was in that position to address this with them as I would look at their Enneagram style, and kind of figure it out, you know, having the knowledge of the levels of development and the deadly sins, you know, which one may I be dealing with. And having that information is very important, because it it lets you be able to dive farther in with that discussion with that employee than any surface level discussion would. And so, looking at the two employees that you have presented with me, both of them, you know, they have some pretty impressive scores off the bat, with the one on my left, being a high achiever, high challenger, high performer.

Doug 02:29

So when you when you say impressive scores for the job? For the technician job?

Ed 02:35

Yeah, absolutely. So impressive enough, where we, we shouldn't expect to have these kinds of issues with these employees. But then again, you know, there's 10 levels of development, you know, there's healthy levels, average levels and unhealthy levels, and what you're describing kind of the issues that you have with them, they could fall somewhere in that below average to unhealthy levels. But that doesn't mean that they stay there, as leaders and managers we want to do our best to kind of bring them out of those unhealthy levels and back into the healthier levels. So that way they can work to their optimal potential. That's at the end of the day, that's what us leaders want for our employees, optimal performance and for them to be their best selves.

Doug 03:21

So healthy and unhealthy levels in theory, right, use a, they could be in an unhealthy level because something happened, their dog died, I don't know, it's like something crazy happens, right? And, and they're depressed or something like that and bring them into an unhealthy state. And then they're going to do something that they wouldn't normally do is that is that a good example maybe

Ed 03:44

That's a perfect example of a life event has happened that they may be not responded as well as they should have responded to. And it's, it's bleeding into other aspects of their walk of life, especially into their work. So looking at these, you have two employees who really have good results. It's pretty evident that you know, something's going on in their life that they don't want to be 100% at work. There's a couple of indications that we got off the bat here, going over this person, specifically his high scores, you know, is a type three the achiever. His second highest score, right off the bat is a type eight, the challenger. They're pretty close in hand in scores, type eights, their crutch, you know, we talked a little bit about their deadly sin, but what type eights don't like is that they don't like the feeling of being controlled. I don't like it when people think that they can have authority over me. Whenever I get into let's call it a creative discussion with someone in law enforcement. I may not handle myself as nice as someone as a type two or three would. But I just I don't like a sense of authority over me I don't like being controlled. I don't like, I don't like people telling me what to do. That's my crutch as a type eight. And seeing that this person is type eight is very high, there could be a chance where he may just not like being told, “hey you had to be here at a certain time” without enough of a relationship being built there first. The other thing that I noticed with the two of these scores is that they're type sixes and their type twos. Which is the loyalist type six, right? Yep, the loyalist type six, and then type two is relatively pretty low. On the result.

Doug 05:50

Type two is the helper. Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Ed 05:54

So the type sixes we discussed earlier, it's great to see these scores a little bit higher on the list. Just because these people buy into the vision, they bleed green, they want to prove themselves, they want to work very hard, and show their management that like, hey, you know, I'm your ride or die. I will, I will be with this company through all its ups and downs. These people because their type six are relatively they're lower scores.it's harder for them to bleed green and buy in on the vision.

Doug 06:27

Let me just like, clarify to some people what is bleeding green mean? I know what it means.

Ed 06:34

We're Precision Door. Green is a big color of ours. And you know, it's just a quick way for us to address one another, like, you know, Precision Door is a hill that will die on you know, we bleed green for the business, we're willing to do anything we can for the business.

Doug 06:48

Yeah. And they don't have that in them yet, especially if they're a new employee. Right? They're not bleeding green yet that's for sure.

Ed 06:55

Exactly, exactly. So to see that they're loyalists is relatively low on this scale, they don't, they don't feel based off of the results, they don't feel that they have to prove anything to their management, they don't feel like that they have to gain their trust, they don't feel like that they have to show their management that they're committed or working hard or not. The other aspect is that their type twos are pretty low. One of them, it's their dead last score. Type twos, they're deadly sin is having all their deadly sin is pride, but their biggest fear is feeling worthless. And maybe I should clarify a little bit. Eights biggest fear is being controlled. A type twos biggest fear is feeling worthless, because there's their type twos are relatively really low in scale. They don't care if they feel a sense of worthy to their management or not, because they don't have that as their big basic fear. So because you know, there's, we see that the six is low, there's lack of drive to have that commitment. And because a type two is low, there's this lack of drive to want to prove worthiness to you. And so ultimately, seeing that these two points, being relatively pretty low on the list, kind of fits the behavior analysis of what you've described with these employees about not caring, showing up and whatnot. Doug 08:27 Yeah so here, I'm going to throw you a tough question. Yeah, tough question that make you think about if you had interviewed them, and you they interviewed well, and then you got their Enneagram scores, and you saw their, their scores like this. And obviously, their helper level is very low on the one person and both six and two, you're trying to explain why they may be doing some things they're doing. Would you have hired these guys for that job? Ed 09:03 I knew I'd be taking a big risk. In previous discussion, Doug, I don't know if we've had this discussion on mic or off mic. But um, you know, I've always expressed the importance of having a type two high up in the list or a type three, high up in the list. Type threes, you know, they're good customer service people, but you know their deadly sin is deceit, right? So it's more of how they look towards other people. So the reason why I include type two is that their deadly sin is pride. It's not really how people perceive them, but how they perceive themselves. But they're really good at customer service. Type twos the helpers are really good at having this desire to be a part of something bigger. They're really good at having this desire to be involved and be the answer to someone's needs, their type twos for these two individuals are relatively really low, I would be very, very interested in because you know, type three, type eight type one, I'd be very interested because they have a lot of great scores up top. But it's hard. I would say looking at these two I, it would be 50/50, depending on the day, looking at them, I probably would have passed, just because the type twos are low. And the type nines, the peacemakers are relatively higher backing up all those other scores. You have, you have the lack of desire to be involved. And you have this desire of doing what you want to do up there, which is that type nine that peacemaker, because type nines, they don't like interruption, they want to go with the flow, they don't want change, change is a problem for them. And you know, you have all this commitment and this lack of desire on the low end of your on the list. And then you had that type nine, that's you know it's a high type nine, this one scored 21 points, and this one scored 19 points at a type nine. So, it's evident that it's a big part of their life that they don't, they don't want change, they want to go with the flow. And so I think looking more at it and dive in deeper.

Doug 11:37

I'm sorry, I'm interrupting here, but my brains thinking about this right? Enneagram the information you can get from this, is like, it's amazing, right? And the question is, you got to interpret that information. And you've been doing it much longer than myself. And we did hire these people. We did hire them because they tested high on some things, but I'm not really looking at the low scores and trying to understand how that also comes into play. You really got to understand their scores across the board. You don’t just make a decision. Hey, he's a type eight. I'm going to hire him for this type of job.

Ed 12:16

I wish it was that easy.

Doug 12:18

Yeah, yeah I get it. I understand what you're saying here. And, and you got to study this. And, boy, I'll tell you, if you're a human resource person, you're involved in the hiring process. And you really understand this and like, you study this, this is going to help people a lot in their hiring process.

Ed 12:37

That is, you give me a call.

Doug 12:40

I'm going to start sending them to you, you're going to start charging me a fee. I got five people I want you to analyze.

Ed 12:48

Exactly.

Doug 12:49

So we were at a national conference recently. And you went to a hiring panel, and we talked about this off camera, share with the audience a little bit about that story, because I thought this was really good.

Ed 13:07

So um, we went to this reunion with all the brands, and they had an employee hiring and retention program and me being so invested in the Enneagram and using it for employee hiring and retention and wanting to master this, this part of the industry. You know, I felt that you know, okay, let's see what this has to offer. And you get in there's a huge meeting room and there's a panel, people sitting in a discussion and you ask these guys questions, and one guy stood up, in particular to me that I was really shocked in hearing was he was talking about this hiring process that they're promoting on the panel. And the one guy was talking about how great it was. And he made the comment saying that, uh last year he had hired or last year he had ended the year with 25 people on payroll, and he sent out 82 W-2s.

Doug 14:04

So, if you're not catching what a W-2 is, that's how that's how many people he has had on his payroll in the year, 82. At one time or another, he's at 82 different people on his payroll through that he's only got 25 at the end of the year.

Ed 14:18

Correct. So he had hired about 50 people or more than that kind of filtered and fell through the cracks and left. We're talking about a lot of employees even from a monthly scale. I think my jaw dropped when I heard this and so it made me feel more confident with the Enneagram and my use of the Enneagram, because the Enneagram is supposed to prevent stuff that drastic from happening.

Doug 14:49

Ed, how many employees on your payroll and how many W-2s. Do you know your own?

Ed 14:58

Yes. So in the last five years, I have hired a total of 32 people. And I have kept 25 in five years.

Doug 15:09

That's a big difference. Think about how much time people are putting in to training and not working out training and not working out, oh my gosh.

Ed 15:18

I know, I know. So, and I went back home, and I looked it up, myself and my jaw and then hit the floor as well, like, wow, I only hired 32 people. And I was able to retain and keep 25 of them, I still have all five of the first employees that I hired when we opened up back in 2019. They're all still on board. So very, very proud of the Enneagram and how it's been able to be utilized for employee retention.

Doug 15:54

So another curveball for you. Tell me about your culture, because obviously, you're hiring people. And if you're an owner of a business, and you don't know this yet, the culture of your business how the people feel, you know, is so critical to the success of your business. Vital, yeah, and if your culture is bad, we get a lot of disgruntled employees. I mean, they're hanging around, but they don't want to be there. That just destroys all the people that want to be there. Obviously, when you can get your culture good, you can do so well. Right? What's your culture like in your business?

Ed 16:46

I take a lot of pride in my culture. We don't really hear any news of people not getting along. It's, you know, my guys, they describe it best. It's like, we're not work colleagues. We're not employees. We're all brothers. I learned, through the employees, and I just had a discussion with one of my lead techs the other day, how often employees come to his house after work and how it's like 2-3 nights a week, employees are hanging out at his house. And one employee I heard, I think I was speaking to Natalie about this not too long ago, but uh, one employee needed work done, you know, some dry flooring done in his house. And other employees were like, “hey do you need help with flooring? I’m off this weekend, I don't mind spending it with you and doing some flooring.” I was moving, I moved last year. And I reached out to two employees that I'm pretty close with and asked them if they wouldn't mind helping me move. Both said yes, and then I started getting phone calls. “Hey, I heard you're moving. Do you need some help?” And I was shocked because who wants to give their time to their boss on the weekend on their day off?

Doug 18:08

Yeah, they didn't. The two guys you asked for help. I’m sure you know them extremely well. And you wouldn't ask, but to have other guys calling you and offering? That really speaks volumes.

Ed 18:19

Yeah, the two people that I asked I had known them before opening up in 2019. So I felt good to ask those two, but having my other employees calling and asking like, Hey, do you need an extra pair of hands? Really, really made me sit back and look at it and be like, Wow, what do I have here that I may not be noticing or seeing?

Doug 18:37

Yeah, so I know, I wish I could go back and give you exact where I heard this from. But this is in my brain. If you have an employee and you ask them, “Who's your best friend? Or who are a couple of your best friends?” And they tell you, somebody that's on your staff, they're one of their best friends or a couple of their best friends works at the company. Your chances of keeping that person and them staying is astronomically high. If you got an employee and say who's your best friend and they do not say anybody in your organization. Their best friend is somebody from high school, they don't work there. The ability to keep them on your thing is like, I think it's like 30 some odd percent over a certain amount of time period. It's just an amazing fact that I heard and one of the things I actually like to ask people and they don't know why I like to hear what they say. I actually do that I ask them, and if they say somebody on staff I go that's good.

Ed 19:58

I'm really happy that you brought that up. You know, they always say birds of a feather flock together. And I would say half of my company has been referral based. And all my guys, all my top performers, their friends who are also top performers, are working for me as well. And I think that's what's one thing that's like really cool about the Enneagram, you know, we can put ads out we can go in Indeed and Paradox and look for employees. But when you start getting a group of friends, lifelong friends working together, and they're doing well together, these leads that come in, they're no longer leads that you're paying for they're more so being referred to you by other employees. And you look at the Enneagram results, and they share similar Enneagram results as they do with their best friend. And that's one thing that I wasn't expecting, but I really felt I accomplished in trusting the person coming through the door and having a sit-down conversation with them.

Doug 21:04

I'll tell you, when you figure certain things out, you just thrive. If you can figure out this whole hiring process and retention stuff. You can thrive. If you got 82 W-2s, you’re just churning.

Ed 21:23

You're in the trenches, you're in the trenches.

Doug 21:25

How do you get successful? Right? Yeah, so we talked about, I'm going to go back to the Deadly Sins of each of these styles. And, and I know you've talked probably about three, four of them right now. And that's a part of the Enneagram that honestly, it didn't trigger in my brain, I want to actually understand a little bit more about that. Can you go through each of them and talk about that a little further? For me, I find this fascinating.

Ed 22:02

Yeah, I even brought my notes. Yeah. So every Enneagram style has a deadly sin kind of like the crutch that holds them back in life or prevents them from achieving, like their optimal potential. Just to kind of go in order type ones are the perfectionist, they're deadly sin is anger and resentment, type twos, the helpers, their deadly sin is..

Doug 22:30

Slow down. Just go back to perfectionist. Repeat that. You said two things. The Deadly Sins are anger and resentment. Alright, so now go dive down a little bit deeper into Okay, anger, resentment? What does that mean to me? If I'm trying to like, how would you manage that person being you know that help me understand it.

Ed 22:53

So if I have an employee who's a type one, and obviously I'm noticing that they're getting angry all the time. If I know that that's their biggest crutch, like that's the one thing that is a part of them that they may or may not be able to control. I can dive into what and why are you angry, instead of addressing that employee as stop being so angry, and get back to work and do your job?

Doug 23:25

Is that telling you though, that they're in maybe an unhealthy state, though? You talked about the health of the person? Right, the 10 healthy levels of development? So if they're in an unhealthy state, because something bad happened to them, or whatever, is that going to make them more likely to be in an angry mode?

Ed 23:43

If it's unjustified? Yes, they're probably in an unhealthy level of anger and resentment. But there's also justified anger, right. So it could be something that they care so much about and are very passionate about. And, you know, it could be morally the right thing to do. And they're expressing it through anger, to get the attention that they believe it may be worth having. And so we always want to ask ourselves, when we see like the behavior of the deadly sin coming out, they can have healthy levels of development, they can be on a healthy level development expressing this deadly sin. But if it's completely irrelevant, and unjustified, and something that is not really entirely important, and it's more for show than anything else, then we know that to be an unhealthy level of development. And a lot of times the way that I measure the levels of development what I found worked best for me is asking myself, is this behavior selfish or selfless? Selfless leads me to believe it's more of a healthier level of development. Selfish leads me to believe that it's an unhealthy level of development. Yeah, so anger and resentment, you know, people can be angry and resentment for healthy things and they can most certainly, yeah, angry resentment for unhealthy things. So I tried to identify if it is selfish or not? And where is it coming from? And how do we tap farther into it to uncover and get back on track?

Doug 25:21

Okay, that makes that makes some sense to me. Go to number two, I'm sorry.

Ed 25:26

Of course. Number two is pride. They're deadly sin is pride.

Doug 25:29

So number two can be called the Helper. I think, you know, just for some of the people. If you're new to Enneagram, there's a lot written online as you go and read certain things about it. Sometimes you'll see it number two is called a helper or, but there's also other places on the Enneagram. Where they don't call them Helpers they call them Givers. Giver/Helper. Right? They it's, it's classified as both of those and the number one is a perfectionist or a reformer. Right. So you'll hear both those words to describe those styles. But a Giver/Helper is a person, talk about that style, and then go into what their deadly sin is.

Ed 26:18

A Giver/Helper, these are people that look for other individuals needs in their life, and they want to present that need almost as a reward to them, or as a way of thinking that they're helping the betterment of their lives. For example, when we were listened to that podcast, Road Back to You, the example in that one was the Pastor he has a beat down rundown car, and he saw one of his friends at the supermarket. And they noticed that his car was kind of more of a lemon and beat down. And she decided, since they, they're financially able, she decided to gift him a new car. And it's not something he had asked for. It's just something that she noticed could be a need of theirs. And she went out of her way to give. That's kind of like the behavior, they look for things that other people may need. And they want to present those needs to them. Because they believe that they're helping the betterment of their lives. The Deadly Sin being pride. I'm guilty of this because I'm a type two as well. My type eight and type twos tied. I could think so highly of myself, and think so like how much of a good person that I am. That I may be mentally elevating myself more than I actually should be elevating myself. And thinking, you know, I'm the bee's knees, I've done this to help this person therefore, I'm becoming very prideful, arrogant and self-focused. And at that point, the downfall is it can almost turn into what are these people then going to do for me? When am I going to get my turn to be helped out? And then when I see that nobody's helping me out, even though I helped out all these people. And I see nobody's helping me out. I start to get angry. I start to get upset.

Doug 28:35

Anger is one of their?

Ed 28:36

Well anger is for me. Anger is not anything with a type two. That's probably more of a type eight than type two, but it's more so like, I've done all this for all these people. Nobody's doing anything back for me. I'm upset. I'm angry, I feel sad. I'm not worthy of love. I'm not worthy of these good things being done for me, by those people I have done good things for and that's pride is the root of where that behavior formulates and comes from. And that's why pride is type twos deadly sin.

Doug 29:12

You know what? I got a new business for you. We're going to start up a HR department. My brain's going like I can use you on staff. You won't come to work for me, we'll start a business.

Ed 29:30

It's probably a better direction Doug.

Doug 29:34

Yeah, let's go. Let's go to number three, which is Performer/Achiever, right?

Ed 29:38

Yep, type three. The Achiever. Their deadly sin is Deceit. There's a movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and I forget the name of the movie, but it's this movie where he films videos for news stations and they buy his film and you know they aired on the news and he gets obsessed with making sure his films are the ones that they’re using. He gets obsessed with driving the most views, you know, he has this very big achiever behavior, achiever mentality like he wants to success. Deceit comes in when for Jake in this movie, which I still can't remember the name of where it gets to the point where he starts staging scenes and staging the accidents, he would get there first and manipulate it to make it look worser than it actually is. And you know, that when I saw that movie, I was like, wow, this is a perfect example of a type three, where when they get to unhealthy levels, they start changing reality of what is real, what is not real. So people can bring more attention to what's not real. And that's the type threes biggest, deadly sin is deceit. That is where they kind of put on a mask so people can see something different than themselves.

Doug 31:07

I know Performers, and you probably we probably talked about this in one of the other episodes about they can be a good person in a sales type position or whatever they get. And if I if I remember correctly, and you can correct me obviously, like they care about how they're how they're perceived and how they look. And one of the things you can you can do. We had a a party, our company party, year end party. And it was a dressed down party. It was a lot of like, fun things we were playing cornhole, and we were throwing hatchets and all kinds of stuff like that, riding a bull on those machines. So it was you know, where you weren't coming dressed in like a suit and tie or anything like that, right. But some people did come really dressed up. And we were like, saying, we're going to give an award for the best dressed at this party, even though it was not supposed to get dressed up, and some people came really dressed up and, they actually look sharp and stuff. And I went and looked at this one particular person, I saw him take a picture and took a picture with them. And I said, you know what, he's probably a three. Just because he was dressed sharp. That was like, one of the things. Is that true?

Ed 32:35

That's 100% true.

Doug 32:40

Yeah. It's interesting, right? It's a way of kind of like, you can just look at that person. And that's giving you a little bit of a clue of what type of personality style they are, because they care about the way they present themselves the way they look and stuff.

Ed 32:49

I would say in most cases if not, if your interviewer comes in, dressed up in a suit and tie or looks very well presented, and you do the Enneagram test, there's a good chance that the type three is within a top three scores in their results. It's that type three showing for sure. Yeah. Because they care about how other people visually see them.

Doug 33:16

Number four, which is an Individualist, so is there another word that's used for that? The Romantics. Romantics or Individualists, okay.

Ed 33:25

I don't have a whole lot of experience with Romantics, I did hire one. Their deadly sin is Envy. Romantics the best way to put it is they're very good into liberal arts, you know, there's a lot of type fours in the liberal arts, there's a lot of type fours in drama clubs, you know, worked their way to the top, climb the ladder.

Doug 33:53

If you're in the if you're in that in those industries, you're going to have probably a lot of them working for you.

Ed 33:58

You're looking type fours, if you're in that industry, you're comparing yourself to somebody else that may be in a star light, or that may be getting attention, or that may move up in the ranks. And if type fours they have this natural built, it's almost natural for them, where they're constantly comparing themselves to somebody else. And what they're looking for is what makes this person better than me. And at that point, why can I be more like this person? Envy, where they just want to be more of who is the successful person.

Doug 34:40

Interesting so yeah, so number five is the Investigator. Greed. That's their deadly sin.

Ed 34:47

That's their deadly sin. Number five they make great lawyers. They make good judges. They make good investigators, good police officers. They have a very logical output logical sense on life. And they know that they're, they're very intelligent people, very smart people. And the greed comes in when they think that they have a loophole to get something for themselves in life that most people may not be aware of. Kind of like hiding in the weeds, per se where they feel if I do this, this particular way, I could get this out of this arrangement and make it look like it's a gift to this other person. But really, I'm getting this for myself. And so that's where the Investigator, the type five, their deadly sin is greed.

Doug 35:45

And you were saying that some of that could fall into a certain kind of field of you're saying maybe law enforcement?

Ed 35:56

And it's when you look at the look at it that way, you see some of that behavior and law enforcement, you see it on the news. You see, you know with lawyers, if you ever been in that predicament with a lawyer, you know, they they're always looking for loopholes to kind of get the advantage in a case.

Doug 36:16

Interesting. Let's go number six to the Loyalist right, we did talk a little bit about Loyalists and bleeding green, so.

Ed 36:24

A Loyalist, their deadly sin is fear. I'll use my, my wonderful wife as an example, she's a high type six, she has a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety. To myself, I think that she suffers from PTSD, pre traumatic stress disorder, where she has fear of the future, she has a lot of fear of something that hasn't happened yet.

Doug 36:53

Worried about what's going on. I imagine listening to the news is probably not the best thing in the world for her.

Ed 36:58

Yeah, I got to get her off the news. And she's found a lot of great ways to manage that. But fear worry of the unknown what could happen, it almost feels like it's as if it's going to be real life to them. And there's, there's no, no way around it to them, where they think that their fear will become reality. And that's where it becomes a crutch to them. And that's why fears are deadly sin and what holds them back from their true potential.

Doug 37:28

On the positive side when we were talking about loyalists earlier, if they're on board with you, and they're going to stay with you, as an employee, like your retention on them is going to be awesome. 100%, provided obviously, they feel like they're part of the team.

Ed 37:45

Exactly, and the best way to address type sixes if you hire any of them is just a little bit of comfort goes a long way for them, a little bit of peace of mind to them goes a long way for them, because you know, Doug, that a lot of things of what we're afraid of probably will never come true. And to type sixes, they need to know, the part of that fear is being alone in that they need to know that somebody that they look up to is brave enough or is not worried about what they're worried for. And it's giving something to them that they can find comfort in. So if you have a type six that bleeds green, that trusts management. And you comfort him like hey, this is nothing to be worried about. They're going to take that trust and hold on to it tight. And all that fear that they once had will be settled right then in there.

Doug 38:42

Okay, let's go to number seven. The Enthusiast.

Ed 38:45

Gluttony, they take on more than they can handle. They won't say no, type sevens. If they have a full schedule and something that they feel of importance comes up, they'll try to find a way to put that and add that into their already full schedule and take that task on.

Doug 39:09

That's interesting. So I have somebody I talk to regularly. I talk about they always want to put 10 pounds of stuff in a five pound bag.

Ed 39:21

Yep, that's perfect description for a type seven.

Doug 39:24

Yeah, that's interesting. And I sometimes for me, it can drive me nuts, like my schedule. I don't want it.

Ed 39:33

It's almost tough for them to say no. And even when they're sick, like if you have a type seven, and you know they're an office employee and they call out sick, they'll work from home. They'll still take on as much responsibility as they can. But it's almost something of impossibility for them to say no to something. And they're always like you said, fitting 10 pounds of sand in a five-pound bag.

Doug 40:10

We are onto the 8s, we actually talked about 8s and I know you, a lot of your staff are 8s, especially in certain positions, right. So we'll talk a little bit further with that.

Ed 40:18

8s, Challengers. Our greatest sin, or deadly sin is lust. And as I said before, it's not anything in a sexual context, it's just, we are so focused on achieving a goal. That it's make it or break it to us, it's almost that goal feels like it's make it or break it to us. And we get so focused on the goal that we don't, it's tunnel vision, we don't see the other important aspects on how to get to that goal, as easily as some other people may see those aspects. And we, it's almost like getting lost in the weeds at that point to us.

Doug 41:01

Yeah, I fall on to my high score is an eight. And I know we had talked about this but control. Like, we don't like to be controlled. Somebody's trying to control me, somebody's trying to tell me what to do. And I know I've heard this on The Road Back to You. It's not that I feel like I have to be in control. I don't need to control everything that I'm involved with. But don't try to control me. That is such a thing that drives me nuts when people are trying to control me.

Ed 41:42

Yeah that's 8's biggest fear. So a lot like with the Enneagram, you can find what their deadly sins are, what their biggest fears are, for an eight their biggest fear is being a sense of being out of control or being controlled by something else. I'm the same way I can't stand. I can't stand being controlled either. And, like you said, you know, I think it gets to the point where we, at some point in time, I, I wanted to be in control of everything, and I couldn't delegate properly. And I think a healthier level of development is understanding how to delegate things well. Understanding that you have the at the end of the day. But at the end of the day, we don't want to feel like we are being controlled.

Doug 42:30

You know, I think when you understand your own personality style, I'll just give you an example for myself. Sometimes people when I feel like they're trying to control me. And I'm getting angry, because like, don't try to control me, that's what's going on in my brain. And they're not really trying to control you might be trying to help you with something, but you feel like you're trying to control you right, yeah. But if you understand yourself better, and you understand your style, and you need to kind of catch yourself, and say should I be angry about this? Or should I be like, I need to open my ears up and listen, because I know I liked this guy, I trust this person or whatever. They're not really trying to control me, they're really trying to help me with something, I need to open my ears up and, if I'm not in a healthy state, my ears are never going to hear that. Like, they're never going to be all figured out. If I'm in a healthy state I can sometimes catch myself and say, You know what, Doug you're being a jerk to yourself, you know, you’re just speaking to yourself, shut up and listen to this person or whatever. And so I think understanding your own Enneagram style helps you become a better person.

Ed 43:43

Having that self awareness. Yeah, it's eye opening, it's you'll having that true self awareness, you will never look at yourself or the world the same again. As I'm sure that you probably have experienced as well, you probably have a better understanding of how people operate and you probably have a better understanding.

Doug 44:03

There is no doubt. Like, I'm 65 right now. And in my career, um, you know, I started in business and my first time when I started my own business, I was in my 20s it was actually late 20s, 27 something like that when we started. And I knew so little at that time, I didn't understand myself and if I knew then what I know now I probably could have achieved different levels faster, it's a process growing in your life and try and learn as you go and, and you have to be ready to learn but it truly is amazing when you understand yourself better how you can you can make leaps and bounds in your in your endeavors in your life. Yeah. So alright, let's go to the last one which was the Peacemaker number nine.

Ed 45:02

The peacemaker, their deadly sin is a sloth. And it's the name, it's just how it sounds. It's fits a great description. They're very slow. They like to pump the brakes. If you have a type nine, who does really well, and you know, you congratulate them, they have this biggest fear that it's almost expected of them. And they may not want to continue that expectation. So they'll back off and they’ll underperform just so they're not held at a high expectation for so long. And, you know, they, you know, we described it before how type nines? You know, it's like a roller coaster where they're doing really well, they go, they perform very well, and then they just crash and burn. And every time they crash and burn, that's that sloth. They're deadly sin interfering. They just, they want to slow down. They don't they don't want expectation.

Doug 45:58

Yeah, yeah so it's very, it's very interesting. And I'm sure you take that person and you put them in the right type of job like, what like, where would a Peacemaker, like maybe thrive? Like, what type of thing would they do?

Ed 46:11

Warehouse, type nine, could do really well as like Warehouse management, where they're kind of in control of their own schedule, you know my warehouse employee, his Enneagram style was very unique. I wanted a two to be up there, I wanted a six to be up there. And I, I didn't mind that a nine was up there because their more in control of their environment. But I wanted the performing scores to be lower on the list. So like the type eight, he didn't test that high as a type eight, it wasn't his highest score. And my biggest fear was hiring a warehouse guy. And he's doing the work for a few months, and he's hearing how much the technicians, or the installers are making and him starting to think I could do what they're doing. Why don't I do that instead? Then I have to hire another warehouse guy again. So I don't want that motivational aspect in my warehouse guy, so I want those scores to be lower. And I wanted the two, six, and the nine to be higher. And my warehouse guy I could not have asked for a better warehouse guy than what I got.

Doug 47:19

It's great. See yeah, there's no personality styles there's no right or wrong or, good or bad. It's really like, what do you have them doing, what your expectations are. And you got to find that right matchup, the right. So let's put the right person in the right job. And they have the best chance of succeeding. I mean, you can do that.

Ed 47:43

And nines, they don't like change. They don't like a rift. And in that warehouse position, you know, it's the same stuff different day. And so they liked that structure. They liked that organization.

Doug 47:56

Interesting. I want to wrap up this episode. Ed, is there anything that maybe you'd like to talk about? Kind of give this totally to you that maybe we haven't talked about anything you want to like finish up on? That would maybe be something that we didn't talk about yet?

Ed 48:20

It's probably the biggest curveball you threw at me all day.

Doug 48:22

We've talked a lot. And, we kind of set up an outline of what we want to talk about. But yeah, maybe there's something we didn't cover. Maybe there's something that you know, and maybe not, maybe we're in a situation where we kind of talked about things we want to talk about, I really appreciate your coming in and dive in deeper with this. With me, I learn every time I'm probably going to go back to the book again and listen to the book again. Because the more you understand, the better you're going to be. And it's interesting, like, I got to figure out how to get my HR people to know this so well, right? That's what I really need. When we're going through the hiring process. I got to get my manager, the leadership team, right? To understand this better and better so that they can be better leaders in our organization and help our employees. There's just so much of this that comes into play.

Ed 49:28

The more you understand this, the more you're capable of the more achievements you can acquire, the better that this is understood, especially from a management level. Thinking in my head, when you had asked if there's anything that we haven't discussed, I don't know if we discussed in great detail the triads or the intellect triads.

Doug 49:54

You did a little tiny bit. Tell me what you want to say about that.

Ed 50:01

The intellect triads is essentially how we view and process information. Types eight, nine, ones, they view and process information with their gut. They run on gut instinct. Two, three fours run on the heart, you know, they don't listen to their head. They don't listen to their gut, they only listen to their heart when they make decisions. Its that more emotional type? And then five, six sevens, they focus more on logic, reasoning, and they make their decisions with their brain, their head. They look at more factual.

Doug 50:38

What three falls in that I'm sorry.

Ed 50:46

Five, six, and seven. They fall into the logic where they make decisions with their head, they don't listen to their gut, they don't listen to their heart, they have to have concrete factual information for them to make decisions. I don't know if this is a controversial topic to discuss for an example. But you know, five, six, sevens when something in the medical industry comes out, they won't make decisions unless they see that this procedure or this prescription has a high rate of success, then they feel confident in making that decision. If somebody just says they're going to use the logic, they're going to use the logic and statistics and information that's presented to them, if somebody just walks off the street and says, Hey, you should get this medication, it may help out with this, they're not going to trust that source. They're not going to listen to that person, they want to see the research, they want to see the facts for them to make that decision. And motions, so like the type threes, for example, they have this desire to, to be liked, to be liked by anyone that they come across, and that they meet, they want that person thinking that they're such a great person when they walk away. And so for an example for like a type three is that they'll interact and have a conversation in a way that's geared towards this person thinking, wow, this is such a nice person, this person's a good person to be around. I really liked this person. Type twos ultimately, type twos are very similar to type threes in that aspect. But that's kind of like an example of how they interact with their heart and make decisions of those interactions with their heart and then type eights with their guts. You know, we don't really know why we make decisions, we just go I don't know why my gut told me that this was the right path.

Doug 52:50

It's almost like instinctual, right? It's like instinctually, I just, and that's me, or my instinct is telling me, this is what the do. I can't give you always the logic. Like that's not necessarily going to be there, it’s something inside me. And I'm going to follow that. Because actually, in theory, like it's served me well on my life, and yeah, am I right on that? No, absolutely. I make lots of mistakes.

Ed 53:18

And eight, nine, ones. That's how they process and make decision is based off of those instincts. And so it's very hard. Like, if you have like an 8,9,1, teaching a 5,6,7 sales, there's going to be huge disconnect there. Because one is basically operating off of their gut instinct, while the other ones trying to figure out how did you know to do that? I don't know, something in my gut told me to do that. Well, they're not trained to work and work off their gut they're trained to work off of if they say this, I have to respond with this. And so you're never going to get that in that training opportunity to its maximum potential because you have a disconnect. Right then and there. If you're serious about training someone to fulfill position, you want their intellect triads to match the trainer and the trainee.

Doug 54:13

Interesting. Yeah, so I do training in our organization all the time. And if I'm training and I'm telling him, you just need to do it, because I know this is what I got to do. It's like, that was not enough for some people. Sometimes I got to give them the why behind what we do because they want to, they want the statistics, they want the facts they want. Yeah, because they're using their brain to logically figure out whether is Doug right does he know what he's talking about? Where's all the facts to back it up and all that type of stuff, right?

Ed 54:43

You being an eight when you train people, the people that you're probably making the biggest connections with are the eight, nines, ones because, you're speaking their language, right? Two, three, fours speak their own language. 5,6,7s speak their own language. My management team is designed to specifically have someone who is rooted in each of the intellect triads. So, Steven, he's a type three. So he's in the heart triad relationships and focusing on relationships. I'm a type eight. I'm in the gut triad. So you know, I'm based off of gut instincts. Dan Madison, my second in command. He's a type six. So he's a logic and reasoning triad. And it's a really good form of balance that we have.

Doug 55:30

Yeah, if you guys can be talking together and understanding, you're going to get a nice balance.

Ed 55:37

When we have a meeting where the three of us are together, and we're addressing the company, everyone walks away from that meeting with a greater sense of understanding because you had someone speak in a language that they can understand more clearly.

Doug 55:53

Ed, thank you so much for coming in today, spending the time with us. Hopefully, this helps people in our audience that have chance to listen to us. And thank you so much. If somebody wanted to reach out to you, to talk to you, what would be a way that you would recommend they do that?

Ed 56:17

Email?

Doug 56:18

If you want to share it here, if you don't, like I understand that too.

Ed 56:46

My email is ehesling@precisiondoor.net.

Doug 56:49

All right. Ed, thank you so much. Appreciate you being here. And thank you once again.

Ed 56:54

It's a pleasure being here. Thanks for having me.

Doug 57:02

All right, you got it.

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