Enneagram Book

Our series, “Interview with an Enneagram Life Coach”, works in conjunction with Life Coach Review to provide un-biased reviews on Coaches, as well as sharing Life Coaching Articles and Resources for Coaches and Clients.

Lynette Sheppard is my 2nd guest in the 3-Part series of Interview with an Enneagram Coach. Lynette is the webmaster for one of my favorite Enneagram Websites, 9 Points. Lynette also happens to be exactly the same type as me, a 7w6 with a sexual subtype. It certainly is a small world.

What’s surprising in this Interview with An Enneagram Coach:

• The 2 most common Enneagram Types for American CEOs
• How we can exercise our less-dominant Wing
• Why Type 2 and Type 9 should be coached with an intentional type “mismatch”

Without futher ado, I’ll offer up this Interview with an Enneagram Coach to all of you readers.
1. First, please introduce yourself, your professional title, and your
enneagram type.

Lynette Sheppard, RN, CHT; author of The Everyday Enneagram is a Seven with a Six wing and a one-to-one subtype. She has worked with clients and Enneagram Consulting for over 15 years.

2. In your practice, do you find that there is a most common enneagram
type that comes to you for coaching? Is there a least common type? Do you have any inference as to why this may be so?

In my practice, I have most frequently worked with Eights, Threes, Ones, Nines, Fives, and Sixes. I rarely have worked with Twos, Sevens, or Fours. Many of my Eight and Three clients were CEO’s of companies where I taught the Enneagram and they were “hooked” after the initial presentation. It seems that Three and Eight are the dominant CEO types in American business, so it’s no surprise that I would work with many of them.Eights in particular responded strongly to the “energy” aspects of the Enneagram, likely because it dovetails with how they experience others.

Ones and Fives seem to be drawn by the prospect of knowledge for improving and understanding. I’m not sure why I’ve worked with so few Twos, Sevens, and Fours. The Sevens I have worked with were not able to charm me or entice me to play, and perhaps I’ve pushed them too hard, too fast, since that is my own type and I see the pitfalls so clearly. It’s possible that I’m too harsh with Sevens, that I have my own counter-transference with those of my own type. It’s probably better that they do see someone else, unless they want “Seven Boot Camp” coaching.

3. Do you believe that one’s enneagram type is from their nature (set at birth) or from their nurturing (formed during early years)? Is it possible to change types during the course of your life? Can you change wings?

The stock answer to the question “Is our type determined by nature or nurture” used to be “Yes.” In other words, we weren’t sure. However, after watching a fair number of babies who seemed to exhibit type almost from the womb, I’ve come to the conclusion that we are born with our type. Our relative psychological health, our dominant wing, and our subtype seem to be determined by our environment.

I don’t believe that we ever ‘change’ type during the course of our lives, but it does loosen it’s hold on us over time, even when we don’t know the Enneagram. With the map of the Enneagram, we can work to loosen its hold even more; to end up as Tom Condon says “easy in our harness”. Our type is like our default mode; stress us enough or let us go unconscious and we revert back to type. This is why it is important to stay ‘awake’ and conscious of our feelings, behaviors, and thoughts, so that we are able to work with our personality type rather than being run by it

As for wings, we seem to initially have a dominant wing as an influence or flavor added to type, yet in certain situations or at different times of our lives, we may exercise the other wing. For example, I exhibited a Six wing for most of my life,yet when I became a boss, I accessed the Eight wing to help me become a strong leader.

4. Have you ever had to stop working with a client because they “hit their wall” or encounter so much mental or emotion resistance within themselves that they can’t go on? Do people sometimes shut down when you approach the end of their comfort zone?

I’ve definitely had clients quit or ‘fall away’ when it seemed they had come up against more than they were ready to deal with. Some have said that they felt they had gotten all they could from the work. I simply try to give them tools that they can work with on their own to further their growth. The rest is up to each individual.

5. What are some techniques you use to work with a difficult client? Do you have any methods you use to help people see themselves more clearly or open up when the defenses go up?

With most clients, I try to match their energy at the outset, eg be Eightish and in my gut with an Eight. Later, I will shift my attention and therefore my energy appropriate to what we are working on, eg heart for matters of the heart, head for visioning and so forth. The notable exceptions to this way of working are Twos and Nines, where a deliberate mismatch is more helpful, since they are likely to match energy with another as a default mode. If I don’t let them match me, then we can get at a deeper truth together.

I don’t have special methods to get people to see themselves more clearly, save telling them how others experience people of their type in the same situations. Pondering one’s inadvertent impact on others can be illuminating and a great first step to loosening the hold of the personality. Often, It comes as a great surprise that we can impact others in an adverse way that we did not intend, simply by being unaware. Awareness is really the most important learning; the Enneagram just provides a framework and matrix for developing that awareness.

6. In Enneagram language, how does therapy or coaching further you down your path? IE: Does it help move you on the path of integration, does it loosen your enneagram fixation, etc.

Working with others means setting my own type bias aside. Anytime we are able to consciously open in this way, we become more available to all the different gifts of the nine types. This practice allows us to see the narrowness of the view from the perspective of our own Enneagram type. Each time we apprehend this more expansive way of perceiving, we are closer to the truth of who we really are, in Essence. Of course, we forget and fall back into old patterns when we fall asleep to ourselves, but with ongoing practice, we might be conscious for longer periods of time. Working with clients, seeing the inherent beauty of each worldview, with it’s pitfalls and promise, keeps me focused on the path of loosening the tight bonds of my type.

7. In closing, can you offer any advice to someone studying the enneagram for personal development and spiritual deepening who practice by themselves?

Furthering our spiritual development and personal growth using the Enneagram is really very simple, but it is not easy. Self-observation is the key to wearing our personality lightly. I advocate Six Steps to deepening personal mastery and spiritual practice using the Enneagram: Step One: Activate Your Inner Observer Whether through meditation or just noticing throughout the course of a day, watch your feelings, thoughts, and behavior vis a vis your Enneagram type. Step Two: Monitor Attention - start paying attention to where your attention naturally migrates. Step Three: Train Your Attention - begin to focus where you wish attention to go. Where attention goes, energy flows. Step Four: Shifting Attention to Other Viewpoints - practice getting your type out of the way and accessing others viewpoints and energy. Step Five: Be Gentle With Yourself - it’s a process and becoming, not an absolute end goal. Step Six: Self-Disclosure - Working in an Enneagram group and sharing stories, insights, and practices can make for exponential leaps that you would simply not be able to accomplish alone.

Lynette Sheppard can be reached at LynetteSh@aol.com or her website.