The Thrill of Being “Mistaken:”

Growth Orientation in Relational Life

An article originally published in the October 2011 NC-IEA Bulletin

Ronna Phifer-Ritchie, Ph.D.

“Spiritual enlightenment always involves finding out you were wrong about something.” (Werner Erhard)

An audience member came up to me after a women’s retreat I recently facilitated and tearfully exclaimed “I loved your workshop; doing those exercises with real people made me so uncomfortable!”  I got such a kick out of how she tied those two statements together with such deep enthusiasm.  We laughed together about the never-ending human journey of learning to respect, and even love, that kind of relational discomfort that signals us that we are at the edge of our personality’s comfort zone and on the brink of spiritual enlightenment.    We agreed that, while real interpersonal connections were one of the richest sources for this brand of soul-expanding discomfort, riding that wave of the challenging relational moment all the way into important psychological and spiritual shifts was by no means automatic for most of us.   Those moments of real Presence with another change us; but immediately before they change us, they provide us with something we have to develop a psycho-spiritual taste for: the discomfort of finding out that we could be mistaken about something.

When a relational encounter begins to challenge our ego’s assumptions and sense of being “right,” it takes consciousness to stay in the “open, accepting, and curious” triad of relational health identified by neurobiology of relationships expert, Daniel Siegel (Mindsight, 2010 ).   Interestingly, in the Enneagram Institute Relationship Workshop (Don Riso & Russ Hudson), we engage our students in an ongoing conversation about these same three general aspects of relating well, just with different terminology.   Staying present in the “body” (open to what is actually happening), in the “heart” (accepting and compassionate towards self and others), and in the “mind” (curious and non-judgmental) unlocks the potential of the I-Thou experience.    Yet our personality spends a lot of energy mapping escape routes from that very potential.  Truthfully, our ego has a point!  Without some wise reframing from a higher perspective, our personal history is often not the best argument for moving toward relational discomfort.  But if we avoid all relational discomfort, we avoid the psycho-spiritual growth crucible that only relationships can offer, and we miss out on one of the most potentially thrilling and transformative adventures of life.    (Note:  While there is not the page space to discuss the role of good boundaries in this relational growth crucible, it is important to point out here that they are an essential part of, and not a block to, this adventure.)

A big part of the reason we avoid this adventure is that we are frequently trained away from appreciating our own relational mistakes for the profound and reliable teachers they are.   Stanford success researcher, Carol Dweck (Mindset, 2006), noticed that intimate relationships flourish when people get comfortable with one of the most valuable and reliable perks of participating in the relational field: the spotlighting of one’s possibly mistaken assumptions.   When we learn to enjoy the thrill of the “Hmmmm,-I-might-be-mistaken-about…..” moment and respect its potential, we move into a kind of personalized curriculum for interpersonal genius.    Dweck’s highly respected study on what she calls “the growth mindset” demonstrates that academic, professional, and relational success are universally tied to moving out of a performance orientation, and learning to normalize mistakes and enjoy challenges as the path to a great life.

Granted, Dweck’s findings only address one leg of Siegel’s relational health triad, “curiosity,” what Enneagram scholars would identify as “Head Center” work.   A growth mindset helps people question assumptions regarding what it means, ultimately, to be “mistaken” about something, and encourages them to cash in on the growth opportunities at hand.   However, relaxing physical tensions (“Body Center” work) and making contact with authentic feelings (“Heart Center” work) are always involved in making room in the mind for new perspectives.

One essential perspective shift for improving interpersonal life is learning to truly value another’s’ ability to shake up our belief in our own assumptions about who we are and what is actually going on in our relationships.    In my own work with students and clients, I have observed that each of the nine Enneagram Personality Types tends to default to a certain flavor of unquestioned “relational assumptions” when relational discomfort arises.  These assumption sets seem to emerge out of what Riso and Hudson (The Enneagram Professional Training) have identified as the Basic Fear for each Type, the central psychic unrest driving that particular Enneagram style of relating.  This can block relational growth potential, in big ways or less significant ways, depending on the level of awareness with which those relational assumptions are held.  Following are a few examples of these relational assumptions, each of which, in their own magnificent way, hold the great potential for igniting the uncomfortable, thrilling, and tremendously useful  ”I-might-be-mistaken” relational moment:

Eight:  “This person is trying to control me.”   ”You are going to harm me!”  “I need more power in this relationship.” 

Nine:  “What this person is doing will cause me to be cut off from this group.”  “You are going to keep me from what I love!”  “I need more peace in this relationship.”

One:   “This person is trying to make this my fault.”  “You are condemning me!” “I need things to be more controlled in this relationship.”

Two: “This person does not find me lovable.”  “You are not connecting with me!”  “I need more relationship in this relationship.”

Three: “This person sees me as a failure.”  “You are making me feel like a loser!”  “I need more status from this relationship.”

Four:  “This person doesn’t know my true identity.”    “You don’t get me!”    “I need to be understood more in this relationship.”

Five:   “This person is going to overwhelm me and make me feel incompetent.”    “You are too much!”    “I need to understand more about this relationship.”

Six:  “This person could undo my security.”    “You are unreliable!”    “I need to be safer in this relationship.”

Seven:  “This person is going to limit my options.”    “You are depriving me!”    “I need more happiness from this relationship.”

Do any of these relational assumptions remind you of some of your personality’s favorite escape routes from relational curiosity?  There will likely be, for all of us, many interpersonal opportunities in the future to practice relaxing, and allowing compassion to guide our noticing of these assumptions.  Then we can experiment with a little more curiosity about what else might be true in that relational exchange.

Using these moments of interpersonal discomfort well does not depend on other people’s level of relational genius as much as we tend to think it does.  Enjoying the thrilling ride of a growth orientation in relationships depends primarily on our commitment to the relational genius curriculum, where we learn to value our mistakes, and trust that showing up for that enlightening brand of discomfort means we get to something we truly love on the other side of it: the next chapter in our own spiritual adventure. 

Your Journey of Growth:

Working with the Dynamism and Levels of the Enneagram

A Retreat with Roxanne Howe-Murphy and Ronna Phifer-Ritchie

through Mercy Retreat and Conference Center, Burlingame, CA

September 14-16, 2012

The Levels of Development LOD), one of the most profound contemporary contributions to the Enneagram field and identified by Don Riso and Russ Hudson, explains the vertical dimension to the personality types.

The Levels help us track our movement along a continuum toward more freedom, consciousness, expansiveness, and Being in the higher Levels (or toward more reactivity and self-destructiveness in the lower ones).

By introducing this “vertical axis” to the types, the Levels explain some of the most important things that we find in human nature—fluidity and change, resistance and conflict, freedom and compulsion—among many human qualities. Working with the Levels points us to where we are in our journey of growth, and guides us toward greater health and transformation.

In this retreat, you can expect to:

* Recognize the dynamics of the psychological and spiritual movement in your life that are explained through the Enneagram.
* Awaken to inner personal cues that guide you to higher levels of health.
* Experience a deep grounding in presence, through the teachings, exercises, music, and meditation.
* Work with the Enneagram in advanced ways that facilitate practical applications in your professional and personal life.

The Levels of Development bring extraordinary power to our inner journeys. The Riso-Hudson innovation is the only Enneagram work to be specifically endorsed by Ken Wilbur who has stated that only with this vertical dimension taken into account, does the Enneagram system move toward being a complete psychology.

To Register:

Contact Mercy Center directly: http://www.mercy-center.org/calendar.html

2300 Adeline Dr Burlingame CA 94010 | (T) 650.340.7474 (F) 650.340.1299 mc@mercywmw.org

Hours:

Friday, Sept 14th : 7-9:30 pm
Saturday, Sept 15th: 9 am-noon; 3:30-6:00 and 7:00-9:30 pm
Sunday, Sept 16th: 9 am-noon; -1:00-3:00 pm

Faculty:

Dr. Roxanne Howe-Murphy is Principal of the Deep Coaching Institute, and Director of the Enneagram Institute of the San Francisco Bay Area. Howe-Murphy is the author of Deep Coaching: Using the Enneagram as a Catalyst for Profound Change, and is the founding teacher of the Deep Coaching Certification Program.

Dr. Ronna Phifer-Ritchie, Principal of Enneagrowth, is a consultant, author, and professional speaker. She is the co-director of the Enneagram Institute of the San Francisco Bay Area and holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and a master’s in marriage and family therapy . Phifer-Ritchie is a certified life coach and a researcher in Relational Health and the Enneagram.

To Register: http://www.mercy-center.org/Flyers_2010/0521Enneagram/retreat.html

MORE INFO:

1) This course is a requirement for the Deep Coaching Certification Program.

2) CEU’s: This course meets the requirements for 12 hours of Continuing Education Credit for MFT’s and LCSW’s as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences. $25.00 administration fee paid onsite.

“There’s No ‘I’ in ‘Team?’ “Think Again!

As it turns out, there IS an “I” in “team;” more specifically, there is always an honoring of each team member’s true “I” in the effective work community. That’s what the new science on productivity in the workplace seems to indicate for work groups with goals that reach beyond mere repetitive task completion. “Teamwork” is an activity of the soul! The modern team produces its most valuable stuff when team members’ individual psychological, even spiritual, development is encouraged and facilitated in the work setting. Daniel Pink’s (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, 2011) very recent and impressive research on why employees stay motivated in the most successful companies strongly suggests that effectiveness-stimulating environments for workers have some essential soul-developing aspects like: freedom for work team members to self-direct, fertile ground in which they can expand and grow as human beings, a firm connection between their assignments and a sense of personal purpose, and more. True team leadership, the kind that facilitates high performance, includes an ongoing authentic invitation to growth extended to each team member, an invitation built into the team’s structure, style, and set of expectations.

Effective Team Structure – The Invitation to Connect the True Self to the Work:

Whether it’s scheduling a weekly employee creative free day followed by a brain-storming beer bash, funding an extended relationship-building retreat in the mountains for volunteer staff, or re-educating hovering middle management to help them create hands-off, respectful, results-oriented environments for the talent; today’s savvy leaders of highly successful task teams make opportunities for their people to connect their true selves and true values to the work in front of them. Contact with the non-objectified self, the seat of both brilliant awareness and profound contribution, is what is invited by the psychologically insightful and spiritually awakened leader. This leader truly sees the developing humans in her work circle, consciously decides to make room for each team member’s unique unfolding process, and encourages the team members to do the same with each other. With that kind of direction, team members can continually re-spark with the excitement that comes with the inner experience of “my ideas matter here,” “their ideas matter here,” and “what we’re doing here matters.”

Ever had one of those inspiring directors who helped you and everyone on the project know and love that you were part of something bigger than yourself, yet also helped you realize that you were somehow bigger as a result of being involved? Those times in our lives are usually cherished because they are times when we were working in an atmosphere that enabled us to feel into that divine dignity that well-designed work really can offer human beings. As team participants, when we can experience this kind of connection between our real selves and the work world in which we are engaged, we harness the power source of deep personal meaning and remove obstacles to flow. “Flow” (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, 1991) is that deeply satisfying, profoundly awake, highly productive state of being fully present with oneself while simultaneously being fully involved in an activity. It is often described as becoming “one with the work.” When we participate in work structures that allow for flow experiences throughout the workday, it invites us to connect the tasks of our “job” to the story of our unfolding career. We ground in an environment where deep breaths seem natural during presentations or creative sessions, we stay tuned in emotionally and delete those reactive sentences off of our email replies, we self-monitor our thought patterns and choose to stay engaged and curious at those 4 p.m. meetings. Our career is unfolding within the team experience, and we aren’t missing it!

The Effective Team Style: The Invitation to Meaning and Maturity

This potential for flow and meaning in work is a central aspect of the attractive compensation package for the twenty-first century work team member, as well as the new “golden parachute” that he looks forward to taking with him into the wisdom decades of later life. Volunteerism is on the rise in the U.S. because of this profound need for work that allows for presence of the human soul. Interestingly, flow and meaning potential cannot be catalyzed in team projects by simple-minded “carrot” rewards like big pay checks and sales bonuses. Compensation that matches the standard package available for a given service on the outside of the work group is a necessary baseline to keep people in the group motivated; however compensation systems that rely solely on the “if-then” reward model can severely distance workers from any sense of personal connection to the work. (Pink, 2011) Team members need to be invested in their work to feel truly compensated. And, generally speaking, unless we are having trouble paying our bills, most of us will not leave a work team that holds the promise of a reliable future of shared peak experiences with colleagues for a higher-paying job elsewhere, especially if that new job is unlikely to give us the same amount of meaning “hit” in our work day as our current one does.

Additionally, the work group itself has developmental needs, it has its own true “I” to uncover under its current operating “personality.” Each team has a style, and that style is functioning at a certain level of health, hovering at a certain distance from the real life potential and problems of the group. Is there so much defensive bravado flying around the coffee room at breaks that the camaraderie necessary for creative brainstorming never gels? Is there such an irresistibly strong ritual of positivity in meetings that there is a dearth of trouble-shooting and strategic planning? Are the morning updates admirably well-organized but so lacking in connection to the emotional temperature of the team project that no-one cares about the content? The team personality holds signals about directions of needed team growth and expansion, and clues about likely team blind spots and pitfalls.

Task-oriented groups are powerful, creative, organic entities; and they suffer from lack of consciousness and growth-orientation every bit as much as a person does. Don Riso (2010), a leading expert in Enneagram personality science, has recently done some much needed exploration and categorizing of these group personality composites in his current Nine Domains of the Enneagram of Personality material. The psychological and spiritual health of a group, just like that of an individual, is never truly stagnant. It seems we humans and the communities in which we participate are either growing healthier (dropping defensiveness, inauthenticity, and anxiety) or disintegrating (galvanizing defensiveness, inauthenticity, and anxiety). The team personality itself must be on a growth path or the work suffers, and team members leave for greener pastures. Team success and turnover rates are profoundly impacted by whether or not there is healthy purpose and forward movement that the individual members can tie their psychic ropes to. (Pink, 2011) The powerful and sustainable task groups are those where the members can identify, are attracted to, and stay connected by the group’s collective “I,” the real purpose of the team’s existence, under all the roles and reaction patterns.

The Effective Team Mindset – The Invitation to Enjoy the Challenge

The developmental combustion engine for healthy team forward movement is a work zone where people feel a freedom to make the vital (yes, vital) mistakes from which they can learn. Powerful teams encourage members to practice what achievement specialists, Rosamund and Benjamin Zander (The Art of Possibility, 2000), call the “How fascinating!” response in the face of an error. Going into, and not running from, the tension of a developmental crisis is how we grow as human beings. It is how toddlers learn to negotiate the front porch stairs, it is how great athletes get to the point where they win medals, and it is how teams kindle that synergistic expansion of talent and rapid momentum unique to group process.

Stanford researcher, Carol Dweck (Mindset: the New Psychology of Success, 2006), did an extensive study of the type of mindset that yields high levels of sustained success throughout a person’s lifetime. Her conclusion? Expecting and enjoying challenge is what success is made of, even for extremely talented people. When was the last time you struggled with an unfamiliar work task and chuckled out a resilient “Great! I love a challenge! Otherwise I’d be bored!” hmm? That is exactly the kind of internal mental environment the high achieving and happy individuals (children, college students, adult professionals and couples) in Dweck’s (2006) study made for themselves. They were individuals who were taught to see the developmental challenges of life as just that, challenges; not as dangerous tests of self-worth that might leave a permanent “F” on their life record. Dweck’s award-winning discovery was that this growth mindset is teachable; we do not have to be born into resilient mindset families to use this developmental key. Any of us can learn to work from this place, and model this for our employees and co-workers. Inviting your team to love developmental challenge and value the necessary stumbles along the way to greatness is an essential part of effective team life.

The New Team-Building – the Ongoing, Sincere Invitation to Development:

If you are leading any kind of task-oriented group and you are interested in that team producing results with real value, making up your mind to do what is necessary to create a group culture of growth is essential. Though the average organization is slashing its “team-building” budgets these days (so much so that even the name of that service genre has been vanishing from today’s corporate speak), your team is has not been brought together to be average. If you listen to the team leaders who are getting truly valuable results in this difficult economy –leaders at some of the most successful corporations, like Google, where increases market share are most often accompanied by increases in employee satisfaction; and leaders at the great institutions of higher learning, like Harvard Graduate School of Business, from which some of the most significant organizations in the nation hire (Pink, 2011) — what you will hear are ongoing authentic invitations to development extended to members of their teams. The chance to align work with the higher calls of the human spirit translates to team productivity and sustained team member investment; successful team leaders get, and never forget, that aspect of reality.

Regularly scheduled team events that stimulate important structural, style, and mindset shifts in the work group are great launch points for igniting or reigniting this new kind of teamwork journey. This new breed of team-building connects team members to the deep “what’s,” “how’s” and “why’s” of team success. One powerful way to send one of these authentic invitations to development to your professional group, ministry team, or work community is offering them the chance to participate in a Team with an “I” transformative one-day retreat, facilitated by Dr. Ronna Phifer-Ritchie:

1. The Team with an “I” – a Personality Assessment-Awareness-Action Group Experience (using the Enneagram of Personality and the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator)
2. The Ministry Team with an “I:” a Personality Assessment-Awareness-Action Group Experience Designed Specifically for Christian Outreach Teams and Fellowship Circles (using the Enneagram of Personality and the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator)

(More Info: EnneaGal Productions will begin offering these two new full-day team retreat packages starting February 2012. Package includes a full-day workshop, manuals for all participants. Watch this newsletter for more details.)

You can also book Ronna’s community-building workshops on the following topics for your teams, work groups, church fellowships, or other organizations:

1. The MBTI Day for Teams: Understanding Each Other
2. The Enneagram of Personality Day for Teams: Waking Up, Growing Up, Living it Up
3. Working and Playing Well with Others: a 10-week Relationship-Building Group Experience with the Enneagram of Personality

Interested in more on this topic for professional groups, ministry teams, student circles, business partners, and other work communities? Follow DrRRelationships updates on Twitter.

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