If you lead others, it is your level of psycho-spiritual development, not your Enneagram type, which determines your effectiveness. Great leaders come in all nine Enneagram personality styles. However, great leadership comes forth from the healthiest parts of those leaders, the parts surrendered to the Divine.

If you think back on what is was like to be in the presence of your favorite mentors, you may notice that there were some profound differences in their leadership styles. However, regardless of the leader’s style, the energy that mentored you effectively was a mature energy. In some way, you were compelled to embrace a truer reality. Contrast that to the ways unhealthy leaders actively pull others into a delusion of some kind. And have you noticed that leaders leading from average psychological and spiritual health often unconsciously (or consciously) encourage others to stay within a comfort zone, catalyzing only superficial changes, or worse, changes that amount to mere conformity to the leader’s ego agenda? Great leaders give others enough of a taste of the unknown better, or of life at what Riso and Hudson call the higher “Levels,” that a new willingness to risk truth’s adventurous, demanding journey arises within people.

Riso and Hudson’s Enneagram Levels of Development are a measuring system for the degree of identification individuals have with their personality structure in a particular phase of life and situation. Their flipping of the Enneagram typology on its side and unearthing of the treasure of the Levels of Development may have pinpointed the central issue of human existence that the insight-rich Enneagram symbol is intended to measure. As these authors often remind their readers:

“Everything one can say about Type is Level-sensitive.” (Don Riso & Russ Hudson, Understanding the Enneagram: the Practical Guide to Personality Types, Revised Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston: 2000)

These nine Levels of Development are nine realities experienced in the growth path for each type. If you’re a leader, remember that type awareness is only one of the gifts the Enneagram gives to your work. The Enneagram is also a precise map to the next Level of Development in the growth path for your style. 

At each of the Levels of Development for your type, certain series of movements lead through a psycho-spiritual integration process and out to a breakthrough new experience of reality. That integration process is catalyzed on the horizontal plane of personality type, so awareness work with your type and your Directions of Integration and Disintegration are doors into the journey. However, the actual journey into great leadership is a vertical one: the adventurous climb up the Levels. Your psycho-spiritual health is going to transmit more to your audience, clients, and children than anything else does.

For further study on this important topic:
Check out the Levels of Development discussion on the Enneagram Institute website
and
Sign up for the August 2007 introductory workshop: Wisdom of the Enneagram

Send in Your Suggestions to DrRonna@Enneagrowth.com  -
Classic Rock Song Titles You Think Go With Each of the Nine Types

Here are some good ones to get you started….

Type One:
I Can’t Get No Satisfaction (The Rolling Stones)
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (U2)

Type Two:
I Want You To Want Me (Cheap Trick)
All You Need is Love (The Beatles)

Type Three:
Respect (Aretha Franklin)
Great Pretender (Platters)

Type Four
Only the Lonely (Roy Orbison)
You Don’t Know What It’s Like (The Bee Gees)

Type Five
People Are Strange (The Doors)
In My Room (Beach Boys)

Type Six
Be True to Your School (Beach Boys)
Stand By Me (Ben E. King)

Type Seven
I Want to Rock-n-Roll All Night and Party Everyday (Kiss)
Fun, Fun, Fun (Beach Boys)

Type Eight
Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting (Elton John)
Under My Thumb (Rolling Stones)

Type Nine
Take it Easy (the Eagles)
Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd)

Wisdom of the Enneagram: a Dynamic Approach to Inner Work                                                   
A Riso-Hudson Authorized Workshop
The Best Life is an Awakened Life…Let’s Get There!

Dates:              November 9/10   Fri/Sat    9AM – 6PM
Location:         Presentation Retreat & Conference Center, Los Gatos, CA
Cost:                $285  (early bird price:  $270 before September 15th, 2007)  (bring a friend and the 2nd person receives a 30% discount)
Register:         contact Ronna at 408-398-7111   or  click here

Beyond the study of personality types, the Enneagram is a powerful tool for supporting the work of awakening to our Essential Nature. Refresh and invigorate your soul during this insight-filled weekend workshop held in a peaceful, fully green solar-powered conference center tucked away in the California Santa Cruz Mountains. This 2-day introduction to the psycho-spiritual approach to the Enneagram will enable you to “remember” your true self, and become increasingly present to the spiritual reality in your daily life. At the end of this weekend, you will begin to more rapidly recognize and respond to the “wake up calls” in your life and experience higher levels of heath and wholeness. This workshop provides immediate access to basic Enneagram knowledge and practices that will enhance your psychological and spiritual growth process, and offer specific insights about your personality style that will inspire you to show up in high quality ways more often in daily life.

You can expect to:

• Discover each type’s gifts, healing attitudes and specific transformation process
• Learn how to observe and let go of our more troublesome habits and reactions
• Hear ways to work with the specific motivations of each type
• Cultivate more awareness in your everyday life
• Understand how to use the Enneagram for your continued spiritual growth

Facilitators:

Dr. Ronna Phifer-Ritchie, Principal of Enneagrowth, is a consultant, public speaker, and author. She holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy. Ronna is an ICF certified Life Coach and her passion is helping individuals broaden and optimize personality style as a developmental pathway to true spiritual progress.

Dr. Roxanne Howe-Murphy, teacher, coach, and author, is Principal of LifeWise Learning Institute, an executive and life coaching company. She also is the Director of the Enneagram Institute of the San Francisco Bay Area. Roxanne is the author of the recently published book, Deep Coaching: Using the Enneagram as a Catalyst for Profound Change.

Both Roxanne and Ronna are certified Riso-Hudson teachers and have been authorized as the first generation of teachers to offer workshops previously taught only by Don Riso or Russ Hudson.

Notes

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. Provider Name: Roxanne Howe-Murphy, Ed.D. Provider number: PCE2759

Cancellation Policy: In the event that you need to cancel, a full refund minus $35.00 will be given through July 15. From July 16 through Aug. 17, there is a 35 % cancellation fee.

Lodging: Participants who wish to stay overnight during the workshop may make arrangements directly with Presentation Center.