Page 116 - Using the Enneagram System to Identify and Grow Your Leadership Strengths and Achieve Maximum Success

Strive for Self-Mastery 93

CHART 3.9 (Continued) Eights: Levels of Self-Mastery

Descriptions
director told her that people were leaving the company
because Carla intimidated them. Although she had been told
before that people found her intimidating, Carla had never
understood the reason. When she asked the human
resources director for more information, Carla was told this:
“They find you warm and generous one day, and then the
next day, for no reason they can understand, they find you
irritable and short-tempered. These fluctuations scare
people.”
Low self-mastery The Bully
Core fear: Being harmed, controlled, or extremely vulnerable.
Eights with low self-mastery can be direct to the point of
cruelty, unleashing a flood of anger and destructive punitive
behavior. Believing that they must overcome their enemies
by whatever means necessary, they justify their actions by
blaming the other person for what is, in fact, their inability to
acknowledge their own intense vulnerability. At worst, they
can deteriorate into antisocial and/or violent behavior, because
they cannot contain or control their explosive anger.
Example: Ray was one of the new owners of a newly
constructed four-unit condominium complex that was having
serious problems with construction defects. He was so
certain that the other condominium owners were being naïve
and making decisions that were not in his best interests that
he secretly contacted the developer directly, relayed
confidential information from a meeting of the homeowners’
association, and reached a side agreement with the developer.
When the other unit owners asked him why he had done this,
he responded, “Well, the rest of you are too stupid to know
better, and the developer thinks you’re all idiots anyway.
You’re just jealous because you didn’t make your own deals.”

Development Stretches for Eights

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF PHYSICALLY Get enough sleep on a regular
basis, eat healthfully and in moderation, and exercise regularly. The
more you take care of yourself physically, instead of wearing yourself
down to exhaustion, the less emotionally reactive you will be.

SLOW DOWN YOUR IMPULSE TO TAKE ACTION Each time you feel
the impulse to take action—for example, giving an opinion, sug-