Page 18 - Using the Enneagram System to Identify and Grow Your Leadership Strengths and Achieve Maximum Success

xvi Introduction

demands placed on today’s leaders. With a constantly changing
business environment, a global marketplace, and the need both to
get products to market quickly and to create sustainable organiza-
tions for the long run, today’s leaders are faced with confounding
ambiguities and competing priorities. However, perhaps the biggest
reason for the leadership shortage today is that we are not even
sure what truly great leadership is, much less how to develop it.
The most helpful clue about what makes an excellent leader
comes from the field of Emotional Intelligence (EQ). An individ-
ual’s EQ is the strongest predictor of that person’s leadership suc-
cess, consistently outranking both traditional IQ and on-the-job
experience. Of course, if you have all three—a high EQ, a high IQ,
and relevant on-the-job experience from which you have learned
and grown—your chances for success are even greater.
EQ is made up of two factors: intrapersonal intelligence, or the
ability to know and accept oneself and to become self-managing
and self-motivating, and interpersonal intelligence, or the ability
to interact effectively with other people. The Enneagram—an
ancient psychological and spiritual development system—is the
most powerful and insightful tool available to help you develop
your EQ.
The leaders with whom I have worked say that the Enneagram
helps them to understand and accept themselves at a very deep
level, and that it is a profound tool for developing their leadership
capabilities. They find the Enneagram freeing; as one leader com-
mented, “I used to feel I was in a box. The Enneagram doesn’t put
me in a box; instead, it shows me the box I’ve been in and pro-
vides a development path out of these constraints.”
To that end, this book focuses on today’s most important lead-
ership competencies and integrates them with the wisdom and
insights of the Enneagram. Excellent leaders need to be skilled in
the following seven core competency areas (see Figure I.1):

1. Drive for Results
2. Strive for Self-Mastery