Page 224 - Using the Enneagram System to Identify and Grow Your Leadership Strengths and Achieve Maximum Success

Lead High-Performing Teams 199

efficient team members, particularly individuals who don’t waste
the Five leader’s time, Fives focus their teams on the task at hand,
with the end product in mind.
Fives particularly enjoy discussing important ideas with intellectu-
ally agile and knowledgeable team members. They do their best to
establish rational, consistent, and systematic work processes that
enable all team members to use their time productively. Because Fives
take satisfaction in understanding how all the parts of a task or proj-
ect fit together, they enjoy the puzzle aspect of issue identification and
problem solving. They also enjoy coaching team members using this
same approach—providing a systems perspective on how everything
works, taking a rational view of turbulent issues, and finding just the
right concept or development activity to help people learn and grow.
Following is an example of a Five leader at work:

At a team meeting in which self-development planning was
being discussed, Barbara listened eagerly as team members
shared what each would do for his or her six-month develop-
ment plan. During this discussion, Barbara took careful notes
and said little except to positively reinforce individuals who had
selected an appropriate and challenging area, or to gently push
those who she believed could challenge themselves even more.
When someone asked Barbara why she was taking notes, she
laughed and said with a wry smile, “So I can remember to
remind you of what you have just committed to do.”

Because Fives prefer to work on teams with low interdepend-
ence among team members and high levels of individual autonomy,
they often develop a team architecture based on these same char-
acteristics. While this architecture works well when team projects
require low interdependence, other team projects require mem-
bers to work more interdependently in order to be successful. For
example, a golf team works best when team members function with
low interdependence, but a soccer team requires moderate to high
interdependence among its members.