Leadership Style of Type Eight

About the leadership style of Eight, as Palmer (1995) points out, Eight CEOs are likely to be direct, assertive, forceful, self-confident.  Also, they tend to like control subordinates and hierarchy system centering on them.  Eight CEOs are powerful and aggressive leaders.  Therefore, Eight CEOs may be highly valued when their companies launch a new business or participate in severe competitions, because these phases tend to need strong and aggressive leaderships in order to lead the subordinates powerfully.

In addition to that, Eight CEOs “prefer to centralize power rather than to delegate” (Palmer, 1995, p.217).  They are more partial to a top-down organizational system, because they can control subordinates more and concentrate power in the top of the organizations compared with a bottom-up organizational system.       

Healthy levels of Eight leaders: Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Franklin Roosevelt

Reference:

1 The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types

2 The Enneagram in Love and Work: Understanding Your Intimate and Business Relationships

Enneagram Assessment: Type Eight (Challenger, Boss) and my type (Seven)

As Riso and Hudson (1999) explain, the basic fear of type Eight is being harmed or controlled by others.  In fact, my score of type Eight is the second highest, so I sometimes fear being controlled by others and fear that others have strong power over me.  When I was a junior high school student, I was a captain of the basketball team in my school.  In retrospect, I was often seized with a powerful desire to control other team mates at will so that I could protect myself and feel comfortable.  Even now, I sometimes feel the same impulse to control others.  Therefore, the basic fear and desire of type Eight seem to have a strong effect on me. 

As for the type Eight with a Seven wing, the characteristics of this type are charismatic, action-oriented (healthy level), and adventurous risk-takers, talkative, outgoing with great self-confidence (average level).   I’m a type Seven with an Eight wing, so I seem to have these characteristics.   My behavioral pattern is action-oriented and I like taking a risk because challenging new things brings strong stimuli to my life taking a risk.  Nowadays, I’m not so talkative, but I was a very talkative man when I was a kid. 

Next, regarding to the wake-up call for type Eight, “Eights generally do not like working under others, performing instead the risk and adventure of running their own activities” (Riso and Hudson, 1999, p. 297).  When I worked in a business consulting company in Japan, I sometimes felt so.  Interestingly, my working behavior toward my managers (authorities) was obedient, but when I worked with my colleagues or my staffs, I didn’t like them to control me. 

As stated above, I have many elements of the type Eight.                                                                    

Reference:The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types

The reason of taking this summer’s classes: The Relation between Shamanism and Business World

Now, I’m taking “Enneagram Assessment”, “Developmental Psychology”, “Shamanism and Dreams”, and “Spirituality, Symbols and Dreams” this summer.  At first glance, the list has no relation, but actually it has very important meaning for me.  As I posted before, I’m working on my master thesis about “Integral Leadership.” 

These classes are key parts of my paper.  How??  I’m exploring new leadership model from AQAP perspectives (All Quadrants, All Levels, All States, All Types, All Lines).  “Enneagram Assessment” class relates to All Types, “Developmental Psychology” class relates to All Levels, and the last two classes enhance my understanding of All States.

“Shamanism?  Altered states of consciousness?  These are definitely not related to the business world?”  However, is that true?  What are the CEOs’ states of consciousness in the crisis of their company (e.g. natural hazard, unexpected events…)?  How many CEOs did they cope with the severe financial crisis maintaining their ordinary states of consciousness?

In the modern business world, management environments are very changeable…they are like human states of consciousness.  Therefore, I think the ancient wisdom about human consciousness is significant in this world.

Shamanism and Dreams

I took a special class “Shamanism and Dreams” at Berkeley campus yesterday and the day before yesterday.  I’ve been interested in the world of dreams since I was belonging to dream group at JFKU.  So, I took this class in order to cultivate my understandings of dreams.  Dream work is one of the most important shadow works for me.

 Through this class, I learned the healing power of dreams.  Personally, Shamanic technique and music using drums were interesting.

 Impressive class contents

-Dream recall

-Dream Incubation song

-Dream re-entry with the drum

-Centering.  Embodiment of the dream

A part of my master thesis (draft: Integral Leadership Model)

I'm working on my master thesis little by little.  I think the following post is difficult to understand in places, because I show my sentences neglecting the contexts...

          The purpose of understanding the types of leaders is to grasp the pattern of their thinking, emotions, behaviors, actions, interpersonal relationships, and so on.  Each person has a unique type, so he or she thinks, acts, behaves, and communicates with others in the different manner in accordance with each type.

All types are seen in all four quadrants (see table XX in the appendices), but this paper refers to only the Upper Left quadrant of personality types utilizing the wisdom of the Enneagram in order to avoid the complex analysis.  Also, the following analysis indicates not only characteristics of each type of leadership but also the conditions of healthy and unhealthy leaders in each type.

Although the wisdom of the Enneagram is so useful to categorize each leader into each type, we need to use it carefully in the following two points.  First, human beings are not simple so that we can classify people into one category.  Second, we may need to pay attention to the difference between the level of consciousness and the Enneagram types.  As, Esbjörn-Hargens (2010) points out, the former is vertical and the latter is horizontal.  Therefore, it is important to recognize that we, human beings are complex creatures mixed with various types within us and the difference between stages of consciousness and types.

Enneagram Type 9 (Peacemaker, Mediator): Leadership Types

          The greatness of the type 9 is the power of embracing others gently.  By virtue of this eminent point, Nines will provide us the peace.  In addition to that, healthy Nines can see the goodness in others and can also see the goodness in themselves.  Compared with the type 7 (me), in my view, Nines are good at caring others better than Sevens, because Sevens tend to focus on only themselves.  Therefore, I’d like to incorporate the strength of Nines in me.

Next, I noticed that I sometimes fell into the trend of unhealthy Nines while reading the Enneagram books.  For example, as Riso and Hudson (1999) explain, Nines are likely to focus on the brilliant aspects in their life in order to keep their mind peaceful.  Also, they tend to neglect the dark side in their life.  Like Nines, I have a propensity to look away shadow aspects in my life in order to maintain my inner peacefulness and stillness.

Third, as for “moving into the inner sanctum” (p.328) and stubbornness and inner resistance, Nines have a tendency to create and keep their inner sanctum where they feel safe, because they can get rid of the disturbance situation.  Furthermore, Nines sometimes have stubbornness and inner resistance toward the situation threatening to violate their inner peace.  Like Nines, I sometimes build my inner sanctum and resist the situation disturbing me.  Considering the above aspects, the unhealthy features in Nines sometimes appear on me.

              Last, the purpose of taking this class is to integrate the wisdom of the Enneagram with my interest (leadership development).  Therefore, I’d like to explore the types of leadership using the Enneagram.  As Palmer (1995) illustrates, Nine leaders sometimes struggle with a lot of opinions around them and try to put forward alternative ideas.  Also, their goals tend to be wide not specific.  That is because the particular goals may arouse disagreements between followers.  So, Nine leaders tend to listen to followers too much carefully, gather a lot of information, and share the information a little. 

Nine leaders are good at drawing a big picture, but they don’t want to think about the detail until they can make a complete plan.  In addition, Nine leaders are likely to suppose that followers also draw a comprehensive plan, and they may feel discomfort to find the followers have a narrow and selfish plan.   Thus, “Nines are imprecise in specifying the ways in which a plan to be carried out” (Palmer, 1995, p.242). 

Nine leaders have a tendency to want advice or directions from every department in an organization, because they try to obtain consensus in order not to bring chaos in the organization.  Therefore, Nine leaders may not take prompt actions until they can gain an appropriate agreement.

Nine leaders are likely to avoid innovative ideas, because new ideas may trigger disorder in their mind.  Although Nine leaders may not be suitable for the top positions in the fast-changing industry for example, internet industry, as Paler points out that they may fit for the top position in utility companies which tend to get around competition.

Reference

1 The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types

2 The Enneagram in Love and Work: Understanding Your Intimate and Business Relationships

The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram

In my opinion, Riso and Hudson’s book include more information about the Enneagram than this book.  However, this book more focuses on human spirit from the Enneagram perspectives.  In the first place, I recommend you to read all types in the Riso and Hudson’s book, then to read this book picking up your type.