Synopsis

Our personality effects our leadership style. If we know about our personality style, which is a combination of our instinctual values and the strategies we use to satisfy those values, we may better grasp our leadership style, use our strengths better and identify and develop our weaknesses. In this piece, we will look at the leadership styles of the nine Enneagram types.

Leadership development is a long journey. In business life, people can develop their own leadership style which stems from their personal qualities. In this journey, Awareness to Action Enneagram helps us discover ourselves and develop leadership styles that are congruent with our personalities.

Our personality determines our leadership style more than our leadership ability. If we know about our personality style, which is a combination of our instinctual values and the strategies we use to satisfy those values, we may better grasp our leadership style, use our strengths better and identify and develop our weaknesses. At this point, we can also say that people with all personality styles can ve effective leaders.

The two dimensions of our personality, both our instinctual biases and adaptation strategies have an effect on our leadership style. We have shared the strengths and weaknesses of the types in relation to the three instinctual leadership styles in our previous article. In this article, we will discuss our adaptive strategies’ -Enneagram types’- effect on our leadership styles.

Enneagram Types and Leadership

We see that leadership styles in literature are congruent with Enneagram types. Lets have a look at the leadership qualites of the Enneagram types:

Type 1 => Administrative Leadership

+ They create order and clarity, and institute and enforce needed policies and procedures.

- They can be rigid, inflexible, remote, and uninspiring and may focus on what is wrong rather than what is right.

Type 2 => Affiliative Leadership

+ They focus on the developmental needs of the team, helping others to develop their skills and abilities and advance in their careers.

- They can be intrusive, manipulative, show favoritism, and demand appreciation.

Type 3 => Pace-Setting Leadership

+ They inspire others by setting an example of high performance and excellence.

- They can place unrealistically high expectations on others and may not consider the needs and values of their employees.

Type 4 => Visionary Leadership

+ They create a vision of what the organization can be and move others toward a shared dream.

- They can be impractical or become dispirited and resentful when their dream is not shared.

Type 5 => Strategic / Laissez-Faire Leadership

+ They are highly analytical and able to develop a plan for getting from current reality to identified vision.

- They can be remote and detached and focus more on analysis than action.

Type 6 => Guardian Leadership

+ They identify internal and external threats to the organization, and protect group cohesion.

- They can be fearful and suspicious, focusing on what could go wrong rather than what could go right.

Type 7 => Motivational Leadership

+ They inspire others with excitement, optimism, and energy and create positive energy toward a shared goal.

- They can be impractical, easily distracted, impulsive, and irresponsible.

Type 8 => Authoritative Leadership

+ They are decisive, bold, and confident, and inspire these qualities in their followers.

- They can be arrogant, hostile, and demanding, and may focus on their own agenda rather than the good of the group.

Type 9 => Democratic-Participative Leadership

+ They gain commitment through inclusion and participation and make others feel valued by seeking their perspective.

- They can be indecisive and conflict averse, and may seem to lack their own opinions and vision.

Leadership Development and Professional Applications

Recent research shows that horizontal and vertical integration is crucial and indispensible for the design of successful HR systems. Accurate analysis of candidates’ with in the recruitment process, hiring of professionals with leadership potential and appropriate to the organization and job specifications are crucial. We witness with regret that a number of brilliant and promising professionals who are not able to meet corporations’ demands and to grow as expected get to be replaced in the middle and long term. This situation not only affects the business results and permanentness but brings with itself the unnecessary use of the resources of corporations.

Ageo International – InterSearch Turkey supports the recruitment of right talents through its well-developed tools and the development of leaders that corporations aspire through the Awareness to Action Leadership Model.