IDL17 Season 1: The Road Back to You with the Enneagram with Ian Morgan Cron
Have you heard of the Enneagram? Why is it such an important tool that leaders can make use of? How can the Enneagram help you to become the healthiest version of yourself?
It is important for us as leaders to understand not only ourselves but those around us. The Enneagram teaches us that not everyone sees the world in just one way and it helps us have more emotional wisdom, empathy, and compassion for those we are leading. Ian Morgan Cron explains this so wonderfully and we dig deep into all things Enneagram so that you may go on this journey and be the best leader you can be.
Meet Ian Morgan Cron
is a bestselling author, psychotherapist, Enneagram teacher, and the host of the popular podcast, Typology, which has over 13 million downloads. His books include the national bestseller, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery, his novel Chasing Francis, and the spiritual memoir Jesus, My Father, the CIA, and Me. Known for his transparency, humor and depth of insight into the inner workings of the human heart and mind, Ian uses the Enneagram personality-typing system as a tool to help leaders cultivate self-awareness and emotional wisdom. He is a sought-after speaker, thinker and advisor to a growing roster of clients such as the Discovery Channel, Ramsey Solutions, Catalyst, Belmont University, Michael Hyatt Company, Warner Brothers Music, among others. He and his wife, Anne, have three children and live in Nashville, Tennessee.
Visit his website. Connect on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Listen to Ian’s podcast: Typology Podcast and subscribe to his YouTube channel.
Take the iEQ9 assessment: Designed to give you a deeper level of self-knowledge
In this episode we discuss:
What is the enneagram?
Different triads of the enneagram
How can the enneagram be helpful?
Enneagram types
WHAT IS THE ENNEAGRAM?
“The Enneagram is an ancient personality-typing system that teaches that there are nine basic personality styles in the world. One of which we gravitate toward and adopt in childhood as a way to cope, to protect ourselves, and navigate the new world of relationships. ”
Each Enneagram type has a powerful unconscious motivation that influences and predicts how each type acts and feels on a moment-to-moment basis when responding to the world.
There is a nature versus nurture argument that lies at the center of the Enneagram: each person is born with their own internal architecture that is unique to them, however, this interior is also shaped and influenced by what happens in their surroundings as a child, the trauma they experience, what the state of the culture and society is that they are born into and so forth.
DIFFERENT TRIADS OF THE ENNEAGRAM
Anger triad: eights, nines, and ones
Heart and feeling triad: twos, threes, and fours
Thinking or head triad: fives, sixes, and sevens
For each triad, there are different ways of perceiving the reality before them. As a leader, you may commit a vital mistake when you think that everyone around you needs to perceive your reality, because if we think that way and then come into contact with someone who perceives the world differently, you may treat them like they themselves are “incorrect” or “abnormal”.
This is why the Enneagram is an important tool for leaders: you can use it to better understand your employees and how you can better connect with them in authentic ways.
“The Enneagram not only reveals what your type does, but why it does it … what you do does not matter as much as why you do it. This is the unconscious motivation which is very different for each type. ”
HOW CAN THE ENNEAGRAM BE HELPFUL?
To become a healthier version of yourself, with the Enneagram, you can start with gathering:
Self-knowledge: this is a big start because you get the facts here about who you are and what you use to understand the world around you.
This leads to self-awareness: the ability to observe and monitor the ways in which you act, think, and feel. Here you can begin to make different choices from the ones you have made in the past that got you into repeated trouble.
“As you go on that journey, you become a more authentic and higher expression of yourself when your gifts are then in service to the world and to others. ”
enneagram types
Type 1: Improvers
Ethical, meticulous, detail-oriented, and morally heroic.
They are motivated by a need to be good, to perfect themselves, others, and the world.
Type 2: The Helpers
Warm, caring, giving, supportive.
They are motivated by a need to be liked by other people.
Type 3: The Performers
Success-oriented, image-conscious, wired for productivity.
They are motivated to succeed, to appear successful, and to avoid failure at all costs.
Type 4: The Romantics
Creative, sensitive, moody.
They are motivated by a need to belong.
Type 5: The Investigators
Analytical, detached, private. They are perceived as aloof and emotionally unavailable.
They are motivated by a need to gain knowledge, particularly about niche subjects, to conserve inner resources and energy, and to not rely on others.
Type 6: The Loyalists
Committed, practical, witty. These are people who are worst-case scenario thinkers who are motivated by the need for security and safety and support.
Type 7: The Enthusiasts
Fun, spontaneous, adventurous. These are people who are motivated by a need to avoid emotional and psychological pain or distress.
Type 8: The Challenger
Commanding, intense, confrontational, sometimes domineering. They are motivated to assert strength and power over their environment and others to mask tenderness and vulnerability.
Type 9: The Peacemaker
Accommodating, don’t rock the boat, go with the flow. These people are motivated by a need to keep the peace and to avoid conflict at all costs.
When you have your enneagram number there are two beside you, those are your wings, and they both have an impact over you except one is more dominant than the other.
Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:
Visit Ian’s website. Connect on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Listen to Ian’s podcast: Typology Podcast and subscribe to his YouTube channel.
Take the iEQ9 assessment: Designed to give you a deeper level of self-knowledge
The Impact Driven Leader YouTube Channel
Join the Impact Driven Leader Community
Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn
BOOK | Ian Morgan Cron – The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery
BOOK | Michael and Megan Hyatt – Win at Work and Succeed at Life: 5 Principles to Free Yourself from the Cult of Overwork
BOOK | Dr. Caroline Leaf - Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess: 5 Simple, Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking
About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast
The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.
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I think the most important thing is for us to develop rich self-knowledge and self-awareness so that we can move through the world with more emotional wisdom, empathy, compassion… with insight into how others who are very different than us perceive the world.
Ian Morgan Cron
Podcast Transcription
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Glad to be back with you. This is episode number 17 now. We're cruising along and I am really appreciative of you guys listening in and subscribing, and I'd love to get comments from people like my friend, Aaron, who listened to the episode with Colin Henderson. Like, "Man, sound like you guys just knew each other for so long. I could have gone on for hours listening to you." I appreciate that. This is what I'd ask of you guys. Give me a rating, give me a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this. If it's on Spotify, great. If it's on one of the other platforms, amazing, would love to get a review, a rating. Let me know how I'm doing. You know, I was fortunate, my friend, Aaron reached out, told me that, and that's what I want to do.
I want to bring conversations, I want to develop relationships. That's going to help me become a better leader and then share that with all of you. That's why this podcast is here, to help other leaders get healthy too. I had to get healthy and I want to invite you into that journey,, come meet some of the people that I've gotten to meet, and I hope it's a benefit and value to you. So today we get to speak to the man, really is I would say the man that really has identified Enneagram into a new culture in society. My friends, I myself read the book, The Road Back to You, which really dug into this whole idea of Enneagram. My personal belief is there's not a be-all-end-all to a lot of these different assessments, but I do believe when you go through the process, you start to identify, you get to create a common language. And through that common language, you can have great conversation.
Ian and I talk about the different Enneagram types, he goes through it, describes it. We talk about myself being an Enneagram eight, what I had to learn and go through and really is that whole idea of getting healthy and helping other leaders get healthy. To me, it's becoming the healthiest version of you. And when you do that, man, you're really on the path to be a better, more impactful leader. Enjoy this episode. I'll see you at the end. Well, Ian, welcome to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. Glad to have you here.
[IAN MORGAN]
I am so glad to be here. Thank you, Tyler.
[TYLER]
Yes. So for my audience, for those maybe that aren't familiar with the Enneagram, would you mind just kicking off starting what is the Enneagram? Where did it start? How did it start as it's become really popular in our current culture?
[IAN]
Well, the Enneagram is an ancient personality typing system that teaches that there are nine basic personality styles in the world; one of which we gravitate toward and adopt in childhood as a way to cope, to protect ourselves and navigate the new world of relationships. Each type has an unconscious motivation that powerfully influences how that type predictably and habitually acts, thinks, and feels on a moment to moment basis as it moves through the world.
[TYLER]
Wow. Okay. So one thing that, I've read your book, The Road Back to You, I have taken the Enneagram, I'm Enneagram eight and one thing that I had not picked up and kind of that I'd love you to expound a little bit on, you made the mention that it's adopted in childhood. Would you mind digging into that a little bit deeper for us?
[IAN]
Yes, sure. So personality is a complex construct. And if you think about it, it's partly genetics. It's temperament and disposition. I have three kids and each of them showed up in the world very, very differently, just by virtue of their interior architecture. It's just how they arrived. However, a personality is powerfully molded by cultural forces, by family experiences, by trauma, by the relationship and our perceived expectations of people like teachers and parents, peers, coaches. All the people in our world have a say, if you will, in who we become and the way that we show up for life.
[TYLER]
Wow. Okay. To that's an extra layer to this Enneagram that I didn't understand, realize, which makes sense. Don't get me wrong, it makes sense, but I appreciate having that a little bit more. So there's nine different Enneagram types and one of the things that I found interesting, and I mentioned this, I'm Enneagram eight, as I learned, your book, The Road Back to You kind of starts off by describing the Enneagram eight. So I'd love to know as an eight, and you know, you're going to sense this as a challenge or why did you start with eight and kind of then go through the other nine, the other eight, nine in total?
[IAN]
Well, I mean, I thought eight was a great place to start because it's such an entertaining number. For eights, they're very easy to peg and everybody knows an eight. So it was a good grabber. More importantly, the Enneagram, these nine types can be broken up into three triads, eights, nines, and ones, which are the anger, triad, twos, threes, and fours, which is the heart or feeling triad and five, six and seven, which is the thinking or head triad. And so I wanted people to see what their type was in the context of their triad. So I started with eights and then went to nines, ones, twos, threes, fours. No, it doesn't matter where you start, honestly. No type is better than another, but all of them exist within a suite of two other roommates, if you will in their particular triads. So that was the logic.
[TYLER]
Okay. All right. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, that's knowing a little bit more, digging a little bit more for the audience listening in, hopefully as well, they grab that book The Road Back to You. I really enjoyed. Now one of the things I want to dig into here as I learn, and I think it can be a big fallacy thinking to learn about Enneagram so we can identify others. Really, the challenge is no, this is to better understand you, am I correct in that?
[IAN]
It's both right but I think the most important thing is for us to develop rich self-knowledge and self-awareness so that we can move through the world with more emotional wisdom, empathy, compassion, with insight into how others who are very different than us perceive the world. It helps us get into other people's shoes, which is vital. One of the things I tell leaders all the time is that it's a terrible mistake to presume that your way of seeing the world is normal when at the Enneagram is right. There are actually nine normals and if you don't appreciate that, you will, when you meet someone whose normal way of seeing the world is different than yours you will presume that they are abnormal and treat them that way. Just opening the aperture of understanding into the human heart. So it's a fairly powerful and useful tool for leaders.
[TYLER]
So I've gone through a number of different assessments. You can go from DiSC to strengths, to Myers-Briggs to even the most recent Pat Lencioni, The Working Genius. And as I kind of mash all these together is one better than the other in your opinion? Is the Enneagram different or do you see value and really kind of getting that big holistic view through some of those different assessments?
[IAN]
Yes. Well, here's the thing. I've worked with all of the Myers-Briggs, Hogan, DiSC, StrengthsFinder, all the ones that you just mentioned among others. I do find the Enneagram the most useful and powerful instrument among them all. Here's why. The Enneagram not only reveals what your type does, but why it does it. We oftentimes say in Enneagram circles, what you do does not matter as much as why you do it. This is the unconscious motivation, which is very different for each time. And because the truth of the matter is you contain all nine types and you can look and act like all those types in the course of a given day. However, you have one that's dominant, one that is more like you than the others and once you understand your unconscious motivation, you can begin to unwind some of the shadow aspects of your personality, which leads me to the second reason I like the Enneagram more than the other systems though. Again, they have great value. It's because it reveals that what's best about you is what's worst about you and what's worst about you is what's best about you. And as a friend of mine likes to say, if what you're looking for is flattery, don't play with the Enneagram. It will reveal both what's broken and beautiful about you. And usually in the beginning, we start with, what's not working.
[TYLER]
Yes. Which comes back to a point I mentioned, earlier for me there's been you know, as you identify trauma can identify different types. And as I had a trauma, when I was 14, my younger brother died in a farming accident and as I dealt with that, as I put my head down and just pushed forward and that's kind of how I moved through life. And it wasn't until a lot of rocky broken relationships later, everything else understood I need to approach this in a better way. As I've kind of now taken this approach for me to get healthier as an eight is going to allow me to really allow the great attributes of an eight to be utilized, to help others, as opposed to being those attributes that I use just to push forward, to move forward in life. So how could you really help people understand that evolution to becoming the healthier version of yourself and how powerful that is?
[IAN]
Well self-knowledge is a big start. I mean, you have to get the facts on the ground about who you are and what your modus operandi is in the world. Then I think that can evolve into self-awareness, which is the ability to observe and monitor the ways that you act, think, and feel in every interaction as you move again through the world, that phrase and begin to make different choices than the ones you previously made that have really predictably and repeatedly have gotten you into trouble. So I think as you go on that journey, you become a more authentic and higher expression of yourself when your gifts are then in service to the world and to others. And that's another part of the Enneagram that I really appreciate deeply.
[TYLER]
So we talked a little bit about it here, why do you think people should know their Enneagram type? Is it, so again, they can understand more of their self-awareness, but then how they can interact with others. They can, as parents, the strength of knowing your personal Enneagram type and, or trying to discern your children.
[IAN]
Well, you know, with children, it's tricky. One of the things that I tell people is the nuts and bolts of personality are in place probably around the age of five. That said it's wet cement at that point. It's still building itself if you will. So I don't, I try to not work with the Enneagram until people are in, let's say, mid to late adolescents when parts of their personality have really begun to be put together more solidly, if you will. Now with parents, I oftentimes say, you may have suspicions about what your child's type is, but hold them lightly. You could be wrong and you don't want to parent a child based on the assumption that you know their type, because here's what will happen. Kids are smart. They'll pick up on what you expect from them. ad they will become that person, even though it's not who they are. And now you've caused a bigger problem for the child, because they are now living into your, what they perceive are your expectations of them, even though it's not their authentic selves.
[TYLER]
Ooh, that's, well, I mean, I would imagine that when that happens and again, in a lot of different relationships in society, we can see that popping up, especially in a senior level, if we're talking leadership. If someone is falling into that pattern of they start adhering to what you expect to where we see this incongruence, in relationships, in the workplace, because people start saying, "Hey, this is how I'm going to act based upon what I expect of you and how dangerous that can be."
[IAN]
Yes, it's going to require a lot of therapy later on to help a young adult come to terms with the fact that they became someone their parents wanted them to be, instead of the person they truly are. So there's a lot of danger in working too early with the Enneagram in kids.
[TYLER]
Oh, that's very enlightening. And I think that's really impactful, I guess, as a parent, but also as a leader, understanding that that comes back to, we have to seek to understand more rather than define for others. And to me, that's where the value of the Enneagram is to understand myself more, but then be able to be open and introspective in myself as I interact with others. How are my Enneagram you know, those subconscious actions, creating interactions with others, and what can I do to understand that better, to create a better relationship with others? So let's dig into a little bit of, I am an Enneagram eight. My wife is an Enneagram seven which at times is I believe, I think I'm also an eight wing seven. I think she's a seven wing eight. It's a very interesting relationship. Could you explain for the listeners that haven't had a chance to go deep into it what is this idea of the wings? How does that work and give a little bit of flavor to that?
[IAN]
Can I make a suggestion?
[TYLER]
Yes.
[IAN]
Let me just run, like I give everybody a two sentence description of each of the nine types.
[TYLER]
Yes, do it, please.
[IAN]
And then we'll come back to your question. I think it's always helpful for people to hear about the whole system, these different types, and sometimes to see if they identify with one. So type ones are called the improvers. These people are ethical, they're meticulous, they're detail oriented and I would say at times morally heroic. They are motivated by a need to be good, to perfect themselves and others in the world.
Type twos are called the helpers. Sometimes the befrienders. These people are warm, caring, giving, supportive. They're motivated really by a need to be liked, really liked by other people. And of course, which I know will have great bearing on the way that they move through the world.
Type threes are called the performers, success oriented, image conscious, wired for productivity. They have a need to succeed, to appear successful and to avoid failure at all costs.
Fours are called the romantics, creative, sensitive, moody disproportionately represented in the world of the arts. They're motivated by a need to belong in the world, which they suspect they do not.
Fives are called the investigators, analytical, detached private. Often they're perceived as aloof and emotionally unavailable. They're motivated by a need to gain knowledge, particularly about niche subjects, to conserve inner resources and energy, and to avoid relying on others.
Sixes, the loyalists, committed, practical, witty. These are people who are worst case scenario thinkers, who are motivated by fear, the need for security and safety and support.
Sevens, your wife, they're called the enthusiasts. They're fun, they're spontaneous, they're adventurous. These are people who are motivated by a need to avoid emotional and psychological pain or distress.
Eights, the challenger, talking about you, commanding, intense, confrontational, sometimes domineering. My mother likes to say, and she's an eight that eights can start an argument in an empty house. They are motivated a need to assert strength and power over the environment and others to mask tender and vulnerability, vulnerable feelings.
Lastly, the nines, the peacemakers, pleasant, laid back, accommodating, don't rock the boat, go with the flow, preserve my inner Hakuna Matata. These people are motivated by a need to keep the peace, to merge with the agenda of others and to avoid conflict at all costs.
Very importantly, Tyler, let me just say this, your listeners might be thinking there are 7 billion people on this planet. How can you possibly say there are only nine personality types? Here's what I say to people. There are, we know from science that on the color spectrum, there is an infinite variety of let's say the color red. It's infinite, infinite hues, contrast, saturation, you name it. So within each type, think of it as a color. There are an infinite variety of expressions of that type to the point that you could have one expression of nine on one end of the spectrum, another on the other end of the spectrum. They may look nothing alike. However, their unconscious motivation remains the same.
[TYLER]
Got it. Well, thank you.
[IAN]
You're welcome.
[TYLER]
I mean, getting that clarity, I appreciate it.
[IAN]
Of course. I know it's a little bit of a long lecture, but it's important, I think for people to kind of get a handle on what this these nine types are in the human family.
[TYLER]
Well, and we'll get back to the idea of the wing, because I think that that helps to identify the spectrum a little bit. And I think that's the, as I look at it sometimes with the challenger and there's a part of me as an eight, but I'm not sure, they're often villainized in our culture. And we see people that, it shows up, I think more than necessarily others because when it goes right, it goes really right. When it goes wrong, it goes bad wrong. And I think that's kind of how I feel. And as I have talked to others, like, there's this element of as eights, as challengers of helping each other be the healthiest version of ourselves. And I think that probably goes for every single Enneagram type.
[IAN]
I'm going to push back on you a little bit. Yes, I think that every single type, when it's in its healthiest, most self-aware expression is wonderful. Every time when it's not healthy is equally bad. I don't want to use the word bad, is equally, when a person's not very self-aware and lacks self-knowledge, they bang guardrail to guardrail through other people's lives. Eights do not have a corner on that market, trust me. A two could be just as bad as you when it's lacking self-awareness.
[TYLER]
Okay, well, I appreciate that. I'll make sure to tell my wife that.
[IAN]
I was going to say, don't flatter, sometimes people say to me, I'm worse than anybody else. And I go, "Don't flatter yourself."
[ANTHONY]
I was going to say, Tyler feels loved because he just pushes it back.
[IAN]
That's right.
[TYLER]
Well, I appreciate that. For those listening in, Anthony, thank you. They're on Ian's team. Glad you're here part of it as well. Again, coming back to this idea of wings, can you describe that and help the listener understand?
[IAN]
Sure. There are two numbers adjacent to yours. So you actually have both wings. It's just that one is dominant. So if you're an eight with a seven wing, what does that mean? It means that your dominant type will always be eight. You'll always be a challenger. You'll never not be a challenger, but you pick up, like the thing like salt and pepper, seasoning your type. Your seven colors that eight dominant type. So you begin to pick up some of the characteristic traits and features of the seven. You don't become a seven, you just pick up some of that energy and some of the juice of the seven. And it's integrated into your dominant type. You cannot be the same thing.
Importantly, sometimes someone would come up to me and go, "I'm an eight with a three wing," which tells me right away that they don't understand the Enneagram right there. They're new to it. Or I'm an eight with a four wing. That is not possible. Your wing is one of the numbers on either side of yours. So you'd be a three with a two, three with a four, five of the six, five of the four. But you know, you can't move around the Enneagram and just cherry pick which one is yours.
[TYLER]
Well, as I conceptualize that color spectrum is what makes that, really it's like, you can be red, but you can be on one extreme a deep purple red going to blue. You can be on the other side where you're almost yellow, that orange is color is, I don't know, color spectrum. I'm not an artist but I believe that's how it works. I mean, somebody correct me, if I'm wrong.
[IAN]
But that's a good way to explain it.
[TYLER]
Yes. So as you look at the practice, as you've gone through, and you're a therapist and helping people evolve and utilizing the Enneagram, where do you feel it is best utilized for a leader or for someone just growing in their own personality, leadership and wanting to impact others? How do you feel it is best utilized?
[IAN]
I think leaders who don't understand their inner terrain are dangerous to themselves and others. And that's a very strong statement, but I actually can't say it strongly enough. I've worked a lot. In fact, most of my work is in the corporate sphere. I work with corporate CEOs, senior management teams, leaders of internal teams inside of companies and I've seen the Enneagram transformed them and the people that work around them. If you don't understand yourself and other people, how can you possibly lead them? How can you possibly motivate them? How can you possibly incentivize them if you don't understand that their way of seeing the world is different than yours? And this requires a little customization in the way that you interact with them. How would you understand how to resolve conflict if you don't understand that there are, you may have two different types of people who are relating to each other or two types of the same type, and they're just clashing because they're both not very self-aware?
When you begin to understand yourself and other people then what begins to happen is you develop a language around the Enneagram, a vernacular that helps you begin to talk about your inner experience with each other. And it's like, you have one aha moment after another, Oh, that's why you always do this. Oh, that's why I always do that. It's not an excuse for bad behavior. You are not like locked into certain behaviors or patterns. You have choice to begin to say, this aspect of my personality does not fly. It just doesn't work for me now. Helped me survive as a little kid but it's a bad thing to hold onto in adulthood. And it also helps you realize, oh, here are the best pieces of who I am. And these are the things that I want to leverage and bring to the fore of my relationships with the world. And so when you don't understand yourself, when you are not exercising wisdom and self-regulation, self-leadership, if you will, you got no business leading other people, and then you're actually flying blind. It's a hit and miss proposition every day.
[TYLER]
Well, I mean the hardest person to lead is ourselves and the more tools that we have to lead ourselves, and I love the idea of this common language and that's, to me very important. We just had on the podcast, Dr. Caroline Leaf and her book Cleaning up Your Mental Mess and one of the things that she talked about, and I know you've discussed this a little bit, is that in 2020, we kind of had this crux of mental health and for a lot of different reasons. And you know, her premise is that it were more overprescribed now than ever because that's the easy solution rather than creating a system. And what I hear from you, a common language and Enneagram fits into that is how can we do the greater discovery of ourselves to understand our emotions, our mental thoughts. And then when we start to share that, and we have that language, which I hear from you, the Enneagram can be a big part of that. Would you go a little bit more into that?
[IAN]
Yes, absolutely. You know, we in 2020 only aggravated this more. We're living in times where one of the greatest crises we're facing is loneliness. We're facing it in the workplace. we're facing it with our peers on the baseball field, watching our children play, we're facing it everywhere. We're called the most connected generation and ironically, we are the most lonely. Now, like, I mean, an example of this right now in England, they actually have designated a minister of loneliness, someone in the government whose task is to address the crisis of loneliness in the general population. Think about that. That's an amazing admission of the problem we're facing. How can we overcome loneliness using the Enneagram? Everybody wants to be seen and understood. Everybody wants to bring their whole self to the world. The Enneagram gives people insight into each other's world, where we can begin to appreciate difference, where people feel known.
Let me give you an example of this. My wife, when she first read about type nines, I remember walking into the bedroom, and I'm not making this story up for the sake of illustration. This is a true story and she was weeping in bed. I said, "Wow, what's going on?" And she said, "This describes me in a way that nothing and no other instrument has been able to do. I finally have a way to explain to people what it's like to be me." And when I understood her type, it changed everything in our marriage. And I've seen it do that in business and in countless other millions. And so, again, we live in a time where like Dr. Leaf said we're faced with all kinds of relational challenges and some of the difficulties we have, we find pharmacological solutions for it, which by the way, as a therapist, I am all in favor of, should they really be needed, but it's true. You know, sometimes we throw Xanax at anxiety. Sometimes we throw antidepressants at melancholy. Sometimes we throw pharmacological solutions at ADHD when it's, these are, may just be personality traits, not pathologies. And again, if they are legitimately diagnosed pathologies, absolutely. But I think we're too quick on the trigger.
[TYLER]
Well, we can have a whole another show about that one, which I don't know how far it'll get us and as a challenger I will spare all of us. Ian, I thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you sharing more about the Enneagram. Where can you share as the best place for people to learn more about yourself, what you have going on with your podcast Typology, all that stuff. I'd love for them to hear that from you.
[IAN]
Sure. The best place to go is my website, ianmorgancron [I A N, M as in Michael, O R G A N, C R O N].com (ianmorgancron.com). You can buy my book, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery on Amazon. You could go to your local Barnes & Noble and find it or find independent bookstores wherever you are. You could take my iEQ9 Enneagram assessment, which is at my website. You can also listen to my podcast, Typology on which I interview people of different types and explore the inner terrain of these different personality styles.
[TYLER]
Well, Ian, thank you so much. Appreciate you being here as a guest. And I'm thankful for your book and the iEQ9 assessment as that helped me walk through and it was like, "Yes. I get that." And I think, again, it's that common language that we can use in between each other, but appreciating each other and not pointing fingers and saying that's what's wrong with you, I think is so important. So thank you again.
[IAN]
Thanks Tyler.
[TYLER]
Right. If you didn't know much about the Enneagram, I sure hope you do now. It's an assessment you can take. We'll have links in the show notes to where you can go to check out Ian's book, you can check out his stuff if that is a tool that you want to use, and it can help you in your leadership journey. And really that's what's here. And that's why I started this podcast. That's why we have the book club this month. We're reading Michael Hyatt's book W Win at Work and Succeed at Life and really digging through. And I think a big catalyst of that, why Ian's episode is featured in here is creating this common language, how you could work together with people. There's some people that thrive in different environments. There's people that thrive with different intricacies. Being a leader is really understanding that and my heart is being empathetic to them.
I'd love to invite you to be a part of the book club, learn more about these books as we're reading, interact with others, and then join the round table. To me, the round table is really where it happens. It's where transformation occurs. It's the position of layered learning, where I can learn from other people, they can learn from other people. And we all learn together because the problem with being a leader is you often find yourself alone on an Island. It doesn't have to be like that. Link arms, join in the journey with others. Trust me, in the fact that I've had to grow through it. I've had to go through that to get better and I invite you to not have to struggle the same that I did. So click on the link, The Impact Driven Leader, join the book club, would love to see you as a part of the round table.
Lastly, please, again, give me a rating, give me a review. Let me know how I'm doing. Let me know if this guest was impactful. Did you get stuff out of this, talking to Ian? Have a lot of great guests coming to you here this month. Thank you again for listening. See you next time.
