Building Harmonious Workplaces: The Enneagram as a Catalyst for Change

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Enneagram Reflections, Kimberly Collins. How are you?

Kimberly Collins: Great. Thanks for having me.

Stone Payton: I have really been looking forward to this conversation. I have heard a thing or two in passing around this whole idea of enneagrams, and so I’m interested to dive into that conversation here in a moment. But before we go there, how would you describe mission? Purpose? What are you really out there trying to do for folks? Kimberly.

Kimberly Collins: Absolutely. You know, what I do comes from a lot of experience in the leadership world and a heart for leaders who, uh, you know, are serving teams or, you know, uh, having to manage large businesses and seeing the amount of pressure that these leaders are put under, um, has inspired me to work a system and my business around supporting these leaders so that they can, uh, not only show up for their teams better, which, of course, is such a wonderful thing, but to show up for themselves better and to feel more fulfilled, uh, by the things that they are doing. So really, my mission is to walk alongside leaders and teams and create a more harmonious workplace so that everybody can feel like they are, uh, working at their best and they’re working with each other and serving their clients the best as well.

Stone Payton: So what’s the backstory? Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you landed here doing this?

Kimberly Collins: Yeah, absolutely. So I am now an executive coach and an Enneagram consultant. But before I started this business, I was part of a co, I was co founded, co owned an orthodontic practice, um, in Minnesota. And I did that for 11 years. And during that time I did everything that didn’t require a doctorate of dental surgery. So I was payroll and 401 K and finance and taxes and HR and hiring and firing. And, um, I found myself it was about six years deep into that 11 year tenure that I found myself really burning out. Um, you know, thousands of patients, 35 employees and three little kids at home. And I thought, you know, uh, it’s something’s got to go. It’s either going to be me or this business. And, um, I was introduced to the Enneagram as a way of kind of managing myself, um, and my emotions and how I show up to the conversation. And I found that it was so helpful for me to manage my own burnout, that I decided to become certified in it, and I started applying it to my team and saw that we had better communication and more harmony and more productive conflict and that, uh, that inspired me to, uh, use it more and also to now do this full time. So now I work with especially small business owners, but I, I work as well with more corporate, uh, groups as well on how they can use the Enneagram, not only for the team, which is a great place, but also for the leaders, which is always, uh, you know, where I think that the most growth comes is working with leaders.

Stone Payton: Yeah. Well, say more about the topics or competencies or the areas where, uh, the Enneagram really can have a have an impact.

Kimberly Collins: Absolutely. So the Enneagram in and of itself is not a growth tool. And I always have to be, uh, you know, super clear about that because people will get into it and they’ll say, wow, now I know what my personality type is, but what do I do with this information? But where it really thrives is improving our self-awareness, which, of course, is the first stop on any personal growth journey, is knowing what are the stories that are driving my life, what are the motivations behind a lot of those patterns of thoughts and behaviors that are make up the majority of my life? And how is this tinting my perspective of the world? So the Enneagram is, you know, of course, in my I’m biased, but of course, in my perspective is the best at giving us a great view of how we’re showing up, um, and giving us a language for an inner experience. From that self-awareness, we’re able to see how we show up, and we can make decisions from there so we can choose better ways of emotional regulation, better ways of communicating and understanding how other people are experiencing us and in improving our conflict. Uh, showing up how we can, uh, disagree, but also how we can communicate in a way that those disagreements lead to something productive.

Stone Payton: As you’re describing this, um, a mental image came to came to me a long, long time ago. Arcade games were different back in my day. But there was this driving game and you could pick between two different views and one. You were sitting in the car and driving, but the other one was like a bird’s eye view.

Speaker4: And oh yeah.

Stone Payton: It seems to me like doing this allows you to to have a bird’s eye view of, uh, how do you put it? Like, uh, how you’re coming to the conversation or how you’re, uh, I don’t know. That’s that’s the mental image I got as you were describing it.

Kimberly Collins: I love that, and absolutely. It’s a way of, uh, like I said, a language for your own inner experience. But like you said, it’s a way of seeing how you’re showing up through this conversation and what you’re bringing to the table and seeing how that’s interacting with other people is really powerful for improving, uh, how you show up and how you interact.

Stone Payton: So a term that I’ve been coming across a lot as we’ve been doing this coaching series is emotional intelligence. Gotta believe that that there’s a lot to be done in that area with this work. Yeah.

Kimberly Collins: Absolutely. I mean, emotional intelligence, uh, in my mind, that’s your ceiling for growth is how how you can improve the soft skills of your job so that you can show up as the leader that you want to show up as. I think that a lot of times when we first start out our careers, we’re heavily leaning on those hard technical skills that maybe we’ve gone to school for. Maybe we’ve had kind of testing or training or whatever it is around that, and then we get to a point where our soft skills are those emotional intelligence skills, and that’s all that emotional regulation, communication conflict, that’s all emotional intelligence that becomes either equal or greater than those hard technical skills. And yet leaders are frequently thrown into leadership positions without any training. And, you know, things that happen from that are one, you know, ineffective leadership, of course, but if you’re the leader, you’re dealing with issues of imposter syndrome. That shame of, I can’t handle the situation. What’s wrong with me? There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re having to rely on a set of skills that have never been developed. Um, and then of course, the issues of burnout, which are just rampant, especially with leaders, there’s so much pressure, uh, to not only manage the position you’re in, the expectations from the company, but now you’re having to make decisions for other people. And if you don’t have a good set of skills around your own self-awareness and how you can fit in that slipstream of, uh, you know, boundaries versus connection, um, as well as improving your communication and conflict. I mean, you’re gonna burn out so fast in these positions.

Stone Payton: I’m getting a pretty clear picture of how of how this might apply to an individual. And for that self-awareness as you’re describing, how does it, uh, how do you utilize it to help entire teams?

Kimberly Collins: Absolutely. And I’m going to cop out a little bit and say the the best place to start for any team is with a leader. Um, the research is in, uh, if you want to improve a team, you go to the leader, the boss, the parent, the teacher. These are the people who make the greatest impact. The smallest. Uh, you know, the biggest bang for your buck is starting with the leader. However, if you want to use it with a team, You know, the Enneagram again, is going to thrive. Even just introducing the topic of showing a team that, hey, there are nine different perspectives of the world that are totally normal. And it just blows up that, uh, it’s like the normal paradox that Chris Voss talks about, where we all think that we’re normal. Um, and then when we encounter someone else who has a different normal, they just drive us nuts, you know? So it’s helping us see that, hey, I, I might see the world through this perspective, but that’s just one of nine ways of seeing the world, and that there’s an infinite number of variations to those perspectives that, uh, is coloring our interaction. And that even just by opening up the eyes to that can be really, really helpful. Of course, you know, if I’m going to work really in depth with a team, I’m going to be focusing on those, uh, big points of contention, communication, how we show up to conflict, how we show up to expectation. And these can really improve just how we see each other when we’re tackling projects or tackling something we disagree with.

Stone Payton: So when you were kind of getting started with this and trying to go out and describe to someone who could write the check and had the authority to bring you in to do this kind of kind of work, was the was the business side of of coaching tough like the whole sales and marketing thing? Was that a bit of a challenge in the early going or did that come pretty easy?

Speaker5: Well, I think.

Kimberly Collins: Anytime you get into a new venture, you’re going to be working with tools you’ve never worked with before. So I come from a small business area and, you know, dental care. So it’s kind of a healthcare. So I was very familiar with all of those laws and regulations and softwares. Um, and then moving into a new space, of course, there’s going to be a lot of learning the new technical things and learning too, about how you want to talk about these topics. And I think it’s a lot of a, um, exposure, uh, exposure therapy or whatever you want to call it, of talking about what you’re passionate about and, uh, being confident that what you are providing is, you know, something that’s really valuable. And, you know, eventually you’ll find those people who see the value in it, and it’ll just kind of click. But, yeah, I mean, of course, anytime you start something new, there’s going to be those hiccups.

Stone Payton: So what are 1 or 2 things? What are some things that people sometimes just get wrong, maybe have a misconception about the nature of this work that that maybe you run into before you have an opportunity to kind of educate them through that.

Speaker4: A lot of times.

Kimberly Collins: Especially when I’m working with the Enneagram, it’s the idea that this is a one and done that. Okay? We, uh, we have the tool. This is great. Our team is exposed to this information, and we’re never going to have issues like this again. And really, you know, the conversation of the Enneagram or the conversation about emotional intelligence, self-awareness, this is a lifelong conversation. Um, this is something that, uh, we’re all we’re always going to be working on as individuals and as teams, and that the work itself is the importance that there’s no solving it. It’s just going through ups and downs and learning from those ups and downs. Um, but I see that a lot of this. Okay, we had the conversation. Let’s move on to the next thing and then, uh, being surprised that those nuggets that they got from the conversation aren’t being carried six months down the line. So it’s something that has to be come back to intentionally, uh, to be able to really improve that, uh, the psychological safety of the team. Long term.

Stone Payton: Psychological safety. I like that phrase. I may I may borrow that one.

Speaker4: Yeah. No, that’s a mouthful.

Stone Payton: Right. And with teams and having the trust and feeling safe and being able to be. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So I’m sure the answer to the question is yes, but I’m going to ask about it anyway. Maybe ask you to expound on it a little bit. But, uh, have you had the benefit of one or more mentors along the way to help you navigate this terrain of coaching on these competencies, but also on getting people to write you a check to coach on these competencies?

Speaker4: Absolutely.

Kimberly Collins: I think you always I think if anything, you need to have mentors who are showing those practical sides of things. Of course, you know the how to the where to do this and uh, giving you ideas about software. But I think it’s so much it’s.

Speaker4: Encouragement.

Kimberly Collins: And support for, uh, the individuals starting these things out and just even those little pep talks of, you can do this. Uh, you know, working through this mindset shift that’s really bogging you down is so crucial because, uh, you know, starting any, any new venture, especially if it’s a solo venture, it’s a lonely position, just like leadership is. And and so it’s so important to have people in your life that are also encouraging you when the times get kind of discouraging.

Stone Payton: Well, and you chose to, to become formally credentialed in this enneagram, um, arena and, and in other ways as well. This was a commitment that you made, and it’s my understanding you don’t have to go get these kinds of credentials to hang your shingle out, but, uh, I’m interested. Are you are you glad you did?

Speaker4: Absolutely.

Kimberly Collins: I mean, I am a lifetime learner. I that’s definitely one of the things that I love to do the most is learn, and so it was very natural for me to want to lean in and, uh, you know, get the credentialing so that I felt like I understood things from beginning to end. There’s a lot of information out there, especially about the Enneagram, that can lean into kind of the pop culture side of things, which totally. I love that stuff, too. It’s it’s a party. It’s fun. Um, but I love to know the psychological underpinnings of things, the history behind things, so that when I’m teaching this to teams, I feel like I have a depth to it as well. So for me, uh, that was a no brainer because I love to learn. But definitely you don’t have to be accredited in Enneagram. You don’t have to be accredited in coaching, um, if you don’t want to be. But for me, I feel like having that underpinning of, uh, formal training helps me have confidence in that. What I’m offering to teams and offering to To individuals as an executive coach is helpful and rooted in something more than just culture.

Stone Payton: So in the in the white space, I’ll call it, when you’re not actively engaged in coaching and that kind of thing, you’re probably writing, speaking all that stuff just to continue to educate your, uh, your market. Yeah.

Speaker4: Absolutely.

Kimberly Collins: I, I read I read a lot of books every year. Um, I, and I definitely love to write about them as well. I and then it’s of course keeping up on your industry too. So I have more continuing education that I do every year just to again, keep growing my perspective of what I do so that I can provide even more benefit to my clients.

Stone Payton: So I’m going to shift gears on you for a moment. If I might, I would be interested to know hobbies, interests, pursuits, passions outside the scope of the work. Anything you nerd out about, that’s that’s not this stuff.

Kimberly Collins: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I’m actually I’m a professional musician as well. I’m a professional singer, and so I, I love to do music stuff, and I am so blessed that I have three little kids, and I have one of them who’s old enough to be into music as well. And so it’s just been such a cool passion to pass some of my music love onto my kids. But, um, I definitely spend a lot of time nerding out about music.

Stone Payton: Oh that’s fun. I’m so glad that I asked. I, I’m learning that asking that question. You really do get to learn a lot about people and you get to.

Kimberly Collins: Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Stone Payton: The whole person. Right?

Kimberly Collins: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Stone Payton: Hey, before we wrap, I would love to leave our listeners with a with an idea or two. Sometimes I call them pro tips, uh, for kind of getting their arms around some of what we’ve talked about the Enneagram, this idea of self-awareness. I like the idea of psychological safety. And look, guys, the number one tip is reach out and have a conversation with Kimberly. But, uh, let’s give them a little something to to noodle on between now and then. Kimberly.

Kimberly Collins: Absolutely. Um, I guess one pro tip I would always say is that if you want to start creating psychological safety, either in your teams or let’s say it’s just at home with your with your kids or your family or your spouse, um, it’s always going to start with you. It’s going to start with you becoming more aware of how you’re showing up to that conversation. And when you are given the opportunity to react, choosing to respond instead. The psychological safety is all about, um, providing a space for another person to be themselves. Uh, have differing opinions and differing preferences and not experiencing negative feedback. And that all comes from being in the vicinity of a person who is emotionally regulated and is able to respond instead of react, even when, uh, you know, the tensions get high, it can be out of response that things move forward. So that’s where I would always say is that if you’re interested in creating a better work culture, home culture, friend culture, whatever it is, start with you and how you’re showing up to the conversation and it’ll improve from there.

Stone Payton: Well, that sounds like marvelous counsel to me. What’s the best way for our listeners to reach out, tap into your work, start learning more, maybe have a more substantive conversation with you. Let’s leave them with some coordinates.

Kimberly Collins: Absolutely. So I have a website. It’s Enneagram reflections.com, and it has my email on there. It has my socials. So check it out and you can always contact me for more information or if you have any questions.

Stone Payton: Well, Kimberly, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show. Thank you for your.

Speaker6: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Stone Payton: The work you’re doing is so important, and you are a fresh breath of air. You are really doing good work, and we sure appreciate you.

Speaker6: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. What a what.

Kimberly Collins: A great opportunity to be on this show with you. Thank you so much.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Kimberly Collins with Enneagram Reflections and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.