Episode 188 Dr. David Gruder: Transforming Organizations with the Enneagram

In this episode of The Real Enneagram, we had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. David Gruder, a self described "recovering psychologist and professional troublemaker." Dr. Gruder shared his unique perspective on the Enneagram and how he integrates it into his work with leaders across various industries, including government and business.

We explored his five-step Enneagram Strategy, which helps individuals identify their primary Enneagram type, nuance their understanding of subtypes and wings, heal core wounds, appreciate the strengths of other types, and ultimately transcend their primary type to access the "superpowers" of all nine Enneagram types.

Dr. Gruder also discussed the importance of understanding one's core wounds, using his own experience as an Enneagram 1 as an example. He emphasized the significance of healing childhood wounds and how they shape our adult behaviors and interactions.

A key theme of our conversation was the evolution of the marketplace, moving from a focus on products to experiences, and now towards a transcendent marketplace that prioritizes spiritual development. Dr. Gruder highlighted the role of integrity in leadership and how it connects to being a whole and complete person.

We also delved into the importance of the lover archetype in the workplace, particularly in the context of HR, and how leaders can create a culture that values both beingness and doingness. Dr. Gruder provided insights on how to help leaders embrace their vulnerabilities and the necessity of balancing different archetypal energies for effective leadership.

Finally, we discussed Dr. Gruder's offerings, including his role as a fractional chief people officer and his resources for male leaders seeking to elevate their leadership skills. His books, The Nimble C-Suite and The Nimble Company, focus on fostering innovation and resilience in business.  More information about Dr. Gruder's offerings can be found at drgruder.com.

We hope you enjoyed this enlightening conversation and gained valuable insights into the Enneagram and its application in personal and professional development. Thank you for listening!

To learn more about the Institute for Conscious Being, visit: theicb.info

Transcript

Scott:
You are now listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. And now, here are your hosts, Dr. Joe Howell and Nanette Mudiam.

Nanette: Well, welcome back to The Real Enneagram, a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Conscious Being. I'm Nanette Mudiam, and I'm here today with Dr. Joseph Howell and Scott Smith. It's a pleasure to be with you guys today.

Scott: Hi, Nanette. Hi, Nanette, good to be here.

Nanette: Yeah, well, we're all looking forward to our guest today. We are here with Dr. David Gruder. Dr. David, how are you today?

David: I am happy. Thank you. And how are all three of you?

Nanette: Well, I'm inspired to respond to the how are you question with happy. I really like that. Well, I'm busy or I'm tired. Happy is a great response.

David: You know, at this point in my life, I save misery for special occasions.

Nanette: That's a beautiful, beautiful way to start. So we're really looking forward to talking with you today. I asked you to tell me what your profession was today. And you said you are a recovering psychologist and a professional troublemaker. So tell me exactly what that is and where and how you do that.

David: Well, you know, as a recovering psychologist, I mean that tongue in cheek because I don't think I could ever recover from being a psychologist in a sense. But on the other hand, I don't feel constricted or constrained by the fact that I'm a licensed psychologist and my doctorate's in clinical and organizational development psychology. But I really view myself as transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary. And the professional troublemaker part is, I could probably characterize that the simplest way by invoking a quote from a 20th century theologian by the name of Reinhold Niebuhr. And the quote is that we as helpers in the world, our calling is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. So the professional troublemaker part is I do afflict the comfortable.

Nanette: And you normally do this within businesses within organizations. Where do you practice your troublemaking?

David: Well, primarily, I work with leaders across industry segments, if you will. So leaders in government, leaders in business, leaders in integrative health and in mental health, people, people in leader and influencer roles and the cultures of the organizations that they are in leadership roles with.

Joe: I read where you, David, have consulted with like American Express and with an organization that has to do with space.

David: CEO space, I think is what you're referring to. So that's, that's an entrepreneur development organization. And that's true. Working with American Express goes back many decades ago, and I've provided consulting and training all the way up to the level of World Trade Organization ambassadors.

Joe: Fantastic. Well, we're very lucky to have you here today. And we also know that part of your expertise is the Enneagram.

Nanette: Yes, we recognize that you use this in your work as well, and you have something called Enneagram Strategy. So what does that mean? It will be interesting to us because if there's a lane we try to occupy, it is definitely the Enneagram.

David: Oh, I know, and I love the work that you do around the Enneagram. First of all, I was first exposed to the Enneagram in the late 1990s. And at that point, I was already trained in a number of different frameworks for understanding human temperament. And when I came into exploring the Enneagrams, again, starting in the late 1990s, I felt like I had finally found kind of the Macintosh of of temperament systems, the easiest, most user-friendly approach to understanding and working with temperament. So that's kind of the background. The strategy that I use when I'm assisting people with the Enneagram or building Enneagram work into what I'm doing with people is basically a five-step process. The first is where I help them ensure that they've accurately identified or pinpointed their major point of view, which of the nine Enneagram types is their strong suit, and where they generally are with that point of view on the continuum from deteriorated to ordinary to superpower. So how well-functioning are they in their primary Enneagram point? And what's interesting with that is that they oftentimes will find that they function or have in the past functioned as though they were a different Ennea type. in order to survive whatever they needed to survive, but it's not their actual, their native enneagram type. So we go from pinpointing to nuancing. And the nuancing is where they identify their subtype and which of the wings are stronger for them and the symptoms that they're moving toward their evolution point or their devolution point in the Enneagram system. And once that nuance is identified, then we focus on the third part of the strategy, which is healing, healing their version of the core wound or trauma structure or Achilles heel of their Enneagram type. And then the fourth step is appreciation, where they get more fully acquainted with the superpowers of all the other main Enneagram types and their subtype variations and their evolution and devolution points in order to more effectively interact with others. And then the fifth step, the final step in Enneagram strategy, from my point of view, is transcendence, where without abandoning their primary Enneagram point, they consciously move toward the middle of the Enneagram diagram, the middle of the circle, so they gain increasingly deep and useful access to expressing all nine superpowers.

Joe: I loved what you had to say about discovering the essential woundedness for their type. Can you give us an example of how you take somebody through that and what the differences are in the type's wounds? Sure.

David: So, the example I'll use is mine. I'm an Enneagram 1, although I will say for your listeners who are well-versed in the Enneagram that I refer to myself as an Enneagram 17, meaning that I'm an Enneagram 1 that's an Enneagram 7 wannabe because 1's evolved towards 7. So, I'm a 17. My Enneagram wound as an Enneagram 1 is about being hypercritical, right? So, healing the wound of criticism and what led me into the wounded expression of the Enneagram 1, the origins of how I became so critical, which in my case, I was definitely critical toward others, but I was most critical toward myself. I had a very overactive and toxic inner critic. And so I had a lot of healing to do around the experiences that I had in growing up that led to my needing to develop a very active inner critic in order to survive.

Joe: Hmm. That's very interesting because you're talking about after childhood wounding. Is that correct? Right.

David: Well, on a more obvious level, it's wounding during childhood and then the escalation of that or the expression of that after childhood. But we can become metaphysical about this and talk about wounds that we came in with if you want to go there, but you might not want to.

Joe: I understand. Well, it's just interesting that when the model we use of the Enneagram, the wounding is actually what occurs in childhood that makes us have to put on an ego.

David: Yes, I totally agree with that. And for me, as a child, in order to survive what I was surviving, without, of course, knowing anything about the Enneagram, I lived as though I was an Enneagram 4. So I went to my deterioration point from a 1 toward a 4. As a child? Yes. Okay. I lived most of my childhood as a deteriorated Enneagram 4.

Joe: And what do you think you came in the world as? As a one. Okay.

Joe: All right. Okay, this is interesting.

Nanette: Yeah. Our theme this year is based on Joe's new book, it's called Know Your Soul. So our work with the Enneagram really proposes the idea that we all come into the world as a soul, and that we put on the ego. So I'm an ego type nine. And so I under this teaching and theory of Joe's really, is that I am born as a three, and that I put on through wounding the ego type nine. Now, we know there's different theories about where we entered at into the world in different Enneagram theories, but ultimately, I think the work we're all trying to do is to find a healthy expression of our egos and really getting in touch with our souls. And so that's really the focus of our work this year. And I just wondered if I Is said to you in the work that you do, is there a place in particularly in the workplace for a sole expression?

David: Oh, I love your question. And the short answer that I'll expand upon in a moment is yes, there is most definitely. And the more so than there has ever been, at least in the course of my career, because of the evolution of the marketplace over the decades. So to flesh out an answer to your question, let me just quickly encapsulate the evolution of the marketplace, which Back in the second half of the 20th century, the marketplace focus was on getting people to buy products and services. And that evolved into what was labeled the experiential marketplace in the early 2000s, where people were wanting much more than just buying a product or service. They were wanting to buy a great experience through the product or service they were purchasing. That was the whole thinking, for example, behind the evolution of Apple, where Apple computers were an aesthetically pleasing experience compared to Microsoft-based computers at that time. So the experiential marketplace is what took hold in the early 2000s. And then that continued to evolve into what started to be called in the literature on marketing in Give or take 2018, the transformation marketplace, where people were wanting to buy transformative experiences through the products and services they were buying, partly as a result of the COVID lockdown. I think we accelerated the pace at which the marketplace is moving into its next evolutionary stage beyond the transformation marketplace, which I refer to. It hasn't gotten a standardized name yet because it's just emerging now, but I call it the transcendent marketplace where people are buying products and services that they have great experiences with that help them transform, but where the transformation is really about spiritual development, not just simply self actualization, but the stage beyond Maslow's stage in his hierarchy of needs, which most people think the highest stage in his hierarchy is self-actualization. But what's true is that toward the end of his life, he said, no, no, no, no, I was wrong. That is a high state of evolution in the development of our our focuses, but there's a stage beyond self-actualization, and he called it self-transcendence, where we are greater than who we think our ego is. And we're moving into that part of the marketplace. So what that has to do with answering your question is that leaders who are in businesses or organizations or whatever setting they're doing leadership in that are more spiritually oriented, they're really about making integrity profitable in a spiritually elevated way. needing to expand their leadership capacities beyond what they were trained in in leadership, which is being basically trained for the product and services marketplace, or at best, the experiential marketplace, but really not for the the transformation marketplace, let alone the transcendent marketplace.

Nanette: That reminds me of the spiral dynamics. It reminds me of Ken Wilber. It reminds me of this idea that, well, of course, if we as a species spiritually grow and develop, of course, it's going to be reflected in industry. Can you give us an example of transcendent industry?

David: Yeah, I could if I could remember the name of the company off the top of my head. I, I think it's Columbia Sportswear. It's one of the the major sportswear companies that where they, the CEO and made a decision that said, We, yes, of course, we sell clothing apparel and accessories, but that's not really what we're selling. That's what we're selling, what we're selling through. But what we're really selling is healthier people, more enlivened, joyful people. And we're selling it through not taking advantage of our employees, but through elevating our employees. So we're, we're doing profit sharing, we're turning the company over to our employees. And our focus is on a really transcendent experience with customer care, where we're not viewing customers as customers, we're viewing as family, them as family, and we're viewing what we do as a particular way of helping to elevate the world. Beautiful.

Nanette: It is beautiful. It makes me think of this word integrity, which I think you use a lot and is a very important value. How does integrity connect to this type of work, this type of industry?

David: Sure. Well, the way integrity connects with leaders across industries and cultures across industries is that for those of us who believe in the value of integrity, which unfortunately is not everyone, but for those of us who do believe in that value, For most of the people that I come in contact with, integrity is a cherished value and a good intention that hasn't been made practical. And so what I do with my integrity work, my book, the book of mine, among the books that I've written that was on integrity, received six awards in vastly different categories. And what the book revolved around was what I refer to as three dimensional integrity, because there, there are three forms of integrity, all three of which are equally important self integrity, relationship integrity and societal or collective integrity. And a whole and complete person is their own authentic self, self-integrity. A whole and complete person does what they say they're going to do. They're in relationship integrity. They have connection integrity. and a whole and complete person has impact integrity. They have integrity with having positive impact in whatever their chosen spheres of influence happen to be with their unique calling in helping to elevate the world. So that's part of what making integrity profitable is about, is helping leaders step into three-dimensional integrity, and from there, helping them elevate their cultures into three-dimensional integrity cultures.

Scott: How would you say, staying in touch with our soul, the deeper part of ourselves, you know, being a whole and complete person, how does that help us, specifically help us remain in integrity? Is it even possible to be in integrity in an authentic way without being a whole and complete person who's in touch with their soul?

David: Yeah, I don't think it is possible because the ground rule, one of the ground rules of our childhood survival plans that we adopt is that survival trumps integrity. And so, in order to survive the undesired and even unacceptable experiences we have in growing up, we construct what for me is a five ingredient survival plan that makes survival possible, and it does involve sacrificing authenticity. It involves sacrificing our authenticity, sacrificing healthy connection with others, and sacrificing really spiritually soul-elevated impact in the world.

Joe: So when you go into a, a corporation to consult, what do you do? What, what is your, your, a way of approach, David?

Joe: Right. Well, thanks for asking that. I.

David: always begin with variation on Stephen Covey's principle of begin with the end in mind, begin with the best possible end in mind. So, where I start with is, what is their true aspirational, true north? What is the difference that they most want to make in the world by providing whatever it is that they provide? And then we look at developmentally where the company is in its development, because there are different developmental stages in the actualization of a company. So we identify where they are developmentally, and then we identify what needs to be most focused on in that developmental stage, including Who does the leader need to become or who does the executive team need to become in order for the business to flourish in the stage that it's in? And how does the culture need to be upgraded in order to flourish in the stage that it's in?

Joe: As your diagnostic methods and corrective methods for your consulting, do you use the Enneagram on the corporate level, or is it just individuals? Right.

David: Well, when they're open to the Enneagram, what I do is I have everyone on the executive team take one of the Enneagram tests that are available in order to identify their own primary Enneatype. And then I have them get together to share what they've discovered about their own Enneatype and the point of getting together to share that is because they need to understand, in my bias, as an executive team, what each other's strengths and superpowers are, instead of this kind of Any eccentric point of view where my Enneagram type is the cat's meow and every other Ennea type is inferior and everyone has to conform to my way of viewing the world, where they really start to appreciate how everyone's point of view is necessary in order to make really high level decisions.

Nanette: It can be so impactful to give people a language to express their perspective, and then also to appreciate that someone else may have a different perspective from a different any type. So I can imagine we've heard about it. We don't specifically practice it in the Institute, but we definitely have professionals who also are students and who bring it back to their workplaces as well. We know that that is happening and we're grateful for that wisdom. You know, we recognize that we're a very doing-based culture. You know, we like productivity, and you've mentioned this word, profit, which seems like it would be an impediment to integrity, that we have this idea of productivity, getting things done. And is there a place for being in the workplace and being present? and not being just driven by the bottom line?

David: It's a wonderful question that you're again asking. And short answer, not just yes, but emphatically, absolutely, yes, there must be that. And what that relates to in the workplace setting is essentially the hijacking of the HR department. which HR stands for human relations, but in the circles that I travel in, it's really called the Department of Human Remains because the original envisioning of HR was really all about beingness energy. And what happened in the evolution of HR was that HR was forced more and more into a compliance role where they were responsible for making sure that people were accountable and legally compliant and fiscally, financially compliant and compliant with their job specifications and all of those things, which I don't mean to demean at all because those things are important, but those are not beingness traits. And what happened when HR got hijacked into that kind of compliance role is that its original vision around human development, developing the beingness, the essence of who we are, which is in the world of archetypes, it's the lover archetype, a lover in the most universal sense, agape kind of love. The lover archetype is the missing archetype in most businesses because HR got hijacked. And so part of what I do is I help bifurcate HR into a separate responsibility that does have to do with compliance so that the original purpose of HR, which is really lover archetype, it's being this energy can finally be restored into the architecture and design and functioning of a company.

Nanette: I have to imagine that that is a revolutionary idea to most companies to think we need a lover archetype in our HR. I'm just thinking about my family has a business and I run a nonprofit to which I am the director and I am also HR. And I'm just thinking about how that as a as an approach for people that work for me and that work for my family's business, how that might change culture to start there. What are some successes that you've had in this experience with this approach?

David: The success always starts with the leaders because how the leaders are showing up, whether they want it to or not, their embodiment has a trickle down impact. Whatever they embody, they are always role modeling what's okay and not okay with the people in their business. So what I do with leaders is I help them develop conscious, up-leveled relationships with all five of their core archetypal energies. So those five energies are two pairs of counterbalancing energies and then a central organizing energy. And one set of counterbalancing energies that I help leaders elevate in themselves is the counterbalance between beingness and doingness, the lover archetype and the warrior archetype. because when lover is over-energized and warrior is under-energized, what we get is self-indulgence and hedonism and addiction and things like that. When warrior is over-energized and lover is under-energized, we get steamrollers, people who, get or done, no matter how much collateral damage is created to themselves and in the people around them, and also to the company's brand as well. So we have counterbalancing energies of beingness and doingness. We have counterbalancing energies of transformation and stability, change and stability. And then we have the orchestrator choice maker energy, which is the fifth archetypal energy. It's the sovereign archetype. Beingness and doingness, again, are Wolverine and warrior. Transformation and stability are magician and steward. And the central energy is the sovereign energy, the queen, the king archetype, which is about choice-making, about how to utilize the energies of beingness, doingness, stability, and change in service to the company's mission, in service to higher purpose, higher source. And when leaders really step on board with aligning and elevating their five core archetypal energies, they get it organically, how if they leave the lover out, they are less than whole and complete. If they encourage inadvertently the people around them to leave the lover out, then they are encouraging dysfunction, disengagement, chronic stress, and unproductivity, and lack of collaboration in their business. So they naturally start opening up to reorganizing their business around these five core archetypes, where they reorganize literally their departments around these five core archetypes.

Joe: So when you have a CEO, who is an Enneagram eight, okay, okay. And you're telling him or her to get in touch with their lover archetype, because they're too much of a steamroller. What is their response to you, Dr. David?

David: Well, the response to me is really dependent on where they are at the level of elevated or dysfunctional expression of the 8. But what I take into account in dealing with Enneagram 8 leaders, and of course, as you know, there are a lot of Enneagram 8 leaders, is the 8's wound, the 8's Achilles heel, which is vulnerability. Yes. Right. So what I work with Enneagram eight leaders around is helping them start to see the unintended negative impacts of their invulnerability. And I help them step into owning that in their vulnerability, their power lies. Once they have sufficiently healed their Enneagram 8 vulnerability wound, they are able to, on their own, start embracing how important beingness and lover energy is and how much they've deprived themselves and the people around them of that energy in themselves.

Joe: Do you teach this to them or do you have exercises that you help for example, apes go through to discover their wounding and how to heal it?

David: Well, yes and yes. If I'm working individually with someone, then it just evolves organically. And I'll oftentimes give them homework or exercises to do. If it's a training program, then training programs are exercise driven. So, yeah. Thank you. There are exercises.

Nanette: Can you tell us just about what your offerings are, how it is someone connects with you, what books you have out there, your website? Tell us about what you can do to help your target audience, Dr. David.

David: Sure, happy to. In the realm of leader development in business and in governance and in nonprofits, as well, I have two main offerings. One is a program that's basically, you know, in today's marketplace, there are a lot of businesses that aren't at a point where it's financially prudent for them to hire a full-time leader developer, culture creation expert to have in-house. And so I function as a fractional chief people officer or the equivalent of that. The fractional movement has really exploded in recent years where people with deep dive expertise as, for example, a chief financial officer become capable of being hired in a part-time way by companies that need the wisdom of an experienced chief financial officer but aren't yet at a point in their revenue where it would be prudent for them to have a full-time CFO in-house. So that's the whole fractional business, fractional CFO. I'm basically a fractional chief people officer. So that's one of the two. resources that I offer. The other is something that's called the Transcendent Male Leadership Resource, which is specifically for male leaders that integrates the process of helping them step into mature, spiritually evolved masculinity and elevating from there their leadership skills into transcendent leadership skills as a man so that men are really helping to elevate humanity in more effective ways. So those are my main two resources. My most recent books on transforming business are called The Nimble C-Suite and The Nimble Company, and they're companion volumes. They interact with each other. for elevating the executives into what I call nimbility, which is the intersection of innovation and resilience, and then helping their cultures elevate into nimbility as well.

Joe: That's just spectacular. This is a real gift to people that you have, and we're very glad that we got to partake in it today.

David: Well, thank you, Joe. I mean, you and I have been looking forward to having these conversations with each other for a long time. And I'm really glad and grateful that we've finally found a way to have that start happening.

Joe: Yes. And we want to get you to Alabama to some of our events here in the future. So we're going to keep that in mind. I will look forward to that as well. There's a great big welcome map for you.

Scott: Thank you.

Nanette: So Pete, our listening audience who would like to find you can find you at drdavidbruder.com. Is that correct?

David: DrGruder.com, D-R-G-R-U-D, as in David, E-R, .com, DrGruder.com.

Nanette: DrGruder.com, thank you so much. We know that many of our listening audience are gonna wanna check this out. And so we appreciate you sharing so much wisdom and insight and ingenuity with us today. Thank you so much.

David: Yes. Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure.

Scott: Thank you for listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. The music for today's podcast was composed and performed by ICB faculty member Drexel Rayford.

Nanette: Thanks for listening today. We hope you liked what you heard. If you did, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this with your friends and family.