My client, Leonard, owns a medium sized-distribution company. I’ve been coaching him for about six months. He’s had a bad temper as long as he can remember, which he blames on others. “Some people just tick me off,” he told me recently, “especially when they don’t deliver.” He’s not been aware, until recently, that he [...]

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making plans. John Lennon, “Beautiful Boy” It is increasingly apparent to psychotherapists that the normal state of consciousness in our culture is both the context and the breeding ground of mental disease. A complex of societies of vast material wealth bent on mutual destruction is anything [...]

Imagine if you never changed your communication or decision-making style, that it was always the same, regardless of circumstances. You’d be similar to Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, who was always predictable, and in his case, always logical, unemotional, and factual. He frustrated his opposite: the passionate, emotional, and intuitive Captain Kirk. Kirk was just as [...]

This is a story about cultural differences, the challenges they create for achieving team results, and how the Enneagram can help. I was recently asked to help Brad, a company president, an American, and a type Three, to take over a smaller British company that had been acquired by his company. The British company, let’s [...]