The Enneagram, commitment and talent

In today's professional world, employee engagement and talent management are at the heart of corporate concerns. The trend is clear: it is essential to offer a unique and personalised development path for each individual. But how can managers design such strategies? The Enneagram and the help of an expert coach provide promising answers.

The importance of employee engagement

For several years now, organisations have been devoting considerable effort to stimulating the commitment of their teams, and this approach remains a top priority. Employee engagement reflects the quality of the relationship between the individual and the company, manifested in the enthusiasm, devotion and dedication that employees feel towards their work. It is an internal state of mind that encompasses discretionary effort, commitment and job satisfaction.

The Enneagram for commitment

Recently, more and more companies are turning to the Enneagram, exploring its application to organisational challenges such as engagement and motivation. This framework is proving powerful in helping our corporate clients not only to understand the diversity of the individuals who make up their teams, but also to engage in conversations about their experience within the organisation. These conversations pave the way for strategic choices in terms of employee engagement and performance.

The benefits of deep commitment

The first step is to accurately identify each individual's profile, unique drivers and motivations, so that organisations can target the motivational needs of their workforce.

Engagement is strongly correlated with a wide range of important performance measures, across organisations, industries and regions. When employees are engaged, organisations benefit from increased customer satisfaction, the ability to retain talent, increased individual effort, improved productivity and improved financial results. Engaged employees feel personally invested in the success of their company. They care about their work and the company's performance, but they also want to feel that their efforts are helping to change the world.

These employees bring their creativity and energy to work, going beyond what is strictly necessary. They come up with ideas, support their colleagues and persevere in the face of difficulties. In return for their contribution to the achievement of common goals, organisations offer a supportive environment, support and rewards. However, as workplaces become more diverse, it appears that traditional incentives are not enough to engage all individuals.

Commitment must be highly personalised

The view of engagement has evolved from a centralised corporate solution to a recognition that one-size-fits-all approaches are less effective. Research from global organisations such as Gallup and CCL shows that only 25-30% of employees in the average organisation feel truly engaged, making the most of their contributions. This means that the remaining 70% are disengaged or "actively disengaged", representing a colossal cost to annual productivity.

Understanding Individuality in Commitment

Organisations are increasingly recognising that employee engagement and retention means understanding the expectations of an autonomous workforce in terms of flexibility, creativity and meaning. In the new social contract between employer and employee, workers become 'volunteers', to be re-engaged and recruited every day.

Towards Personalised Talent Management

This individualisation of commitment means that it starts with each person and is subjective. Employees don't leave their personalities at the door when they come to work. Knowing that they are respected as individuals at work can have a significant impact on their perception of their lives in general.

Increasing specialisation and diversity within organisations means that engagement priorities and needs can vary significantly from one part of the business to another. Exit interviews and research suggest that people don't leave organisations, managers do. The real drivers of engagement are individualised and local, resulting from the employee's personal experience within the organisation, through their own filters and the interactions they have with individuals, teams and managers in their immediate environment.

This puts the responsibility for engagement back on the shoulders of the manager and the team, building on an understanding of individual perspectives and finding ways to use diverse strengths in the service of a common goal. Talent management and development also focuses on individual and personalised pathways, rather than strategies designed for limiting segments such as 'middle managers', 'female employees', 'high potentials' or 'older employees'.

With five generations in the workplace and the need to attract and include more diverse perspectives, the ability to listen to, understand and motivate different people becomes a crucial skill. But how do these organisations really understand the people they are looking to engage? How can talent professionals know how to do this?

The Enneagram for decoding commitment needs

To support this vision of individualised engagement, organisations need a tool that enables them to assess, analyse and respond to the engagement needs of their people. For our clients, the Enneagram and the iEQ9 questionnaire have enabled leaders and practitioners to understand what intrinsically motivates different people, what engages them and what risks disengaging them. Drawing on decades of research, we can identify nine different motivational systems, with additional layers of complexity, such as the types of goals they prefer, their team engagement needs and their preferred focus for recognition.

Personalized Engagement Strategies with the Enneagram

The Enneagram and the accuracy of our test, offer engagement strategies for all 9 Types, enabling leaders to deeply understand the individuals they work with and provide coaching in a way that the individual can hear, internalise and sustain on their own. This approach can be challenging for leaders, as we often tend to assume that what motivates and engages us personally will do the same for others, which is not always the case.

Clients who introduce the Enneagram and the tools of a certified coach into their organisations find that this common language and education about the different drivers of engagement can empower leaders to understand and engage their teams.

The Enneagram offers an opportunity to illuminate the true drivers of engagement in the diverse group of individuals that make up an organisation, enabling leaders and practitioners to adopt a strategic and data-driven approach to engagement.