I'm a business and leadership coach who uses the Enneagram. I've had corporate clients cry during workshops.

• Jay Hidalgo is a business and leadership coach who uses the Enneagram in his corporate practice.
• The Enneagram is a personality model that characterizes people into one of nine archetypes. 
• Hidalgo said the Enneagram is a great tool for building team cohesion and addressing work conflict. 

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jay Hidalgo, a business and leadership coach who leads Enneagram trainings and workshops with corporate clients. The Enneagram is a personality model that categorizes people into one of nine interconnected archetypes that are represented by numbers that attempt to explain people's characters through their core motivations, desires, and fears.

About ten years ago, I launched my firm with the desire to help executives become better leaders, build better teams, and build better companies.

Just around the time I started my current firm, I was sitting in a coffee shop with a colleague and she told me about this thing called the Enneagram. I thought it sounded silly. There's no science behind it. It's all based on tradition.

I said: "Okay, that's nice. Maybe I'll look into it someday."

About a year later, one of the organizations I was working with asked me if I knew about the Enneagram. For whatever reason, the way they explained it landed with me and I started exploring it.

I read about it and went and got myself typed. I'm an Enneagram six with a five wing.

I went through some certification and formal training on it. I came upon an Enneagram coach named Beth McCord and started reading her material. She offered a certification process that really landed with me. I got licensed through her material.

The more I got interested in it, the more it started helping me understand myself better and helping me interact with the people around me, primarily my family.

I mentioned it to one of my largest clients one day, a gentleman who has about 30 people directly underneath him. I asked him if he had ever heard of the Enneagram. We started talking about it and he said: "Do you think you could teach this to our team?"

I very confidently said: "Sure. I think we could do a one-year program."

I had to scurry behind the scenes and take what I was learning and convert it into a coaching methodology. But it was very, very successful, such that they decided to do it a second year.

I eventually fostered it into becoming an offering in my firm. I've rolled it out to several clients since. It's been about six or seven years that we've been using it.

The Enneagram makes up about 25% of my firm's work

We offer two workshops: half day is $4,500 and full day is $7,500. The content is customizable based on the needs of the team.

Whether it's through a conversation, workshop, or coaching engagement, we've done it with financial service companies; we've done it with manufacturing groups and technology companies. I have one client who is a food manufacturer in New Jersey.

It doesn't matter what they do or how they operate or what industry they're in. The Enneagram comes up when two primary needs emerge in conversation.

One is when someone is really seeking to understand themselves as a leader. That will foster a conversation about their hard wiring and why they do what they do and think the way they think.

The other thread of conversation is around team cohesion. The Enneagram is a fantastic tool for me, not only to understand myself, but also to understand my teammates. I can approach them in a different way when I understand their core underpinning.

We give our clients an overview of the Enneagram to start

Before the session starts, we give them an opportunity to take an assessment and have that be the starting point of what they think their type might be. We walk through some high-level understanding of what the tool is, how it works, and how you can use it.

I don't think it serves my clients to come in with a lot of theory and conceptual content. So, after that, we practice. In the context of a workshop, the practice may be breaking off into little groups. We create a scenario and have them come up with a practical way they can apply this in the office the next day.

For example, the Enneagram focuses on core motivations. So, after discussing core motivations, I say to a team: "As you're about to engage in a problem-solving or conflict-oriented conversation, I want you to consider the person you are talking to. If you know their Enneagram type, think about the core motivation of that type and have that frame how you're going to approach that conversation."

When I come back the next month for our coaching meeting, I ask them for a story of how that changed the trajectory of the conversation.

The thing I love most is when I have a story told through tears. It's amazing how often that has happened. People will come back and say: "I was so afraid to talk to so-and-so about this topic. Then I realized where they were coming from wasn't anger and animosity toward me. They were coming from a place of fear. I was able to ask them what are you afraid of? And it broke the ice."

People tell these conversations in tears. I didn't realize I could connect with people at that level.

I see some patterns in my Enneagram work

Types threes, sevens, and eights tend to be your leaders. They lead in different styles and for different types of reasons, but they tend to be your leaders.

The other trend I see is that out of the nine types, the most infrequent type you'll see in a leadership position will be a four. Type fours tend to be very internal in terms of their thinking and processing. They're very comfortable being on the fringes and on the outside looking in.

I see that types one, five, and six tend to be very driven toward process. They stick to the script.

Every once in a while you have a skeptical executive

But I don't really try to combat anybody who doesn't want to bring the Enneagram in. When I start describing the Enneagram, it just somehow lands because it's not typical corporate speak. It's different. And people seem to want different.

I'm finding more and more that there is a very low tolerance for anything that's not authentic. The Enneagram requires each of us to look inside to deal with things like core motivations, childhood messages, things we want to hear, and core longings.

The biggest reward I get is when these conversations move from their workplace into their personal lives. I'm amazed at how many people come back and say: "I didn't use this at the office, but I did use it at home."

I started to see that there is a significant change and transition in how they're interacting with family and those closest to them. If they can change their lives and change things at home, that's going to make them a better employee and a better staff member and a better team member.

Seminars are great, books are great, conferences are great. But there's something about learning about myself together in a community that brings people together. And the Enneagram is a great, great tool to do that.