Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/would-you-like-to-get-along-with-difficult-people-pick-a-number/5016658/
At the Happy Flower Nursery School, Rose complains that her co-teacher Lilly never puts anything away in the storage cabinets or folds the blankets neatly after nap. Lilly’s gripe is that Rose is so preoccupied with things being done a certain way that she can’t be spontaneous by changing plans and following the interests of the children. In another classroom, lead teacher Daisy feels that the children should be doing more creative and unusual art projects like “toile plunger painting” which fuels co-teacher Violet’s concern that such projects might be tacit permission to play with unsanitary plungers at home.Working closely with others often gives rise to these and other types of conflicts as each of us is driven by different and usually conflicting preoccupations and concerns. Often directors are caught in the middle of such disagreements, which, if not nipped in the bud, can escalate into all out blight!
What’s a director to do? One option is to explore the tenets of a 3,000 year old 9-sided star-shaped paradigm known as the Enneagram (see figure). This personality inventory purports that early in life all children need to feel safe and to cope with family situations. As a consequence, they develop ...