Mark: Alright, Michelle. You're at a work party. What's the one personality type that makes you want to hide behind the potted plant? Michelle: Easy. The 'Actually' guy. The one who corrects your story about your own weekend. I'd rather talk to the plant. Mark: I think we all know that person. And that impulse to retreat is the perfect entry point for today's book, Bringing Out the Best in Yourself at Work by Ginger Lapid-Bogda. It’s all about understanding these workplace dynamics that make us want to run. Michelle: Another business book with personality tests? I'm already feeling skeptical. Mark: I hear you, but this one has some serious weight behind it. The author, Ginger Lapid-Bogda, isn't just a writer; she's a PhD and a top-tier organizational consultant with decades of experience. She's brought the Enneagram system into places like Disney, Hewlett Packard, and even the CIA. Michelle: Okay, the CIA? Now I'm intrigued. That’s a pretty serious endorsement. But I have to ask, how is this different from all the other personality tests that put you in a neat little box? Mark: That is the million-dollar question, and the book's answer is what makes it so powerful. The Enneagram is less about boxing you in and more about giving you a map of the box you've already put yourself in. It focuses on your core motivations—the hidden 'why' behind what you do—not just your surface-level behaviors. Michelle: A map of my own self-imposed prison. How delightful. Mark: Exactly! And the first part of that map reveals something the book calls communication distortions. We all think we're being clear, but our personality type is constantly warping the signal, both when we send it and when we receive it.

Michelle: Okay, 'communication distortions.' That sounds like a technical term for 'things getting lost in translation.' Give me an example. How does this actually play out? Mark: The book has a perfect one. It tells the story of an attorney named Thomas, who is a classic Enneagram Three, the Achiever. His core motivation is to be valuable and worthwhile, which in a corporate setting often translates to being seen as efficient and successful. Michelle: I know this person. Their LinkedIn profile is probably more up-to-date than their driver's license. Mark: Precisely. So, Thomas's speaking style is incredibly direct and to the point. He sees it as being truthful and respectful of people's time. If a colleague comes to him, he gives a quick, concise answer and moves on. In his mind, he’s being a high-performing, helpful team player. Michelle: But I'm guessing his colleagues don't see it that way. Mark: Not at all. They perceive him as rude, abrupt, and dismissive. They feel like he can't wait to end the conversation, that he doesn't care about them as people. So here you have Thomas, with the genuine intention of being efficient and helpful, but his communication 'blueprint' as a Three completely distorts the message. The impact is the polar opposite of his intent. Michelle: Wow. And he's completely unaware of this gap. He probably thinks he's nailing it. That’s a sender distortion. What about on the receiving end? How do we mess things up when we're the ones listening? Mark: That's where it gets even more fascinating. The book gives this incredible story about a non-profit board. The newly appointed president is a man named Oscar, an Enneagram One. Ones are often called The Reformer or The Perfectionist. Their core motivation is to be good, to have integrity, and to be correct. Michelle: Ah, the 'Actually' guy from the party might be a One. Mark: He very well could be. So Oscar feels overwhelmed. The organization is a mess, and he's desperate to get things in order and prove he's a competent leader. A new board member, Faith, who is an Enneagram Four—The Individualist—starts asking a lot of questions in her first meeting. Fours are driven by a need to be unique and authentic, and they often explore things with deep, probing questions to understand the emotional and meaningful layers. She's asking things like, "Why do we do it this way?" and "What's the real purpose behind this policy?" Michelle: That sounds like a good board member. She’s engaged and trying to understand. Mark: To a neutral observer, yes. But Oscar isn't a neutral observer. He's a One under pressure. His internal filter is set to 'scan for errors and criticism.' He doesn't hear Faith's questions as genuine curiosity. He hears them as a relentless attack on his competence, a judgment of his leadership. He perceives her as trying to undermine him. Michelle: Oh, that's brutal. So he's not a bad guy, he's just filtering everything through his own 'I must be perfect and not make mistakes' lens. Mark: Exactly. And the outcome is a disaster. Faith feels misunderstood and rejected, thinking Oscar is a controlling tyrant. She considers quitting. Oscar feels unsupported and attacked, convinced Faith is a troublemaker. The potential for a great collaboration is completely destroyed, not by what was said, but by the distorting filters of their own personality types. Michelle: It's fascinating how these miscommunications are the kindling for bigger fires. The gap between what we mean and what people hear can be huge. Which makes me wonder about full-blown conflict. When things go from awkward to openly hostile.

Mark: And that's the next crucial layer the book unpacks. It argues that just as we have communication patterns, we have predictable conflict triggers. Each Enneagram type gets angry about very specific things. For a One like Oscar, it’s incompetence or irresponsibility. For a Three like Thomas, it’s anything that makes him look like a failure. Michelle: So if you know someone's type, you can basically predict what will set them off? That feels like a superpower. Mark: It is. And it's also the key to de-escalation. The book shares this incredible story from a large law firm. There are two senior attorneys, Leon and Stan, whose hostile relationship is poisoning the whole firm. Michelle: Lawyer drama. I'm in. Mark: Leon is a Type Three, the Achiever, just like Thomas. He's the firm's rainmaker, bringing in a third of all the revenue. He's confident, fast-paced, and image-conscious. Stan is a Type Six, the Loyalist. Sixes are motivated by a need for security and support. They are great troubleshooters because they are masters at scanning for potential problems and worst-case scenarios. Michelle: So you have Mr. 'We Can Do It!' and Mr. 'But What If We Can't?'. I can see the friction already. Mark: It was more than friction; it was open warfare. They avoided each other, which was a huge problem because Stan, the legal specialist, was involved in almost every case Leon brought in. The firm's managing director finally insisted they work with a consultant. Michelle: Okay, so they get locked in a room for some corporate-mandated trust falls? Mark: Here’s the brilliant part. The consultant never puts them in a room together. He works with them separately for four months, introducing them to the Enneagram. He helps Leon, the Three, understand his own type. Leon has a breakthrough. He realizes his intense annoyance with Stan's pessimism isn't really about Stan. It's a projection of his own terrifying, deeply buried fear of failure. Stan's cautious questions poke at the one thing a Three cannot stand to feel. Michelle: Whoa. So he's not mad at Stan, he's mad at the feeling Stan brings up in him. Mark: Precisely. And what about Stan, the Six? Through his sessions, he realizes that Leon's boundless confidence—the very thing that annoyed him—was also something he secretly envied and admired. Leon's go-getter style represented a kind of certainty that Stan, in his world of doubt and what-ifs, craved. His criticism of Leon was a defense against his own feelings of inadequacy. Michelle: Wait, so they never even had to meet together to resolve it? The whole battle was internal? Mark: That's the punchline. After four months of individual work, the consultant asked if they were ready for a joint session. They both said it wasn't necessary. They had each, on their own, understood the root of the conflict. It was never about the other person's behavior; it was about what that behavior triggered in themselves. They started working together comfortably, the hostility just… evaporated. Michelle: That is a wild story. It completely reframes the idea of conflict resolution. It’s not about finding a compromise between two people. It's about each person understanding their own internal engine. Leon's issue with Stan's pessimism was really about his own fear of failure, just like Oscar's issue with Faith's questions was about his fear of being seen as flawed. Mark: You've got it. The book makes the profound point that almost all interpersonal conflict is a case of mistaken identity. We think we're fighting with the person in front of us, but we're usually fighting with our own shadow, our own fears, our own unmet needs that they just happen to be triggering.

Michelle: This is so much deeper than 'don't send emails in all caps.' It's like psychological forensics for the office. Mark: It really is. And it circles back to your first question about putting people in boxes. The power of the Enneagram, as Lapid-Bogda presents it, isn't in labeling others. It's in giving you the user manual for the one person you can actually control: yourself. There's a key quote in the introduction that says, "Social competence—that is, social awareness and skills—depends on an individual’s personal competence." Michelle: In other words, you can't be good with other people until you're good with yourself. Mark: Exactly. The book argues that the most effective way to change how others react to you is to first understand the hidden operating system running inside you. Once you see your own patterns, your own distortions, your own triggers, you gain the freedom to choose a different response. You're no longer a puppet of your personality. Michelle: Okay, that's a powerful idea. So for anyone listening who just had a lightbulb moment about their boss or that one coworker, what's the first, tiny step they can take? Where do they even start with this? Mark: The book is full of developmental activities, but the simplest starting point is just pure observation without judgment. For one day, just notice your immediate internal reaction when you feel misunderstood or when a conflict starts to bubble up. Don't try to fix it, don't analyze it, don't blame anyone. Just notice the feeling. Is it anger? Is it fear? Is it shame? That moment of pure awareness is the first step out of the pattern. Michelle: Just notice. That's it. That feels manageable. I think this is one of those ideas that, once you see it, you can't unsee it in your daily life. Mark: It completely changes the game. Michelle: We'd love to hear about your 'Aha!' moments from this. Come find us on social media and share the Enneagram type you think you might be, or the one you're most curious about after hearing these stories. Let's get this conversation started. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.