For 4 months in 2023, I had the absolute pleasure of getting to know the sales team at DECKED, an outdoor and sporting goods company. As a fully remote, work-from-the-road team, the majority of our training was done virtually. At the end, we did get a chance to meet in person for our 1/2 day Enneagram workshop in the city of Defiance, Ohio where their main factory is located. 

The program was designed for a newly appointed senior sales manager who believed it would be beneficial for him in his development to understand the different personalities that are on his team. His intention was to better understand what both drove and triggered each person on his team to help him improve his day-to-day interactions with them.

In sales, as you know, there are quotas to hit and customers to take care of which doesn’t always leave a lot of time for personal development/team-building activities.

But this leadership and team impressed me from day one with how open and engaged they all were throughout the entire program - even though some were a bit skeptical in the beginning :)

During our time together we:

💡Learned about all 9 Enneagram types and identified our dominant one

💡Studied our type’s stress behaviors and triggers to better navigate those situations and to better understand our teammates and support them during stress or frustration

💡Looked at the various communication styles and feedback preferences so that we could better understand our own and those of our teammates

💡Identified what growth looked like for each type

💡Specifically used our type knowledge to better understand our individual sales style, strengths, opportunities for growth, and potential impact on customers

💡Applied the Enneagram to better understand customers and listen for clues about what’s really important to them and how they might convey that to us

Thank you DECKED team for making this experience both meaningful and fun ✨