The goal of this work with the Enneagram is not to get rid of who you are or your patterns, but to be more flexible and aware, allowing more compassion and self-acceptance. – Isabelle Peyrichoux
Interview with Isabelle Peyrichoux
In this episode of Enneagram Insights, Flemming Christensen welcomes Isabelle Peyrichoux to discuss leadership, personal growth, and how the Enneagram can be used as a tool for self-discovery and team development.
Isabelle Peyrichoux is a Leadership Coach and the Founder of Brilliant Seeds.
Isabelle shares her journey from a successful corporate career in user experience to becoming a leadership coach focused on helping professionals discover their unique purpose.
Together, they explore the concept of an “authentic blueprint” that everyone carries and how understanding this blueprint can unlock personal and professional fulfillment.
They dive into how the Enneagram can reveal core strengths and limitations, how emotional intelligence plays a key role in effective leadership, and how leaders can bring their full potential to their teams by becoming aware of their type’s patterns.
Isabelle also shares personal insights on how her experience with type four has shaped her coaching and how Flemming’s experience with type three has influenced his leadership journey.
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
iHeartRadioKey Discussion Points
1. Isabelle Peyrichoux’s Career Transition
✔️From corporate tech (Yahoo) to leadership coaching.
✔️ The role of self-discovery in aligning with one’s purpose.
✔️ How being laid off became a turning point in her life and career.
2. Using the Enneagram for Personal Growth
✔️ How the Enneagram reveals strengths and limitations of each type.
✔️ The importance of recognizing one’s innate talents and overcoming patterns.
✔️ Isabelle’s personal experience as a type four and Flemming’s reflections as a type three.
3. Emotional Intelligence and Authentic Leadership
✔️ Why emotional intelligence is critical for leaders to connect and lead effectively.
✔️ Understanding how each Enneagram type’s tendencies can impact leadership styles.
✔️ The importance of leaders staying authentic and true to their unique blueprint.
Three Key Takeaways:
1. Self-discovery is crucial for meaningful career transitions and personal growth, especially when one’s work is misaligned with their inner strengths and purpose.
2. The Enneagram offers a powerful framework to understand core strengths and emotional patterns that may hold people back, leading to personal and professional transformation.
3. Emotional intelligence and self-awareness are critical for authentic leadership, as leaders who understand their emotional drivers can more effectively manage teams and create lasting impact.
Quotable Moments in the podcast
Skeptical of the Enneagram
Isabelle Peyrichoux:
“And when I heard about the Enneagram initially, I was like, you know what? I know already. I have many tools. I don’t need another tool.
I was thinking it’s just another personal typing systems. I wasn’t realizing the depths of it. But the at some point i became curious because I heard something about the type four and I realized I was a type four.
And finally, and first for my own personal growth, because I realized, despite all the work I’ve done with myself, I still had a long way to go. The Enneagram was showing me all these places where I could continue growing and the place where I was stuck.
For example, you know, being as a being very comfortable with my emotions, but sometimes so comfortable with my emotions that leaving a lot in my, you know, in my emotion and getting lost in my emotional worlds and can staying lost for days and impacting my relationships.
And I thought, you know what, this is the way I am. But then the Enneagram showed me, oh, actually, maybe this is a pattern that is not serving me. And there might be a way to transform it for my own liberation. And this is when I did the Enneagram work first on myself and a lot of shadow work combined with it.
And then I think this really helped me expand to the next level of my purpose in the world, my own liberation from being stuck in that type four, you know, that was working well for me, but I was stuck in the type four model and view of the world and view of myself. And by doing the work on the Enneagram and shadow work, I can also expand and be more flexible.
This is the beauty of the Enneagram. It’s going to show you, even if you have done a lot of work, it’s going to show you so precisely the place. And even the places that when you see it, it’s like, no, don’t show me these places. And to fully help you liberate and reach the next level of your, you know, your expression in the world.”
More flexibility and awareness
Isabelle Peyrichoux:
“The goal of this work with the Enneagram is not to get rid of who you are or your patterns, but to be more flexible and aware, allowing more compassion and self-acceptance.
It’s to more how can you can have more flexibility inside of yourself to have different way of being and also being aware, developing the awareness.
Oh, despite all the work I’ve done, I’m still, oh, I was stressed and this old family of pattern came back and then giving compassion to that part and being compassionate to all the parts of us.
So the goal of this is not to get rid of any part of us because if we try to do that, we can reinforce the pattern, the type. But it’s more about how can we have more flexibility with a different part of us and welcoming all the parts of us.
I think it’s very important when we do that kind of work.”
Resources
Isabelle Peyrichoux’s Website – Brilliant Seeds
Brilliant Seeds Discover the Career You Absolutely Love and the Confidence to Make it Happen
Contact or connect with Isabelle on LinkedIn
