In this episode of the Awareness to Action Enneagram Podcast, Mario Sikora, María José Munita and Seth "Creek" Creekmore talk about the navigating domain and how it operates. They discuss why it’s the misunderstood of the three domains. They also break down the three subdomains: trust/reciprocity, status/identity and power/influence dynamics.

“What navigators tend to do is look at the people and classify people according to different criteria.” - María José Munita [13:22]

“What it has to do with is understanding group dynamics, understanding the people in the group, so that I know where I fit and I know how to make my way through this social environment I find myself in.” - Mario Sikora [14:10]

“So when it comes to status and identity, I don’t think it’s entirely related to belonging.” - Seth "Creek" Creekmore [36:10]

TIMESTAMPS

[00:00] Intro

[00:22] Circles the hosts were surprised to be in

[08:24] The most misunderstood domain

[11:59] Transactional networking

[14:50] Misunderstanding about the Social One

[16:31] Trust and reciprocity

[23:59] Power and influence dynamics

[32:43] Status and identity

[44:34] External contradiction

[48:33] Paralyzed by inhibition

[49:10] Pattern of expression

[52:57] Outro

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IG: @mariosikora

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Maria Jose Munita: 

IG: @mjmunita

Seth "Creek" Creekmore: 

IG: @creekmoremusic

Pod: Fathoms | An Enneagram Podcast

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Delusional Optimism

Welcome to another episode of the Awareness to Action Enneagram podcast. My name is Creek, and I have with me, María José Munita and Mario Sikora. How are y'all doing today?

Great. Looking forward to talking about today's topic.

Navigating.

We finally get to talk about something interesting.

All right, speaking of navigating, what circles have you found yourself in that you were surprised to be in?

Oh, boy, I just had one the other day. So I was actually talking to a guy, and it wasn't so much a circle. And so this is important, because when we talk about this domain, people tend to think it has to do with groups, but it doesn't. It has to do with people and how they operate.

Okay, what's interesting about them and what’s not, but I found myself talking to a guy in Saudi Arabia, who I had been connected to by somebody who heard me talk at some point, and we were having a conversation about some project he is undertaking for the Saudi government. I'm just thinking, this is weird. I'm sitting in my office in Abington, Pennsylvania, talking to a guy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, just because of random connections that I've cultivated over the years.

Wow, that is kind of crazy. You were affecting the government of the Saudi, is that what I'm hearing? That's a scary idea.

Yeah, it was... It wasn't leading in any business. I'm not in bed with the Saudis, or I don’t have anything against the Saudi people.

Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, wow. María José.

In My case, I think that looking back, it's not one in particular, but the range of circles that I get involved in. So if I like the Enneagram… It’s like… First of all, I think it's coming from a personal attraction to the people who are leading or making things happen in different circles. I want to know what's going on. I want to know who is who. So I identify the people. I tend to be very interested in knowing more about it, so I go to the right people. So I end up in the circle, eventually, that it's driving that circle to that group.

Yeah.

So if I play tennis, I'm part of the board of the tennis club that I belong to. And in my building, I went to one meeting of the building owners and people who live here, and I'm part of that board as well. And I work with the Enneagram, and Mario has already made enough fun of me of how I ended up in the...

[inaudible]

María José ??:??

I know. I did.

Manipulated. Manipulated is a better word.

Unconsciously, but probably I did. So I do things, and I pay attention to things. And I'm drawn to things that get me into all of these circles, but to the group that it's kind of driving it. Because I'd like to know what's going on, and I want to contribute. I want to make it better, and it is very fast. The way in which I get there.

For me, other than being with two legendary figures right now. I mean, kind of, kind of. I wasn't gonna go there, but yeah.

But we are a big deal, Creek. I'm not denying that, but yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

But the example I was going to say, weirdly, is wine club. So I am actually in a wine club with a bunch of old WASPy people, and they're wonderful. And I am by far the youngest person in that room. They could buy me out probably 50 times over. But it's yeah... Those types of people that I'm like you did what? You're like the the chicken mafia of the Chicago area? This is fascinating. So yeah, stuff like that.

So it's funny, when you mentioned that. When Bill Withers was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the '60s, early '70s singer. Withers was an interesting case study, probably a navigator more than a transmitter. So he gets out of the Navy. He's looking for something to do. Had no idea what his next career is gonna be. He said, you know, this music thing looks pretty easy. And so... Yeah right, I hear you, Creek.

I just flipped off the camera, everyone who could not…

So he starts writing songs, and turns out, he's got this amazing voice. And so for seven-eight years, he is huge, but then he just lost interest. He's like, you know, I don't really enjoy the performing. I just was looking for a way to make a living and then kind of disappeared for a while, but he's still made money because of the songs. But when he got inducted to the Hall of Fame, the thing was, he said was, he's giving the acceptance speech telling his story, and Stevie Wonder inducted him. And he said, you know, my life started out here, and then I went there. And now, Stevie Wonder knows my name.

And again, it was to that point you're talking about and what happens with navigators is, there might be something interesting happening over there. It's not, oh, I need to be around people, but it's hmm, that looks interesting. Let me wind my way over and see what's going on. And then you talk to people, and you ask them questions, and you start building these relationships that lead to strange places.

Let me tell you one strange place that it got me to. So I met this guy in some meeting, and he had a job, like global network of CEOs. There was something global in leadership. So I find it interesting, and I said, I'd love to know more about it, so why don't we get together for coffee one day and talk about it? Because I said, okay, maybe he has a network that might be useful to me, or whatever, but I was willing to explore.

And I'm a woman, and he was a man. He is. And he read it differently. And it ended up with me feeling very uncomfortable, because he thought that I was interested in him and made some uncomfortable movement until I said, you know what. I'm not comfortable here, so I'm not meeting with you any more. So it's interesting that that curiosity, that interest might not be perceived the same or understood from the other side.

Ain't that true?

And you might want to delete that if you want to, but it's true.

No, I mean, I've told people, I'm generally flexible, but ever free.

Absolutely. And as we're gonna see as we talk about the Navigating domain, there is a discrimination. I mean, it's not just okay, whoever wants to come on board, come on board, this sort of thing. It's I'm assessing is a big part of this domain. I'm assessing. Now it's different from what we'll see in the transmitting domain, because the transmitting domain is about quick assessments. Ah, he looks interesting. Ah, she looks interesting. I'm going after that. And if they don't find that interest right away, it's boom, off to the next thing. Navigators, it's more of a scanning.

Methodical.

Yeah, methodical is moving around. Okay. Well, let me see. Let me find out where this goes, and so forth.

You're planting seeds.

But if you're boring... Yeah, planting seeds a huge part of it. Yeah, great analogy for what's often happening in the navigating domain. This, I think, is probably the most misunderstood of the three domains. And we've had this conversation before. I don't know if we've discussed it on this podcast, but certainly María José and I've talked about it.

With preserving and with transmitting, you can see it. With navigating, you can't. With navigating there's no tell tale behaviors, activities, and so forth, because so much of it is based on observation. And so people don't really see what's going on. So when we read the literature about this instinctual bias, people think it has to do with social. It's about being extrovert, about being wanting to be around a lot of people.

Could one potential area could be something along the lines of your contact book or list?

But it's not literal, because it.. but it is. Part of the plantings of seed is having a broad network. And because some people might be useful for this or interesting for that reason. So like your social media contacts. Look, I discriminate. I have certain rules. There's some people I leave out. I don't accept as Facebook friends.

There's at least one guy that you cut out.

No, I have two rules, but I won't share them here. Okay, so in social media, if that's the equivalent to your address book, it's kind of like that. Because it's a loose network that it's flexible, all sorts of people that might be, as I said, interesting or useful, and you kind of manage in different ways.

You are aware of the spectrum. And you might do certain movements towards some of them, but you're aware of the spectrum. You know who is there. If I had to categorize who's there, I could say I have my coaching network, and I have my friends from university and all of that, and I have the Enneagram people. And I have people in self development in general. I know who is there,

On my phone, most of my contacts have their location, and something that they can do for me. In that, like, if I want to find a drummer, because this just happened the other day. Someone's like, hey, I need a drummer for a band, so I just go into my contacts, and I type in drummer, and then all of them appear. And then I send out messages. And I get excited about connecting people in that way.

So this is a distinction here, and I'm glad you made that somebody needs a drummer, because when it comes to networking and relationship building and Rolodex building, two ways to go about it. One is transactional. What can this person do for me? All right. Ah, this person could be useful to help me blank. And that's typically what we see in transmitters.

It's a more... not that they don't have genuine friendships, and they're not generous and kind and all that stuff, but the natural way of networking is, ah, you could help me this. Whereas with navigators, this person's interesting and could be useful. I'm not sure how yet, but I just want to keep them on my radar, because I might need somebody. I might know somebody who needs something that this person might have thoughts with. That connecting piece of it.

You made me think about my address book on my phone, and I also have those kinds of categories. And I have a letter for different categories before the name so that I can sort them very easily. And whenever somebody needs anything, but my case is more about restaurants, places to stay, delivery and those kinds of things. And I'm very quick at suggesting things and sending options and all the contact leads because I have them so that I can access them quickly.

Again, it's a bigger picture, sort of networking, I think that happens. This may not pay off for years, but I just want to keep an eye on that person.

Yeah. And I want to protect how people view me a little bit in that it's not all my relationships are transactional, and like, what can you do for me? It is actually more along the lines of like, I want to be able to present people with opportunities. One of my friends got stranded in England, and I had like six people I could call to be like, Do you have a place to stay? Or do you have a friend that has a place to stay for this person?

Right?

Yeah, and I was one of them. Yeah, but no... And yes, but what navigators tend to do is look at the people and classify people according to different criteria. So you know who is doing what, how close or how far. You're naturally putting them in different boxes. Not that those boxes constrain them, but it helps you sort through all that list of people that you are in touch with more easily.

This is a good place to define what we mean by navigating and why we don't use social. So you know, people call this a social instinct, and it has to do with the group. It has to do with culture. It has to do with shaping the way that the group thinks about things. Except that in reality, it doesn't. What it has to do with is understanding group dynamics, understanding the people in the group, so that I know where I fit, and I know how to make my way through this social environment I find myself in.

So it is all about gathering information, the strategic sharing of that information, and storing information away. It's like mapmaking in a lot of ways. It was one of the reasons we call it navigating. It's like, okay, I'm plotting everything out socially, so I get it. A big misunderstanding about the Navigating One or what people call the Social One. Oh, Social Ones are always trying to change society. You know talk about it more? No, no, no, no, they're not. They are trying to understand what's the right way to behave within this environment. Not trying to change it, I'm trying to make sure that I am following the rules of the group.

And if you want to change it, you want to get a bit better, but it's more limited in scope than a Transmitting One would be probably. Yeah, and I'll only wanted to add that, when you talked about you want to understand the group, so that I can kind of find my way to where I want to go. For the different strategies or types, it will be a different place that you want to go.

So for a Navigating Eight will be how do I get to a power position? As you said, for a Navigating One, how do I understand it so that I behave in a proper way? For Navigating Four would be well, is this where I want to be or not? And I want to position myself outside of this group, it could be. I don't want to be seen as part of these groups. So it's different goals using the same means.

It can be who am I compared to all these other people with the Navigating domain. What is my self-definition? What is my social-definition based on comparison to all these other folks?

Doesn't relate at all to me.

Yeah. Right. You got it tattooed on your back, man. What are you talking about?

Just like the preserving, we have three subdomains in the navigating bias, we have trust and reciprocity. We have power, influence, dynamics, status, and identity. So let's start with trust and reciprocity.

Look, humans are a social species, and every interaction we have is around establishing trust and reciprocity. When we teach this domain, we usually show a picture of two chimpanzees sitting next to each other, and they look like they're gossiping. It looks like they're talking about other people. And the reason we gossip is so that we know who we can trust and who we can't, who we can depend on and who we don't. If you know somebody that I want to know more about, it's a shortcut for me to say, hey Creek, tell me about so and so.

So I don't have to make my own assessment through lived experience, which could either take a long time or be a bad idea, because you could have just told me, stay away from that guy. He's crazy. So the information exchange is all about understanding who I can trust. And we do some of that through experience, too, right? Interacting with people, but we share information about trust through information exchange. Eh, be careful with that person.

Information exchange is a cool word to say gossip, but it's not just gossip. It's not just gossip. It's like an impulse to share information that might be useful to someone else. So it's like, okay, so this happened. Who needs to know? Who will benefit from it?

As with anything else, these things can be done adaptively or maladaptively, right? So gossip is usually thought of as a maladaptive information exchange that's used to harm others or advance ourselves at their expense. In a positive way, it's just hey Creek, I thought you should know this. There's a job opening over there. You might be interested, connecting those people like you're talking about earlier.

Yeah. I think just for clarification sake, reciprocity, according to Merriam-Webster, the practice of exchanging things with others for mutual benefit.

Yeah. So if I scratch your back, will you scratch mine? If I share my food with you when I have plenty, will you share yours with me when I need? This is reciprocity.

Yeah. And it doesn't... I think the difference with the other two domains - the transmitting and preserving - is that it doesn't need to be right away. I'm willing to share today, my time, my resources, because I know that down the road I might need and you might give something back, maybe not the same, but help me.

And if not, when these relationship starts to feel unbalanced, then I want to stop doing it. Not willing to continue to invest there because it’s not. You're not reciprocating, but I'm willing to wait a bit, willing to just do it and see what happens later.

Another important element of this is maintaining group coherence. You think back to our ancestors who lived in a tribe of about 150 people, there were power discrepancies in those, both physical power and resource power, etc. And so it's easy for certain more powerful figures to take advantage of the others.

So how do we keep people in line without resorting to violence? We exchange information. So if María José cheats me in a game of cards, I'm going to turn to you, Creek, and say, hey, you know what, be careful. Don't play cards with her because she cheat.

But you're the one who cheats.

And so now... Well sure, but I'm not going to admit that.

I just don't ever play cards or games actually.

I cheat too.

You know, look, I live by the dictum. I live by the motto: Win if you can. Lose if you must, but always cheat.

Wow, you heard it here first, folks.

But once that gets out, nobody wants to play with me anymore. So it keeps me from cheating, because if I want to play Monopoly with people, and they know that I cheat, they're gonna say, well no, you cheat. And so next time, I'm going to have to not cheat or get better at cheating, but ideally, not cheat. Information exchange keeps order in the world without resorting to violence and punitive moves.

And I think that group coherence, like having, I don't know, fair rules or be consistent, creates trust. I know that I can trust these people, because they will respond in a coherent way, and they're trustworthy.

I hear in my head some pushback against like, all relationships shouldn't be transactionary. And I hear what you're saying, person in my head, but you're not being honest with yourself.

Of course, of course. It drives me crazy. There's this knock on Twos. Oh, they give to get, you know, blah, blah, blah. Of course they do. They're human, but that doesn't mean every one of our interactions is selfish. But we depend on each other, for other people to get our needs met. And this is what reciprocity is about.

Relationships are reciprocal. I love you, you love me back. If you stop loving me, well, then I'm a fool for continuing to love you or if you start to become a drain on resources. You know, a taker rather than a sharer. It is about sharing.

Make me have fun, and you're giving me that joy.

You amuse me.

So it doesn't have to be something material, but I am getting something out of you.

If I can get a little personal here, something that has helped me a little bit is, when I'm going through something, sometimes it's a struggle to reach out to people. Like I shouldn't need their help. I should be able to solve this on my own. I should be able to... Like I can grieve by myself, no need to know about this.

But I'm like what I say that about food or sleep? 'Cause people are equally as crucial to my health. And so if I view it more as like, no, this is just a necessity of how to live as a healthy human and to be able to survive well in this world, then I do need. I do actually need people, and it's not a codependent statement to say that.

Look, this is why churches and social organizations survive, because we're there for each other. When I need something, you're there for me. When you need something, we're here for you. And that's just part of being a social species. There's nothing.

Now again, if you're a taker, if it's all about me and not giving back, if it's all about me taking, but again, that's where the information exchange comes in. Because at some point, people say, you know what, he's not contributing. He's not pulling his weight. And that's when the individual gets ostracized and becomes vulnerable.

So, the next subdomain is power and influence dynamics.

And this is about understanding those dynamics. Who has power? Who has influence? Who do I need to go to to get something done? Who do I need to connect to this other person? What are the power dynamics here? It does not mean that navigators are one power.

Just Eights.

Not just Eights, but certainly Eights, right? And again, this is... When we start talking about the Navigating Eight, this is exactly what we're talking about. How do I manage the power dynamics, preferably, so I have more of it than other people do? It's Don Corleone from the Godfather. So this is all about understanding how the group politics work. And navigators tend to be really good at it. I've got this complex political situation at work. How do I manage it?

María José was talking about her preserving mother going to her for advice on political dynamics in her mother's workplace. Navigators have a sense of, here's how you navigate these political dynamics and influence dynamics. So it's very much about politics, and not necessarily governmental politics, but politics of all sorts, which is just how groups interact. There's politics in a family, in a wine club, and whatever.

It's about social intelligence. The ability to read nuances and subtle group dynamics that Navigators are gifted at. You can see navigators in a group communicating to each other, nonverbally. Just glances of the eyes that happened. You ever see the movie, The Breakfast Club, and a great example of it just, there's all these things that I think... Well go watch a movie, Creek. You'll grow. You'll learn as... You'll advance as a human being. But there are these scenes where nobody says anything. They all just look at each other, but it says everything.

Yeah. It's like, did you see that? It's like, can you believe she said it? Or understanding the implications of what was said and how it was received and the consequences. It's this whole reading of the scene that you share, that you're seeing the same.

Well, and I think, in some ways, the politics is supposed to be about the people. Right? It's supposed to be.

It's what it means.

Right? And it's like, you do this, and you do this, and let's collaborate and compromise and find a better way to do this. That's what it's supposed to be. So politics is... I mean, I know we have a negative connotation to that right now in culture, but...

But it's always been that way. I've never heard... in 25 years of working with executives, you hardly ever hear anybody talking positively about office politics, except the navigators. They get it. Politics can be done maladaptively, selfishly, to hurt others, to advance yourself, or it's just the way you get stuff done.

And it's always gonna be messy.

Exactly right. It's like, okay, I've got six stakeholders in this situation. I have to make them all happy. I have to find compromises. I have to make concessions. Okay, how do I maneuver these? How do I manage those things? That's when navigating is about. There's also this other thing we have here about hierarchy management.

So, you know, humans are hierarchical creatures. I love when I see these organizations saying, oh, we're gonna take hierarchies out of the business and treat everybody equal, et cetera, et cetera. It's a great idea. And it has never, ever worked, because even if you take the hierarchies off the organizational charts, hierarchies will form. Because that's what human nature does. And we're not suggesting again that navigators need to be at the top of it, but they pay attention to it. They're inclined to understand it.

Understand again the implications of it. I have so many clients or a few who have said, yeah, I want to be one more of the group, of the team. I said, well you're not. You're the boss, and you need to act like it. Doesn't mean that you are treating them poorly or anything, but you're the boss, and people will tell you some things and will not tell you certain things, and that's okay. So understanding those kind of politics is important. And when you don't, when you don't pay attention, or don't even want to acknowledge that they're there, you're missing out on a big deal of things that are going on.

It's the parent who wants to be their child's friend. And that's just the sign of somebody is going to be a lousy parent, because a child needs a parent. He's got plenty of friends. Now, it doesn't mean that the parent has to be a tyrant. Doesn't mean that they have to be a dictator. But it means they need to understand the nature of the relationship that is required in all sorts of environments.

Yeah, I was just listening to a philosophy podcast the other day, and he was talking about how, yes, I guess in some way, everyone's voice matters, but we've gotten to the point where we think everyone's voice requires an equal weight.

Yes.

And I just want to be really careful here, because yes, there are ways in which we have silenced certain voices that need to be heard. Absolutely. But the guy that has read one book about how to do heart surgery, you're going to want the guy that has done heart surgery numerous times and has gone to college and done all the things to do your heart surgery. He needs to have way more weight in the opinion on how to do a heart surgery.

Yeah, and part of being a good navigator is understanding when different opinions are relevant and when they're not. So, to your point, some guy who did his internet research about heart surgery, his opinion doesn't weigh as much as somebody who went to medical school and has done 50-500 heart surgeries.

This guy named Tom Nichols, who's written a couple of good books about expertise and the death thereof. And we see this, especially in today's environment where people think, well, these experts, what do they know. They're always wrong. And so my opinion is just as good. And the people who say that all say it until it gets to their profession. And when you say, okay, well, you're a plumber, so is my opinion as good as yours when it comes to plumbing. Well, no, plumbing is different, because blah, blah, blah. ‘Cause it’s an area where I have expertise, and I understand that expertise matters.

Yeah.

And understanding, I think... I'm stuck with the previous part of the conversation about the politics and how the hierarchy has an influence on how people from a lower level might never say no to a boss. So I was with the team the other day, an executive team, and they said, well, we did this, and you're telling me that they were not... They did not agree to it, but I asked them, and somebody else said, yeah, but they would never say no to you.

So understanding those subtleties, how human nature works, how hierarchy affect the way in which people behave and react, it's a very navigating thing. It's like for navigators, it's a bit more natural to understand those dynamics.

You can add cultural dynamics to that. Not just regional within a country. The US Northeast is different from the Southeast, very different culturally. North America very different from South America, and the US different from Mexico, and so forth. And being attuned to those differences is important.

When I do 360 assessments, I always have to calibrate to the people I'm speaking to culturally, for the very reasons you're talking about, María José. When I'm talking primarily to people in Latin countries, there's much more unwillingness to question or talk bad about the leader than there is in, say German culture, where you're gonna get the unvarnished...

At least face to face.

...feedback. Right. In a safe environment, it'll come out.

Yes, big time. They will all be talking about it behind their backs.

Alright, so the third subdomain for navigating is status and identity.

Yeah. So then once you have the map, you want to figure out where you fit in. And it's where is my status? What's my status? What's my identity? Where do I fit in? In which part of this map I am? And where do I want to be in? Where do I want to position myself? And I remember when, so after Mario was president of the IEA, of International Enneagram Association, and then I was. And we were both past presidents, and we went to some kind of party reception that the President throws before every conference, or used to at least. We didn't know where to stand.

We didn't know if we wanted to be in the corner or close to the door. It was very uncomfortable, because we were used to being the president. And that is easy. The president should be there greeting people, like the bride or the groom, just going from one group to another. That's what's expected. Your role was clear. So role clarity here is very important, because then you feel more comfortable as a navigator performing. Even seeming transmitting, it could be. When your role is clear, you're willing to become probably more assertive. But if it's not, you just sometimes don't know what to do with yourself.

You'll see this in startups. So startups have a very kind of transmitting environment most of the time. We have to grow. We gotta make money. We gotta sell stuff. Everybody do everything. Whatever needs to be done, somebody just pick up the broom and do it. And then you get to a point where that's just a recipe for chaos. You can do it up to a certain point and then it becomes chaotic.

And so then you need to go into kind of this navigating mode of, okay, let's define the roles here. Let's understand how this thing works so that we can function effectively. And then you kind of go into a preserving mode of maintenance and continue to structure and process. We talked about reputation management here. And this is about how much do I reveal about myself? There's a consciousness and a deliberateness to the way that preservers, I'm sorry, navigators present themselves and share information.

Should I tell this story? Or shouldn't I? If I tell the story, will they think positively of me? Or will they think he's a jerk or you know... I would like to say that the navigators share enough to be accepted, but not so much to be rejected. It can also make other people think that navigators are sneaky, or up to something or manipulative, because the people can see navigators weighing their behavior, their actions and so forth. So it's one of the challenges that others have with navigators.

Yeah. I'm just kind of getting flooded with examples in my mind.

Quack, quack, quack.

It's been very helpful, actually. So when it comes to status and identity, I don't think it's entirely related to belonging. That feels like something slightly different.

Yeah, it's not about belonging. And again, this is one of the misunderstandings of the navigating domain. It's about understanding where I am on this map. It's kind of the You-are-here spot at the mall. It's not, oh, I want everybody to love me and embrace me and accept me in. Yeah, I want to be connected, okay, but to the extent that I want.

And that'll vary from navigating to a want to be more connected. Navigating Nine, we want to be more connected than, say, a Navigating Eight, or Navigating Four, or even a Navigating One. So it's not about yeah, I'm part of this group. It can be part of it sometimes, but it's about okay, this is how it works, and now I know what to do next. I know where to stand at the party.

A very, I think, vivid example is when the team is at a meeting, where they sit. And so usually the leader has his or her seat, and there's people who tend to sit by their side and that sends a message. Some people who sit further away, who might be disengaged or sending another message whether they want it or not. And it's so much fun for me to see how people sit around the table, usually with teams. It says so much about their internal dynamics.

And people who are not aware and are not intentional about it, when I talked to them, and they said, oh, I want to be more involved. I want them to consider me, and I said, so why do you sit so far away? What role do you want to have? Where do you want to sit? Because that will send the message. I'm very deliberate about the places I sit. And if I want to, I don't know, become part of a group, I'll sit right across the person who's in charge.

And if I want to send a message, like when Mario was President than I was, I think, Vice President, I would sit by his side in every meeting. Of course, there was somebody else who wanted to sit there, so I got there first in the morning.

It's tough being popular.

I know. So all of those things, I think navigators are more aware of it than the other two instinctual biases.

An example that comes to my mind is the times in which two of my social circles start to overlap. And I don't necessarily have control. I don't know how to engage both sides. So then, I'm sat there, like, okay, everyone just kind of, just talk to each other. Like, I know you're gonna get along, but I don't know, am I the conversation starter? Do I need to interview this person, so this person knows?

And then there's certain times where I'm in meetings where I'm like, I wish I was in charge, because this would be done in five minutes instead of 20, but...

But it's not your role.

It's not my role. So I go to the opposite extreme, most of the time, where I don't engage at all.

And so in the first situation there, you have a clearly identified role in one social circle, and you have another clearly identified role in the other social circle. And sometimes when those two groups come together, we don't know which hat to wear, and it becomes confusing, and okay, which Creek am I here?

And that's not inauthentic.

No, it's human. So the dissonance is this internal stress caused by competing ways of satisfying the same need. Different tactics can satisfy the same strategy, and so we can satisfy this need to navigate effectively in multiple ways, and some of them are contradictory. And they cause this internal dissonance, this internal stress. Should I do this? Or should I do that? Should I seek acceptance? Or should I manage my image? Meaning craft something. And we say seek acceptance, it's about sharing something about myself that will ingratiate me toward others.

The writer Truman Capote, who wrote "In Cold Blood," he was brilliant at getting information out of people. And what he would do is he would go in and he'd sit down with somebody he was interviewing, and he would tell some horrible story about himself, some utter failure he had, some deep character flaw, whatever it was. And it would elicit this need from the other to reciprocate and expose themselves in the same way. So it was a brilliant navigating tactic of I'm going to share something about myself to establish a bond, but if I go too far, and say, well, there was that time I ran over the dog, and you know...

They didn't tell anybody.

Didn't tell anybody and then backed up and ran over it again, just to make sure. Now people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, too much information. So the navigator is always trying to figure out what is that line between an engaging and appealing exposure of myself versus too much information.

Yeah. And it made me think, Creek, about when you said about sharing your needs, because that's something personal. So do I want to share that I need that? What are they going to think of me? Am I going to become like a burden? Well, I'm talking about myself here, but I do have an issue as well about sharing my needs.

I'm very quick at helping other people in telling them what they could do. But when it's about my issues, I tend to have a harder time because it feels like I'm exposing myself too much, and I'm not sure what's going to happen after that. It feels uncomfortable. So it's all the time, how much do I share so that they don't run away?

And this will vary based on Enneagram type. So again, what people are comfortable sharing will vary based on their type. For example, as an Eight, I tend to share things that other people might think who would admit that. For example, I have this gift for falling asleep in other people's presence. When I get tired or bored or something like that, it's just lights out. María José has witnessed this in all over the world.

And I remember one time I was asleep, and I had just started to wake up and we were in a van. It was in Cairo I think, and somebody says to María José, is he sleeping? She says, yeah, he does that. I like telling this story, because it's my way of saying, hey, I'm the kind of person I don't care what you think. It's an Eight flex. Now, when I tell that story to people, my wife is horrified. Why do you always bring that up? Why do you admit that you do that? That's horrible. So it'll vary from type to type as well.

Yeah, but it's intentional. You're sending a message. You're crafting your image there.

Exactly right.

You're crafting how you want to be perceived. It's not just I want to share that, because.

But not necessarily consciously.

No, not always. Not always. Yeah, not always. Sometimes it is. And other times, it's just... I don't give a crap.

It's like intuitive. You know that it serves a purpose. In that way, it's not conscious.

When you've worked at something for years and years and years, it just becomes intuitive, and you do it without thinking.

Wow. All right.

Save me, Creek, before people think I'm not a nice guy.

I don't think you really care about that, so... So we have as you can hear, the dissonance is happening in vivo, seeking acceptance and managing the image. So that's our internal dialogue. We have external happenstance. No, external... What's the word?

The contradiction.

There we go. We have an external contradiction that happens.

Meaning sometimes they're like this and other times, they're like that. Go ahead, María José.

And people, many times don't understand what's going on here and don't like it. So the contradiction is connecting versus judging. So you want to navigate the group. You want to sometimes be part of it, or at least engage in conversations, and all of a sudden, you're doing what navigator do. Look around. Put labels on people. Classify them.

That is a bit judging. So this person adheres to the rules. These one doesn't. This person is of this group. That person is that group. You're classifying people. You're judging who is doing what. Who belongs to what. And that could be uncomfortable for people. So yeah, I kind of want to connect to this person, but I feel judged. I feel this person is assessing me in some way.

Yeah. It can come across as a kind of snobbery at times. I remember years ago, my brother and sister telling me what a snob I was, and I was just shocked by that, because I just never thought of myself that way. But I am, because I'm constantly assessing. In fact, when I came up with this construct to these contradictions, I could easily figure out the preserving and the transmitting. And I was wrestling with, okay, what is the contradiction in the navigating?

So I started looking at all the other navigators I knew, and I came up with this idea of connecting versus judging. But then I said, but yeah, it doesn't work, because I don't do that. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks that it's the water I swim in. I'm doing it all the time so much that I don't even recognize it. You want to know what I think about you? I'll tell y'all.

We'll revisit that another time.

I hate it when people ask me, what do you think about this person? Because I have so many opinions. I wish I didn't.

And I think that's in some ways... I mean, again, adaptive/maladaptive way of doing this. When someone asks me, hey, I want you to listen to these five songs that I just recorded and tell me what you think, I'm like, I don't know if you want me to do that. Because I will find ways in which they aren't... There's some goodness in there, but oftentimes, it's like, oooh buddy, you should go back to the drawing board. And it's not any sort of, I'm better than you or you're better than me. It's just like, well, this is just the thing. It's not a superiority complex.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's about evaluating and creating assessments in the mind. And sometimes they're negative. Sometimes they're maladaptively framed. And other times more adaptive. We need to do that. I mean, there’s a discrimination, okay? We can't just accept everything in life at face value. We have to figure it out.

Yes, yes.

But sometimes it creates some limitations for navigators, at least for myself, on this for me, in that, I wish I didn't care about certain things. I wish I didn't see these categories that I belong or don't belong to. And I had the freedom to just swim across these categories. But when I see people wearing certain kinds of clothes, and I say, I couldn't never wear that. I wish I didn't care, but I do.

So this is issue of inhibition. Navigators can be paralyzed by inhibition, not out of fear of, oh, I'll fail or something. But what will people think? How will people read this? How will people understand this? And then what will they say about me afterward?

What you're saying is navigators need to drink more to lower their inhibitions.

They do. That's been my strength, for sure.

Well, I mean, I think on that note, I think we've convinced everyone that it's better to be a navigator.

Why would anybody want to be anything else? Yeah. There you go. Should we talk about the pattern of expression before we wrap up? Yeah. Okay. So people who are navigators, obviously, that's the zone of enthusiasm. There's the old saying from the writer, Dorothy Parker, "If you don't have something nice to say about someone, come sit next to me." You know, it's like I get juiced by information about people, but the transmitting domain is where we start to see this zone of inner conflict.

Now, if you know navigators, you know anybody who attends my programs or listens to me on podcasts or whatever, they start to say, are you sure he's not a transmitter, because I can go on. But it's role specific. It's where I feel comfortable. It's where I feel like that's what my job is, but sit me down with a group of people that I don't really know and I have no interest in transmitting. In fact, I feel inadequate in my ability to do so in unstructured environment.

Let alone fight for airtime. I mean, I'm not willing to fight for airtime. If you don't want me to talk, I'll just shut up.

Exactly right. Exactly right. Okay, so I'm happy to just sit here and listen, or if you're not interesting, pretend I'm listening, or if you're really not interesting, just fall asleep, so... But I'm not going to fight for airtime like María José says. So it's this inner conflict, I kind of want to transmit, because I feel like I got something to say, but it comes at an energetic cost, like for the preserve of the navigating domain.

Yeah, so there's this almost inner transmitter that wants to come out, but not at any cost with limitations. When my role is clear, when I feel safe, comfortable, and when yeah, there's less risk, I think, or drunk.

The amount of times that the Enneagram has come up in conversation, and I just have to sit there kind of squeezing my fists in the corner, not to say something, because I don't want to be that guy.

Right? You don't want to be... Yeah, absolutely. I hear it. I hate in social environments when people want to start talking about the Enneagram. It's like, no, no thanks. I don't want to be that guy. Now the zone of indifference is in the preserving domain. And again, this doesn't mean that navigators don't exercise or play sports or cook or whatever, but it means that they're not motivated by preserving their energy. There's this, you know, sure, everybody needs to recharge. Everybody has those days where I just want to sit and veg out.

But what you'll start to see in navigators is, after a while, I've got to get out and navigate. I'm going to pick up my laptop, and I'm going to go to the coffee shop, because I just can't sit here by myself anymore. I'm not all that interested in the details of things. I don't want to sit here and go through all the receipts, because you've already lost my attention with the details of these things. Not all that interested in administrative aspects of things. I don't want to go shopping and do those sorts of things, you know, for mundane sort of things.

Again, you might understand that those things are important, but they can usually wait until tomorrow.

With that being said, again, hopefully, we've convinced you that navigating is the best way of operating in the world and you should sign up. So tune in next week, we're going to be talking about transmitters. Have a great week.

You too.

You too. See you guys.

Thanks for listening to the Awareness to Action Enneagram podcast. If you're interested in more information or talking to Mario, MJ or myself, feel free to reach out to us through the links in the show notes or by emailing info@awarenesstoaction.com. All episode transcriptions and further information can be found at awarenesstoaction.com/podcast.

Welcome to another...

You were gonna say Fathoms, weren't you?

I was.

Now we know what your true favorite podcast is, Creek. You know, we're secondary. That's all right. It's like when your mother calls you by your brother's name or something. It gives away who she really cares about.