Today we´re finishing our tour around the three instinctual biases in Awareness to Action (ATA) that we started two weeks ago and continued last week (if you don´t know what I´m talking about, I encourage you to start this article series from the beginning, by reading here, here and here).

The third instinctual bias is dedicated to transmitting, and it´s represented with a bright and colourful peacock (even though this particular icon is black and white). What comes to mind when you imagine a peacock unfurling its tail feathers and appearing in all its glory?

The thought of attracting attention may have crossed your mind, and yes, you´re on the right path there. The core theme for the transmitting domain is attracting and bonding, that is, making themselves get noticed and catch people´s attention to be able to transmit something to them, be it their genes (in fact, in traditional Enneagram terms, individuals with this bias are said to have a "sexual instinct") or their ideas, beliefs, values, their point of view or something they have created. They are naturally charismatic individuals who attract attention without consciously seeking it, perhaps through the way they dress, speak, or behave.

From an evolutionary point of view, our ancestors developed certain behaviours to increase their probability of attracting a mate and reproducing, which, at the end of the day, is the same thing the male peacock does when he unfurls his tail feathers and parades in front of the female. But in humans, the concept of transmitting goes way beyond that: not every person with a transmitting bias is seeking to reproduce and have offspring; what they do have in common is a tendency to want to bring a piece of themselves out into the world, and to want to leave their mark, in their own style.

People with a transmitting instinctual bias unknowingly pay a lot of attention, and give a lot of importance, to topics related to:

• Asserting
  • They´re usually ambitious and self-confident individuals, who go after what they want.
  • They have low levels of inhibition: they don´t feel uneasy about saying or doing whatever is needed in order to achieve their goal.
  • They have higher intensity levels than preservers and navigators, and a tendency towards competitiveness.
• Broadcasting and narrowcasting
  • Through their charisma, their charm, their appearance and behaviour, they send signals to the group to become the centre of attention, transmitting to their general audience (broadcasting).
  • Once they have secured someone´s attention, or if they´re interested in a particular person, they tend to narrow down and focus exclusively on that person (narrowcasting).
  • In their one-to-one relationships and conversations, they establish a very intense bond, even if it´s brief.
• Impressing
  • They are individuals who seek to impress, to have a specific impact on those around them.
  • They tend to be really good at influencing and convincing others, both individually and as a group.
  • They usually seek to leave a mark in this world: their legacy, a piece of themselves that gets transmitted to the next generations.

At work, transmitters (that is, individuals with a transmitting instinctual bias) are usually good at presenting and promoting their projects or products, as well as promoting themselves. They tend to be great salespeople and charismatic leaders, who know how to convince, inspire and paint a vision for the future that guides and energises the team, moving things forward.

Let´s remember once more that the instinctual biases are essentially systems of values that point to what we consider most important in life, and in consequence, push us to prioritise certain things over others. But this doesn´t mean that transmitters are always transmitting non-stop, or navigators navigating, or preservers preserving. These patterns are helpful because they uncover general tendencies that are observable throughout time, independently of specific points in time, because we all do a bit of everything at different moments, and nobody does the same all the time.

Something else we also need to take into account is that certain stages in life are very closely related to one of the instinctual domains, causing us to temporarily focus more on that domain, even if it´s not the most natural one for us. For example:

• The teenage years are decidedly navigating: our parents are no longer our main reference; now it´s our friends and classmates, and we spend (or want to spend) a lot more time with them than with our family.
• Later on, when the moment comes to start our professional career and look for a sentimental partner, we get into a phase that´s much more transmitting: we go out into the world to show what we have.
• And further down the line, the child-rearing years bring about a significant amount of preserving: it´s time to tend to the nest, to make sure our offspring is well cared for and can grow safely without lacking anything.

As you can see, this topic of the instinctual biases, which may seem very simple, and in a way, it is, is also full of nuances worth taking the time to explore and observe. The good news is that it also has loads of practical applications. In a future article, we´ll talk about how the three domains arrange themselves in order of priority according to the dominant bias, and how all of this shows up in our day-to-day, at home and at work.

But for the moment, what are your thoughts on this description of the transmitting bias? Does it resonate with you? Once again, I encourage you to observe yourself during the week, and see how much time and attention you dedicate to behaviours typically associated with this domain.

Let´s continue our tour around the instinctual biases in Awareness to Action (ATA) that we started last week (if you don´t know what I´m talking about, I encourage you to start this article series from the beginning, by reading here, here and here).

Today, we´re going to focus on the instinctual domain dedicated to navigating, and the animal we use to represent it in this case is a monkey, perhaps a chimpanzee:

But why a chimpanzee? Let me give you a clue: in traditional Enneagram terms, individuals with this bias are said to have a "social instinct". The core theme for the navigating domain is orienting to the group: they pay attention to people and people dynamics, and they seek to be with other people, to belong to a group and position themselves within it. Monkeys and chimpanzees are highly social animals: they spend a lot of time interacting with each other, and their groups feature quite complex social rules, so they serve as a great metaphor to represent this instinctual domain.

Us, humans, at the end of the day, are not that far from the other primates, and living in society is also a basic psychobiological need for us. Our ancestors organised themselves in tribes or clans in order to protect each other, hunt together, defend themselves from predators or enemy tribes... For them, belonging to the group was fundamental, for being left out, in many cases, could mean their death.

People with a navigating instinctual bias unknowingly pay a lot of attention, and give a lot of importance, to topics related to:

• Trust and reciprocity
  • They focus on exchanging information, sharing what they know and asking questions to discover how the group works, their customs, their rules...
  • They observe individuals to find out whether they can be trusted.
  • They look for group coherence and reciprocity ("I help you today, and tomorrow you may help me").
• Identity and status
  • They like being surrounded by people, and, in general, belonging to groups (though sometimes also observing them from outside).
  • They seek to understand where each person fits into the group, and more importantly, where they fit in, often positioning themselves intentionally.
  • They´re very attuned to how they are perceived by the group, and sometimes they tend to also judge others according to the group´s rules.
• Power and influence dynamics
  • They strive to understand how the group functions, who´s in charge, where everyone is in the hierarchy, who can be helpful to them...
  • They´re usually good at establishing relationships, collaborating and building alliances.
  • They´re naturally sociable, but at the same time, as they´re concerned about their reputation, they tend to be careful when sharing information about themselves.

Do you get the idea? Let´s remember that this is only one of the many dimensions of human personality, and it can manifest in as many ways as humans there are on the planet. For example, there are individuals with a navigating bias who are rarely at home and spend their days doing a million social activities (there´s a very Spanish expression for this, se apuntan a un bombardeo, as in, they´re up for anything), while others may prefer belonging to fewer groups, or staying on the sidelines and observing people around them, or perhaps watching the news, or movies, shows, documentaries or books about interesting people. The key point is identifying where our energy and attention go most naturally, and how we employ our free time when there´s nothing urgent to do.

At work, navigators (that is, individuals with a navigating instinctual bias) are usually very good at "reading the room", interpreting what´s happening in a room without anybody saying anything. They mainly focus on interpersonal communications, group dynamics and what we could call politics (working relationships, securing support, finding allies...)

What are your thoughts on this description of the navigating bias? Does it resonate with you? Like last week, I encourage you to observe yourself for a few days, and see how much time and attention you tend to dedicate to navigating topics.

This is the continuation of a series or articles dedicated to the Awareness to Action (ATA) model, a methodology to support personal and professional growth, created by Mario Sikora and developed in collaboration with his business partner, Maria José Munita.

In the next weeks and months, we´re going to explore the main elements of this model, starting with the three instinctual biases (preserving, navigating and transmitting) and continuing with the nine Enneagram strategies, represented by numbers from one to nine. If you have ever asked yourself: why am I like this? (or why other people are the way they are, and why we don´t understand each other sometimes), then I´m sure this will be of interest to you, so keep reading!

(Having said that, if you haven´t read the previous articles in this series yet, my advice would be to start here, here and here.)

Note: out of the two dimensions of the Enneagram, the instinctual biases are the least well-known, and different schools and traditions give them a slightly different name, like "instinctual variants", or simply "instincts". In these articles, I´m always going to follow the ATA nomenclature, although I will do my best to also mention other terms for reference, and explain how the concepts differ slightly from those in the most traditional approaches to the Enneagram.

Out of the three instinctual domains, the first one we´re going to see is preserving, and the squirrel is a great metaphor to explain what it represents. What comes to mind when you imagine a little squirrel, industriously storing away food for the winter?

The core theme for the preserving domain is nesting and nurturing: making sure both I and "my people" (my family, my close circle) have what is necessary not only to survive, but to live comfortably and have a chance to thrive. In other schools, this domain is called "self-preservation instinct", but in reality, the concept is broader: the nurturing and search for wellbeing are not limited to just me, but also extend to the people I share "the nest" with (my household, my team at work, etc.)

Let´s remember that these three instinctual domains are areas of life for which we have inherited a number of evolutionary adaptations that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. We all pay attention to all three domains, but in different ways: there´s one that we non-consciously give a disproportionately high priority to, and that´s the one that determines our instinctual bias, generating certain ways of thinking, feeling and behaving that follow distinctive patterns for that specific bias.

Evolutionarily speaking, the idea behind preserving is quite clear: if we think about the prehistoric men and women that we all descend from, it´s easy to understand how their first priority was to survive, as they lived in much simpler times than our own, but also much more uncertain and dangerous times.

People with a preserving instinctual bias (among which I count myself) unknowingly pay a lot of attention, and give a lot of importance, to topics related to:

• Safety and security
  • They prefer familiar and well-known environments, where they feel safe.
  • They seek to form a support network with several trusted persons, so that they can help each other.
  • They tend to avoid getting exposed or risking too much.
• Wellbeing and resources
  • They highly value comfort (including physical comfort: not being too hot or too cold, wearing comfortable clothes, etc.)
  • They make sure they have enough resources: food, clothes, a home to live in, financial resources...
  • They worry about their health, and the health of their people.
• Maintenance
  • They tend to "the nest" so that it continues to be comfortable, safe and welcoming.
  • They notice when something needs fixing or repairing (doesn´t mean they´re necessarily good at doing the fixing...)
  • They usually also want to maintain traditions, continue to do things the way they´ve always been done.

All of these, of course, are generalisations, which manifest in different ways depending on the person and are influenced by many other aspects of personality, starting with the nine Enneagram strategies. But it is true that there are general tendencies that stay over time, as years go by, and that´s what we need to watch out for, as opposed to just looking at specific behaviours at a certain point in time (because we all do a little bit of everything, and nobody does the same all the time).

At work, preservers (that is, individuals with a preserving instinctual bias) are usually very good at developing processes, creating structures, organising tasks... They´re generally methodical people, who manage resouces well, identify potential risks and take measures to avoid them. They like stable and predictible environments, without big changes.

What do you think of this description of the preserving bias? Does it resonate with you? I encourage you to observe yourself this week, and see how much time and attention you dedicate to preserving tasks on a daily basis.

This past week, at work, I gave my first talk on the topic of instinctual biases, one of the two dimensions of the Awareness to Action model I mentioned a couple of months ago.

This part of the model describes three domains or areas of life that we all focus on without really noticing, as they are essential for our survival, and ultimately, for the survival of the human species. But the interesting thing is that we don´t realise how much attention we give to them (hence the word "instinctive", as they´re non-conscious tendencies), and even more interesting is the fact that this attention is not equally distributed among the three areas; instead, each of us prioritises one of them way above the other two (hence the word "biases", which are nothing more than tendencies to follow certain patterns).

Crucially, these instinctual biases are a determining factor in many of our decisions and everyday behaviours, so, going back to the analogy of the elephant from the other day, by being aware of these biases, we´ll be able to detect their influence on us, and work with them so that they help us instead of hindering us.

But before telling you about these three domains, there are two things I would like to clarify:

• First, that us human beings are incredibly complex (and contradictory!), and there are a multitude of factors that influence our personality (remember the layers of the iceberg, and then add other aspects like family, culture, demographics, life experiences, etc., etc., etc.). This model doesn´t intend to explain everything about a person, not even remotely; that would be simply impossible. But it does explain several things that can provide significant value. As the famous quote attributed to George Box says: "all models are wrong; some models are useful".
• Second: that this is not about labelling people, or putting them into boxes. It´s about realising that we´re already in a box, we´re already conditioned, and by being aware of that conditioning, we can make our "box" more flexible and adapt better to the circumstances at any given moment. So it´s not a question of defining who we are through this classification (or any other); it´s all about observing how we behave, and above all, the things we habitually do most of the time, so as to distinguish the moments when our auto pilot tends to get us into trouble or create misunderstandings.

In view of all this, the three instinctual domains in Awareness to Action are formulated as verbs, representing clusters of behaviours:

• Preserving
• Navigating
• Transmitting

All these behaviours are, in reality, evolutionary adaptations we´ve inherited from our ancestors; they were useful to our ancestors, in the sense that they allowed them to survive at least long enough to reproduce, thus ensuring the continuity of our species.

Note: if you´re already familiar with the Enneagram through books or other schools or traditions, as there are several approaches, you may be familiar with other names used for the three subtypes under each Enneagram type. It´s not only the name that´s different here: chances are these concepts are broader than the ones you may have learned before, so you may need to do some "unlearning" to be able to grasp their full meaning and scope.

(Photos of a squirrel, two chimpanzees and a peacock, symbolising the three instinctual domains.)

We will get into more details for each instinctual domain and its corresponding bias in future articles; for now, let me give you some very broad strokes, including the symbols we use, which will hopefully help with understanding:

The preserving domain focuses on "nesting and nurturing", that is, making sure the fundamental survival needs are met, both for oneself and one´s family or close ones: for example, food, shelter and protection from external threats. It´s associated with the image of a squirrel, which we can visualise getting ready for the winter.

The navigating domain focuses on "orienting to the group", that is, understanding people and how they interact socially and within groups. Building alliances, creating trust and reciprocity, and understanding how oneself and others fit into the group. It´s associated with the image of some monkeys or chimpanzees, as these animals also form social groups with somewhat complex rules.

The transmitting domain focuses on "attracting and bonding", that is, behaving in ways that attract attention and leave a mark, so that they can transfer not only their genes (though that´s part of it as well), but also other things as their beliefs, values, interests and worldview to others, in order to make them carriers of that information. It´s associated with the image of a peacock, displaying its colourful and elegant feathers.

What do you think of these three domains? The are all necessary, and all of us do things in order to satisfy needs in all of the three areas.

But, as I said before, we don´t pay the same attention to all three of them: for some reason, we consider the needs related to one domain more important than those of the other two, and therefore, we prioritise the behaviours aimed at satisfying those needs. In a way, they become like a system of values we conform to without realising. And as a consequence, the other two areas are given lower priority, especially one of them, which always ends up at the bottom of the list... But we´ll talk about all of that in future articles.

Do you see yourself predominantly in one of these domains? Or maybe you´re torn between two, or even the three of them? As we get deeper and deeper into the model, hopefully the mystery will be solved... For the moment, as always, observation (and above all, self-observation) is the best exploration tool that will allow you to make interesting discoveries.