The Work of You
This is a podcast about the leadership that matters most — the kind that starts from within.
Hosted by certified behavioral coach and Enneagram expert Jen Ostrich, The Work of You is for high-achieving humans ready to stop repeating patterns and start leading themselves differently.
Through insights from coaching, the Enneagram, and her own personal inner overhaul, Jen brings honesty, humor, and sharp emotional clarity to the table. With real talk, self-awareness tools, and a healthy dose of tough love, she helps you uncover what’s driving you, shift what’s no longer serving you, and ultimately do the work of you — one honest episode at a time.
This isn’t about fixing yourself. It’s about finally understanding yourself — so your choices, relationships, and leadership can actually align with who you truly are.
The Work of You
Why the Enneagram is a Leadership Superpower
The Enneagram is powerful, but also widely under leveraged and often misunderstood. Let's get into why it's your leadership superpower!
This episode is an introduction to clarify what is the Enneagram (and all of its layers), what it's not AND how to use it in practice. ENNEA (greek word for nine) and GRAM (greek word for diagram) makes the 9 point symbol or diagram that is the Enneagram model. This episode is to ground you in the ways you can use the Enneagram in people and team development and all the aspects that help you to understand yourself. In future episodes we'll dive into the nine types in addition to going deeper in each of the layers of data that are available to do the work of you.
Episode topics:
- The Enneagram looks at a core fear which drives a core motivation, your personality, and defense mechanisms -- all in your subconscious -- and then how all of this shows up in your behaviors (what you do consciously)
- Think of the Enneagram as a developmental map
- Enneagram shows you your habitual patterns – by connecting the dots from your underlying beliefs centered around that core motivation and how that drives your behaviors.
- Explains the WHY (motivation) behind WHAT (behaviors) you do
- Based on we are 3-brain beings with 3 primary intelligences: IQ, our intellect (Head Center), EQ, our emotional intelligence reading our own feelings or emotions of others (Heart Center), and BQ, our body awareness using our five senses and inner knowing/gut instinct (Body/Gut Center)
- 3 centers of intelligence: how you take in and experience the world
- The Body/Gut Center = Types 8,9,1; primary need for autonomy and agency
- The Heart Center = 2,3,4; primary need for attention and connection
- The Head Center = 5,6,7; primary need for information/certainty for safety
- Inside each of the 9 types live 3 Instincts: Self Preservation, Social, and Sexual or One-on-One - we have all 3 instincts yet one is our dominant one that colors how we move through the world, then we have a secondary and a repressed instinct
- Taking an Enneagram assessment (see below) can provide this data and more to understand your belief system and how your motivation is driving your behaviors.
Coaching Prompts:
1. When you consider how you experience the world and take in information, what feels most important to you: having certainty and safety, being in connection and feeling seen/valued, or being in control of your environment?
2. What might your go-to strategy be to ensure this in your life today? Feeling safe, seen or in control?
3. What patterns, ways of being or acting does this bring out in you – at home? At work? With your team?
Resources:
Website | The Enneagram 9 Types
GET YOUR ENNEAGRAM TYPE -- includes the Instinct data; most ideal for professional use: leaders and teams
ALT OPTION FOR TYPING - also includes the Instincts