Welcome to “The Archer”

Welcome to the first edition of “The Archer,” a bimonthly e-newsletter brought to you by Mario Sikora and the Breckenridge Institute™, publishers of the Sikora SPI™. The theme behind The Archer can be summed up in the slogan below our logo: “Awareness in Action.”

So many of our everyday activities are carried out unconsciously: we half-heartedly play with our children while thinking about work, we talk to our spouse as we open the mail, we labor at work while thinking about how our personal lives are disappointing.

Awareness in Action is the ability to be fully engaged in life, to be conscious and present to what we are doing when we are doing it.

There is an old Zen story about two monks discussing their masters. The first monk says, “My master has tremendous powers. He can walk on water, levitate above the ground, and predict the future.”

“Quite impressive,” says the second monk, “but my master has even greater powers: when he chops wood, he chops wood; when he carries water, he carries water.”

To be aware in the midst of our actions—to be focused, undiluted, and attentive to events as they unfold—is both tremendously powerful and enormously difficult. We spend most of our time walking around on autopilot, sticking with conditioned and unconscious behaviors that have served us well in the past. These behaviors may not serve us so well today, however, and we need to be aware enough to know when change is needed.

The Sikora SPI™ is an excellent tool for helping you develop self awareness and to identify areas where change may be necessary. It also provides guidance on how to embark on the journey of making those changes. Each issue of The Archer will strive to bring you useful information that will make that journey more fruitful.

About The Sikora SPI™

The Sikora Strategy Preference Indicator™ (Sikora SPI™) is a unique tool based on a model of personality style called the Enneagram. It measures your preferences in two dimensions of personality: the Strategies and the Instincts.

• The Strategies are nine distinct patterns of interacting with our world. They are the way we go about interacting with others and satisfying the needs and desires of daily life. The strategies are at the heart of what is generally thought of as “personality type.”
  
  
• The Instincts are three distinct areas of fundamental biological drives. They determine what is important to us and what activities we tend to direct our attention to during the course of the day.

The Enneagram is a system of nine distinct strategies for interacting with individuals, groups of people, organizational structures, systems, culture, and the world around us. Ideally people should have access to all nine strategies and draw on the appropriate one for a given context, but most people rely on a “preferred strategy” regardless of the situation. The habitual use of this preferred strategy (especially in situations where it is inappropriate) creates the robust patterns of behaviors, attitudes, and
beliefs that underlie the traits and characteristics of our personality. Leaders, managers, and staff members can learn to use the Enneagram as an objective tool that identifies which strategies they are over-relying on, thus undermining relationships and producing undesired results in their personal and professional life. The will also discover which strategies they need to develop.

Working with the Sikora SPI™ will help you identify your preferred strategy and the ineffective behaviors associated with it. You will then learn to broaden the definition of your preferred strategy to include other strategies, thus widening the range of behaviors and attitudes available for your use as different situations arise.

The Sikora SPI™ is two assessments in one. No other valid and reliable Enneagram test identifies both the strategies and the instincts. In fact, the SikoraSPI™ is the most valid and reliable Enneagram test available and is among the most statistically reliable personality assessments in the world. Send an email to info@sikoraspi.com for a copy of the psychometric report on the Sikora SPI™.

Contact Us

If you would like further information about the Sikora SPI™, certification programs for the Sikora SPI™, or consulting services provided by the Sikora Group, please call 215-739-8144 or visit www.sikoraspi.com.

The validation study on the Sikora SPI™ is now complete and the instrument is available online at www.sikoraspi.com or at the online store at www.breckenridgeinstitute.com. The psychometric report on the Sikora SPI™ is also available online at: http://www.breckenridgeinstitute.com/
sikoraspi.htm or www.sikoraspi.com. The report, conducted by Dr. Mark Majors, shows that the SPI is among the most reliable and valid psychological assessments in the world! We are thankful to the nearly 400 participants in the validation study, without whom we could not have made this possible.

Keep your eye out for the Sikora SPI™ Plus, which will be available in the coming months. The Plus will be able to compare the results of two people, both charted on the same graphs Spouses, co-workers, or bosses and employees will be able to compare their test results and find out where there are similarities and where there are significant differences. The report will provide guidance for navigating those differences and improving any relationship.

The Enneagram is a mental model—an intellectual construct that can help you order observations and better understand reality. Mental models are invaluable because they provide frameworks for interpreting the circumstances and events around us and plan our lives accordingly.

Of course, mental models are only as good as their construction. A mental model based on faulty data and lacking rigor will collapse upon use in the real world. Reason and critical thinking are crucial when examining or constructing mental models. Two recent books and one older book address this topic quite well.

“More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places” by Michael J. Mauboussin is ostensibly a book on investment strategies, but it is really an examination of tools for better understanding the concepts of choice, risk, and analysis in general. These tools are hardly limited to investment decisions, and Mauboussin’s book provides a wonderful introduction into the psychology of decision-making.

“The Halo Effect…and Eight Other Delusions That Deceive Managers” by Phil Rosenzweig focuses on the faulty logic found in many business books. It shows how easy it is to become enamored of easy answers and twist data to support a simplistic explanation for either success or failure. Sure to anger many, Rosenzweig will force his reader to examine cherished assumptions.

“Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger,” edited by Peter D. Kaufman is a difficult to find (and expensive) collection of the ideas of Warren Buffet’s quiet but influential business partner, Charlie Munger. Packed with common sense and an emphasis on ongoing education (Read, read, read, exhorts Munger), this volume emphasizes the importance of understanding life from a variety of perspectives and making decisions based on evidence rather than emotion.