As a corporate anthropologist and culture change expert, I work with organizations that need or want to change. I'm an observer, constantly watching for emerging “trends from the trenches,” and I like to share them so that others too can see what's coming.

As I report in my recent article for Forbes.com, one of the biggest trends I'm noticing as I travel around the country is how business leaders are really struggling with today's breakneck pace of change. (You can read the article here.) Rather than embracing change and its possibilities for innovation and growth, they’re fleeing from it. Not good!

The trends are obvious but CEOs don't want to see them

Often, the biggest challenge for people is how to recognize what's happening right in front of them. But for today's CEOs, this is particularly scary because the degree of change is so great—threatening their business models, fundamental beliefs and long-held strategies—that they feel lost, like the proverbial deer in headlights. But for those leaders who are willing to adapt and change with the times, new levels of productivity await them.

5 trends that today's business leaders should pay attention to:

As President and Founder of Simon Associates Management Consultants, I have been working as an Innovation Games® consultant with numerous healthcare providers, helping them become more creative and innovative. Inevitably, I am often asked to make this often-arduous change journey easier to implement. 

The constant challenge in any change process is to make the undesirable desirable. That means business people have to have a good deal of help, not just hope, to find new ideas and convert them into effective innovations. Furthermore, these cannot be occasional events. They have to become part of the way people do things in an organization. 

Here are the 10 things you need to do to build a culture of innovation in your organization—whether it is a healthcare institution or not. To learn more, please click here for our website.

How do you receive new ideas? Leaders know that ideas are crucial for innovation and improvement, but ideas don’t just magically appear. They live right now in the minds of your employees. Wonder why you don’t hear more of them? Maybe you are doing something that kills your staff's ideas before they can be explored or even verbalized.

Why do we often not see what is right in front us? Recently I've been working with several clients that could grow by leaps and bounds if only they could "see" the business opportunities that are right before them. All they need to do is open their eyes, open their minds, and re-define the way they and their people think about what they could offer consumers that they're not offering right now.

As a Guest Blogger for Simon Associates Management Consultants, I recently wrote about my experiences as an Enneagram Type 8, then found myself struggling with writing a second, follow-up blog. I finally realized that what I was experiencing was not typical writer’s block but the result of my Type 8’s natural defense mechanism: denial.

What is a defense mechanism? 

A defense mechanism is a protective, psychological strategy whose function is to keep us within our own comfort zones. It is primarily triggered in uncomfortable or difficult situations in an attempt to reduce our anxiety or uncomfortable feelings.

The purpose of a defense mechanism is to maintain our self-image, and each Enneagram Type has a different one. In my case, my defense mechanism keeps alive my self-image of “I am strong and not weak.” Typically, our defense mechanisms operate automatically and unconsciously. Unless we are in observer mode, we aren't aware of when they are active.

One of the many things that I love about being a CEO Coach with Vistage International is the challenge. I challenge my members to be better and they challenge me right back!

I was only 26 and excited about my new role as Controller. As a first-time manager, I was driven by a desire to be a leader who both listened to, and acted on, my employees’ problems. In fact, I encouraged everyone to bring me their unsolved problems. One after another, I resolved them and felt like I had nailed this management thing. “What was so hard about being a boss?” I wondered.

We are pleased to feature the following blog by our Guest Blogger Cheryl McMillan, a Vistage Master Chair who specializes in helping business leaders change. We thought you would find it of particular interest because its message is perfectly in sync with what Simon Associates is all about: helping companies and their leadership change and adapt to today's shifting business environment.

Using Blue Ocean Strategy®, Innovation Games®, the OCAI culture assessment tool and a variety of workshops and presentations, we apply our anthropological approach to companies who want or need to change, to great results. (Read our Stories2Share.) Similarly, Cheryl writes about helping business leaders change using The Enneagram. Enjoy!

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I believe that the health of any company is directly related to the health of its leadership. Therefore, my primary strategy as a Vistage Chair is to help my members learn and grow so that they can become better leaders.

The Enneagram: An effective business tool for transforming relationships and enabling personal growth

When I became a Vistage Chair, I wanted to supplement my business background with a certification in a personality or behavioral assessment system. I looked at the most well-known ones, such as Myers-Briggs and DISC. None gave me insight into the motivation that drives an individual’s behavior. After researching “The Enneagram,” I found it was a great fit and, in 2009, I became a Certified Teacher.

Anais Nin said, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

This is a great summary of The Enneagram, which is one of the world’s oldest known personality systems. It recognizes and describes nine distinct and fundamentally different viewpoints, called “Type” in Enneagram lingo. Each Type has a distinct pattern of thinking, feeling and acting.

The power of The Enneagram comes from:

1) identifying the core motivation or belief about what each of us need in life to survive and be happy, and

2) identifying the perceptual filters that shape our perception of the world.

Once we discover our own filters and triggers, we can make new choices based on self-awareness

Each Enneagram type also has a blind spot, which is one focus of our self-development efforts. Studying The Enneagram also helps us to understand and have empathy for others.

To learn more, please check out the following books and websites:

Books:

The Enneagram: Understanding Yourself and the Others In Your Life, by Helen Palmer

Websites:

www.enneagram.com: A portal into the accumulated wisdom collected by Helen Palmer who has been working with The Enneagram system over thirty years. Unique to Helen’s understanding is the integration of psychology and spirituality from the perspective of the Inner Observer, also known as “witnessing consciousness."

www.enneagramworldwide.com: The website of The Enneagram Studies in the Narrative Tradition Professional Training Program, which contains more detail about the individual Types. Helen Palmer and Dr. David Daniels, world-renowned authors and Enneagram teachers, founded the training program in 1988 to certify individuals.

TheEnneagramInBusiness.com: The website of Ginger Lapid-Bogda, providing specific information for using The Enneagram in business.

The World Health Organization declared the 2014 outbreak of Ebola in Africa an extraordinary event. Experts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cite crisis communication as critical in stemming the outbreak. The Health Communication Capacity Collaborative's Health COMpass has made social and behavior change communication materials publicly available.