Letter from the IEA President, Curt Micka                                                                                                                                                March, 2017

Someone commented to me recently that we need each other. That all of us need one another… teachers, colleagues, friends… we’re all in this together.

And right now, the Board needs to hear from you. As a Board, we have ideas of what the IEA can become and how it can be of service, but it’s not something that we can do without knowing what you want and need from the IEA.

Soon we will send a survey to IEA members, former members, and members of IEA Affiliates and Chapters who have never been members of the IEA. When you receive the survey, please respond. Your voice is important.

And in addition, let me know how you’re relating (or not) to the IEA and what we can do differently to improve our engagement with you as we build and strengthen our community.

Indeed, the Board has adopted two priorities:

• First, Engagement. We (the Board) need and want to do a better job of communicating, collaborating, and exploring with you. I’ve mentioned the survey that will be forthcoming. And I’ve also encouraged Board members to talk with those in their networks about your relationship with the IEA. What works for you? What doesn’t? The Board has worked to develop a visual brand, but I’m all too aware that the IEA is lacking an emotional brand. When I talk with some people, their impression of the IEA is that it’s an amorphous entity that perhaps exists solely to maintain itself.

If this impression is to change, we know some things that we need to do differently.

• We need to enhance member benefits.
• We need to become a forum for discussion about topics of interest and difference within our Enneagram community.
• We need to become a resource for Enneagram practitioners to help improve the quality of how they present and share the Enneagram.
• We need to be more transparent.
• We need to dare a bit more.

The Board’s second priority is Innovation.

• We have plans to reinvent Nine Points to make it more user friendly and dynamic.
• We will work to expand our Community and extend our reach to people working in other traditions involving mindfulness, self-awareness, presence, and find common ground for enhancing the work that we and they do.
• We will work to generate an increasingly more dynamic IEA Global Conference. This year we’ll have Kelly Kingman capturing the essence of certain presentations using real time visual white boarding.
• Next year we will explore the possibility of using Open Space Conferencing.
• Above all, we would like our Conferences to continue providing forums for discussion and dialogue about areas of the Enneagram where teachers have different perspectives. Honest, real, and sometimes uncomfortable discussions.

Both priorities will take time, energy, commitment, and adherence.

And that’s fine. But we are 12 Board members plus our wonderful administrator, Sandy Hatmaker. The reality is that we can’t do everything ourselves. As I’ve said, the first thing we need is to hear from you. We need your ideas, your thoughts, your wish-list for the IEA. Collectively our combined wisdom can take us places we might not be able to imagine.

So talk with us. Share your ideas and perspective. Tell us what you want the IEA to be that it’s not.

Thank you.

Curt Micka

President IEA Board of Directors

president@internationalenneagram.org

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 IEA Mission

IEA’s mission is to support our members by providing opportunities for:

• Engagement with an international community of shared interests and diverse approaches
• Education in theory and application of the Enneagram
• Developing greater excellence in the use of the Enneagram