The Universal Growth Process (UGP) is a practical and powerful model made up of four main components: awareness, acceptance, action and adherence. I stumbled across this model in my exploration of the Enneagram, a system of self-discovery that dates back to the ancient Greeks. (I remember getting a talking to by an Enneagram aficionado for referring to it as a .tool — Sorry, I’m a utilitarian!)
If you’re interested in finding out more about the Enneagram and how it can help you on your path of professional development, I would recommend visiting the web site of Helen Palmer and checking out David Daniel’s book, “The Essential Enneagram.”
The more I learned about the UGP, the more it became apparent that I’d been using it all along with my clients. Coaching naturally follows these steps.
- Awareness: getting clear on where you are, where you want to be. That is just the beginning. Assessments then create a view of who you are from the outside in.
- Acceptance: owning where you are and who you are. This step can be a challenge for professionals who have run their own show for a long time.
- Action: taking the next step based upon the knowledge you have gained. Moving forward is typically intuitive for leaders, but conscious action is another thing all together.
- Adherence: sticking to the changes that you have initiated. Making change stick is all but impossible without a process to support the shift.
In the next few days, I’ll break down each step in the UGP and give some examples of how it works.