The Enneagram and Business

Use of personality assessments are helpful tools in the workplace. They are regularly used by recruiters, hiring managers and human resource departments and include The Caliper Profile, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The Enneagram is likely one of the most mature assessments, providing cursory psychological information to a casual student and becoming a powerful symbol of unity and diversity, change and transformation to ongoing students.

Even in its most cursory use, the Enneagram may have superior positive impact on self-acceptance, self-development, and understanding of others.

The Enneagram might best be described as a model for human consciousness with nine points describing the predominating aspect of any particular human personality. According to teaching on the Enneagram, every personality has one particular point that most accurately describes it. The nine points as described by the Enneagram Institute are:

• The Reformer
• The Helper
• The Achiever
• The Individualist
• The Investigator
• The Loyalist
• The Enthusiast
• The Challenger
• The Peacemaker

The Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI) is likely the most widely used self-administered test. Short versions of this are readily available online for those who are curious about their enneagram type. Psychology or spiritual professionals trained in accurate use of the Enneagram are most often the best way to learn about your type in depth.

The primary cautionary with any personality assessment is that it describes a personality and not who we are. You might consider a personality like a suit of clothes we wear. They are requirements for daily living, providing protection, expression of our tastes and preferences. But we are not our clothes. An Enneagram type is a default propensity for our response to the world around us, but it is not who we are at our core.

In reality, we all partake of all the energies embodied by all nine types under various conditions. The more you know about your type, the better you become at being a non-biased observer of yourself and others. While determining someone else’s type is really the purview of the other, you might make educated guesses. At best, you can recognize the energy of “The Investigator,” for example on display in the other and respond accordingly.

The Enneagram has a close relationship as a tool to the Mindfulness meditation movement that has become a widely used business, education and spiritual technology. Mindfulness encourages conscious awareness and observation of thought, behavior and response. Releasing judgment of the content of our awareness is a key component of Mindfulness. So too with the Enneagram. Even those things we might typically regard as “negative” personality traits are seen with an objective eye and lack of judgment. Noticing what repels us and what attracts us are useful ways to promote awareness. Non-judgment provides more spaciousness to make a conscious choice about response.

It is easy to see how the Enneagram can readily be used to connect in a more meaningful way with co-workers, clients and suppliers. Nonjudgmental observation in ones self encourages the same response toward others. Differences of opinions are not seen as threats, but as valuable alternatives providing a wider spectrum of thought.

In the immortal words of Lao Tzu, founder of philosophical Taoism, “He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.”