What Exactly Is the Enneagram?

You’ve probably encountered numerous personality tests throughout your career: Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, DISC, to name a few. While these tools can provide valuable insights into behaviors and preferences, the Enneagram goes deeper. It focuses on the underlying motivations, fears, and desires that drive our actions.

The Enneagram is an ancient system, refined and adapted for modern psychological use. It classifies personalities into nine distinct types, each characterized by a core motivation, worldview, and emotional pattern.

Here’s a quick overview of the nine Enneagram types:

1. The Reformer: Principled, purposeful, self-controlled, perfectionistic.

    

2. The Helper: Generous, demonstrative, people-pleasing, possessive.

    

3. The Achiever: Adaptable, success-oriented, driven, image-conscious.

    

4. The Individualist: Expressive, dramatic, self-aware, sensitive.

    

5. The Investigator: Perceptive, innovative, secretive, isolated.

    

6. The Loyalist: Responsible, anxious, committed, security-oriented.

    

7. The Enthusiast: Spontaneous, versatile, distractible, fun-loving.

    

8. The Challenger: Self-confident, decisive, willful, confrontational.

    

9. The Peacemaker: Easygoing, receptive, agreeable, complacent.

    

Unlike other assessments that simply tell you what you do, the Enneagram helps you understand why you do it—unlocking self-awareness, empathy, and a pathway to deeper connection with others.

Ali’s own story beautifully illustrates how the Enneagram can guide personal and professional transformation. As a Type 7 (The Enthusiast), Ali is naturally adventurous, energetic, and driven by excitement and possibilities. However, she explained during our conversation how discovering her Enneagram type wasn’t just about labeling her personality—it was about deeply understanding what motivated her and how she could use that knowledge to foster healthier relationships and more intentional career choices.

For Ali, knowing her type helped her recognize her tendencies toward distraction or avoidance when faced with difficult emotions or tasks. Armed with this knowledge, she began implementing strategies to maintain focus, increase self-awareness, and intentionally engage more deeply with clients and colleagues.

The Enneagram also helped Ali enhance her leadership by clarifying her strengths—energy, positivity, and innovation—and addressing her growth areas, like managing discomfort with conflict or difficult emotions.

Why Leaders Need the Enneagram

In leadership, understanding your motivation—and equally, the motivations of your team—is essential. It can mean the difference between thriving, engaged teams and disengaged, frustrated individuals.

According to Ali, the Enneagram is particularly effective for leaders because it provides actionable insights into how different team members think, feel, and operate. For example, a Type 2 (Helper) thrives when they feel appreciated and connected, while a Type 5 (Investigator) needs independence and quiet space to reflect.

By understanding these differences, leaders can tailor their approaches, enhance communication, and prevent conflicts before they escalate. Ali shared several powerful examples from her work, such as a senior leader in a media agency who leveraged the Enneagram to avoid burnout and create a more sustainable leadership style.

The Enneagram also fosters psychological safety and trust—two pillars of high-performing teams—by encouraging transparency, empathy, and authenticity.

Actionable Steps: Integrating the Enneagram into Your Leadership

Ready to use the Enneagram to enhance your leadership and personal growth? Here are several practical steps, directly inspired by my conversation with Ali, to get started immediately:

Step 1: Identify Your Enneagram Type

Understanding your own type is the essential first step. You can do this by taking a credible Enneagram assessment (like the IEQ9), reading Enneagram literature, or working directly with a coach like Ali. Knowing your type helps you uncover your core motivations, triggers, and strengths, providing invaluable insight into your leadership style.

Step 2: Explore and Understand Other Types

Invest in learning about all nine types. Understanding the motivations of your team members and peers allows you to connect with them on a deeper level. Ali emphasizes the importance of “treating people how they want to be treated,” which is often very different from how you yourself might want to be treated.

Step 3: Encourage Team-Wide Enneagram Education

Consider bringing the Enneagram into your team or organization. Workshops or group assessments foster shared language and mutual understanding, enabling team members to relate more effectively, navigate conflicts constructively, and collaborate seamlessly.

Step 4: Practice Empathy and Curiosity

Use your newfound insights to foster deeper empathy and curiosity. Ask thoughtful questions about your colleagues’ perspectives and motivations. When conflicts arise, use the Enneagram to understand why someone may be responding in a particular way, helping you to approach resolution constructively rather than defensively.

Step 5: Commit to Personal and Professional Growth

Finally, leverage the Enneagram not as a one-time exercise, but as a continuous framework for growth. Regularly revisit your type’s core motivations, strengths, and blind spots. Set intentional goals for improvement, like becoming more comfortable with challenging conversations, delegating more effectively, or recognizing when you need to recharge.