The Enneagram

The Enneagram seems to be everywhere. Books. Podcasts, Workshops, Online Courses. So, why haven’t you heard about it yet you ask? Well, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of the Enneagram! This is a fun journey of self-discovery; it’s also humbling and growing in the very best way.

Discover one of the most powerful tools in the coaching environment! The Enneagram framework is uniquely positioned to support individuals in understanding their deepest levels of intrinsic motivation, conflicts, anxieties and self-limiting beliefs, which create awareness and potential for accelerated, integrative and sustainable development.

The Enneagram is not a superficial framework that provides quick and short-lived insight. Your Ennea number is not meant to box you in, but rather free you to be your actual self. The depth and layered approach to the Enneagram enables the client to develop over time, guided by a deep coaching process that supports application, rapid results, and deep self-awareness. Clients find that Enneagram insights continue to resonate with them long after the initial journey, as they change and their circumstances change.

It is, in essence, a helpful tool in understanding ourselves, and others. In the past few years the Enneagram has taught me how to better relate to friends, family, and myself.

From one point of view, the Enneagram can be seen as a set of nine distinct personality types, with each number on the Enneagram denoting one type. It is common to find a little of yourself in all nine of the types, although one of them should stand out as being closest to yourself. This is your basic personality type.

Everyone emerges from childhood with one of the nine types dominating their personality, with inborn temperament and other prenatal factors being the main determinants of our type. This is one area where most all of the major Enneagram authors agree—we are born with a dominant type. Subsequently, this inborn orientation largely determines the ways in which we learn to adapt to our early childhood environment. By the time children are four or five years old, their consciousness has developed sufficiently to have a separate sense of self. Although their identity is still very fluid, at this age children begin to establish themselves and find ways of fitting into the world on their own.

The Enneagram opens up avenues for coaching at a team and organizational level; it also adds value to engagement, change management, organizational culture, team development and organizational coherence. The Enneagram enables work with “self as instrument” for leaders and employees, and can be applied at all levels of the organization, from frontline staff levels to executive leadership teams.