The Enneagram is a powerful and nuanced tool for self-awareness and transformation. Combining ancient spiritual wisdom and modern psychology, the Enneagram provides a map of our automatic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Understanding the map of our own core type results in greater self-awareness and provides insights that can lead to personal growth and transformation. The Enneagram also helps us understand and have greater compassion for others, and provides insight into how to relate more effectively.
The combination of its impact on self-awareness and relational effectiveness makes the Enneagram a key tool for leadership development. Leaders and teams that learn and integrate core Enneagram principles raise their E.Q. (emotional intelligence), which results in more effective communication, collaboration, and innovation.
Each type has a particular set of underlying beliefs and a strategy for getting needs met that is developed early in life. Each has its strengths and blind spots. Learning to recognize these different points of view enables us to understand our own and other people’s motivations, their major needs and concerns, and styles of working and relating. It helps us to build rapport, reduce unnecessary conflict, and cooperate with higher levels of effectiveness.
People are of course more than their personality. Each person has an essential, core self that is unique. Our intention in applying the Enneagram isn’t to put ourselves in boxes, but rather to enable us to get out of the box of our already established personality. When applied with wisdom and care, the Enneagram allows us to become more flexible and creative, rather than stuck in habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
In the decade plus we’ve taught Enneagram to thousands of leaders and teams, we’ve seen a dramatic rise in its authority and popularity in the organizational world and beyond. We attribute the adoption rates to the accuracy and depth of The Enneagram. When wisely applied, the Enneagram becomes integral to the cultural fabric of organizations and key to the positive cultural shifts that organizations experience.
There is accompanying research with this rising trend. Early studies to test scientific validity are positive. With the accompanying expansion of organizational development, more research is sure to follow.
The challenge of using the model is that there are no written Enneagram tests that can be trusted to accurately determine your type. Based on test results alone, it’s extremely easy to mistype yourself or others. For years, CLG has been on a quest to find the most accurate typing assessment tool possible. We have chosen to partner with The Enneagram Group, led by Debbie Burditt, who is one of the world’s top typing experts. Debbie spent over a decade refining her assessment process after typing thousands of leaders around the world.
If you’re working with a budget, you can take the Burditt Enneagram Online Test. This can be a good starting point for exploring the Enneagram, but keep in mind that until you work with an expert, it will be difficult to determine your type with a high degree of accuracy.
Discovering your Enneagram type is a great start to learning and growing with your personality patterns. A CLG coach will support you to deepen your insight and create sustainable change as you explore how your type influences how you live and lead.
Getting your team typed and trained as a group can be a collaboration game changer. Knowing your own types and the types of your team members deepens connection, empathy, collaboration, productivity, and often, fun(!).
We offer Enneagram typing and training for YPO Forums and Chapters. Knowing your Forum-mates’ types can deepen connection and empathy, and support you to notice and address Enneagram patterns and blind spots that keep each of you from creating what you most want.
“I've leveraged the power of Enneagram awareness in multiple companies since being introduced to the tool by Diana almost a decade ago. In each instance, the way we engaged with one another became deeper, richer and more efficient. But most importantly, we became more compassionate and empathetic; we became closer as human beings.”
Mark Anderegg, Co-Founder, Newbury Franklin