Emotionally mature people enhance performance and are happier too!

The Enneagram is different to other personality profiling tools in that it shines a light on our underlying motivations that shape our behaviours and how we show up in the world. Because of this focus it provides a far deeper understanding of ourselves and others.

Although many profiling tools use psychology, the Enneagram is based on a complete and comprehensive theory of personality. Most of this was developed by an American-trained Chilean psychiatrist, Claudio Naranjo, based primarily on the work of Oscar Ichazo in Chile. Naranjo subsequently brought his theory to the USA in the early 70s, and later published two books directly conveying his interpretation of Ichazo’s material and integrating it with western psychology.

This theory of personality gives the Enneagram a far greater level of sophistication and depth than most psychometric tools. It is also why people find it so accurate and insightful. Although the Enneagram has an enormous amount of depth and complexity to it, one of Naranjo’s significant contributions was to simplify this complex theory in a way that made it accessible to all. One of the Enneagram’s strengths is that it can be grasped and applied very quickly by anyone, regardless of their background or education level while it can take years to understand in full depth.

The Enneagram describes personality types in terms of conscious patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving along with the unconscious “shadow” aspects. Growing up, we often learn to disown aspects of ourselves we think of as ‘bad’ and eventually become unaware of them. These attributes become what is referred to as our ‘shadow’ and represent everything we cannot see about ourselves but nevertheless show up in how we behave with others.

If we can become aware of these ‘shadow’ attributes, and re-own them, we have the potential to grow and develop. As Beatrice Chestnut says, “this makes it an excellent tool for the hardest part of conscious work – realising, owning and accepting our blind spots.” This approach is quite different from other approaches which often focus on what we need to do ‘more of’ or ‘less of’.  Within the Enneagram framework, growth is not about being more or less of something, but occurs when we fully accept all of who we are and stop trying to be someone we are not.

The Enneagram’s fundamental philosophy is that all nine types are equal. In this way the Enneagram increases acceptance of self and others, as we come to see all nine Enneagram types as “equally beautiful and problematic”. The process of acknowledging and re-owning our ‘shadow’ helps us move towards greater acceptance of ourselves ‘warts and all’, and therefore others as well. Rather than promoting one type over another as more desirable, it encourages us to see the unique strengths that each type brings, as well as the shadow of each type. This becomes invaluable when working together in teams, as it allows us to see the strengths of each Enneagram type or subtype, and harness these strengths for the benefit of the team as a whole.