Leading change to help your school and community adopt Career Connected Learning strategies – particularly in the midst of a global pandemic and all the confusing implications for education – requires the best leadership tools you can deploy. In my leadership experience, a crucial skill is being able to understand and value the differences in temperaments and perspectives among your team members, as well as those of other community partners that are working with you. In our team at NC3T, we have strong shared values, but we also have a very diverse mix of strengths and ways we approach the world. Over time, I have learned to leverage our team members’ unique skills and perspectives and that simply makes us a more effective organization. The tool I’m sharing today has been invaluable to me helping grow my leadership and strengthen my most important relationships, both personal and professional.

That’s why I’m running this encore blog post this week about the Enneagram personality model.   Take a look and add it to your leadership toolkit!

ENCORE BLOG POST FROM August 2019

I’ve talked recently about the Holland Code Career Personality Model and how useful it is for helping children, youth and adults start to identify their strengths and aptitudes, and to match those innate capacities with career options.

There is another personality model I’ve discovered and applied over the past year that has helped me enormously in my personal growth and relationships, both as a spouse and as a parent. It’s called the “Enneagram.”

The Enneagram is an ancient personality typing system with an uncanny accuracy in describing how human beings are wired. It shows how we’re wired and how we operate when we’re in a healthy, balanced, self-aware state; it also helps identify our go-to coping strategies we adopt when we’re living in an unhealthy state.

I would highly recommend that anyone who wants to grow in self-awareness and in understanding of others get to know the Enneagram model. I’ll share some resources for that at the end of this post.

The Nine Enneagram Type Descriptions (provided by the Enneagram Institute)

Type 1. THE REFORMER

The Rational, Idealistic Type: Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic

Type 2. THE HELPER

The Caring, Interpersonal Type: Demonstrative, Generous, People-Pleasing, and Possessive

Type 3. THE ACHIEVER

The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type: Adaptive, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious

Type 4. THE INDIVIDUALIST

The Sensitive, Withdrawn Type: Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental

Type 5. THE INVESTIGATOR

The Intense, Cerebral Type: Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated

Type 6. THE LOYALIST

The Committed, Security-Oriented Type: Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious

Type 7. THE ENTHUSIAST

The Busy, Fun-Loving Type: Spontaneous, Versatile, Distractible, and Scattered

Type 8. THE CHALLENGER

The Powerful, Dominating Type: Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational

Type 9. THE PEACEMAKER

The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type: Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent

 

For what it’s worth, after some exploration and discussion with others, I concluded that I am mostly likely a Type 1 – the Reformer. This type affirms many of my strengths, and also helped me discover why, when I’m in a stressed mode, I take on some negative coping strategies like being overly-critical and perfectionistic, which foster disappointment and anger with others.

Most importantly, I’ve learned there is no “right” or “wrong” type; because we each have a type, we tend to view the world and other people from the lens of our particular type. I’ve discovered that every other person operates in a way that seems completely natural to them, because it is, even when we have the same basic values and beliefs. This insight, which seems like “duh,” has really opened up my world to healthier, happier relationships.

I hope understanding the Enneagram can do the same for you!

Resources:

I highly recommend the book The Road Back to You, An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery, by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile, InterVarsity Press. It places the Enneagram in a Christian/spiritual context, which was helpful to me.

Morgan Cron also offers a regular podcast on the topic called Typology, which you can find through all the major podcast feeds.

The Enneagram Institute is another important resource. The Institute offers lots of detailed information on the type descriptors: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions

There is also a self-assessment from the Enneagram Institute that you can take. A big caveat; however, I took the assessment and for whatever reason, my scores rated me about equal among three different personality types. It was only after some meaningful reflection and discussions with my wife, daughter and friends that I came to a conclusion about my basic personality type. I think its most valuable to grapple with the model rather than only depend on the findings from an assessment. Still, you may find the assessment helpful as part of our discovery process. You can find one at: https://tests.enneagraminstitute.com/

Ian Cron’s organization also offers an Enneagram assessment, but I haven’t taken this one. You can find it at: https://ianmorgancron.com/assessment

Another acclaimed recommended book is The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types, by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson.

 

Hans Meeder is President of NC3T, the National Center for College and Career Transitions (www.nc3t.com). NC3T provides planning, coaching, technical assistance and tools to help community-based leadership teams plan and implement their college-career pathway systems and strengthen employer connections with education.