What is the Enneagram?

What is the Enneagram?

The Enneagram is primarily an excellent tool for personal growth, the understanding of fellow human beings, communication, and cooperation.

The Enneagram is a dynamic personality system, describing nine fundamentally different behavioural patterns people follow when they think, feel, and act. It describes how one thing might motivate one type, but demotivates another. Each of the nine patterns are based on a particular perceptual filter. This filter determines what you notice, and how you invest your energy. At the core of each pattern lies a fundamental assertion, or belief, as to what is needed to survive and feel good.

The word Enneagram is derived from the Greek “Ennea”, meaning “nine”, and the suffix “-gram” meaning “figure”. In other words, the Enneagram is a nine-pointed geometric , originally introduced to the West in the 1910s and ‘20s by George Ivanovich Gurdjieff.

What is in it for you?

When you have discovered your personality type in the Enneagram, you will achieve insight into how you change your life in a positive direction – by consciously altering your communication and behaviour.

The Enneagram aids by altering the way you relate to yourself and others. The Enneagram gives you more insight into the circumstances and challenges you face – in particular in your relations with other people (colleagues, customers, leaders, family, children etc.).

The Enneagram and your relations

When we communicate, our communication is distorted by our personality type. Likewise, how our communication is perceived, is distorted by the personality type of the person we are communicating with. The more you know yourself and your personality type, the better you are at filtering out those distortions. Moreover, the better you know the personality types (and their particular distortions), the better you will be at communicating with the different types without being misconstrued.

To a team, a department, or a company, learning about personality types makes it possible to resolve existing conflicts and communication difficulties. The result is a focus on optimising the cooperation and greater tolerance, with a good work environment and faster and less rigid solving of tasks as end result.

When we learn to look at ourselves without ‘filters’ – without being judgemental or take offense – but, simply by viewing the personality’s mechanism at play, we can ‘wake-up’, accept ourselves and live to our fullest potential – A huge asset to the company who wants ‘flow’ in its business processes.