Enneagram in the workplace

Essential to the success of any team is its ability to communicate, connect and understand one another. Using the Enneagram to understand how each member thinks and behaves differently can help teams and their leaders improve communication, increase emotional intelligence and develop conflict resolution skills—leading to better collaboration, more productivity and greater workplace happiness.

Building strong teams and leaders

Great teams need a shared language so they can talk about what they need and how they feel. The Enneagram can help your team develop that shared language and make them more comfortable recognizing the core differences between the types before centering themselves within a conflict. Establishing this understanding can help your team resolve conflicts more effectively by allowing them to see new perspectives before making judgements or assumptions.

[The Enneagram] stirs compassion to see through the eyes of others and to feel the pressure of their emotional life because when you take on others’ outlook, their perspective is right. - The Nine Points of View

With recognition of each other’s habits, motivations and behaviors, your team will start to see that diversity is a great thing. If you are missing certain Enneagram types, you might also be missing dimensions and skills that can benefit your team greatly.

As a leader, it is essential to create a safe space for your team to be honest and feel valued. Leaders often take for granted how important this is and may assume that there is trust in the workplace. But for many people, this trust is built through shared experiences and through their leaders’ investment and commitment to showing them that they matter.

The Enneagram can help you create this supportive space. Bettermeant’s workshops and facilitation are a great resource to start building that trust and safety across your team. We can help you and your team learn to communicate better and to appreciate diversity and the unique assets that each person brings to your work.

Your team’s growth mindset

A lot of personal growth is about awareness and acceptance of why you are how you are, but it’s also about awareness and acceptance of others. The Enneagram can help you recognize that people aren’t doing things to you but they are simply doing them in the way they know how. If you understand the Enneagram through its archetypes, you can see people’s behavior as part of their personality and bring more empathy in how you choose to respond to and communicate with them.

As you learn more about the core types, their wings and how they integrate and disintegrate during times of growth and stress, you will come to understand that people are dynamic and you can find where you have things in common with others and where you have tendencies to clash. This awareness brings connection and can encourage resolution to potentially tense situations. When you find common ground through the patterns and language of the Enneagram, it’s easier to take things less personally and to offer support to others.

Empathy and communication in teams

Practicing empathy allows us to understand and share the feelings of others. While it does not come naturally to everyone, a great way to build empathy is to develop an understanding that people are different from each other and not only is that okay, it’s a good thing. When you center your team around the positive differences amongst yourselves, there is less focus on who is right and wrong and instead on how the different perspectives can all serve you in some ways.

Focusing around diversity can help leaders and teams design more inclusive and valued teams with meaningful connections and authentic dialogue. In our workshops, we have helped teams make immediate, impactful changes by simply developing a common language to honor and discuss those differences. Our clients have expressed how much lighter they feel after realizing they could more easily understand their coworkers by talking to each other through the lens of the Enneagram. Their previous frustrations with the team were mostly about how they reacted to others’ different ways of operating and by learning to communicate and empathize within the context of their different personalities, they greatly improved their relationships.

Leading the individual

Being the best leader you can be means encouraging your team members to become their best selves rather than some version of you. Knowing and understanding their Enneagram type can help you create a meaningful development plan for their individual needs. As a leader, it’s your job to help them reach their better version instead of your better version and the Enneagram provides the tools and framework to help you offer the right kind of support.

Why we love the Enneagram

Personality typing systems have long been used in the workplace for self discovery and introspection. Most of these tools focus on categorizing people and keeping them there. At Bettermeant, we love the Enneagram because it is complex—just as we are. Instead of putting us in a box where we stay, it provides a framework for understanding our dimensions: how we change in health and stress; how and when we take on characteristics outside of our core type; how we overlap and contrast with other types; and why we act and react the way we do.

These complexities allow us to find a common space with each other. Whether it’s sharing a wing or integrating and disintegrating to another person’s type, the Enneagram encourages curiosity to learn about all nine types. Not only does it help us understand how others show up for us (and what causes resistance), we communicate and collaborate more effectively with others when we know what motivates and scares them. While the Enneagram does give each of us a type, it also offers a dynamic path to take on qualities of other types as we journey through our development and encourages us to move in the direction of growth.

Integrating the Enneagram with your team

Using the Enneagram with your team will open up incredible opportunities for growth as well as improved productivity and joy. Not only can it spark curiosity and compassion within your team, it can help provide your team leaders with the tools to develop personalized development plans and to coach your team in a meaningful way.

Reach out to work with us individually or book a group workshop to help your team become better at communicating and understanding each other. And if you’re simply interested in learning more, check out our previous posts on using the Enneagram for personal development and understanding the Enneagram or join our Bettermeant Circle to connect with our growing community.