The Enneagram at Work
Strengths, blind spots, and what your coworkers are noticing before you do.
Most personality assessments hand you a label and send you on your way.
You take the quiz, share the results in a team meeting, file it away somewhere between your coffee order and your astrological sign. Nothing changes. The same conflicts play out. The same blindspots run the show.
The Enneagram doesn’t do that. It shows you the box you’ve been living in your whole life. And then it hands you the key. (Take your free quiz here)
Let me set a work scene that may seem familiar:
An Enneagram 8 leader ends the meeting early with a unilateral decision because a decision needed to be made and nobody was making it. The Enneagram 2 leader stays behind to make sure everyone feels seen for their contribution.
The 8 (Controller) thinks the 2 (Helper) confuses being valued with being effective. The 2 thinks the 8 doesn’t notice the people doing the work. They’re both building the same business yet speaking completely different languages.
Nobody’s wrong. Nobody’s difficult. They just have different motivations driving every decision, every reaction, every moment of friction.
That’s what the Enneagram actually measures. Not personality. Motivation. Why you do the things you do.
Imagine fully understanding yourself, your team and your family members with just one tool? It’s that easy.
Unfamiliar with the types? You’ve probably worked with all nine. Or maybe you see yourself here?
Type 1 The Perfectionist: The one who fixes the typo in the final draft at 11pm. Not because they’re controlling. Because standards matter. And so does alignment.
Type 2 The Helper: The one who remembers your coffee order, works overtime and hasn’t taken a real lunch break in three weeks.
Type 3 The Achiever: The one with trophies on their desk and already planning their next move before this one closes.
Type 4 The Creative: The one who brings the most original idea in the room and feels it so deeply when it gets glossed over. Sigh.
Type 5 The Specialist: The one who says the least, means every word, is calm in a crisis and has already read everything you haven’t.
Type 6 The Loyalist: The one with the low level anxiety who asked the question nobody wanted to ask and turned out to be right.
Type 7 The Enthusiast: The one with all the optimism and vision, has twelve tabs open and says yes to every invite.
Type 8 The Controller: The one who says what everyone else is thinking and somehow gets blamed for the tension they didn’t create.
Type 9 The Peacemaker: The one holding the whole team together while quietly wondering if anyone notices.
No type is better than the other. They all have their strengths, challenges and blind spots.
The Enneagram makes your life easier.
helps you depersonalize conflict, flex your communication style, and stop leading from a place of fear or stress.
That feedback that stung? Probably not about you. How you react to it is what matters. Your type tells you why you reacted that way in the first place.
All the strategy in the world means nothing if you don’t have the self-awareness to back it up. How well do you actually know your blind spots? The goal of the Enneagram is to never put you in a box. It is to show you the one you’re already in, so you can actually choose what to do next.
That’s not a label. That’s freedom. And coming from an Enneagram 7, that says a lot.
Signs and symptoms that you may need a coach (me) or the Enneagram in your life:
Someone asks what you need and you go completely blank.
Your therapist has suggested the same thing three sessions in a row and you keep saying "interesting”.
Bad things keep happening but you swear you aren’t the problem.
You can’t go to a restaurant without reading 50 Google reviews first.
You've read every self-help book and still can't figure out why you keep doing that thing.
People describe you as spirited and you can’t tell if it’s an insult.
You sleep at your office instead of in your bed.
You say yes when you mean no.
You haven’t verbalized your opinion at a meeting in 2 months.
You rewrite the same email fifteen times because you can't figure out if you sound too aggressive or too passive and then you don’t send it anyway.
Time to make a change? You don’t need to do it alone.
How do I find out my Enneagram type?
Take this FREE quiz. (Created by moi)
Get your personalized guide here.
Book a 1:1 session here or discovery call here.
Team building with the Enneagram
This week’s challenge:
Examine your boundaries. Make a list of where your boundaries are firm and which ones need more structure. It is not your job to make other people comfortable. Permission to say no!
See you next week,
Ali
This is great and important. The important work starts after you know your type. Thanks.