Enneagram
Discover your personality and life's texture through the nine types.
The Enneagram is a personality system that sorts people into nine types. Pick your type to explore your personality, strengths, love, work, and growth points, and gain a clue to understanding yourself more deeply. The figure of nine types set on a circle and joined by lines was introduced by Gurdjieff early in the twentieth century, and it was joined to personality types in the 1970s through Ichazo and Naranjo. Each type has neighbouring wings, and is held to move towards a different type in ease and under stress. Where MBTI asks what you do, the Enneagram asks why you do it that way.
How it works
Choose your type among the nine. The Enneagram sorts people less by the behavior on the surface than by the inner motivation driving it.
What you'll get
You get a one-line summary for your type, its natural temperament and strengths, love, work and aptitude, health and wellbeing, the direction of growth, and this year's flow. What you fear shapes how you hold money, so the grain for money is given type by type as well.
There is a reason the types go by number
The Enneagram calls its types by number, as type one or type two. Names such as the reformer or the helper are used alongside them, but the number comes first because the moment a name is attached the type narrows to the meaning of that word. Read only the name helper and you picture someone good at looking after others, whereas what actually sits at the centre of type two is wanting to locate oneself within a relationship of giving and receiving.
Why your own type is hard to pick
Read the descriptions and several types all look like you. That is mostly because people pick the self they would like to be rather than the self they are. Choosing by what you fear most when you are worn down and cornered, rather than by how you are when things go well, pins it down far more reliably. Whether the fear is of being disregarded, of becoming useless, or of losing control is the clue that separates the types.
Where you move when at ease and when pressed
The Enneagram draws its nine types on a figure joined by lines, and along those lines a type is held to take on the look of another when at ease and again when under strain. If there are moments when you seem unlike yourself, that direction is what is being described. This page covers only the main line of each of the nine types and does not carry those movements, so if a description misses in one particular place, that may be the reason.
When your type seems to have changed
The Enneagram holds that the type you are born with does not change. What does change is how it shows on the surface, as years pass and experience accumulates. If a description that once fit no longer does, the type may not have changed so much as grown. In that case, comparing the passages about the habits that surface when you are worn down, rather than the passages about strengths, tends to settle the question.
Do not assign a type to someone else
What the Enneagram looks at is motive rather than behaviour, and motive is not visible from outside. Two people doing the same thing may be doing it for entirely different reasons, so fixing a number on someone from what you observe usually misses. Respect the type a person has chosen for themselves, and keep this reading for the work of explaining yourself, where the motive is one you can actually check.
Frequently Asked Questions
What if I do not know my type?
Read the nine descriptions and choose the one whose motivation — not behavior — sounds most like you. This page has no test questions.
How is it different from MBTI?
MBTI looks at preferences in how you perceive and decide, while the Enneagram looks at the inner motivation and fear that move you.
What is a wing?
It means the influence you take from the numbers on either side of your type. A Four, for instance, often carries some of the grain of Three or Five. If you want the wing too, reading the descriptions of the two neighbouring numbers alongside yours gives you the rough shape of it.
Is any type better than another?
No. The nine are not ranked; they differ in what moves a person. Each type is written with both the strength it shows at its best and the habit it falls into when worn down.