4 | My Enneagram Origin Story
This unscripted episode is a raw reflection on why I use the Enneagram personality system as a coach. I was talking to a friend and realized that you might be interested in learning a little more about me, my personality style, and the work that I'm personally doing with the system. I share my hesitation with using personality tests at work and you even get to hear me coach myself at the end.
I share my personal experience with the Enneagram personality system. I discuss the ethical implications of using personality tests in the workplace and how the Enneagram system is different. I explain how understanding the Enneagram system has helped me to see people in a new light and how it can improve relationships. I emphasize that the Enneagram is not just about categorizing people into nine personality types, but it provides a specific pathway out of limiting beliefs and the box we trap ourselves in. Additionally, I offer a free PDF download and a test for those interested in learning more.
It is not an exaggeration to say that my life changed when I found the Enneagram and started using it for my own personal development 15 years ago. It helped me to come home to who I am and more clearly see the ways that I was conditioned as a woman in leadership growing up in an evangelical environment. Ultimately, understanding my Enneagram type helped me step into self-sufficiency and personal empowerment.
Episode Contents:
Why use the Enneagram [00:01:40]
Ethical implications of personality tests [00:02:56]
What is an Enneagram type [00:05:07]
Ego armor and protection [00:05:57]
How the Enneagram found me [00:06:55]
Understanding others using the Enneagram [00:08:47]
Benefits of the Enneagram [00:10:02]
Limitations of the Enneagram [00:12:09]
My Enneagram Type [00:13:06]
Embracing Who You Are [00:15:19]
How to trust yourself and step out of limiting beliefs [00:17:18]
Free Download: Finding Your Type [00:18:34]
Using Enneagram at Work [00:21:20]
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Transcript
(This transcript was generated with the help of AI - please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.)
This is episode three: Why I use the Enneagram personality system.
(00:00:51) - This episode is a little bit different than most of my episodes in that it's completely unscripted. I had a conversation with a friend that made me think about you and that a lot of the things that we were talking about you might also be interested in.
So I woke up the next morning with some thoughts on my heart and just hit record in a voice memo on my phone. And what we ended up with here is something a little bit more raw and intimate. You're gonna learn a lot about me and my personality style and some of the work that I'm doing personally using the Enneagram personality system. And you even get to hear me coach myself towards the end of the episode. Enjoy!
My hesitancy in using personality frameworks at work
(00:01:40) - I wanted to make a recording on why I use the Enneagram at all <laugh> and share a little bit about my personal experience with the Enneagram system, how I came to find it.
I think one of the reasons why I wanted to make this recording is because frankly, I feel a bit conflicted about using personality systems at work. Historically, personality tests have been used to perpetuate stereotypes and even been used to discriminate in the hiring process itself. Screening for certain traits that may indicate mental illness or lower socioeconomic status or even ethnicity, which can be implied by some of the questions and the way they're framed in personality tests. And I just want no part of that.
The Enneagram is Different
I do find, however, that the Enneagram personality system has been very different to work with and I will only use it professionally on a team that is committed to doing the self-awareness work and understands the ethical implications of gathering this data and starting to use it within the workplace.
(00:02:56) - I don't mean to freak you out or scare you away from doing this, not at all. Because when I found the Enneagram system, I feel like my life forever changed, right? It felt like this huge light bulb moment for me - and I literally think about my life before I found the Enneagram system and started using it to understand myself and the people around me and after, and that's not hyperbole. There are only a couple of other events in my life that I mark like before that point and after that point. And the Enneagram is definitely one of them. And that is because it really was the first major step that I took to get out of a victim mentality and giving away my authority. So it really was like me stepping into self-sufficiency as a person, my own empowerment - especially as a female growing up in an evangelical environment where I absorbed a lot of messages around the role of women and what my potentiality would be and what was wrong about me or sinful about me as a person.
(00:04:03) - See, growing up, I had always been appreciated for my attention to detail and that I was a strong leader and a workhorse. And that was continually validated at home, at work, and even in my first few jobs rewarded with promotions or extra pay. But really that was about extra work because as an Enneagram one, I know how to make things happen. I'm not afraid to roll up my sleeves and dig in and get into the dirty work. I will work long and hard. I am looking for that gold star because of my strong two wing and wanting to be helpful and just a general people-pleasing vibe <laugh> that I thought was really fulfilling.
But once I understood my personality type, I could see that that was a form of me (in Brene Brown's words) “hustling for worthiness” and being stuck in a constricted ego structure that was trying to keep me safe in my head.
(00:05:07) - The story I was telling myself is that this is what's needed to get ahead or this is what's valued, or the world needs me, they need me, you know, whatever or the potentiality of what could be and if I just put my head down and work hard enough, I'll be able to get there.
Now, Enneagram ones are not the only ones that feel this way at all, and that's part of the nuance of the Enneagram system, right? Other personality typing structures will categorize people based on behaviors often or maybe feeling states. But the truth is that why we think a certain way, why we behave a certain way, or why we feel what we feel can be the same, but the reasons why can be very different. And the Enneagram personality types are based on the motivation, the underlying motivation of why you do the things you do.
(00:05:57) - It's deeply rooted in psychological theories about humanness, personality development, adult development - why we are the way we are, and what forces of nature and nurture work together to form your sense of identity, your worldview, the things that you are drawn to naturally, the things that you avoid. All of these are determined in part by your early formative experiences and something inside of you that is this natural orientation to the world. So that's what an Enneagram type is to me.
An Enneagram type is a style of protection. There are nine flavors of that type of protection, the way we armor up when things don't feel safe. And it's based on the messages you received and how you see the world and the information you take in what you pay attention to. All of those things work together to reinforce a belief about how things are and what you need to do to protect yourself.
(00:06:55) - And once you can see that ego armor, you start to have a whole bunch of choices about is this - Is this serving me? Am I safe here? Can I try something else? Because the truth is, at some point in your life, your usual way of doing things stops working for you. Typically that happens in midlife.
And so when I started working with the Enneagram so many years ago, like let's think probably, oh my gosh, I feel old <laugh>.
MY STORY: HOW THE ENNEAGRAM FOUND ME
When I started working with the Engram, it was like 15, 16 years ago and there weren't a lot of young people doing this work. But the Enneagram found me at a mom's group where I had just, I was in the throes of postpartum depression and I had a kid with colic, an infant who (let's be real), had colic for like almost the first two years of her life, <laugh>.
(00:07:49) - And I was struggling with postpartum depression and just knew that I needed connection. And the thought of having someone take care of my baby for a couple of hours so that I could have a cup of coffee and talk to another mom was like, I don't know, comfort - it felt like rainbows and butterflies, honestly. But at one of these talks, my mentor, introduced us to the idea that there were nine different ways of being in the world. And that you can understand your way of being and how it is different than the other ways of being, especially for people that you are in a relationship with, like your spouse or your best friend or your in-laws. I think that was kind of the vibe that we were going off of. Like how do you improve your relationships using just the simple idea that there are nine different colors of rose-colored glasses?
(00:08:47) - Do you know what I mean? Nine different ways that people orient themselves to time and space and the environment that creates a different set of default ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
X-RAY VISION TO GET CLEAR
And as soon as I understood this, it literally felt like this woman gave me x-ray vision into people. I could instantly see why certain things were so important to my husband that I felt like he was bringing up continually just to annoy me. Do you know what I mean? Like, I could see how these were related to core fears that he had and needs that he was trying to express.
Or like with my mother-in-law, I felt like she was constantly criticizing me, but once I understood that she was in Enneagram six, I could see that this was related to her own underlying insecurity about the world and my kids, you know? And once I could see all of that, it depersonalized conflict, like I stopped making it mean something about me and almost instantly a level of irritation and frustration and insecurity melted away, it was magical.
(00:10:02) - I felt immediately this sense of clarity that turned into levity and lightness pretty quickly. It wasn't instant levity, like I'm not gonna lie to you. There was me going down the rabbit hole of the Enneagram types and having to learn and work with this information, but also confronting the ways that I contribute to the situation that I was blaming on other people, right?
So I think one of the most profound things about this tool is that it helps you not only understand yourself and your patterns and the ways that you might be holding yourself back, it helps you understand your own strengths and like really delineate between what's me and what's them.
WHERE WE RUN INTO TROUBLE
And that's related to the second thing that I really appreciate about the Enneagram is that it helps you understand other people by understanding myself and what makes me me and what my potentiality is, what my, the polarities of my particular type, meaning the tensions between opposites or extremes that I'm constantly navigating that I think are binary, that are actually polarities.
(00:11:13) - Once you see them as such, you can start to work with and allow them instead of resist them - which means that you stop buffering maybe with food, maybe with shopping, maybe with alcohol or overwork, or you know, there's all… you know, exercise for some, there are all kinds of ways that we buffer against negative emotions. Often I would set a new Year's resolution to try and resolve these negative habits, but once I could see why I was doing those things, what role those behaviors were filling for me, like what I was getting out of it, the Enneagram helped give me a shortcut to understand those things.
And so I immediately started projecting it out into the world on other people typing everyone I knew in my head. But it became a very oversimplified way of understanding the world really quickly.
(00:12:09) - And I think that's normal as you try to integrate this information. And it's normal for the stage of adult development that I was in at the time. But this is the place where people start to make assumptions about other people and where it can become a little problematic at work. This is the part that makes me kind of cringe inside because you think you know something about someone, but as you continue to work with the Enneagram, you see there aren't just nine types of people.
There are actually 27 subtypes. Once you layer the nine types with the three instincts and you figure out which of your biological instinct is more dominant than the others, it flavors the way your type shows up in the world. And then you start working with tritypes and you can see that you really are a combination of the dominant style that is in your body or action center, the dominant style that's in your heart or feeling center and the dominant style that's in your thinking or head center.
That’s 81 different types!
MY EXPERIENCE AS AN ENNEAGRAM ONE
(00:13:06) - And so I'm a self-preservation one as it's called in the Enneagram world, which means I'm oriented towards like physical safety resources, feeling supported and resourced personally more - that's like where my brain goes and pays attention to them first.
I'm a 125 tritype, which is called the mentor archetype. And that means that, the combination of the 125 means that I like to go really deep on topics. That's the way my brain works and I'm also a really private person. And that's the five part. And then the one part is like highly ethical and idealistic, and wise, right? There's a certain type of wisdom that comes out of the oneness that's related to what could be and potentiality. And then there's the two part which is very caring and helpful and supportive and, and even loving but oriented towards other people. And so the combination of those things, being able to sense the needs of my people and the environment around me with the idealism of the one of what could be, what should be really realistically is a better way to talk about that idealism for one, the injustices of the world and the way things ought to be.
(00:14:30) - …driving my focus of attention combined with a deep wisdom and knowing and thirst for knowledge and understanding and desire to be private.
You could see how when I go to start a podcast, for example, <laugh>, some of my perfectionism of course is inevitably going to come up - in part because I'm putting myself out there as an expert, in a way. I mean, starting a podcast is definitely putting a stake in the ground and saying, I know something about something, and the five/one part of me really, really wants to make sure I'm ready and I'm doing no harm and that I'm giving you everything you need and I really, really wanna get it right. And that two part of me wants to be super helpful. So of course I want to make it as actionable as possible or as short as possible. (This doesn’t account for the fact that I’m also a woman who has been socialized to think certain things about her worth that also drives a form of perfectionism…)
(00:15:19) - Anyways, you can see how knowing my tritype, my instinct, and all of these different nuanced connections of the nine types normalizes my behavior so that I can be with that feeling instead of trying to resist it. I can allow it and I can channel the energy of the good side of all of that combination into trusting that it's enough. It gives me breadcrumbs to embrace who I am, allow negative emotion, and get on with my life because I've got big things to do.
EMBRACING WHO YOU ARE
According to the creators of the idea of a tritype. The life purpose of the 125 Mentor is that your mission is to use your wisdom to provide the information needed to manifest ideals that could help those in need - a true mentor, this type is happiest when you can help others improve themselves. And I think that's in part because I feel like I've been on a continual self-improvement project for my whole life as a one!
(00:16:27) - And the work that I had to do and start to open up to in coaching is letting go of my need to perfect myself - being really gentle, taking action before I feel like I'm ready, and focusing on being in service of others and trusting that it's enough right now. And that there's always gonna be the gap between where I am and where I wanna go. But if I look backward at all of the ways that I've grown, all of the things that I've already gained and acquired the skills in my life, I can give myself credit for those things, give myself all the gold stars that I need so that I stop looking for them outside myself and I stop “hustling for worthiness” and I allow what is here right now to be enough, which brings me into the present, which frankly is all I really have.
(00:17:18) - And this is the big work of the Enneagram, is that homecoming to who you are and this present moment and the wisdom that comes from not having to think about things, but just knowing from a quiet mind space, the wisdom that comes, not from having to always force things to happen for myself or other people or whatever, and just attuning to that intuitive gut ping - the yes or the no, the leaning in or the leaning out that can be found in the wisdom of the body - and then the opening of my heart both to what I really need, what's going on for other people. That connection that you could just sense energetically. The combination of those three things is the heart of the work of the Enneagram.
And what makes it so powerful is that it is not just categorizing people into nine ways of being in the world, but it is laying a specific pathway out of the box that you've trapped yourself in. Out of the limiting beliefs that we all naturally adopt into a world where you trust that you are not broken, that there is probably nothing wrong with you <laugh>. 😉
(00:18:34) - And when we can operate from enoughness, God, that opens up so much possibility, right? Like that is for me, a big piece of the key of stepping out of a scarcity mindset and into abundance. And that is what I want for each of you!
Till next time…
LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE ENNEAGRAM
If you are curious about learning more about the Enneagram and the nine different personality styles, I made a little PDF download intro that you can get on my michellekayanderson.com/free where I have a download called Learn the Types that you can snag and get started understanding what even these things are <laugh>, how, how are they related to each other?
That download will give you a flavor of the nine styles, what their strengths are, and how they're related to each other. That will serve as a reference for you over time as you dig in. So I find that it's a really good place to start on this journey, and if you're wondering how to find your type, I will record another episode on that.
(00:19:45) - But the fastest way to find your type is to DM me <laugh>, and I will get you in touch with the test that I use that is the most accurate test on the market and gives you a full report on your style so that you don't have to learn the whole system to begin to work with it. That's the best part. And it puts it into action - like how type shows up at work, how to communicate better, how do you communicate with a person of this specific type, based on your type. So it really helps you understand also the avenue of growth and development opportunities that you have.
So if you're like at a goal setting time of the year and you want to stop like apologizing for who you are, <laugh> or you want to like develop like real useful ideas about how you can grow as a person so that you can be more effective at work or at home or in your relationships, this report provides a bunch of clues, a ton of ideas, and you can pick one to begin to work on. You know what I mean? It makes it so much easier. It's like a shortcut to you personally, all of your particular quirks and the unique strengths of your type so that you can go all in on who you are and to trust yourself more. And who doesn't want that?
All right. So send me a note if you're interested in the testing side of things, but go download the freebie and check out my blog. I have a ton of information on my blog about Engram and how it works.
(00:21:20) - Next time I'll talk more about how I use the Enneagram at work specifically, and the benefits that I've already seen working with individuals on the executive coaching side and teams on the organizational coaching side of things. I’m an executive coach who also coaches teams, runs workshops and retreats and helps you get more clear on the things that are holding you back as a collective using the data, the Enneagram, and also just best practices from organizational development. So if you're interested in working with me, reach out, I'd love to talk about what's going on for you and figure out if we'd be a good fit.
Before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes right as they're released. And if you're enjoying the podcast, I'd love to ask you to leave a review in Apple Podcast. Reviews are one of the major ways new podcasts get noticed, and it would really make a difference if you could take a minute to write a review. Thank you for joining me, Michelle Kay Anderson on this episode of Upleveling Work. I'll see you next time.
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