Enneagram Introduction

A first glance, the Enneagram is a personality profiling system.  However, that description comes woefully short of capturing the Enneagram for what it truly is: wisdom.  The Enneagram is wisdom about nine styles of human character - nine styles identified most accurately through an understanding of a person’s primary motivation and how that motivation impacts behavior because of how they see, interpret, and experience the world.

This aspect of the Enneagram distinguishes its value to people because it offers a dynamic quality of movement rather than a static description of personality.  Rather than simply telling a person, “This is who you are and who you have been since you were a child and that is just the way it is,” the Enneagram offers opportunity.  As a person learns its wisdom, he or she comes to recognize how each core style is an invitation to let go of the unhealthy action, attitudes, and patterns of the false self in order to move toward the health, wholeness, and holiness of the true self.  This movement toward one’s true self transforms not only that person, but their relationships, their community, and their leadership. A beautiful gift amidst this process is that the one doing the work learns to extend compassion as they recognize there is more than one way of seeing, interpreting, and experiencing the world.