If you are like me, you have heard conversations about Enneagram numbers just about anywhere: in line in the Great Hall, in ‘ice-breaker’ questionnaires, you name it. But I want to challenge the casual nature of these conversations. When the results of personality tests (and the Enneagram, specifically) are shared within a group, assumptions and generalizations are naturally made by others. If we are willing to identify with one of the nine numbers of the Enneagram, we each deserve the space to offer up our own interpretation of our results (whether through critique or elaboration).
In popular culture, there has been an increasing desire to understand our individual personalities. Tests like the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator offer simplified ways to better understand actions, motivations, and behaviors. The question of concern has been: are we giving ourselves room to push back on these results? Personality tests offer a simplified overview of complex emotions and experiences. For example, thousands have taken the Enneagram, but it offers only nine possible outcomes (with a bit of room for overlap).
The danger of personality tests lies in the assumptions made about how certain traits of an Enneagram number play out. These sweeping judgements may be unfair, or worse, damaging.
With a rise in personality test-taking for hiring decisions and career recommendations, new texts are being published with titles like, “Ace the Corporate Personality Test” in order to guide readers through the types of responses they should provide on a personality test in order to land their ideal job.
This attitude towards personality tests regards different ‘types’ as indication for success in specific roles, but each individual’s personality is so complex that it cannot be fully represented by a test result, let alone by outside parties.
External judgement is addressed by test-makers, but only in part. While Enneagram experts warn that a person’s number should never be used against them, there is a resource offered for tips in “typing” others.
The Enneagram website advises test-takers to “remember that you are like a beginning medical student who is learning to diagnose a wide variety of conditions, some healthy and some unhealthy. It takes practice to learn to identify the various ‘symptoms’ of each type and to see larger ‘syndromes.’”
This attitude and terminology is further encouragement for external judgements on the personality of others.
I want to challenge the way that we currently use the Enneagram. Since the test results are determined by an individual’s deep fears, motivations, and sin patterns, our results deserve a safe space to be discussed.
If you choose to share your Enneagram number with your peers, make sure that you are welcome to push back and elaborate on the general implications of your number. Do you relate to every unhealthy tendency for your number? Do you agree with the suspected motivations for your actions?
We owe it to ourselves and to one another to make the conversation on personality more complex than a chorus of numbers and silent assumptions.