The Enneagram is Dead. Long Live the Enneagram.

The Enneagram Personality Typing system is showing up more often in organizations, in part because it is increasingly popular with leadership coaches.

But the Enneagram isn't the only personality typing system on the market. The Myers-Briggs dominated the training landscape in the 80s and 90s and the assessment is still taken around 2MM times a year. Someone recently tried to sell me on the unbelievable insights she got from DiSC and wondered why I didn't use it in my coaching. A training organization for women that I volunteer with has been using LIFO since the organization was formed.

Coaches and trainers like using these personality typologies because they often lead their clients to big ah-ha's and constructive behavior changes. I think this is wonderful.

Personally, I am not a fan of typing systems of any kind.?I have been exposed to them for decades, but I have never used them in my practice or coaching.?

I was not really sure why typologies didn't work for me, so I started writing to clarify my thinking.?The result was a 16-page treatise that identified all the psychometric and usage concerns I had about typing systems in general and the Enneagram in particular.?Don’t worry, this is not that article.

It can be interesting to see if you can summarize your position on something in one out breath. Here goes:?

The labels we attach to people are often wrong.?That's a problem that should give pause, but even when the labels are correct, they have side effects.?Moreover, the map is never the territory. Therefore, as opposed to relying on general patterns that sometimes apply but often don't, I prefer to work with the reality...the nuanced, contextually-shaped behavior and the unfolding process...right in front of me.

I might have inhaled a bit in the middle of that.

I'll share "the why" on my stance in this article, but if you need some quick support for my position, ask someone on the receiving end of racism, sexism, homophobia etc what it is like when the lens of a label prevents both his/her common humanity and uniqueness from being seen.

The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again.?~Krishnamurti

This article is an attempt to come up with something between a treatise and an out breath summary of why typologies are not my cup of tea.?In order for it to be shorter, it had to be direct, with little explanation or justification.?If you want the data, backup, benefit of the doubt/disclaimers, the longer version is on my website.

There is no intention here to offend fans of typologies and no intention to get those fans to stop using typologies. Please read that sentence again.

This piece is no different than me writing an article about doing yoga vs. going to the gym. While yoga is a perfectly fine form of exercise with many benefits and only a few risks, it does not provide the right training stimulus for my needs. Cardio and weight training are not better, they just serve me better.

If you like yoga, keep doing it. If you like personality typologies, keep using them. There is no need for you to even read this...and, in fact, you probably shouldn't.

If you are using typologies, are curious about what issues there might be with them, the kinds of side effects that can occur, ways of managing the downsides, and other potential approaches, read on.

This article is organized into two main sections: Psychometric Concerns and Usage Concerns.

Psychometric Concerns with the Enneagram

The Usual Response Biases, Made Worse by Self-Typing.?All personality assessments are plagued by a self-report response bias, but the output of the Enneagram is often so unclear (multiple high scores, differences in output from one version of the assessment to another, coach's lack of the in-depth knowledge and training to type correctly), people end up self-selecting their type which further muddies whether the label is even accurate. If the diagnosis is wrong, the patterned prescription for managing your type will be as well.

Traits vs. Types: A Distinction with a Difference.*?The Enneagram is a personality typing system.?The basic difference between type- and trait-based approaches to measuring personality is that traits are measured on a continuum, whereas types give you a label.?

A trait approach to Extroversion says that your tendencies can be scaled somewhere between highly introverted to highly extroverted.?A type-based approach says that everything above a certain, often arbitrarily set, level gets you the Extroverted label.?

It is therefore often the case that two people, who answer the assessment very similarly but are on either side of the cut-off, would be labeled differently.?This doesn't seem like a great outcome to me.

The label vs. continuum approach also means that if you put 100 ENTJs or Enneagram 6's in a room, there would be similarities sure, but there would also be a blizzard of significant differences. Typologies, like a Procrustean bed, tend overlook these differences in their attempt to simplify.

Finally, the Enneagram output report attempts to sort you into one of nine "personality" types. The Colors "personality" assessment had only four types.??The Myers-Briggs has sixteen.?Can/should you attempt to sort all of humanity and the obvious continuum of personalities into a few boxes, and, if so, who has the truth on the right number of boxes to sort them into?

The Only Constant is Change…And Apparently Your Enneagram Type. “Everything changes” is a modern day bromide.?But the Enneagram Institute claims some things don’t change.?They assert that “Everyone emerges from childhood with one?[their emphasis] of the nine types dominating their personality…” and “People do not change from one basic personality type to another.”

This position is completely refuted by peer-reviewed research which indicates personality absolutely does change over time.??Enneagram practitioners don’t have a leg to stand on if they try to insist both that 1) the Enneagram measures personality and 2) that your personality never changes.

Moreover, research by Carol Dweck at Stanford has shown that believing your type (or intelligence) is fixed vs. something that can grow and change has a profound effect on motivation, self-regulation, interpersonal processes and achievement.

"As you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets, you will see exactly how one thing leads to another— how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions, and how a belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions, taking you down an entirely different road."

According to Dr. Dweck's research, the most successful, happy people don't believe traits are the hand they've been dealt and have to live with. These people have a growth mindset and believe in The Power of Yet ...that the hand their dealt is just the starting point for development.

The Enneagram Institute is obviously free to make whatever data-free claims they want to, but they should stop pushing the notion that people's traits don't change. It is counterproductive.

What on Earth are “Core Motivations”? Some Enneagram users like to hedge and say what the assessment really measures isn’t personality, but something called “core motivations.”?They leave it there without answering what they are, why there are nine of them (and not five or seventeen), and many other questions.

There is no theory about a set of Core Motivations that drive behavior in use today across the entire field of Psychology.?Does this strike you as odd? The question of behavior and what causes it has been the raison d'etre for Psychology for hundreds of years: the behaviorists thought we did things to get rewards and avoid punishments. McClelland proposed internal drives.?Maslow thought we were driven by a need to grow and once the basics were taken care of we were free to pursue the more fulfilling. Vroom and others thought that we made lots of internal and rational calculations, until Kahneman and his band of behavioral economists came along.?But nothing on Core Motivations.

Maybe it is "their time" and if so, practitioners who want to see the Enneagram used more broadly would greatly advance their cause by constructing a testable definition of their core motivations construct.?This is how science and practice have always advanced.

Here are two elements of a construct definition that could be easily tested: 1) is there a genetic/heritable component to core motivations, like there is to the Big Five personality traits??2) if core motivations are real and permanent, do they predict anything that business people care about such as effectiveness on a team, ability to take on increasing leadership responsibilities, etc?

If Enneagram practitioners want their assessment to become more mainstream so others can derive the benefits, avoiding Virgin Birth-like, take-it-on-faith claims about the existence of core motivations that never change would be a good start.

Typologies are Popular…but not Used When It Matters Most.?There are times when the accurate assessment of personality has huge implications. When doing Twins Reared Apart research to determine what part of personality is heritable vs. shaped by the environment, a reliable and valid measure of personality is sine qua non. Further, the accurate assessment of personality can sometimes have multi-million dollar implications (using personality tests to predict job performance when hiring thousands of call center agents, placing military recruits into the jobs they are best suited for, or deciding which executives to promote in a large organization).

When there is a lot on the line, researchers, psychologists and practitioners turn to the well-researched trait-based approach that goes by several names including the Big Five and OCEAN (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism).?Typologies are rarely used in these situations and to my knowledge, the Enneagram has never been used.

If coaches feel that the understanding of a client's personality is an essential ingredient for guiding that client, they might at least consider using personality assessments that are well understood and have been validated across multiple cultures, age groups, geographies, etc. The Hogan Personality Inventory is one such option, and I am delighted to see that it is also gaining traction with coaches.

Zero...Repeat, Zero...Supportive Scientific Evidence. I mentioned there is no defined construct of “core motivations” that would lead to predictions like this that could be tested and in fact very little peer-reviewed research on the Enneagram even exists. Research that has been done has found very little scientific reliability or validity for the Enneagram.

Even worse, one study showed only weak agreement between a person’s type as identified by the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI) and the Wagner Enneagram Personality Styles Scale (WEPSS).?These are two of the major approaches to assessing the nine Enneagram types and yet people can get different readings depending on which assessment they take.

As an aside, I have taken the Enneagram 3 times in the last five years for various seminars. The tests have labeled me a 1, a 3, and most recently a 9. An expert in Enneagram diagnostics says I am a 7. I have no idea what my type is, nor, apparently, do the tests or the experts. The only thing I can say for certain is I appear to not be one of the even-numbered types.

This is anecdotal evidence of the complete lack of test-retest reliability--a prerequisite for use when it matters, as in the situations previously described.

Finally, Robert Carroll is less equivocal.?He included the Enneagram in his list of pseudo-scientific theories in his book The Skeptics Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions, indicating that it “can’t be tested because they are so vague and malleable that anything relevant can be shoehorned in to fit the theory.”

I just wonder if any Enneagram proponents are concerned about the lack of scientific support or is this another example of the "believe-whatever-you-want-science-doesn't-matter-anymore" movement?

Issues with Enneagram Usage

Labels increase the incidence of Cognitive Biases. I have not seen Enneagram proponents express concern with any potential fallout from the label they put on someone.?But there is simply no denying that labels give rise to a host of cognitive biases.

Racism isn’t a product of race.?Race is a product of racism. ~Dorothy Roberts

Here are three examples: explaining others' behavior as being due to stable aspects of their personalities while we attribute our own behavior to the conditions we find ourselves in (e.g., the Fundamental Attribution Error**), the tendency to continue to look for information consistent with those labels (Confirmation Bias), and the likelihood of expectations becoming self-fulfilling (Pygmalion Effect).

The pernicious effects of these three cognitive biases, alone or in combination, means we really should try to avoid labels entirely. If labeling is somehow unavoidable, we need to exercise extreme caution to minimize these known side effects.

But another question is are the labels even necessary. Consider this excerpt from the NY Times Best Seller, Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard, by the brothers Chip and Dan Heath:

"Frustrated by her husband's various peccadilloes, Sutherland began to use approximations with him [...] and Scott, basking in appreciation, began to change. This approach contrasts with much of the thinking on improving relationships at work. For instance, you probably have been asked to take a personality test or a "work style" test for a job. The idea is that if you understand your colleagues' "types," you'll all get along better. And some people may find the knowledge of types useful. But notice that this sounds like Fundamental Attribution Error thinking. To develop better relationships, you don't need to know whether your colleague is a Navigator or a Pleaser or a Passive-Aggressive Chieftain. You just need to notice and reinforce your colleague's positive behaviors---as Sutherland did with her husband---and trust that your colleague will do the same with you. After all, advice about aligning styles and expectations can't be the answer to everything. A trainer in California taught six elephants to stand in a line and urinate on command, and they hadn't even completed a Myers-Briggs."

Finally, I came across this statement from Dorothy Roberts as I was writing this and it shook me. "Racism isn’t a product of race.?Race is a product of racism."*** What Ms Roberts is saying is there is no biological basis for race, no genetic boundary line. It is an invented label.

What do you think: have the benefits outweighed the side effects for all the race labels and distinctions some like to make?

How about the labels you like to use: Have the benefits outweighed the side effects?

Are you sure?

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.” ~George Bernard Shaw

Depth Psychology: Seeing what’s Right in Front of You.?An important notion in depth psychology (Jungian, Process Oriented Psychology, etc.) is that there are multiple “characters” inside us. Among these multiple characters, the Primary Identity usually “has the conn." The other characters inside us might be considered “minority voices,” and many of these minority voices are less well known, certainly less influential, and might even be completely disavowed.?

Process Oriented Psychology, as developed by Arnold Mindell, would say our Primary Identities are not only not fixed, but they are trying to expand to include those other parts.?It is worth noting that Enneagram proponents might share at least portions of this philosophy.

However, a Process-Oriented psychologist would never start with a label, an abstraction, a tendency that is said to be associated with every INFP or Type 3 who has ever been born.?A Process Worker (as they are known) would get intensely curious about the unfolding human process right in front of them. They would then try to "trust Life," and help their client follow their own process to where it wants to go.

Contrast this to attempting to follow Arthur Murray-like footprint patterns on the floor to where everyone of a certain type is supposedly better off. Such an approach would be antithetical to the psychological, spiritual, and world view of Depth Psychology.

Here are a couple quotes about the need to be vigilant about seeing what is right in front of you.

[Love] means to see a person, a situation, a thing as it really is, not as you imagine it to be. You can hardly be said to love what you do not even see.?And what prevents us from seeing??Our conditioning.?Our concepts, our categories, our prejudices, our projections, the labels that we have drawn from our cultures and our past experiences.?Seeing is the most arduous thing that a human can undertake, for it calls for a disciplined, alert mind.?But most people would much rather lapse into mental laziness than take the trouble to see each person, each thing in its present moment of freshness.?~Anthony de Mello

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.” ~George Bernard Shaw

The Effects of Coaching on a Client’s Enneagram Score.?Many coaches love giving their clients the Enneagram, but I have not seen a theory or model offered for the relationship between the effect of coaching, if any, on a client’s Enneagram type.?

If what motivates me, my ways of looking at the world, my preferences and my behavior have all changed from working with a coach, all of which are related to personality, shouldn’t my scores change on the Enneagram?

If the answer is yes, would it be a good idea to give the Enneagram pre- and post-coaching? (The Enneagram Institute does indicate that personality "loosens its grip" for people who do a lot of work on themselves.)

If the answer is no---coaching has no effect on Enneagram score because core motivations never change---that brings us back to the discussion-ending, Virgin Birth premise.

The real answer is, of course, that it's an empirical question! The first step is to build a model: based on what we know/assume, what should happen? Then test it. That's how science advances and that is the direction I would like to see Enneagram/typology enthusiasts go.

Conflicts with Contemplative Spirituality Views of Self. ?Many coaches are personally drawn to contemplative forms of spirituality.?They even recommend contemplative practices to their clients.

The core belief in those traditions is that there is no such thing as a True Self, no “essence” of you.?There are two selves:?No Self and False Self.?No Self…the pure, empty, light of Awareness…is what they say you really are.?That No Self is being projected through the False Self: a bird’s nest of genetics, memories, and conditioning, haphazardly stitched together.?

From the contemplative perspective, spending time trying to locate and define a True Self amongst all that clutter is a fool's errand.??And the False Self is not the structure of personality, it is the structure of confinement, walling us off and causing us to feel separate from the world around us.

For a client that wants "out," I see no value in helping him/her explore the prison cell they find themselves in. Nor am I interested in helping them decorate it by accessing their growth/stress or Relaxation/Resource points.

We’re all confined. Let’s not study the metallic composition of the bars.?Let's leave that bird’s nest and take flight---from the conditioning, genetic tendencies, and the identity to which we have become fused---and leave the whole thing behind.

Final Thoughts

If you are a fan of typologies or the Enneagram (and you got this far!), many of you are probably thinking something along the lines of:?“Blah.?Blah.?Blah.?The OCEAN model. Peer-reviewed research.?Construct definitions. Pygmalion effects.?Minority Voices.?False Self.?What a bunch of gobbledygook. He is ignoring the most important thing of all:?It works!?People gain insight; their relationships improve; some even experience a profound sense of relief working with their type. What about that?”?

No argument from me.?I am delighted for the coaches/clients who have experienced this.

But let’s be clear, having an epiphany with a typing system does not validate the approach in general.?It may not even be noteworthy.?Hippocrates developed the Four Temperaments theory around 400 BCE.?I am sure that finding out their type felt revelatory to some, even back in that day.?

And many people in this modern, scientific era, still feel their Zodiac sign completely explains who they are, why they do what they do, and whom they should partner with.?In fact, on 4/16/19, this headline/article appeared in the NY Times :?“Venture Capital is Putting Its Money into Astrology.” ?If you needed any proof that the scientific validity of a typing system has absolutely no bearing on its popularity or the value people feel they derive from it, quod erat demonstrandum.

Which is all to say, personality typing systems have been around forever and they aren’t going anywhere! People can't resist a mirror and, like Narcissus, are enamored by the reflection. Plus, there is an agenda-filling, parlor game element of these personality typologies that many coaches and trainers enjoy too much to ever give up.

...personality typing systems have been around forever and they aren't going anywhere! People can't resist a mirror and, like Narcissus, are enamored by the reflection.

The title of this article was obviously a spin on The King is Dead. Long Live the King.?That phrase meant there would never be an interregnum: the king/queen may have died, but a new king/queen has already ascended.

The Enneagram is the current king of personality typologies in the coaching world, and it probably will be for a while.?It will also almost certainly be succeeded, as all things eventually are. Maybe the Myers-Briggs will ascend the throne again. Maybe it will be something shiny and new.

Based on the NYTimes article, for better or worse, the smart (?) money appears to be on astrology.

#enneagramproblems #enneagramconcerns #enneagrampsychometrics #personalitytests #personalitytypes #personalityassessment #enneagram

Foot Notes

If you want citations, they can be found in the longer article on my website mentioned at the beginning. I have included a few key ones here.

* Key points in the Traits vs. Types: A Distinction with a Difference section were drawn from my friend and colleague Gordie Curphy's #1 selling college Leadership textbook: Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience, co-authored with R. Hughes and R. Ginnett.

** The Fundamental Attribution Error is the tendency to attribute the behavior of others to stable aspects of personality or the “way someone is” (he so arrogant, she is such a control freak, etc.), while we describe our own behavior as being more a function of the environment: “I had to take over the meeting because we were running out of time.”?It is such a pervasive and insidious cognitive pattern that it is often referred to as “the conceptual bedrock for the field of social psychology.”?

*** Ms Roberts quote can be found in "Not so Black and White:?Dorothy Roberts on the Myth of Race," Interview in The Sun Magazine, April 2019

Dennis Adsit, Ph.D. is the President of Adsum Insights, a consultancy that provides executive coaching, team building and consulting to align culture, processes and talent to improve strategy execution.