Using the Enneagram to Guide Personal and Organisational Wellness

What does the word “wellness” make you think of? Maybe it conjures up images of physical fitness, regular gym sessions, balanced diets, sleep and perhaps a bit of meditation against a peaceful mountain or beach backdrop.

True wellness goes far beyond this. According to the Global Wellness Institute , wellness is “the active pursuit of activities, choices and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health.” It’s about achieving a harmonious balance in every aspect of life - mental, emotional, and social. And that’s where the Enneagram comes in.

We chatted with Kate Clayton , Associate and Executive Coach at Aephoria , about the Enneagram’s role in enhancing personal wellness and how it can help us thrive within and for our organisations.?

How a Personality Test Opened Up New Ways?

Kate Clayton started her career in marketing. It was when she hit her 40s, however, that she felt a deep need for change, and met a coach who helped her realise that her real love was people development and personal growth - something she had always been passionate about but not really applied in her career.

It was around this time that she reconnected with Lucille Greeff, Product Officer at Aephoria. Lucille, who happened to be her neighbour in Noordhoek, introduced Kate to the Enneagram as a birthday present. Kate was instantly fascinated!. When the COVID-19 pandemic threw everyone's lives into disarray, Kate dived deeper and joined the Aephoria Enneagram training. The more she learned, the more excited she became about the Enneagram’s potential to influence both her own development and her work with clients.

Over the past few years, Kate has been consistently blown away by how much her clients benefit from the Enneagram. She describes it as a pathway to reveal core patterns that have been driving us our entire lives, often without us realising. When we can start seeing the patterns we have more capacity to change them.?

Now, as a leadership coach working with Aephoria, Kate integrates the Enneagram into most of her coaching. And wellness increasingly comes into the conversation.?

The Relationship Between Wellness and the Enneagram

“My purpose is to help people ‘juice the truth’ for greater expansion”, explains Kate Clayton. That’s where the Enneagram proves indispensable. It’s more than just a tool for personal development - it’s a pathway to holistic wellness and can be instrumental in helping us uncover issues that can go unnoticed.

In many organisations, employees are encouraged and rewarded to work close to their limits, often pushing beyond healthy stress, into the zone of exhaustion and burnout. Unsurprisingly, this can lead to significant health issues and is unsustainable for the marathons (not sprints) we are running.?

“There’s a lot of anxiety in many systems,” says Kate. “Everything is trying to draw everyone's attention.” Data from Life Healthcare Solutions reveals that a significant increase in stress, relationship issues, bereavement, anxiety, domestic violence, and difficulties adjusting to life changes were all drivers of mental health challenges in South Africa during 2023 (Life Healthcare Solutions, 2023).?

Within a professional context, Havard Business Review reports that 53% of managers say they are burned out at work (Kelly, 2023), while global data from Gallup shows that an alarming 58% of employees who evaluated their lives identify as “struggling” (Gallup, 2023).??

“We are working with an organisation that wants to grow wellness among its employees. We used the Enneagram to help spot unwellness patterns, which was eye-opening for many as it revealed how wellness extends to all aspects of human experience - physical, emotional, mental, and relational.” - Kate Clayton?

Life is complex and fast-paced, perhaps more than it’s ever been. Our solution is often to work at the exterior, while neglecting our own well-being. But that only gets you halfway.?

In the organisational context, wellness is not just about the individual but also about people working together, which is often the trickiest part. Interpersonal wellness is key to creating a thriving work environment.?

“Wellness has become front and centre for me; maybe that's why it's starting to show up strongly in my work. We need to look after ourselves and our relationships, as this enables us to shoot for our goals.” - Kate Clayton?

How Understanding Your Enneagram Type Can Inform Wellness

The Enneagram has many fascinating parts, many of which are helpful when it comes to insights around wellness. Here are a few perspectives on Enneagram Motivation and Defences.

Motivation

Each Enneagram type has a core motivation that shapes their approach to life. For example, Enneagram Twos are naturally oriented towards meeting the needs of others, often to the detriment of their own. This can lead to self-neglect and health issues. Kate shares a poignant example: "I recently worked with someone leading from Enneagram Two who was borrowing money to assist a family member who needed financial help, putting herself under enormous strain."

Someone who identifies with Enneagram Type Three, whose primary motivation is to achieve and win, might approach wellness with the same intensity they apply to other areas of their life.?

“Going super hard on everything, including wellness - for example, marathons or 10-day silent retreats - borders on the obsessive and is not necessarily healthy.”?

Recognising these motivations helps individuals understand why they might be approaching wellness in a particular way and how they might need to adjust for a healthier balance.

Defences

The Enneagram also highlights the ways we protect ourselves, which are innately wise and useful, and can also impact our wellness negatively unless we are more aware. For example, the Enneagram Type Five can withdraw and isolate when feeling overwhelmed. "Isolation feels like a healthy choice for them," Kate notes, "and while it might provide temporary relief, it can extend and negatively impact interpersonal relationships. The person or relationship they withdraw from doesn't understand what's happening, which can lead to a breakdown in communication and relationship wellness."

Another example is Enneagram Type One, whose defence mechanism is reaction formation. "Type Ones might receive a message from their body saying they need rest," Kate explains, "but they unconsciously judge this need as bad or wrong and so instead of resting, they do the opposite and push themselves harder.”?

“The Enneagram is a potent tool, offering us a mirror of some of the core patterns we adopted early in our lives and which have become hardwired. As adults, when we can see these patterns, we have a chance of loosening them, towards greater wellness and range.” - Kate Clayton

Awareness is the cornerstone of change. “What we see, we cannot be.” Once we become aware of our patterns, we can start to see how they support and limit us. Then we can make more conscious choices, which can cultivate wellness.

How Different Enneagram Types Approach Wellness

People are often resistant to changing (or simply reexamining) a core aspect of themselves that has, in their? words, “helped me get to where I am today” and “is who I am”.? Kate says that doing this inner work invites a more integrated, whole person which brings something even more valuable. From more range in superpowers, less reactivity and more choice around responding, to healthier relationships, more meaning and fulfillment, and wider perspectives.?

“The work with the Enneagram is about catching ourselves and loosening our patterns so that we have a wider range in our choices. It gives us more possibilities and perspectives and allows us to be more impactful. If we role model more range in the way we show up, we invite and permission this in others too.” - Kate Clayton

Here are a few pointers to consider for different Enneagram types:

Enneagram One

• Challenges: High tension in the body due to striving for perfection, ignoring bodily instincts, and a strong inner critic.

• Wellness Tips: Start opening up to body signals and instincts. Schedule relaxation and fun activities to balance the constant drive for perfection.

Enneagram Two

• Challenges: Focuses on others' needs, neglecting their own, leading to self-neglect and potential resentment.

• Wellness Tips: Practice self-care, set boundaries, and learn to say no. Invest time in understanding and addressing personal needs and feelings.

Enneagram Three

• Challenges: Driven to achieve, often leading to burnout. May overlook health in the pursuit of success and / or drive any healthy activity super hard so it’s not that healthy.

• Wellness Tips: Slow down, make choices that are nourishing for your body. Be awake to unconsciously competing with your peers and cultivate collaboration. Celebrate achievements instead of moving to the next goal.

Enneagram Four

• Challenges: Can get stuck in intense feelings and melancholy, focusing on what's missing.

• Wellness Tips: Engage in somatic practices like yoga or dance to help process emotions. Balance feeling with action to avoid being trapped in emotional cycles.

Enneagram Five

• Challenges: Prefers intellectual activities over physical, leading to neglect of bodily health. Tends to withdraw and isolate.

• Wellness Tips: Incorporate body practices into daily routines. Recognise when isolation is counterproductive and maintain relationships.

Enneagram Six?

• Challenges: High anxiety and stress from focusing on safety and managing risks. Tends to have a pessimistic outlook.

• Wellness Tips: Regular physical activity to manage anxiety. Practice reframing thoughts to focus on positives and opportunities. Mindfulness practices are very helpful for Sixes.?

Enneagram Seven

• Challenges: Constantly seeking new experiences to avoid pain, leading to a scattered and frenetic lifestyle.

• Wellness Tips: Develop grounding practices like mindfulness or deep breathing. Prioritise health and wellbeing over fun and indulgence by making wellness practices fun.?

Enneagram Eight

• Challenges: Intense and extreme in activities, whatever the activity. Can overlook the need for calm and quiet.

• Wellness Tips: Incorporate calm, quiet time into daily life and find the more subtle aliveness in this. Engage in reflective practices like reading or spending time in nature.

Enneagram Nine

• Challenges: Self-forgetting, often neglecting their own needs, avoiding difficult conversations and procrastination.

• Wellness Tips: Identify personal needs, values, and purpose. Engage in physical activities that promote health without using them as a means to avoid difficult feelings. Start leaning into the tough conversations. Resistance training to build muscle strength can support overall assertiveness.?

How to Incorporate the Enneagram Into Your Coaching Practice?

Incorporating the Enneagram into your wellness coaching practice involves understanding the nuances of each type and recognising the unique challenges they face. It’s about building a metaphorical muscle to navigate wellness more effectively, not expecting sudden transformations.

Clients often present their active lifestyles as sorted, but a closer look may reveal that their approach to wellness is extreme and unsustainable, like running marathons and needing a holiday to recover. As a coach, it's crucial to be open and curious to what else might be there.?

• Come back to the basics with clients: sleep, nutrition, hydration, physical activity, and other health practices. Surprisingly, these foundational aspects are often overlooked. The basics are especially important for clients who are blind on the self preservation instinct.?

• Keep starting again: Both clients and coaches can fall off the wagon, losing interest or getting distracted. It’s important to build awareness, try new things, and be kind to ourselves and our clients when we slip up, and keep starting again.

• Be curious and compassionate: Rather than judging or reprimanding, listen and normalise and offer kindfulness and stretch.?

Common Myths About Coaching?

One of the common myths about coaching is the expectation of rapid progress. Many people expect a big breakthrough or quick improvements and that it will be done and sorted. Meaningful changes take time and mostly happen through small, incremental steps.

Neuroscience shows that our brains predict and respond based on past experiences. This means we can map new neural pathways or patterns over time by making small, consistent changes, so that the brain starts predicting more of these. We might slip back into old habits, but the key is to get back on track and keep taking those small steps. Over time, these incremental changes can lead to new pathways, wellness and otherwise.?

Enrich Your Coaching With the Enneagram

There are so many benefits to coaching with the Enneagram! If you would like to enrich your coaching and you are already working with the Enneagram, sign up for your Enneagram Conversion Course .?

Or, if you are new to the Enneagram, accredit in Aephoria’s renowned and popular Enneagram course . We at Aephoria would love to welcome you into our coach community .?

About Kate Clayton

In her own words, Kate is an “accredited executive coach, group facilitator, truth seeker, and speaker”. She’s also an Associate at Aephoria and has more than 30 years' experience working with a range of start-ups, social enterprises, entrepreneurial businesses and corporates, to expand identities, perspectives and possibilities. Kate combines Integral Coaching with strategic thinking, weaving these together in practical ways that help leaders, teams, and organisations move forward with greater possibilities.?

Connect with Kate .?

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REFERENCES

Life Healthcare Solutions. (2023). Mental health challenges in South Africa: A 2023 report. Life Healthcare Solutions.

Kelly, J. (2023). The high cost of burnout in management. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2023/07/the-high-cost-of-burnout-in-management ?

Gallup. (2023). State of the global workplace report. Gallup. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx ?