Five - The Independent Style
My boss
(Nine) and I (Eight) have become really interested in using the Enneagram for team
development. At your suggestion we got copies of Goldberg's The 9 Ways of
Working
but the third member of our team still hasn't read it. He said he wasn't uncomfortable
with the idea, but his body language said otherwise. I think he's probably a Five.
If your colleague
is a
Five as you have guessed, that's the most private of all the styles.
Theoretically the Five's passion or compulsion is avarice, which doesn't translate
into greed as we usually think of it – more a withholding of personal information, a
"stinginess" of emotions. Fives are also the most independent. Their
connection to
Eight is attached to unconscious
fears of vulnerability, and their connection to
Seven
is attached to avoidance of "pain" or going deeper into things. These are fears
we all have, and could be true of your team-mate regardless of of his Enneagram style, but would be somewhat
exaggerated or perhaps less "known" (more a part of his Shadow) if he is indeed
a "Five."
You'll find W.H. Auden's delightful poem instructive about Fives:
Some thirty inches from my nose
The frontier of my Person goes,
And all the untilled air between
Is private
pagus or demesne.
Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes
I beckon you to fraternize,
Beware of rudely crossing it:
I have no gun, but I can spit.
Fives love the Enneagram as a
basis for knowledge. And when they initiate exploration of the Enneagram, they like to
use it at work. My guess is your team mate doesn't want to be "ranked" or
"classified" by someone else. It may help, if
you haven't already done this, to place the emphasis on you and your boss, who are already
willing to go public as an "Eight" and a "Nine."
Ask him to read about those two
styles and to give the two of you feedback.
If he's a Five he may be attracted by the opportunity to
learn
something. Stay away from words that convey
emotions,
even positive ones, such as how excited you feel about being able to change yourself. If he's a Five, he'll disdain emotional responses until he feels safe. Fives have worked their whole lives
to place all their energy into their intellect.
A Five reader added the following:
"About your recalcitrant Five, I think
the key is to find someone who can get into his internal worldview and find out what the
block is. He may have some construct like "psychology is bunk," in which case
winning him over may only be possible via another Five who can show him in an objective
fashion that the Enneagram is an elegant system for understanding human motivational
patterns. I've recently come to the conclusion that someone I've been close to for a long
time is a Five. He's not interested in the Enneagram. He has an active mental life and I
think he sees the Enneagram as a competing philosophy. Since he processes things more
slowly than I, he may have a valid point with regard to the precious (Five) resource of
time, but I strongly believe the Enneagram can beautifully integrate with nearly any
philosophy or worldview."
If he's not a Five, none of this will hurt, even it it doesn't help.
