A
Little Slapstick is Perfect
I'm a
Five
and I think one
of my team-mates is a
Three, although he thinks
he's a One. It's
his call of course. However, he seems to me to have too much personality and
optimism for a One. He is almost
like a Seven, and that was his second choice on
the Stanford Enneagram Self Assessment. I think what is going on here is that as technical
professionals we all need to have some strong One "perfectionist" traits. I do
too, but Five is really a better fit at a deeper level.
What do
you think?
Healthy and mature Ones have a wonderfully developed
sense of humor that's a little more slapstick than the "Far Side" type of Five
humor. Fives will amuse themselves with their humorous insights; Ones (who are "compliant" types) will more actively seek to
amuse the listener and take overt joy in the listener's response. A One with a Nine wing
might be more quiet, but I've worked with several Ones who have Two
wings (especially those who operate out of a
One-to-One
subtype) who totally belie the stereotype of an "uptight" One.
The One
with a 2 wing is more interpersonally warm. Michael Goldberg (The
Nine Ways of Working) writes:
"Everyone, of whatever type, must relate to the Enneagram style
of his or her workplace or team. The Enneagram is the most cogent and precise approach to
organizational culture I know. It focuses employees and managers alike on asking
important questions about their own work team: What is valued and what is not? What are
this company's goals? What happens on this team when someone fails? How are decisions and
plans made?… One organizations have strong norms and operating controls to maintain
high quality (Motorola)… Five organizations are focused on closely managing
information (C-SPAN, M&M/Mars)."
If this reader's team
mate thinks he's a One, he probably is. One of the ways I can
feel certain a client is a One is in the very certainty with which they
identify that position. A mistyped Six, for example, might say, "I felt relieved
to nail my type down as a One right away." A One might say (as the client above did
when I described how she resembled a Four), "No, you're wrong! I'm a One!"
Riso's chapter on "Misidentifications" in
Understanding
the Enneagram distinguishes between Ones and Threes. Some excerpts:
"Average Ones and average Threes are sometimes mistaken because both types are
efficient and highly organized… The two types are very different, however,
particularly in their motivations.
Average Ones are idealists, striving for perfection and
order… in an effort to control both themselves and their environment… Inner-motivated by strong consciences, they are organized and efficient so as not to waste time
and other resources or allow themselves to be in a position for their consciences to
rebuke them...
Average Threes, by contrast, are efficient pragmatists, not
idealists… interested in success, prestige, and advancing their careers,
and the efficiency we see in them is a way of attaining those goals. Because emotional
depth and a full range of emotions remain undeveloped, average Threes are rarely
emotionally disturbed for long by anything… With average Ones, we get the impression
of deeper feelings being held in check or sublimated elsewhere, say into social reform.
…Ones are trying to be perfect, while Threes feel they (more or less)
already are…Ones offer themselves as examples of those who strive for
perfection, particularly moral perfection; Threes offer themselves as exemplars of
individual perfection… as those who 'have it all.'
Both (tend to be) "thinking" types… Both have in mind some sort of goal they want to achieve. The difference is that Ones attempt
to discover which objective means will best lead to the desired ideal, whereas Threes are
pragmatists who work backward to find the most efficient means to achieve their
goal."
As Riso
& Hudson have found, it's also been my experience that both Ones and Threes are
more likely to be MBTI Thinking types than
Feeling types. This can be
confusing because Threes are part of the "heart" triad (2, 3, 4) and Ones are
part of the "gut" triad (8, 9, 1), so neither are "head" types on the
Enneagram (5, 6, 7). But the MBTI is a
different typology from the Enneagram, having to do with conceptual style vs. underlying
motivations, so MBTI Thinking types could appear anywhere on the Enneagram.
