Enneagram

Paul’s Enneagram profile maps as follows:

Primary - 5: The Thinker

Secondary - 8: The Protector

Third - 1: The Idealist

While the Enneagram is not a rigorous tool founded in the scientific method, it is good for sparking conversation, especially among teams. The history of the Enneagram is a matter of great dispute, but there is growing consensus that it comes out of 4th century Christian mysticism, was used as a model for understanding differences in how behave, and later was used, somewhat controversially, as a framework for organizing ideas and concepts in psychiatry.

Paul’s Enneagram results are being shared because of the popularity of this assessment in west Michigan, particularly among Christian organizations and their members, and the framework it provides for understanding people’s dispositions and habits.

Adherents of the Enneagram typically refer to people’s actions and behavior by number, and are careful to note that people are complex beings and cannot be defined by their behaviors alone. Therefore, it is more accurate to say “she is behaving like a Seven” or “I am feeling like a Six today” than to say “He is a Four.”

Not surprisingly, Paul maps as a strong Five, which is a one of the three “heady” classifications. Fives tend to be interested in facts and objectivity. They tend to ask questions, research, collect information, and postulate. Because of their focus on ideas and collecting information (and other things), Fives have a tendency towards privacy, preferring to be alone with their thoughts. Fives are typically attracted to philosophy.

It is easy to perceive significant alignment between Paul’s mapping as a Five on the Enneagram to his results on the Myers-Briggs, CliftonStrengths®, and DISC. The same cannot be said for his secondary (Eight) and tertiary (One) mapping.

Famous Fives include Meister Eckhardt, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. With a strong interest in empiricism and phenomenology, and an understanding that those things bring us into caring relationships with other people and the world around us, Paul is pleased to be keeping company with the latter.

Logic is important to Fives, but they need to be careful not to get caught up in their admiration of logic at the expense of devaluing other people for whom logic may not be as important. Fives can deceive themselves into believing that knowledge is power.

The two defense mechanisms of Fives are withdrawal and compartmentalization, which can separate them from other people.