Dimalanta has recently captured an effective tool for understanding the complex nature of personality. We wanted a thorough and comprehensive model that would help us to grow as individuals and find clear paths for collaboration with each other. When our team started picking up fascinating bits and pieces about the Enneagram through social interactions, books, and media, we realized we wanted to onboard this tool as a guiding light for our company. The Enneagram has also been a helpful tool for our clients. We can help them find better clarity of voice and identity within their brand and simultaneously help their teams work together more effectively. This tool is the shining star of our new culture training program and we couldn’t be more excited! So what is the Enneagram?
The Enneagram is a framework for understanding the multi-layered nature of personality. Our personalities are shaped through the intertwining of our innate qualities and the nurturing we received from our parents, caregivers, family and friends, as well as other environmental factors physically, socially and culturally. Other personality assessments reveal our strengths, weaknesses, and simple facts about our personalities, but the Enneagram dives deeper. It reveals what is boiling beneath our personalities and helps us resolve the confusion and frustration we feel in relationships.
“The Enneagram is a very old map. Like other typologies, it describes different character types. But, that is just the beginning. Beyond the description of conditions, the Enneagram contains an inner dynamic that aims at change…It confronts us with the compulsions and laws under which we live–usually without being aware of it–and it aims to invite us to go beyond them, to take steps into the domain of freedom.”
–Father Richard Rohr, The Enneagram, A Christian Perspective
The Enneagram personality model (labeled “a Map for Developing Self-Awareness,” by Beatrice Chestnut, PhD) is a nine-pointed star etched inside of a circle that provides a framework for a personality type system of nine interconnected characters. Put to work compassionately, the Enneagram allows for beautiful personal development and transformation. The Enneagram teaches three distinct “centers of intelligence,” nine personality types, and twenty seven “subtypes” that offer an incredibly accurate image of ourselves and the patterns associated with the way we move through the world. (Chestnut, Beatrice, PhD, The Complete Enneagram. She Writes Press, 2013.)
“As we “study” ourselves, it helps us to have some sort of guidance. We think, feel, and do many things every day–how can we even begin to make sense of it all? This is where the Enneagram comes in.”
–Beatrice Chestnut, PhD, The Complete Enneagram
We are big fans of this tool! Bringing it to the business setting to help create room for employees to be creative has in return helped businesses grow and stay innovative. It has been a gift to our team and we really hope to bring it to yours. If you are interested in learning more about the Enneagram, we are offering one-day workshops for teams and organizations. Email info@orig-dimalantadesigngroup.devsquad.tech to schedule a workshop or learn more here.