Sean Palmer

The Enneagram has become quite the hot commodity in Christian devotional and spiritual circles. Many are skeptical of it on account of its associations with the New Age movement and a lack of robust Biblical pedigree. Many people make way too much out of it, and far too many violate the foundational principle of not projecting a number on others. I have found the Enneagram to be functionally useful: almost everyone with whom I have discussed it and who took the test have found it eerily accurate in terms of the way they look at the world, their basic strength and struggles, in its instinctual centers, and the like. As a tool for self-analysis and an invitation to humility in realizing how one looks at the world and how it looks very different to others I find the Enneagram far superior to the Meyers-Briggs or other personality tests because the Enneagram is more specialized and goes far deeper. I am very interested to see if we will be able to figure out why the Enneagram “works,” or if that will be left to a later generation. I think it does “work,” but I also don’t think anyone has a great handle on why.

It is interesting to see the development and advancement of “Enneagram Studies", so to speak. Speaking by the Numbers: Enneagram Wisdom for Teachers, Pastors, and Communicators by Sean Palmer (galley received as part of early review program) involves such development and advancement. This work assumes one has basic familiarity with the Enneagram and a lot of the core concepts behind the Enneagram. The focus on the work is on the "centers of intelligence,” doing, feeling, and thinking: Eights, Nines, and Ones are considered the “doing” triad, in which gut instinct predominates; Twos, Threes, and Fours are considered the “feeling” triad, in which emotions/feeling predominate; and Fives, Sixes, and Sevens are considered the “thinking” triad, in which thought predominates. Each number will have another center which becomes less used and thus deemed “repressed”; the author associates this with Hornevian groups involving coping strategies of moving toward others, against others, or away from others. Thus the author will speak of “stances”: Ones, Twos, and Sixes are reckoned as “compliant” or “dependent” in stance, because they instinctively move toward others. Threes, Sevens, and Eights are reckoned as the “assertive” or “aggressive” stances, moving against others. Fours, Fives, and Nines are reckoned as “withdrawing” or “detached” in stance, moving away from others when needing to process something. Each stance has one member of each triad; two of the numbers will have a strength in one center and a weakness in another (Gut vs. Thinking, Feeling vs. Thinking, etc.), and the Threes - Sixes - Nines will be simultaneously strong and weak in their intelligence center (feeling, thinking, gut/doing, respectively).

From this the author would have the communicator think both about their own particular stance and how that affects how they communicate as well as to give consideration of how the various numbers in each of the stances can best hear what the communicator would communicate. This is the most helpful and insightful part of the work. It is mostly savage, for it focuses on the limitations and weaknesses inherent in each stance. The author is consistent and savages his own Threeness as much as he does others. He also provides sample speeches which would highlight the different communication strategies necessary for those in each stance.

Giving the communicator such things to think about is important and worthy in the book. The ultimate conclusion, however, proves a bit milquetoast, but for understandable reasons: ultimately, almost every audience is going to include people of the whole range of numbers, and thus the whole range of the intelligence centers, and so any speech or form of communication should have something which is directed at the mind, at the heart, and for action.

A lot of the time I am completely on board with Enneagram assessments, but as one gets deeper and more developed, some cracks begin to show. When one gets into more specifics, the ability to generalize gets weaker. It would seem the author identifies himself as a “pure” Three. I, for instance, identify as a 1w9, or a One with a Nine wing. Thus a lot, but not all, of his characterizations of Ones made sense to me. I think a lot of work needs to be done to see how those with wings, and thus some characteristics of one of the nearby numbers, affects how the centers of intelligence and stances work. At this point any kind of resource would become unwieldy; one has now gone from nine numbers in three triads and stances and multiplied them exponentially.

If you are interested in how the Enneagram can work in terms of communication, this is a good resource to consider.… (mais)