Enneagram Resources: Determine your type and learn about the path forward
Friends ~ you may know I love the enneagram, and I enjoy sharing it with others. Here are some of my favorite resources. If you are curious to learn more, please just ask!
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This video introduces the enneagram using clips from films. While I don’t agree with some details in the discussions of wings and arrows, the rest is useful and entertaining. For a deeper dive into characters for each type, go here.
There are two podcasts I particularly love for explaining the enneagram, partly because they feature a long conversation among my three favorite teachers. Here they are: part one and part two.
This is a fabulous website to explore, with user-friendly descriptions of the types and subtypes and much more, including my favorite assessment for finding your enneatype. It is quick and relatively accurate, as assessments go (note: it’s best to determine type for oneself rather than to rely on any test). The only thing the creators will ask of you is your email address. Which IMO is a good thing, because then you’ll be connected with them. I consider their podcast essential. I have listened to every episode—for some, multiple times!
There are other free resources available. This is an assessment to determine your dominant instinct. You will find out whether it's more likely self-preservation, sexual (one-to-one), or social. The order, in percentages, is good to note.
This assessment for type + instinct will provide a good guess about your type plus your dominant instinct. No assessment instrument is always accurate, but we can get an idea from your results. (It will be interesting to see whether the instinct identified by this assessment matches other assessments’ results.)
For more assessments of both instinct and type, visit The Art of Growth’s website and scroll down to take their free tests.
One final type assessment I find interesting is from a German group.
This searchable website chock full of information is fun to explore. If, for example, I know my type is nine, I can read up on the general information about my type. And if, for example, I know that my dominant instinct is sexual, I can read how this instinct manifests when combined with my type-nine personality.
If you want to go more in depth, go to the "learn" section of the Enneagram Institute website and just look around. Good stuff here. If you want to take their enneagram test, the RHETI, you can do that, but it costs money and, like all the other assessments, isn’t necessarily accurate.
If you like to get info from books, here's a link to the enneagram book I recommend starting with. It contains concise descriptions of the types and subtypes. The chapter for each type begins with a checklist, which can be very helpful for finding your type.
There are some really interesting videos and podcasts on the enneagram that I recommend, if you enjoy listening.
First—as mentioned previously—there is the wonderful Enneagram 2.0 podcast’s introduction to the nine types. Note that this is a re-broadcast of the presenters’ first episode, and they have a bunch more after this one. If you like what you’ve heard, I recommend that you go to season 1 and start with episode 2.
Once you think you know your type—or have a clue what it might be—it would be good to find and listen to a panel for your type. I've provided a link for an in-person panel for type two. If that's not your type, you can find the other types' panels pretty easily from this one.
I also recommend listening to three episodes on the Art of Growth's podcast, starting with the one on the instincts. After these three introductory episodes, which will help you understand what is meant by "subtype," you can listen to subsequent episodes of panels of people of each subtype. I'm a member of the sexual nine subtype panel. That might be a fun place to start.
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At any point in your exploration, I invite you to contact me for a free consultation and introduction to coaching. If you’d like to continue with private coaching, I currently have space in my schedule for two or three new clients.