How to Read Your Enneagram

What Is the Enneagram?

The Enneagram (said ANY-a-gram) is a map of nine personality types. Each type is defined by what it wants most and what it fears most, the motivation underneath behaviour, rather than by the behaviour itself. Two people can both stay late at work every night, one because a job done properly feels right and one because being seen to succeed feels necessary. The first is likely a Type 1 and the second a Type 3. The Enneagram asks why you do what you do.

The name joins the Greek ennea, nine, and grammos, something drawn. The symbol is a circle with nine points, joined inside by a triangle through points 3, 6 and 9 and by a six-pointed figure through 1, 4, 2, 8, 5 and 7. The inner lines are part of the system. They show how each type changes under stress and as it grows, which the sections below explain.

The Nine Types at a Glance

Each type is a different answer to the question of what a person needs in order to feel safe, worthy and whole.

• Type 1, The Reformer. Wants to be good, right and in integrity. Fears being corrupt, defective or wrong.
• Type 2, The Helper. Wants to be loved and needed. Fears being unwanted or unworthy of love.
• Type 3, The Achiever. Wants to feel valuable and worthwhile. Fears being worthless or failing in front of others.
• Type 4, The Individualist. Wants to find themselves and their significance. Fears having no identity or personal significance.
• Type 5, The Investigator. Wants to be capable and to understand. Fears being useless, helpless or overwhelmed.
• Type 6, The Loyalist. Wants security and support. Fears being left without support or guidance.
• Type 7, The Enthusiast. Wants to be satisfied, free and happy. Fears being deprived, limited or trapped in pain.
• Type 8, The Challenger. Wants to protect themselves and direct their own life. Fears being harmed or controlled by others.
• Type 9, The Peacemaker. Wants inner stability and peace of mind. Fears loss, separation and conflict.

Where It Comes From

The nine-pointed symbol reached the West through the teacher G. I. Gurdjieff in the early twentieth century, as a figure for how any process unfolds. In the 1950s and 1960s Oscar Ichazo linked its nine points to nine fixations of personality, and in the 1970s the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo developed them into the psychological types used today.

From the late 1980s writers and teachers such as Helen Palmer, Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson brought the Enneagram to a wide audience. Riso and Hudson added the idea of levels of health within each type and several of the groupings described later in this guide. The type names used on GnosisWay, such as the Reformer and the Peacemaker, follow their tradition.

What It Is and What It Is Not

• A habit of attention, not a box. Everyone has some of all nine. Your type is the one you return to most, especially when you are tired or under pressure.
• No type is better than another. Each has its own gifts and its own blind spot, and each can be lived in a healthy or an unhealthy way.
• Stable at the core, changeable in health. Most teachers hold that your core type stays the same through life, while how free and generous you are within it can change a great deal.
• A tool for reflection, not a diagnosis. The Enneagram is not a clinical instrument and research on it is still limited. Treat your result as a starting point to test against your own experience.

How Your Result Is Calculated

This part describes exactly what the GnosisWay test does with your answers, from the first statement to the result page. Nothing is weighed behind the scenes beyond what is written here.

The 90 Statements

The test has 90 statements. 72 of them are written for the nine types, eight for each, and 18 for the three instincts, six for each. They come one at a time in a shuffled order, so statements about the same thing are spread through the test and the order is different every time you take it. You can go back and change an answer, but you cannot skip one, so every type and every instinct is measured by all of its statements. Most people finish in about twelve minutes.

The statements come in five parts of 18, with a short pause after each part. Your answers are kept in your browser as you give them, so if you close the page you can come back on the same device and pick up where you left off.

For each statement you choose how much it sounds like you. Answer as you usually are on an ordinary day, not as you would like to be and not as you were in one unusual week. There are no right answers, and agreeing with a statement for another type does not count against your own.

From Answers to Scores

Each answer becomes a number of points.

A type's eight answers are added up, which gives a total between 8 and 40. Its score says where that total lands between the lowest it could be and the highest, as a percentage. Eight Strongly Disagree answers give 0 percent, eight Strongly Agree answers give 100 percent, and eight Neutral answers give exactly 50.

Your Main Type

Your main type is the one with the highest score. If two types tie exactly, the lower number comes first.

A clear gap between your first and second type makes the result more certain. When the top two are within a few points, read both descriptions and ask which motivation is truly yours. The test measures how much you agree with each set of statements, and it cannot see why you agree, which is the question the Enneagram turns on.

Your Wing

Your wing is one of the two types beside yours on the circle. Type 1 sits between 9 and 2, Type 5 between 4 and 6, and Type 9 between 8 and 1. The test takes the scores of your two neighbours and compares them.

• Balanced. If the gap between the two is no more than 15 percent of the higher score, neither leads, and the page says you are balanced between both wings.
• Leaning one way. Otherwise the higher neighbour is your wing. It is written after a w, so a Type 4 whose Type 3 neighbour scored higher is a 4w3.

The two wing bars on the page show how your neighbours share between them, each as its part of their two scores added together, so the bars always make 100 percent between them.

Center Scores

Every statement also counts toward one of three centers. Statements for Types 8, 9 and 1 count toward the Body center, those for Types 2, 3 and 4 toward the Heart center, and those for Types 5, 6 and 7 toward the Head center. Each center is scored the same way as a type, from all 24 of its statements, so it shows how strongly the concerns of that center run through your answers as a whole, whichever type within it you are.

Instinct Scores

Six statements measure each instinct, and they count toward nothing else, so they never change your type, your wing or your centers. Each instinct is scored like a type, from its six answers, between 0 and 100 percent. The strongest is your dominant instinct, and the order of all three is your instinct stack. If two instincts tie, self-preservation comes first, then social, then one-to-one.

What Your Type Decides

Some parts of your result follow from your main type rather than from separate statements. Your stress and growth arrows are the two lines that leave your type on the symbol, and your place in the four triads, your center, harmonic group, object relations group and stance, belongs to your type. Two people of the same type see the same arrows and triads and differ in their scores, their wing and the balance of their centers.

What the Test Does Not Measure

None of the 90 statements measures how healthy or stressed you are right now, so the page does not rate your level of health. A Six at its best and a Six under strain get the same result. The stress and growth arrows below describe what each state looks like, so you can judge for yourself.

The instinct statements were added after the test first launched. A result saved before then shows no dominant instinct. Retake the test to see yours.

The Nine Types

The types are grouped by the center they work from. Each card gives what the type wants and fears, the habit it falls into and the quality it grows toward, as the Enneagram tradition names them, and where its arrows and wings lead.

Wings, Arrows and Triads

A type is the centre of the picture, not all of it. These ideas describe how your type leans, how it moves and which other types it shares its ways with.

Wings

Most people draw on one of the two types beside their own on the circle. The wing adds a flavour without changing the core motivation. A 4w3 tends to be more outgoing, ambitious and aware of image, while a 4w5 is more private, intellectual and reserved. Some people draw on both wings about equally, which is what balanced means on your results page.

Stress and Growth Arrows

The inner lines connect each type to two others. Under stress a type tends to take on the less healthy habits of one of them, its stress point. As it grows it takes on the healthy qualities of the other, its growth point. The arrows follow two paths round the symbol, 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, 7 and back to 1, and 9, 6, 3 and back to 9. Stress moves along them and growth moves against them.

A One under stress can turn moody and self-pitying like an unhealthy Four, and in growth relaxes into the lightness and spontaneity of a healthy Seven. Knowing your stress point helps you notice early that you are slipping. Your growth point is a practical direction to practise in.

The Four Triads

The nine types fall into groups of three in several ways. Each grouping answers a different question about a type, and the Dynamics tab of your results shows where your type sits in all four.

The Three Instincts

Alongside type, the Enneagram describes three instincts that everyone has, usually in a settled order. The first one colours the whole type, which is why two Sixes can look so different. Nine types with three instincts each make the 27 subtypes described by Claudio Naranjo.

• Self-preservation. Attention goes to safety, health, comfort, money and home. These people make sure the basics are covered before anything else.
• Social. Attention goes to belonging, standing and the groups a person is part of. These people read the room and care about their place and contribution in it.
• One-to-one. Also called sexual. Attention goes to intensity and close bonds, the spark of attraction and connection with one person or one passion.

The test scores all three with six statements each. Your results show the strongest as your dominant instinct and all three in order as your instinct stack. The last of the three is your blind spot, the part of life you tend to neglect until it causes trouble.

Reading Your Results

Your results page shows one result in several layers, from a one-line summary down to notes on relationships and growth. Signed out, part of each text and the chart are blurred. Signed in, everything is open and the result is saved to your account, where it joins your other systems in your Atlas.

The Enneagram Chart

The chart sits beside your results on a computer and above them on a phone. It shows the nine points on the circle with the triangle and the six-pointed figure inside.

• Your scores. A ring round each point fills as far as you scored that type, from the top, and the percentage is written under the type's name. A ring nearly as full as yours marks a type worth reading too.
• Your type and its lines. Your point is larger, filled in rose and tagged Your Type. A solid rose arrow leads to your growth point and a dashed one to your stress point. The thin grey lines are the symbol itself, the paths every type moves along. Points outlined in rose are tied to yours, your two wings and the ends of your arrows, and the wing that leads is tagged Wing. A legend under the chart says the same.
• Tap a point. Tap or click any point to see its name, your score and its place among the nine, what it means for you and what that type wants.

Overview

• Your type. The type's number, name and nickname with a short description. The badge shows your type with its wing, such as 4w3, when one wing leads, and the question mark beside it says what that means.
• Wing Influence. A bar for each neighbour showing its share of the two neighbours' combined score, whether you lean toward one or are balanced between both, and what your wing adds to your type.
• Core Pattern. How your type's motivation, strengths and fear tend to play out, and the moment to watch for when the fear takes the lead.
• Internal Engine. Your type's core motivation, with the message from childhood the type tends to carry, and its core fear, with the desire that answers it.

Dynamics

• Instinctual Drive. Your dominant instinct and what it means for your type, with a bar and a percentage for each of the three in the order you scored them. The last is your blind spot. A result saved before the test asked about the instincts shows Not measured instead.
• Psychological Structures. Where your type sits in the four triads, its center, harmonic group, object relations group and stance, each with a short explanation, and Center Balance, a bar and a percentage for each of the three centers.
• Communication. How your type tends to speak, what it needs to hear from others and where it is most often misunderstood.

Relations

• Relationships. Your type in friendship, romance and family, with a note written for your type.
• Work & Leadership. How your type leads, the careers that tend to suit it and how it works alongside others, with a note written for your type.

Growth

• Movement & Growth. Your two arrows from the chart, in words. One block names the type you move toward under stress and what that tends to look like, the other the type you move toward as you grow.
• Growth Path Details. What integration means for your type and practices that help you move toward your growth point.

The Menu and Retaking the Test

The ⋯ button beside the heading Layered insights in order opens this guide and lets you retake the test. A new test replaces your saved result. If your Enneagram is part of a paid Gnosis Synthesis, the page asks you to confirm first. The synthesis then moves to My Purchases, where it stays readable, and the new result does not get a synthesis of its own.

Getting the Most From Your Result

• Look at motivation, not behaviour. Many types can look alike from the outside. Ask which fear and which longing sit underneath what you do.
• Read your close runners-up. If two or three rings on the chart are nearly as full as yours, read those types too. The one whose core fear makes you wince is often the right one.
• Ask someone who knows you well. Others often see our type more easily than we do, especially the parts we would rather not see.
• Retake it on an ordinary day. Mood and circumstance colour answers. If the result surprises you, take the test again in a few weeks and compare.
• Use it to grow, not to excuse. A type explains a pattern without making it fixed. Your growth point is the most practical place to start.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about the Enneagram and the GnosisWay test.