For many of us, encountering the Enneagram creates a moment of recognition. We suddenly see patterns that were always present but that we had never really named. Behaviours we had explained through circumstances or personality begin to reveal deeper motivations, fears and desires. This was certainly my experience, although the most important insight for me came somewhat later. I started to realise that understanding why I behaved in a certain way was fascinating, but insufficient. The more interesting question was what I would actually do differently because I now understood myself better.
My own encounter with the Enneagram came during a period of considerable transition in my life. After a failed marriage and many years in corporate environments, I was asking questions about myself that professional success had never really answered. I explored several approaches to personal development, but the Enneagram affected me differently because it invited me to look beneath behaviour and confront motivation.
Understanding myself through the lens of a counter-phobic Type 6 was particularly revealing. Suddenly, experiences that had seemed unrelated started to form a pattern: competitive judo, becoming a paratrooper, entrepreneurship, difficult corporate situations and my repeated attraction to high-pressure turnarounds. I had always thought of much of this as courage and a willingness to take on difficult challenges. The Enneagram confronted me with another possibility: perhaps my tendency to move towards difficult situations also had something to do with the way I responded to the fear and uncertainty associated with Type 6.
This did not make those choices wrong, nor did an Enneagram number suddenly explain my life. What changed was my capacity to observe myself while making choices. Fear did not disappear because I understood its role better. But understanding gave me the possibility of relating to it differently and, at times, transforming it into more constructive problem-solving and leadership. Somewhere in that distinction lies what I increasingly think is one of the great opportunities of the Enneagram. Self-awareness allows us to recognise the pattern; agency begins when we realise that the pattern does not have to make the next decision for us.
I subsequently became interested in what might happen if this kind of awareness moved from the personal sphere into professional life. As a CEO, I engaged a certified Enneagram school to work with me and my C-suite executive team. We were not trying to become Enneagram teachers. We were trying to become better colleagues and leaders. We wanted to reduce ego, increase empathy and understand why intelligent, committed people could experience exactly the same situation so differently.
The experience changed some of the conversations we were able to have with each other. Differences that could previously produce frustration became easier to explore when we understood that another person's behaviour might emerge from a very different internal motivation. We became more conscious of our own patterns and more appreciative of heterogeneous personalities and perspectives. Silos began to weaken and communication became more open. Over time, we extended Enneagram training more broadly within the organisation. A colleague who worked closely with me during those years later described self-knowledge, transparent communication and employee empowerment as central ingredients of the culture we were trying to create, and specifically recalled how Enneagram training helped employees develop greater self-awareness and empathy towards others.
This was important for me because it moved the Enneagram beyond the question of “Who am I?” towards another question: “How does who I am affect how I lead, decide, collaborate and contribute?” In difficult organisational situations this became particularly relevant. When we could recognise motivations, fears and defence mechanisms, some conflicts became less personal. Instead of immediately deciding that the other person was the problem, we could become curious about the patterns both of us were bringing into the room. This did not eliminate conflict, and nor should it. But it could change the quality of the conflict by replacing some blame with self-awareness.
These experiences eventually became part of a much broader inquiry into vocation. I became increasingly interested in the relationship between who we are, what we do professionally and the contribution we want to make through our work. I began using “vocating” deliberately as a verb because I do not see vocation as something we simply discover one day and then possess. It is something we practise through choices. We understand ourselves, formulate a direction, act, encounter reality, learn and adjust.
The Enneagram became an essential part of this process for me because vocation without self-knowledge can easily become another projection. We may tell ourselves that we are pursuing our calling when we are actually reproducing familiar patterns of achievement, security, recognition, control or avoidance. Understanding our type does not tell us what profession to choose, but it can help us become more conscious of the motivation from which we are choosing.
This is where I see the transition from type to agency. We recognise a pattern and begin to understand what may be driving it. That recognition creates a small space in which choice becomes possible. We can then act differently and observe what happens. Reality gives us feedback: from our own emotional response, from other people and from the consequences of our action. That feedback allows us to understand ourselves a little better, which in turn informs the next choice. Rather than self-awareness being the end point, it becomes part of a continuous relationship between introspection and action.
For example, someone who recognises a familiar Enneagram pattern in an important professional situation might ask what they are really seeking or protecting. What would they normally do next? What becomes possible now that they can observe that reaction rather than simply enact it? And what small alternative action could they try? The experiment may be as simple as asking rather than asserting, saying no rather than automatically helping, allowing imperfect work to be seen, entering a difficult conversation rather than avoiding it, or pausing rather than immediately confronting a perceived threat. The point is not to imitate another type or somehow escape our own. It is to create enough consciousness that our habitual pattern does not have to determine our response automatically.
This question has also led me to think more critically about education. We spend an extraordinary amount of time learning about the world around us and comparatively little learning about the person who is going to navigate it. We study mathematics, history, economics, technology and management, yet many of us enter professional life with remarkably little structured understanding of our motivations, fears and emotional patterns. I have described this elsewhere as becoming the “absent person” of our own education. The Enneagram can help address this absence, not because young people need another label, but because they need tools with which to observe themselves and develop the agency to make increasingly conscious choices about their lives and work.
I believe this question becomes even more important with the rapid development of artificial intelligence. AI is becoming increasingly capable of giving us information, analysing alternatives, generating content, recommending actions and, through agentic systems, beginning to execute some of those actions for us. Much of what we previously considered professional competence will be augmented, transformed or sometimes replaced by machines. This development understandably creates anxiety, but it also raises a deeper question about what remains fundamentally human.
An artificial intelligence can increasingly tell me what I could do. It can analyse my skills, suggest professions, identify opportunities and help me develop a plan. It may even be able to execute substantial parts of that plan. But can it determine what is meaningful to me? Can it decide what I am willing to struggle for, what contribution I want to make, or what kind of person I want to become in the process?
I do not believe we should outsource those questions. Intelligence, whether human or artificial, does not by itself provide intention. Technology can help us optimise, but human beings still need to decide what deserves to be optimised and towards what purpose. My work on organisations has increasingly led me to the same conclusion: as technology becomes more capable, human agency does not become less important. It becomes more important.
This is why I wonder whether the Enneagram may have an increasingly important role in the age of AI. When external intelligence becomes abundant, internal discernment becomes precious. The ability to understand our motivations, recognise our fears, question our automatic responses and make conscious choices may become an essential counterbalance to systems that are extraordinarily good at telling us what is possible but cannot ultimately determine what is meaningful.
There is also a responsibility here for those of us who work with the Enneagram. The objective cannot simply be to become ever more sophisticated at describing ourselves. There is a risk that self-knowledge itself becomes another comfort zone, allowing us to explain our behaviour beautifully while continuing to reproduce it. For me, the transformative potential of the Enneagram begins precisely where explanation stops being enough.
After years of working with the Enneagram personally, professionally and organisationally, I increasingly see it as a starting point for agency. Discovering that I am a Type 6 was important. Recognising my relationship with fear was more important. Learning to observe that relationship while making consequential choices has been more important still.
Perhaps this is ultimately what moving from type to agency means. I can recognise the fear without needing to eliminate it. I can recognise the pattern without rejecting the person who developed it. I can appreciate the strengths that have emerged from it without becoming blind to their origins. And I can recognise that this pattern is part of me without allowing it to make every next decision for me.
For me, that leaves one question which has become increasingly central to my work on vocation, leadership and now human agency in the age of AI: What will I do differently because I understand myself better?
