World Enneagram
Nine ways of seeing the world. Which one is yours?
The Enneagram is a tool for knowing yourself and others: playful, and surprisingly accurate. It describes nine personalities, nine “bases”, each with its own core motivation, its great fear and its unique way of communicating. Click on a number on the circle: you will find the complete profile of each base, like in a book, with all its secrets.
First of all, what is this tool?
The word comes from the Greek “ennea”, meaning nine. The figure is a circle bearing nine points connected to one another: each point represents a personality, a “base”. We do not choose our base, we recognise ourselves in it: it is the filter through which, since childhood, we look at the world without even realising it.
Where many tools describe what we do, the Enneagram is interested in why we do it: the core motivation that drives us, the fear we avoid, and the automatic patterns that flow from them. That is what makes it so useful for communicating: when you understand someone else's why, their reactions stop being mysteries or personal attacks.
A base is not a box: it moves. We borrow colours from our neighbours (the wings), we transform when we feel secure (integration) and we have characteristic reactions under stress (disintegration). All of this can be read on the figure, and all of it is explained in these pages.
The circle of the 9 bases
Every number is clickable: the complete profile of the base awaits you, with its motivation, its fear, its strengths, its movements, its wings and the best way to communicate with it.
The Perfectionist
Instinctive centre
To be right, upright and beyond reproach.
Discover the full profile → 2The Altruist
Emotional centre
To be loved and indispensable.
Discover the full profile → 3The Achiever
Emotional centre
To succeed and be recognised for his results.
Discover the full profile → 4The Romantic
Emotional centre
To be himself, unique and deep.
Discover the full profile → 5The Observer
Mental centre
To understand the world and be competent.
Discover the full profile → 6The Loyalist
Mental centre
To be safe, surrounded and supported.
Discover the full profile → 7The Epicurean
Mental centre
To enjoy life and keep every option open.
Discover the full profile → 8The Leader
Instinctive centre
To be strong, master of his destiny and protector of his own.
Discover the full profile → 9The Mediator
Instinctive centre
To live in peace, in harmony with others and with himself.
Discover the full profile →Three centres, three intelligences
Types 8, 9, 1
Instinctive centre
The intelligence of the body and of action. These types decide from the gut: they sense territory, the balance of power, what is right.
Types 2, 3, 4
Emotional centre
The intelligence of the heart and of relationships. These types decide from feeling: they sense the connection, the image they project, who they are.
Types 5, 6, 7
Mental centre
The intelligence of the head and of anticipation. These types decide by analysing: they want to understand, to foresee, to be safe.
We are not set in stone: the arrows
The lines inside the circle are arrows. When we are doing well, we borrow qualities from the type of our integration arrow. Under stress, we slide towards the behaviours of the type of our disintegration arrow. Spotting these movements in yourself is one of the most liberating uses of the tool.
The wings: our personal colour
Each base has two neighbours on the circle: its wings. We mainly develop one of them, which colours our base without changing it. Two people with the same base can therefore be quite different, one gentler, the other more intense, depending on which wing dominates.
Communicating with each base
We do not all hear the same things in the same way. What motivates a Type 3 exhausts a Type 5; what reassures a Type 6 annoys a Type 8. The Communication page gives, base by base, what works, what hurts, and concrete examples.
Want to go further?
This website is brought to you by ABP Consulting, a French training organisation that has been teaching the Enneagram since 2003. To learn how to identify your base with a trainer, discover the e-learning module or take a course in person or by video, head to the Training courses page.