What level of improvement have you experienced in each of the below areas using the Enneagram? You can find the answers from the 2022 Enneagram in Organizations Global Survey, conducted online by the Enneagram in Business network and drawing nearly 800 respondents from 49 countries.

Leadership is complex and nuanced, and it requires adroitness in multiple areas. In relation to tasks, leaders need to provide purpose, direction, operational structure, roles within the team or organization, resource allocation, and clarity. The Enneagram does assist leaders in exploring how their Enneagram type influences the degree to which and how they, for example, define and communicate purpose and organizational direction. However, the Enneagram is most useful in helping leaders prove the clarity that often makes or breaks an organization or a team. What is leadership clarity and why is it so important?

Leadership clarity is the ability to perceive things accurately, to understand what action then needs to be taken, and to communicate both in a clear and compelling way. Clarity is important because people need to understand the following:

What they are supposed to be doing
Why they are doing it
How they need to do it
When they need to get it done by
Who needs to be involved
How they need to be involved
How will they know when they’ve been successful

Without leadership clarity, none of the above areas get addressed in a coherent and aligned way.

The Enneagram fosters leadership clarity (65%), but why and how? One way to explain this is through a focus on the three Centers of Intelligence – Head, Heart and Body – which we all have yet use differently depending on our Enneagram types. Through understanding and using the Enneagram, leaders learn, often through direct teaching but sometimes through more indirect learning, how they (1) currently use each Center of Intelligence; (2) might misuse or underuse each Center; (3) can gain greater access to the most productive uses of each Center; and (4) how to align these three intelligence centers. In other words, each Center of Intelligence has its own potential wisdom, and when leaders both understand themselves better and work on their deeper development using the Enneagram, they gain increased access to this greater and more aligned wisdom from the Three Centers. This is the main reason why the Enneagram fosters leadership clarity.

There are, of course, other ways in which using the Enneagram in leadership development promotes leadership clarity. Here are just a few examples for leaders of each Enneagram type.

Enneagram One leaders are often clear and even extremely precise about certain aspects of task-focused leadership roles (such as the what and how), but less so about the whys and who needs to be involved.
Enneagram Two leaders may feel clear, but they may not express this with full authority.
Enneagram Three leaders may be very clear about the results they want, but less so about the purpose, the why the results matter so much.
Enneagram Four leaders often focus on purpose and use their personal stories to convey their thinking, but stories can be confusing and may not be sufficiently specific.
Enneagram Five leaders may be clear and organized in their own minds, but may not communicate enough information or communicate often enough.
Enneagram Six leaders often handle the complexity of leadership task-related responsibilities well but may have challenges simplifying their complex understandings with enough clarity.
Enneagram Seven leaders often have ample ideas related to tasks, yet have challenges sorting through these to achieve the clarity required of leaders.
Enneagram Eight leaders have a felt sense, a gut sense of how to move forward, but tend to assume others “get” this without their having to be precise or explicit.
Enneagram Nine leaders tend to work from operation details upward instead of starting with the big picture and moving into the operational details.

The next blog covers the remarkable way in which the Enneagram supports leaders in developing their acumen and agility in the relationship responsibilities of great leaders.

You can see the full results of the 2022 Enneagram in Organizations Global Survey here.

What Type of Leader Are You? by Ginger Lapid-Bogda PhD

You can read more about leadership in my book What Type of Leader Are You?  – a roadmap for becoming an exemplary leader using the Enneagram to develop seven core leadership competencies: Drive for Results, Strive for Self-Mastery, Know the Business; Think and Act Strategically, Become an Excellent Communicator, Lead High-Performing Teams, Make Optimal Decisions, and Take Charge of Change. Purchase here

About Ginger

Ginger Lapid-Bogda PhD, author of nine Enneagram books, is a speaker, consultant, trainer, and coach. She provides certification programs and training tools for business professionals around the world who want to bring the Enneagram into organizations with high-impact business applications. TheEnneagramInBusiness.com | ginger@theenneagraminbusiness.com