Self-help books, coaching books, management books? They often promise too much, and nothing changes after reading them. Fortunately, that is not always true. Here is the eighth book that has given me significant direction in my work as a leadership coach.

THE ENNEAGRAM AND THE TEAM WITHIN YOURSELF

In my early years as a leadership coach, I was vehemently opposed to personality models such as DISC (you are green, yellow, red, or blue), or the MBTI (in which you possess four of sixteen traits strongly). I didn’t think such a label was necessary: ​​for me, it was about genuine interest in the human being. Moreover, those models didn’t work for me. The idea that there were only four personality types seemed far too few to me, and I found the sixteen positions of the MBTI too complex to apply. I also rejected the Enneagram with its nine positions: people with the same drive as me often had very different personalities. How could that be?

And then I met Frank Schapers. Like me, he was a pioneer in the field of leadership coaching, and he had just written the book *The Enneagram and the Team Within Yourself*. He understood my objection that you would only have one driving force. That is why he looked at it differently. He saw the nine driving forces as nine inner voices. One of them is the strongest – let’s say, the bus driver. In addition, you have two more driving forces as co-drivers (which are also strongly developed) and a number of voices that are averagely developed. There are also driving forces that you have not developed: these sit, figuratively speaking, on the back seat of your personality bus. Finally, there are driving forces that have been completely repressed: they sit in the trunk, as it were. Now that was clear.

With knowledge of just nine driving forces, you suddenly understand 504 personality types (9x8x7 driving forces). Wow. The Enneagram tells us clearly what we are good at with our top-three driving forces, where we overshoot under stress, and what our challenges are. It also teaches us how to adapt to the driving forces of others when collaboration is difficult. Magical knowledge.

My team days focusing on driving forces have become my best-performing workshops. Working together better and complementing each other is not as difficult as it seems. Thanks to Frank Schaper.