If you know me well, you probably know that I’m an active advocate of Enneagram. Enneagram (pronounced as “any-a-gram”) is a profound system of nine personality types that combines traditional wisdom and modern psychology into a powerful tool for understanding ourselves and the people in our lives. I’ve personally benefited tremendously from learning and applying Enneagram in improving myself and understanding my clients.
Each of the nine personality types portrays a distinctive style that has its own way of viewing, construing and responding to people and events. The nine types are:
Type 1: Perfectionist
Type 2: Helper
Type 3: Achiever
Type 4: Individualist
Type 5: Investigator
Type 6: Loyalist
Type 7: Enthusiast
Type 8: Challenger
Type 9: Peacemaker
Enneagram describes the strengths, talents and potentials of each personality type as well as its limits, pitfalls and blind spots. The descriptions are both profound and comprehensive, detailing the inner motivations, thought patterns and basic beliefs. We are not going to discuss those nine types in this article, you may “google” more for your own interest. Here we’ll focus more on the generic voice traits based on my observation and experience with my clients.
The most impressive style of my client I encountered is type 4 – Individualist.
Generically, individualists often experience a sense of longing or melancholy. They seek meaning and depth in their relationships, their work or their quest for personal creativity. Many people of this type are artists who excel at expressing universal human emotions in dance, music and poetry. Often passionate, sometimes overly emotional. Individualists need time alone to heal and grow.
No wonder they are called Individualist, I find they are the type that sometimes can be more easily and faster identified as they could be so different at times. After a lot of interactions and careful observations, I realized one of my clients is type 4. It was interesting just to watch person of this type speak. This client of mine speaks extremely slowly, as if he was savoring every word he used. His voice is low as if it traveled from somewhere very deep in his heart. He speaks with obvious emotions, expressing his authentic inner world. Type 4 will never get into the difficulty of monotone. He likes to discuss his own feelings, as well as other’s. It’s of great help knowing the type of my client and communicating in his way. It was effective and efficient for the results both my client and I wanted to create.
What I do want to point out though is typing a person takes time and efforts, sometimes maybe years to understand a person’s inner motivation, which is exactly why Enneagram is so fascinating. Don’t jump into a conclusion only by observing his/her behavior, which will be misleading. The purpose is not to type or judge a person, but to understand his/her way of thinking and to communicate in his/her way.
What is your voice like? What does your voice say about you? Does it tell the world the way you want?
