Chapter 17
Work, Career, and Type
In This Chapter
• Types in the workplace
• Career growth and personal development
• Do’s and don’ts for each type at work
• How each type defines job satisfaction
• Facing your worst fears: challenges worth taking on
Work is an integral part of life and your work identity is extremely important in most cultures. It determines how you see yourself and how others see you. It transfers to your personal life, as well. Aligning your work choices and career paths with your type can give you personal satisfaction. Working against your type can be difficult, unless you are consciously trying to challenge yourself. Enjoyment, personal growth, and feeling in charge of your work and professional development have important implications for your personal life. Development, strong wings, subtypes, family history, and how one likes to challenge one’s self are important factors in work and career decisions. (Refer also to the “Work and Career” sections of each of the nine types in Part 2.)
This chapter will look at tendencies and preferences, professional development and disaster paths, what settings tend to work well with each type, and a tongue-in-cheek look at work settings unlikely to bring happiness. Included are lists of important workplace characteristics for each type.
Each type tends to gravitate toward certain career and work choices, but understand that any type could potentially do well in any work or career setting. Which work choices will make you happier than others? How can your type strengths be used to your advantage? Know thyself! Meet as many of your requirements as possible. Interview others to make sure a job is right for you. The Enneagram can help.
Career Paths and Professional Development for 1s
1s usually do well in work and careers that require attention to detail, have clear guidelines, offer an ethical purpose or right cause, or produce high quality products or services. Typical jobs that work well for 1 include town manager, police officer, independent house cleaner or carpet cleaner, office organizer, fashion consultant, financial planner, or real estate agent. Whatever 1s do, they do well and thoroughly. 1s develop professionally when they find professions that support their type strengths, learn to relax, interrelate well to others with different standards and values, and can handle a few mistakes without committing seppuku.
Disaster Paths
Disaster jobs would be high profile, with shady ethics or jobs that support sloppy work. Characteristics of the jobs from hell would include nonspecific job descriptions, inaccurate accounting practices, overlapping shift schedules, production geared toward inferior products or services, and quantity stressed over quality. Additional levels of torture would include the allowance for innumerable mistakes, constant redefinition of job descriptions, inconsistent or nonexistent standards, support for pleasing the boss valued over doing what’s right, and no targets for outcomes. Worst professions would include being an odds maker at the racetrack, teaching in a Montessori preschool, or traffic officer in Beijing.
Checklist for a Good Working Environment
• Cleanliness
• Efficiency
• Order
• High quality standards, services, or products
• Proper dress codes or other reasonable standards
• High ethics
• Consistency and reliability
• Fairness
• Adherence to schedules
• Acknowledgement for good work
• Clear job description
Career Paths and Professional Development for 2s
2s do well in professions that require a positive image and include service, people contact, helping others, and giving personal attention. 2 would be perfect as maître d’hôtel or waiter, service manager, educational consultant, childcare provider, physical therapist, or yoga and workshop center instructor or owner. Professional development includes acknowledging personal limits, working on areas of improvement, saying no, and finding the right boundaries for giving to others.
Disaster Paths
Jobs to avoid include those with no people contact, appreciation, or reward systems. To make this worse, include physical settings that are spare, with no pictures, windows, or décor, and add complaining people who never smile, never share anything personal, and punishment for engaging with people during work or breaks. Worst professions here might include working on a factory assembly line, professional chicken plucker, shelf stocker on the night shift at a grocery store, heavy machine operator, or sewage pond maintenance personnel.
Lifelines
Doing work you love is essential to your health. Your stress level lowers with work that satisfies, even if it challenges you. Make sure your work utilizes your type strengths.
Checklist for a Good Working Environment
• Beautifully appointed environments—pictures, plants, brightness, and sunlight
• People contact—the personal connection
• Appreciation and acknowledgment
• Fun, cheery atmosphere
• Positive focus
• Service orientation
Career Paths and Professional Development for 3s
3s do well in jobs that offer possibilities for advancement, leadership potential, competition, and good reward systems. Professions such as real estate investment, business consulting, sales, prestigious teaching positions, entrepreneurial ventures, modeling, and project management are good fits. Professional development includes having tolerance for project slowdowns and complexities and doing work less concerned with image and acknowledgment. 3s need relationship development beyond their work connections. Well-rounded 3s have interests that add dimensions to their lives, and that are outside work.
Disaster Paths
Worst-case scenario jobs for 3s include those where everyone is treated equally, with no perks for productivity and where there are no clear goals, leadership potential, ability to advance, or job titles. No extra pay, no trophies, no benefits—just one of the boys or girls. We’ll inflict filing as an office job for our hapless 3s—also teaching socialism, maintaining the electronic scoreboard for the Chicago Cubs, or being a researcher for a cloning project.
Checklist for a Good Working Environment
• Clear goals
• Reward systems
• No limits to advancement, quick advancement
• Can-do, winning atmosphere
• Efficiency and speed focus
• Leadership potential
• Special recognition and star potential
Career Paths and Professional Development for 4s
4s do well with work and careers that stress individuality and meaningful, personal values, along with aesthetic pursuits. Unusual jobs with a dramatic flair and potential for variety and change are well suited to 4s. Interior decorator, a psychology professor who teaches about trauma and abuse, artist, dancer, flautist in a symphony orchestra, or writer of erotic novels could be perfect. Professional development includes integrating the mundane at work in unique ways and developing skill sets and conforming to standards, while still standing out.
Disaster Paths
Disaster 4ness would include not having disasters, living an ordinary work life with no drama, no special recognition, no beauty in the environment, and pleasing the boss as the top priority. Jobs that elicit no feelings would be hell. The inability to express yourself personally would be the worst tragedy. Jobs that would fit this description could include manufacturing paint-by-numbers kits, method acting, mathematics, and surgical scrub nurse.
Checklist for a Good Working Environment
• Aesthetic and creative possibilities
• Acceptance and support for passion, mood, and drama
• Ability to express one’s feelings and inner state
• Openness to the new and different
• Appreciation for artistic quality
• Positive stress, essential for 4s
def·i·ni·tion
Positive stress is the type of stress that enhances life and keeps it exciting. The thrill of a roller-coaster ride, a fun challenge, a promotion, getting married … all are examples of positive stress.
Career Paths and Professional Development for 5s
5s do well in knowledge-based careers such as engineering, systems analysis, psychiatry, physics, mathematics, or higher education. Anything that relates to analysis, developing advanced knowledge, creating more integrated knowledge with other systems, new theories of learning—all are part of the 5 experience. 5s like to constantly learn and don’t want to stay in jobs with no ability to deepen or create more knowledge. Professional development includes support for 5s’ need for learning, knowing that personal relationship education is part of that learning, and that knowledge isn’t the same as outcome. 5s need to be careful not to isolate at work. Share your knowledge and process, so others can benefit too. Personal engagement can add to more knowledge!
Disaster Paths
Worst-case 5 work would be dull jobs that don’t challenge the mind. Structures that limit you from learning or developing new strategies and ideas would be awful. Authoritarian structures that limit pursuits of research or the ability to challenge authority, particularly if that inhibits your individual process, would not be the job for you. You often like to be the authority when it comes to the latest ideas and theories about subjects that interest you or in which you want to be expert. Disaster jobs would be charismatic televangelism, swimsuit model, or professional wrestler.
Checklist for a Good Working Environment
• Time alone and privacy at work
• Intelligent people to engage with
• Learning opportunities
• Information and knowledge valued
• Appreciation for introversion
• Clear guidelines along with an openness to innovation
• Appreciation for objectivity
• Discussion groups that challenge the mind
Career Paths and Professional Development for 6s
6s do well with work that supports their strengths of research, analysis, awareness and incorporates support for safety systems, combating danger, and ways to support relationship security. Engineering, the legal system, safety standards, the insurance industry, and the home security system industry are 6s’ areas of work. 6s need some structure at work, with guidelines for grievances and a clear hierarchy. Professional development includes managing your anxiety; making alliances with most people instead of us against them, therefore eliminating the need for enemies; acting without having to overly plan or predict in advance; and seeing the best-case intentions of people who challenge your assumptions.
Disaster Paths
Areas to avoid would be working at jobs that over-promise security and those would include dangerous jobs with no safety standards (though some of you counter phobic 6s aren’t always safe, as you challenge the boundaries). Specific horrible situations for 6s include regulator at an enriched plutonium plant, astronaut for a third world nation’s fledgling space program, or circus trapeze artist working without a net.
Checklist for a Good Working Environment
• Clear lines of leadership and authority
• Guidelines for challenging authority
• Strictly enforced safety standards
• Orderly environment
• Allowance for questioning
• Supportive groups
• Appreciation for problem-solving skills
• Critical analysis and feedback opportunities
Warning!
6s like order and control from outside, yet are also concerned about too much order and control. 6s can’t solve this dilemma around control until they focus on themselves for security and feel control from inside.
Career Paths and Professional Development for 7s
7s need freedom and variety at work to be their best. They do well with a system for brainstorming before decisions, a support system to help with carrying out tedious details, and fun and extroverted environments. They thrive in jobs that have plenty of new, nonrepetitive dimensions. They can write exciting computer games, motivate others as public speakers, and shine as masters of ceremonies. They develop professionally by accepting limits as part of the process, following through on action and commitments, and realizing that authority, not total egalitarianism, is sometimes necessary. They need to realize and allow that others aren’t as positive as they are, possibly due to others facing bottom-line realities.
Disaster Paths
7s think that everything is possible, so real disasters can be a challenge for 7s, who can focus on favorable possibilities and forget that real dangers do exist. Disaster paths for a 7 would include work and career journeys that focus too much on real or imagined danger and rules and limitations. Worst-case jobs would be telephone solicitor working in a cubicle, prison guard, coroner, or compiler of actuarial tables for an insurance company.
Checklist for a Good Working Environment
• Freedom to move physically in the environment, independence
• Options to do your job the way you feel is best
• Dynamic, exciting, engaging environment
• Plenty of change
• Openness to new ideas
• Appreciation for what is good, positive focus
• Fun, entertainment, and pranks as part of the mix
Career Paths and Professional Development for 8s
8s want their independence and a strong sense of autonomy. Telling an 8 what to do doesn’t land well. 8s prefer to be in charge, or at least feel in charge of their choices. They need environments in which they don’t feel dominated or restricted. 8s speak up, so work settings need to tolerate that, to some degree. They are the head nurse; they’re in charge of the high school physical education department; or they own a lumber company, run their own business, or manage the department in which they work. To develop, they need to practice patience, allow for differences, appreciate their own insecurities (without needing to fight to cover them up), and think before they leap. Other people are also learning about power and control, and there needs to be some give and take in the process, between the 8 and others.
Disaster Paths
They would hate to have a million bosses over them, competing with each other. Having confusing leadership above is torture. People trying to be nice, with undercurrents of power swirling about, is like having spider webs in the face. 8s feel trapped and little. Feeling and reality can be different. Worst-case jobs would be Army recruit being ordered around by a bully sergeant and working front counter of a complaint compartment.
Checklist for a Good Working Environment
• Room for independence, self-determination
• Comfort in people being direct with each other
• Leadership position potential
• Strong and clear leadership from others
• Group goals, defined and consistent
• Room for joviality and good times
• Environments that have a sense of boldness, action, conviction, and passion
Career Paths and Professional Development for 9s
9s like work that’s not overly stressful, in a pleasant environment, with a tolerance for differences and minimal competition, fighting, and mixed messages. 9s prefer to please and create harmony, if possible, so if that is difficult, it’s a challenge to be motivated. Unappreciative environments or organizations, rife with conflicts, are challenges. 9s do well as mediator, human services director, spiritually-oriented therapist, x-ray technician, repairperson, or almost any job that does a service that ideally benefits others or improves the environment. 9s need the challenge to be more self-oriented and speak up with their desires and intuitions.
Disaster Paths
Worst-case scenarios include 9s being in or witnessing constant conflicts in a highly stressed work setting with major power struggles. Constant pressure to produce wouldn’t work with a 9, unless it fits the 9’s individual purpose and the approach is somewhat comforting. 9s are flexible but hate to be pushed or taken for granted. Worst-case jobs would be bullfighter, fashion model, stockbroker, hockey player, or Donald Trump’s assistant. It’s not to say a 9 couldn’t do these jobs, as 9s adapt to anything and everything, but typically they struggle both inwardly and outwardly in stressful environments, with competition or infighting. 9s pick up stress easily, so everyone’s inner conflicts are felt by the 9.
Checklist for a Good Working Environment
• Opportunity to take breaks as needed
• Congenial atmosphere
• No back-biting
• Cooperation, rather than competition
• Appreciation for differences
• Higher purpose
• Inclusive environment
Facing Your Worst Fear
At times, all the types will face their worst fears at work and need to confront the challenge. Until you master all the strengths of the nine types, you haven’t fully played the game and faced your own type fear. Face that and life is more abundant and less fearful. Have compassion for the fear of each type:
• 1s—Face your anger, imperfection, and hidden desires and you can relax, have pleasure, and still strive for excellence.
• 2s—Face your needs, your self-drives, your limits on giving, and your need to receive love with openness, and you will have the love you want.
• 3s—Face your fear of failure and you’ll no longer experience it, because you’ll know it’s an illusion. You can relax and not try so hard to win every time. You can have love without winning.
• 4s—Face your fear of abandonment and you can’t be abandoned. Accept yourself as you are now, and let go of longing for a future that is better. Be here now. That’s the meaning.
• 5s—Face your fear that your learning will never be enough. It won’t be. Nothing in and of itself will be fully satisfying. Allow emotions, the unknown, lack of control. It’s all part of the dance. Wisdom is beyond knowledge and accepts all of what is.
• 6s—Face your fear of insecurity and allow it in. When you allow your fears, rather than try to fix them in some desperate way, you can accept fear as a teacher. Security lies within.
• 7s—Face the fact that unlimited freedom actually traps you. Certain commitments and limits give freedom. See the illusion and you’ll still be free.
• 8s—Face your inadequacies and fears and share them. Don’t worry, you can protect yourself, but don’t overprotect yourself. There is strength in admitting weakness.
• 9s—Be your assertiveness. Have an ego. Say what you think and want and go after it. Most people will accept you, but you need to see and accept your own strength. Be yourself rather than blend.
The Least You Need to Know
• Career choices need to be made with your type in mind.
• There are professional development challenges unique to type in your work and career.
• Each type has a list of important qualities to look for in work.
• Use work to grow beyond some of the limited qualities of your type.
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