Diving into the Enneagram with Jeff Helton
roux LLC • September 1, 2020
At roux, we’ve always been intrigued by different work styles and how they can impact our success and wellbeing. This has included taking the DiSC assessment and discussing our natural vs. adaptive styles, and we recently decided to take a closer look at the Enneagram.
The Enneagram has become a hot topic in the space of personality typing and self-discovery, particularly here in the Nashville area. While the DiSC applies directly to who you are in the workplace and your professional behavior, the Enneagram takes a more holistic approach.
A few of our team members introduced us to the Enneagram a while back after exploring it in their personal lives with spouses and friends. As we began to learn more, it was clear that this was something that could be beneficial to us as a croux.
Understanding each other’s styles, motivations, and mindsets is just as important in the office as it is at home, and we decided to take the first step toward learning more about the Enneagram with our friend, Jeff Helton.
As Jeff says, it’s important to “work on yourself first” before you can be helpful or valuable to your co-workers or clients.
Jeff is an executive coach and life coach specializing in organizational and relational health. He’s local to Franklin, and is an expert on assessments like the MBTI, DiSC and Enneagram, in addition to having 25 years of experience as a pastor. Jeff and his wife, Lora, often speak on topics such as marriage, parenting, and the Enneagram.
Jeff hosted a virtual workshop to introduce us to the basics of the Enneagram and how it can be a powerful tool for both personal and professional relationships. While we wish we could have met in person, going virtual allowed us to include some of our more remote croux members!
Before the workshop, we encouraged our team to take The Enneagram Institute’s official test to determine their number. You can take the official test here.
What is the Enneagram anyway?
The Enneagram is an ancient system of personality typing that assigns individuals a number from 1-9. The word, ‘Enneagram’ is made up of two Latin words meaning “nine lines” or “a nine-sided figure.”
There are numerous ways to characterize each number, but we’ll use the descriptions from The Enneagram Institute below.
- 1 - The Reformer: The Rational, Idealistic Type: Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic
- 2 - The Helper: The Caring, Interpersonal Type: Demonstrative, Generous, People-Pleasing, and Possessive
- 3 - The Achiever: The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type: Adaptive, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious
- 4 - The Individualist: The Sensitive, Withdrawn Type: Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental
- 5 - The Investigator: The Intense, Cerebral Type: Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated
- 6 - The Loyalist: The Committed, Security-Oriented Type: Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious
- 7 - The Enthusiast: The Busy, Fun-Loving Type: Spontaneous, Versatile, Distractible, and Scattered
- 8 - The Challenger: The Powerful, Dominating Type: Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational
- 9 - The Peacemaker: The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type: Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent
You can view more detailed descriptions by clicking on each of the numbers here.
It’s important to remember that just because a test assigns you a number, that’s not the entire picture. You may find yourself relating to some of the number’s description but not all of it, or you might identify with more than one number.
The Enneagram isn’t about putting you in a box; it’s a tool to help you understand yourself. If you go into it with an open mind, it’s incredible what you can learn. Here at roux, we’ve only just begun to explore the Enneagram. We’ll be working with Jeff again in the future, and in the meantime, he recommended a couple books for those interested in learning more.
- The Road Back to You, by Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile
- Jeff recommends this as a starter book for anyone looking to understand the basics of the Enneagram. Ian Cron is a trained psychotherapist and sought-after speaker on the Enneagram, local to Nashville. He has a popular podcast on the Enneagram as well, Typology.
- The Wisdom of the Enneagram, by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson
- Jeff calls this one “The Enneagram Bible,” and recommends it to anyone looking to take a deep dive on their number or the tool as a whole. Its authors, Riso and Hudson, are the founders of The Enneagram Institute which was created to further research and development on the Enneagram.
Are you familiar with the Enneagram? Tell us your number, or share an insight you’ve gained from the test in the comments below.
We are excited to announce the recipient of our most recent Food for Thought grant — the Hot Springs Food Pantry, located in Hot Springs, South Dakota. Food for Thought is a fund we created through The Community Foundation to offer grants to organizations that help feed children in our community. This isn’t just about money though. We’re also on the lookout for ways to teach kids about good food, to help them learn to prepare it, and to encourage them to love it as much as we do. We are always looking for organizations in our local communities whose mission aligns with ours and have specific needs we can provide grants for. Because our croux reaches far and wide, “local” doesn’t just mean Tennessee. In this case, the community is local to one of our core team members, Lauren. After moving back to her hometown of Hot Springs, South Dakota to be closer to family, she got involved with the local food pantry and saw a specific need there. The food pantry needed a refrigerator so they could provide more fresh produce and protein to families in the area. They were also seeing an above average need in the community due to rising costs which has depleted some of their funds. The grant received from Food for Thought will go towards these efforts and help provide fresh food for families in the area.
We’re back with another creative croux feature. Normally, these pieces are put together by one of our freelance writers, Annie Van Essen, but this time, we’re spotlighting her!
We celebrated our 10-year anniversary in July 2023, making this our tenth Mardi Gras as a krewe. We are so thankful for the many projects, partnerships, clients and friends who have been a part of our journey so far. The essence of Mardi Gras can be summed up in one lighthearted phrase, “ Laissez les bons temps rouler!” — French, for “Let the good times roll!” We’ve had a lot of good times here at roux over the last decade, and we’re excited for them to keep on rollin’. Bon Mardi Gras and merci beaucoup, friends!
Every January we like to gather as a croux and plan for the year ahead. It serves as a holiday celebration and a strategy session. We look forward to it every year. Over the last few years, we’ve also begun incorporating a “word of the year” practice, where we each choose a word that we will focus on throughout the year.
This year, we decided to take our merry-making to the streets of Nashville to see how well the average passerby could interpret some of our favorite Creole vocab. The results were… entertaining. See for yourself!
Every year, our croux puts together a roundup of our favorite Super Bowl commercials.
This time around, we thought we’d switch it up and ask for submissions of our team’s favorite commercials EVER. Whether from 2023 or 2003, we want to celebrate the advertising magic of Super Bowl Sunday.
Here at roux, we have a wonderful team of creatives supporting us, including photographers, videographers, writers, and designers.
Today, we’re excited to introduce you to Kyle Sorvick, one of the talented graphic designers we work with as part of our extended croux.
We all look forward to receiving Christmas greetings from friends and loved ones, whether it’s a social media post or a physical card to display in our house or hang on the fridge. But when it comes to company Christmas cards, corporate greetings can sometimes fall a bit flat. We love when a company spices things up and sends a message that’s genuine and fun. Videos can also be a more effective and affordable option for a company, when you consider the reach made possible with email and social media, and the savings on printing and postage. Averitt and JetRight are two local companies that knock it out of the park every year when it comes to their video Christmas cards. Whether they choose to be lighthearted and silly or share a heartwarming message, watching their videos shows you the real people and spirit behind the companies. Check them out below!