I Know I Am, But What Are You?
David Freund, Chief Leadership Officer

Last week I asked if you suffer from the Sunday Evening Flu. I asked if when you start thinking about Monday morning, you get stressed out. Falling ill to the Sunday Evening Flu may be because you are not working in our strength zone, but rather working in areas of weakness. The result is that you become mired in tasks that leave you stressed out.

On the contrary, working in your strength zone will energize you. The big question I need to ask is this: why aren’t more people working to their strengths? Why do so many people give themselves a life sentence of the Sunday Evening Flu? Maybe, just maybe, it’s because they don’t know what their strengths are.

Thankfully, there are a variety of ways to find out what your strengths are. Today, I would like us to take a quick look at the Enneagram Assessment. Marisa Norcross sent me a link to the free assessment (a quick Google search will lead you to a few free assessments and some paid options), and it matches up well with the other assessments I have taken. The enneagram assessment looks at nine different personality profiles. By asking you about 125 questions, the assessment can slot you into one of these nine types:

1. The Reformer – Type One is principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionistic.
2. The Helper – Type Two is generous, demonstrative, people-pleasing, and possessive.
3. The Achiever – Type Three is adaptable, excelling, driven, and image-conscious.
4. The Individualist – Type Four is expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental.
5. The Investigator – Type Five is perceptive, innovative, secretive, and isolated.
6. The Loyalist – Type Six is engaging, responsible, anxious, and suspicious.
7. The Enthusiast – Type Seven is spontaneous, versatile, acquisitive, and scattered.
8. The Challenger – Type Eight is self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational.
9. The Peacemaker – Type Nine is receptive, reassuring, complacent, and resigned.

The assessment took me about 15 – 20 minutes to complete. My assessment said that I was between the Helper (Type 2) and the Achiever (Type 3). The report actually said it was tough to tell where I fell between those two. The assessment also stated that I need to be aware of my wings (the types adjacent to the Helper and the Achiever). No one is a pure personality type: everyone is a unique mixture of his or her basic type and usually one of the two types adjacent to it on the Enneagram circle. My wings would be the Reformer and the Individualist. Not bad for a free assessment.

The main point I would like to make in this post is that each of us must become intentional about our lives. Don’t let others determine whether you spend the rest of your life getting the Sunday Evening Flu. There are so many assessments and methods you can use to discover your strengths and learn more about yourself. Why not discover your strengths and feel more excited about your daily work.

If you would like to hear more about the Enneagram test, please join Marisa Norcross and me on Episode 129 of The Next Page podcast, where we will share from our personal experiences with the tool.

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