just another assessment?
It’s not uncommon to meet families or professionals who have dabbled in personality assessment tools in the past. They can create great fun in the workplace and sometimes can even encourage increased personal insight. Over the past few years, I have been pursuing studies in the iEQ9 integrative enneagram. While the enneagram has gained popularity in pop psychology over the years, the iEQ9 is a data driven tool that draws from both assessment and narrative interviewing in order to determine one’s “type.” While many personality tools assess behavior, the enneagram is an assessment of motivation. Rather than putting us in a box and then leaving us to stay inside that box, the enneagram shows us how small or limited we have made our own box and shows us a path outward so that we can become more whole selves. I have found this tool to be effective not only with individuals who are trying become “unstuck” but also with families who want to learn to communicate with and understand each other better.
family enneagram work
“Your beliefs become your thoughts.
Your thoughts become your words.
Your words become your actions.
Your actions become your habits.
Your habits become your values.
Your values become your destiny.”
Families who have completed enneagram work with me have reported significant shifts in family communication. The commitment to family enneagram work accomplishes the goal of encouraging individual self-reflection and accountability while also enhancing insight into both healthy and less healthy family styles of relating. At times, I will work with families who do not want to begin the family meeting process with me but are interested in this work. Before meeting with your family, I spent time with each individual family member for a minimum of two hours in order to complete an interview and also interpretation of assessment results. After each family member has done some of their own individual work, we meet together as a family to learn how these individual results affect the functioning of the larger family enterprise.