Source of Image: the Internet – Enneagram types of Personalities

In communication, if you have some understanding of the other person’s personality, you are taking an active role in the conversation. For those who often negotiate and work with partners, understanding human personality is extremely necessary. What are the types of personalities? And how can we identify a person’s personality traits just through the first meeting? Please refer to the following publication.

The 9 Most Common Human Personality Types

1. The Perfectionist
2. The Helper
3. The Achiever
4. The Individualist
5. The Investigator
6. The Loyalist
7. The Enthusiast
8. The Challenger
9. The Peacemaker

1. The Perfectionist: “Principled, purposeful, autonomous, and always seeking perfection” are standout characteristics of the perfectionist. They are very considerate, dedicated, and live by certain principles. Perfectionists always have a strong sense of right and wrong. They work in an organised manner, diligently maintaining the highest standards. This personality type sometimes leads them to be overly perfectionistic and receive criticism.

• Strengths: practical, insightful, wise, and noble.
• Weaknesses: often lack patience, become resentful.
• Core motivation: strive for greater heights, make everything beautiful, persist in their own ideals, strive for perfection to avoid judgment from others.

2. The Helper: Emotional individuals are usually generous, inclined to express their thoughts, emotions, and feelings, and desire to get along with everyone. They tend to try to please others but do not want to be slighted. Prominent traits of emotional individuals include being friendly, empathetic. They are warm, generous, ready to sacrifice themselves, but can also be quite manipulative and sycophantic at times.

• Strengths: always make people around them feel warm, loved, and valued.
• Weaknesses: tend to be possessive, only see their own needs, sometimes lack rationality.
• Core motivation: always wanting to be loved, to express emotions to others, to be special in the eyes of others.

3. The Achiever: Identifying traits of the ambitious are having goals, motivation, and a sense of personal image. They are driven, striving for success, aiming to earn respect and admiration from others. Ambitious individuals can create trust and attract others. They are ambitious, talented, and full of energy. They are also diplomatic and stately, but sometimes overly concerned with their external image.

• Strengths: have the will and determination for success in life and career.
• Weaknesses: prone to ‘work addiction,’ competitive with others.
• Core Motivation: To stand out, be recognised, be noticed, and be admired.

4. The Individualist: The individualistic person often has volatile moods, lives sincerely with their emotions, is somewhat reclusive, and usually declines to help others due to feelings of inadequacy. Sometimes, these individuals can be quite indifferent and disconnected from regular life.

• Strengths: straightforward, honest, intelligent.
• Weaknesses: prone to self-torture, melancholy, complaining.
• Core Motivation: To express oneself, one’s personality, surround oneself with beauty, and always be concerned with emotions.

5. The Investigator: The rational person is profound, likes innovation but often secretive and somewhat detached. They are always oriented towards knowledge, desire to enrich their personal understanding. For them, everything that happens must be meaningful. A distinctive feature of rational people is the dislike of expressing emotions outwardly.

• Strengths: control emotions, maintain balance, know what should and should not be done.
• Weaknesses: somewhat eccentric, rigid, and disconnected from others.
• Core Motivation: To possess great knowledge, understand everything to protect oneself against threats.

6. The Loyalist: These are responsible individuals, always committed and oriented towards safety and reliability. They work hard to merit the trust of others. The loyal person is often very adept at finding and resolving issues. However, sometimes they also act defensively, evasively, and worriedly. They are cautious but also know how to protest, even being a bit defiant.

• Strengths: live and work with commitment and responsibility, usually earning the trust of others.
• Weaknesses: sometimes skeptical and lacking self-trust.
• Core Motivation: To seek safety, be protected by others, always have certainty and be concerned about others’ attitudes towards oneself.

7. The Enthusiast: Enthusiastic individuals proactively participate in activities with a cheerful, open attitude, showing a zeal for learning, eager to promote new ideas. This personality type is extroverted, optimistic, and adaptable. Their distinguishing features are humour, bravery, and practicality. However, sometimes they misuse their talents, becoming excessive and undisciplined.

• Strengths: retain a positive spirit, have many opportunities for self-development.
• Weaknesses: often impulsive, impatient.
• Core Motivation: To maintain freedom and happiness, not wanting to give up good experiences and striving to keep oneself enthusiastic and busy.

8. The Challenger: Confident, assertive, courageous, and decisive are the manifestations of the strong-willed individual. They always strive to protect others; they are forthright yet can also be quite recalcitrant and conservative due to an excessive ego. The strong-willed often feel the need to control everything around them, occasionally enjoy engaging in confrontation and can be incredibly formidable.

• Strengths: Works quite efficiently, readily achieves success in life and career.
• Weaknesses: Struggles to restrain bursts of anger, never allows themselves to be vulnerable.
• Core Motivation: Desires to prove their strength, become significant to the world, and tends to dominate those around them.

9. The Peacemaker: The amiable individual belongs to a stable, open-minded, optimistic, and trustworthy archetype. They are receptive and always instill a sense of ease and peace in others. These individuals often desire for everything to operate smoothly without any conflicts. However, this very desire can lead them to self-contentment, satisfaction, and oversimplification of issues in various situations.

• Strengths: Friendly, open-minded, calm, and acts with maturity.
• Weaknesses: Resistant to change, quite stubborn.
• Core Motivation: Seeks to create harmony, avoid tension and conflict, and favours minimal change.

Source of Image: the Internet – Enneagram types of Personalities

Some notes about the Enneagram personality system

The Enneagram personality system is a model of human personality that is based on the idea that there are nine basic personality types mentioned above, each with its own set of motivations, fears, and desires. These nine types are interconnected and can influence each other, leading to a complex and dynamic understanding of personality.

Each of these types also has a unique growth path, stress path, and relationship dynamics with the other types in the system. Beyond the basic nine types, the Enneagram also includes concepts such as wings (the neighbouring types which influence a person’s primary type) and levels of development within each type.

The Enneagram system is often used as a tool for self-discovery, personal development, and understanding interpersonal dynamics. It can provide valuable insights into one’s own motivations and behaviours, as well as those of others, and can be useful in various contexts including relationships, team dynamics, and personal growth.

By VINH PHAN, Practice Leader of Executive Search & Board Services

NB Asia is a highly experienced and strategic human resources consulting firm that specialises in providing an extensive range of executive placement, board services, organisational structure, and people solutions to business partners throughout Asia. We are privileged to have the opportunity to work with many great companies in various industries across Asia. Don’t forget to follow NB Asia’s social media pages across multiple platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn) to update on good knowledge and beautiful life information, and let’s work together to bring a better life to everyone!

For clients, please contact us via email at SERVICES@nbvn.asia, and for candidates, please email us at PEOPLE@nbvn.asia. We will respond to your inquiry within 24 hours.