This on-going series has featured profiles of each Enneagram type. In particular, we've focused on how each type tends to function in the role of school leader. Education administration and leadership takes place in a unique and complex context, and understanding more about how personality interacts with the function of leadership in P-12 schools can enrich our self-awareness and professional effectiveness.
In this latest installment, we turn to the Ennea-Type Seven, a distinctively exuberant, energetic, and enthusiastic personality style that brings many strengths to a leadership role. Because of the Seven's drive toward maximizing intensity and joy in their lives, and in the lives of others, we call this type the Fun Seeker.
Maximizing joy; minimizing pain
As a school leader, the Type Seven often fosters a warm, vibrant, and joyful environment for working and learning. The Seven is a cheerleader, with the innate capacity to make people feel good about their efforts and enthusiastic for the mission of the school. A seemingly tireless multi-tasker, the Seven is perpetually visible in classrooms, hallways, meetings, and school events, and is initiating new projects and promoting new ideas at a pace that only she seems to be able to manage. Sevens are especially gifted at the social dimensions of leadership, fostering positive and intense relationships with students, parents, teachers, and community members. While the Seven sometimes struggles to follow through on ideas, initiatives, and commitments, stakeholders tend to be extremely forgiving of these peccadillos, giving the Seven the benefit of the doubt for his unflagging commitment and dedication to others and to the school or district itself.
Ultimately the Seven's drive to synthesize as many ideas and maximize as much energy as possible is rooted in a deep drive for happiness, and an insecurity about the world. Every Ennea-type has its own particular fear or insecurity, and the Seven responds to her anxiety by trying to fill up her life with a maximum amount of experiences and activities. In some ways, the Seven is engaged in a pattern of avoidance, trying to skirt around the uncertainties, pain, and loss that is as essential to life as happiness and pleasure by focusing solely on what is fun, bright, and good.
Ennea-type Seven school leaders can exhibit profound denial about their school's weaknesses and growth areas, about conflicts and problems in the culture, and about their own limitations, losses, and needs. Sometimes the Seven school leader will barrel ahead with a plan even when it is clearly doomed or deeply flawed, because the discomfort of acknowledging the truth is too great. Or, perhaps more common, the Seven contributes to the sad tendency in education for schools to pursue a raft of new initiatives every year, never really abandoning old practices but heaping new idea upon the old and leading inevitably to the morale-killing "initiative fatigue" so familiar to many teachers.
Prone to boredom and addicted to stimulation, the Seven school leader can experience terrible burn out and yet be the last to recognize it, or sometimes quit a job - or a series of jobs - in quick succession, always looking for the next big thing professionally or personally.
Practices for wholeness: Being still, being real
The Ennea-Type Seven is constantly in motion, mentally as well as physically, and so learning to take regular "breaks" from activity and intense experience can open the Seven school leader to experience her inner world and see her context from new and broader perspectives. Reflective practices, mindfulness meditation, and other strategies for slowing down and being still are inherently challenging for the Type Seven, but potentially rewarding and renewing.
Above all, coming to recognize his pattern of avoidance will empower the Type Seven leader to be aware of the ways he might be compensating for insecurity or anxiety by engaging in activity for the sake of activity, or glossing over problems and challenges. Nurturing a few close, authentic relationships with co-workers who can be a "critical friend" can help the Seven keep a check on these patterns and pitfalls.
There is no inherent contradiction between stability and self-awareness and the Seven's inclination toward exuberance and activity. By practicing self-awareness and honest, open communication, the Ennea-Type Seven leader can bring her greatest gifts to bear and foster an effective, high-performing school environment.
Look for additional profiles of other Enneagram Types as school leaders in coming weeks. For a complete list of Enneagram resources, check the Enneagram links on the left-hand side of this page, and visit our Services page to learn about the wide range of CLS workshops available for leadership and professional development. For previous type profiles, click here and scroll to the bottom of the post.
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