Our series of profiles exploring how each Enneagram personality type typically functions in the role of school leader comes to an end with a look at the Type Nine. We think of this affable, easy-going, and generally positive personality as the Peace Seeker. Driven by a deep need for harmony and inner and outer peace, the healthy Type Nine school leader has the capacity to build powerful, united coalitions of parents, teachers, and students around meaningful, long-term improvement goals.
Like some other personality types, the Peace Seeker is a relative rarity among school administrators. Perhaps because the Type Nine prefers to stay out of the spotlight, often defers to others, and is generally avoidant of conflict, the Peace Seeker may desire other, lower-profile educator roles such as classroom teacher, media specialist, or guidance counselor. The healthy Nine’s skill at bringing people together and mediating conflict, however, makes the Peace Seeker a potentially strong candidate for leadership roles.
The core motivation behind the Enneatype Nine personality is a desire to achieve a large measure of inner harmony. The Nine tries hard to create an internal equilibrium that feels safe and comfortable, and will arrange her external world to facilitate this peaceful state of mind. On the other hand, the average Nine will tend to flee from situations that threaten this sense of inner peace. This drive for harmony and fear of conflict or disequilibrium can be a powerful dynamic for the Enneatype Nine school administrator, leading to highly-effective behaviors of personal self-management and organizational improvement, or to damaging tendencies like avoiding conflict or disappearing from view.
When Peace Seeking Leads to “Checking Out”
This dynamic is one reason leadership roles like school principal can pose challenges for the Enneatype Nine. Schools are rife with difficult-to-solve curricular and instructional problems and managing those issues often sparks deep interpersonal conflicts. Without good strategies of personal management, the average Nine can find such problems overwhelming , and will often sidestep addressing the conflicts altogether. Like unhealthy Sixes, the Nine will experience such challenges as dangerous threats to his well-being and safety, and will often react in self-protective ways.
Every Nine has a unique strategy for “checking out.” A checked out Nine school leader might immerse himself in busy work, attending to low-risk tasks that consume inordinate amounts of time (such tasks abound in the life of school administration) rather than confront the real challenges facing the school. Or she may hide out in her office, avoiding work tasks altogether and surfing the internet or playing computer games, convincing herself that she deserves a break. The effect is the same, regardless of the Nine’s coping strategy: the average or unhealthy Peace-Seeker school leader avoids the root problems and is often out of sight, leaving the school adrift and teachers and staff members alone to deal with pressing issues.
Calm Within the Storm
But healthy Nines find ways to create inner balance and harmony in the midst of challenging external situations. These Peace Seekers utilize their gifts to discern the sources of conflicts and school-wide problems. Their easy-going nature frequently makes them a supportive, unthreatening source of feedback, guidance, and direction, even when they are in overt positions of authority. For example, healthy Nine school principals have a gift for helping teachers identify weaknesses in their instructional practices in ways that make the teacher feel safe and confident, rather than criticized and threatened.
Enneatype Nines tend to eschew the attention of others, and healthy Nine school leaders use this to their advantage, using sincere humility to allow others a chance to shine and lead, and to unite differing, sometimes conflicting perspectives around a common mission and purpose. From their place of inner harmony, healthy Nines can exercise great patience in establishing long-term goals for school improvement, steadfastly “hanging tough” through difficult times and inspiring others to maintain their focus, keeping the end result in mind. In this way, Nines appear like healthy Threes, becoming simultaneously more action oriented and group focused.
Practices for Wholeness
The most important duty of personal wholeness for a Nine is to be aware when she is feeling a need to check out. Reflective practices like journaling and mindfulness meditation can build one’s capacity for awareness. From this place of mindfulness, the Nine can recognize conflict brewing and proactively respond in ways that are personally and organizationally positive.
Sometimes this means actually taking a break, but Nines must learn healthy ways to do this and maintain a positive purpose for doing so. Rather than to avoid the problem, Nines should seek strategies that help them cultivate real inner calm and prepare them to move outward toward engaging the world. Prayer, mindfulness meditation, and body-based practices like yoga, running, or even taking a brisk walk can give Nines a chance to temporarily retreat from perceived danger, but to do so in a way that builds their capacity to lead and take action.
The conflict-ridden world of leadership poses significant challenges for the Type Nine, but with self-compassion and discipline, the Peace Seeker can become a powerful personality for leading and improving schools and districts.
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.
