Marketing professionals construct narratives designed to catch the attention of specific personas. The Enneagram describes nine personas, each with a distinct point of interest. The Enneagram also describes the sequence by which to construct a narrative to be most captivating to each persona. This video explains how to construct a marketing narrative tuned for each Enneagram type.
[Transcript]
Today, I want to share an application of the Enneagram that I recently presented to a group that’s focused on marketing. And specifically, I wanted to show them how they could use the Enneagram to craft narratives that were targeted to each of the personas that are described by the Enneagram. Now, the Enneagram has these nine distinct dynamics, and each one of them represents a persona that you can hone language to that will resonate with that persona. And the Enneagram also describes sequences.
Now, the most obvious sequence is the sequence around the circle, one through nine. And you can see that, and that’s the most generic sequence, and you can craft a narrative using that sequence as well. I call that the problem-solving narrative, and I’ll briefly touch on that at the end. But what I really wanted to do was home in on a narrative that was targeted for each one of the types.
And for that, I used the lines that are inside of the Enneagram circle. And you can see that there are two sets of lines that describe sequences. One is described by that triangle, the red triangle, and those are the three, the six, and the nine. And then there is the sequence described by the blue lines. And you can start anywhere, but starting with one, it goes over to seven, then five, then eight, over to two, four, and then back to one. And for each one of these sequences, you can start at any point and then follow around. So let me give you an example.
So I crafted language for this particular talk. And I’ll read it to you. And then just imagine what Enneagram type you think I was targeting here. So, “You want to engage with clients in a fun way that makes them happy. Matt Schlegel presents a thoughtful approach that serves as a guide for action that will help you help your clients while making a positive, emotional impact. This principled approach allows you to realize your ultimate goal- make your clients happy.” So what Enneagram type do you think I was talking about there?
Now, I had some insider information on this organization. I have given the Enneagram assessment to over 100 members of this organization. So I have a very good understanding of the dynamics. And the two dynamics that really stand out are the seven dynamic and the three dynamic. So in this case, I decided to write the blurb targeted for a type seven dynamic. I also did a type three dynamic. So I’ll show you both examples.
But first, let me show you the seven. So for the seven, you want to start with that fun and positiveness. That is going to attract the attention of a type seven. And then as you move through the points described by the lines in the sequence, the next point is the five, which is the fives want to be informed. And so you bring in informative, thoughtful. The next point is eight, which they want to get to action. Two wants to be helpful. Four wants to have an emotional impact and be unique. One is principled. And seven, back to fun.
And so here’s what it looks like deconstructed. So you can see, “You want to engage with clients in a fun way that makes them happy.” So that’s that seven. “Matt Schlegel presents a thoughtful approach.” So that’s the five, “that serves as a guide to action,” which is the eight, “that will help you help your clients.” So that’s the two. And then, “while making a positive, emotional impact.” So that’s that four feeling coming through.
And then this principled approach allows you to realize your goals. So ones like principles and they like goals. And then back to seven, which is “that makes your clients happy.” So that’s how I constructed that blurb to target a type seven dynamic. So now, let’s look at the sequence described by the triangle. And this time, I did it with the type three in mind, because that’s the other dominant character or dynamic associated with this organization. And so this is the blurb I came up with.
“Win-win! Your client’s success is your success. Matt Schlegel shares a big idea for how you can consistently lead your clients to successful outcomes, using a considerate, attentive, high-touch approach- achieving success for both you and your clients.” All right. So did you feel three in that? So here’s what I was going for with three. So three wants success. And so you want to formulate this around winning and success. Threes are also idea people, so you want to include something around ideas. And then you follow through, the six, they want the predictable and the consistency. The nine wants the harmoniousness. And the three, back to success.
So here’s how the narrative is deconstructed. “Win-win! Your client’s success is your success. Matt Schlegel shares a big idea for how you can,” so that “win-win,” the “success,” and “the big idea” are all elements that are going to appeal to a type three. And then the six wants the predictableness and the consistency. So I say, “consistently lead your clients to successful outcomes.” And then the nine wants to have harmony. And so it’s, “considerate, attentive, high-touch approach.” And then back to success, “achieving success for both you and your clients.”
So you can see how would resonate with the three and then touch on each one of those elements in the narrative that make sense to the three. Now, let’s just briefly touch on the narrative structure for the general audience. If you don’t know the dynamic of the group that you’re going to be speaking to, or if you’re speaking to, say, an executive team that’s going to have multiple dynamics, or say, a board of directors, I find that the narrative described by the circle, the problem-solving narrative, is very powerful.
And so the way that that looks is, as I describe in my book, Teamwork 9.0, the Enneagram is also a problem solving process. So you can just go through the dynamics of each one of these Enneagram types, pull out that problem solving dynamic, and put it into the narrative. So step one is describe the problem and describe what the goals are. Step two is, who cares? So all of the stakeholders that are involved. Step three of the narrative is, what are the ideas that you considered? And then step four is, what feedback did you get? What was the emotional reaction to those ideas? And what were the ideas that had the most positive reaction?
Then, now you’re moving over into the head group, which starts with the five, and you want to validate. This is how you validated the idea to make sure that it’s going to work. This is the analysis that you did to validate it. And then once you have validated idea, then you want to show, this is the plan that you put together from point A to point B into the future to implement the idea. So that planning is that type six dynamic.
Now, when you are actually presenting this to your audience, that’s a very seven activity. You are promoting this proposal or plan that you’ve put together. So that is the seven dynamic. And you could say, “So I’m here to present this to you, and get your permission to move forward and implement the plan,” which is eight. “And then I will show you the results.” And that’s the nine.
And so that would be the narrative structure around the circle for the generic case. So these are a couple of ideas for how you can use Enneagram to create narratives that are tuned for specific audiences that are described by these Enneagram dynamics. Thanks so much for listening. If you like this, click on the thumbs up button, share it with others, and subscribe to the channel to get notifications of future episodes. Thanks again.
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