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The Nine Creativity Gifts: Creativity and the Enneagram

December 15, 2020 by Matt Schlegel Leave a Comment

 

Where does creativity come from?  Can anyone be creative? How can you tap into your own personal creativity?

I know a very smart, creative person who confided in me that they do not think that they are creative. WHAT?  I couldn’t believe my ears.  I wondered if this person had defined creativity so narrowly that they discounted and minimized certain forms of creativity, including their own.  Based on their self-perception, I am afraid the answer to that is yes.

In my book Teamwork 9.0, I explore the application of the Enneagram to team problem solving.  The Enneagram is commonly used as a powerful personality system, but it can be used more broadly than that.  Most people who use the Enneagram for personality are unaware that the reason the Enneagram types are numbers is that the numbers represent the order in which people solve problems.  In short, the Enneagram is also a problem-solving process represented by motion around the circle, from steps 1 to 9 and back to 1.

As a problem-solving framework, the Enneagram provides a direct link between a step in problem solving and a personality dynamic that is perfectly suited for that step—step 1 connects to Type 1, step 2 to Type 2, etc. It goes to reason that each step in problem solving requires a certain creative dynamic, implying that there may be nine distinct creative energies, each suited for a particular step in the process.

Necessity the Mother of Invention?

In Chapter 5 of Teamwork 9.0, I describe nine distinct creative dynamics, one for each Enneagram type.  Inspired by the saying, “Necessity is the Mother of Invention,” I thought about how “necessity” affects each type.   Looking at the Enneagram diagram, each Enneagram type is connected to two other types by what are called the Path of Integration (direction of arrow) and Path of Disintegration (opposite of arrow). These paths describe how the behaviors of each type change when we move into a stressful situation (Path of Disintegration) or into a stress-free situation (Path of Integration.)  The movement between stressful and stress-free, can serve as an engine of creativity for each type.  I characterize this dynamic like the motion of a seesaw.  Imagine the following:

Stressful See: Posed with a problem or challenge, a need arises that you must address.

Stress-free Saw: You sleep on the problem and, in your calm state, generate a possible solution which occurs to you when you awake or when you are in the shower the next morning.

Stressful See: Now you need to implement the proposal by acting on your idea.

Stress-free Saw: You are relieved that you are making progress, moving towards resolving the problem.

Stressful See: You encounter an obstacle preventing you from reaching your goal and requiring that you take a new direction.

Stress-free Saw: You sleep on the new problem, and so on.

Each Enneagram type will respond distinctly to the Stressful-Stress-free dynamic, each with a distinct creative flare.  The Enneagram provides an understanding of each creative energy.  It shows how each creativity contributes to problem solving.   Knowing that each Enneagram type brings a unique creative contribution reminds us of the value and benefit of having style-diversity on your teams.

Creativity Seesaw: Inspiration-Action

Thomas Edison famously said, “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”  Indeed, for each Enneagram type, one path leads more to inspiration, and the other towards action.  The seesaw is a metaphor for moving back and forth between inspiration and action during the creative process.  And while the inspiration-action ratio for Edison may have been 1-to-99, that ratio may be different for each Enneagram type (I’ll hazard a guess that Edison was a Type 3.)

Here are the nine Inspiration-Action pairs as prescribed by movement along the Enneagram paths:

Enneagram Type 1 Creativity Inspiration — Identifying what’s missing to make things right

Action — Informing others to right wrongs

Enneagram Type 2 Creativity Inspiration — Feeling how they can help

Action — Acting on those feelings

Enneagram Type 3 Creativity Inspiration — Seeking to appease others

Action — Systematically achieving goals

 Enneagram Type 4 Creativity Inspiration — Intense feelings for what is missing

Action — Self-righteous express of that void

Enneagram Type 5 Creativity Inspiration — Assimilating information

Action — Asserting knowledge

 Enneagram Type 6 Creativity Inspiration — Envisioning systems that work for everyone

Action — Anxiously working through their to-do list

 Enneagram Type 7 Creativity Inspiration — Collecting and synthesizing ideas

Action — Dogmatically promoting their ideas

 Enneagram Type 8 Creativity Inspiration — Scanning for opportunities while restrained from acting

Action — Acting to help themselves and others

 Enneagram Type 9 Creativity Inspiration — Understanding the cause and nature of discord

Action — Actively creating harmonious environments

 

Motivation is the Seesaw Fulcrum

Underpinning the creativity seesaw for each Enneagram type is the distinct motivation associated with that type.  This motivation underlies our inclinations toward inspiration and action as we move back and forth on our paths.  And like the height of the fulcrum of the seesaw, the higher our motivation, the more motion we will get back and forth between inspiration and action. I review the nine underlying motivations of each Enneagram type in this YouTube video:

 

Mother Necessity or Father Time?

Calling “necessity” the mother, does imply that there is a father.  While I do not think either necessity nor creativity is gendered, I do think that there is a duality to creativity and that the duality can be understood by the inspiration-action pairs. Also, if you look closely at each pair, you will see that some types receive inspiration along the path of disintegration while others receive inspiration in integration.  This has implications for team effectiveness.  Sometimes in problem solving inspiration comes when team members are under stress.  Sometimes inspiration comes when stress-free.  This dynamic is also true for certain Enneagram personality types. Team leaders can use this information to achieve the best outcomes for their teams.

Creativity Broadly

Before, I would have never considered myself a “creative type,” at least as I had understood the term. I associated the “creative type” with what I now understand to be the Enneagram Type 4 dynamic, the type often called “the “Artist.”  Now I understand that my previous definition of creative type is very narrow and that each of us has a creative engine within us that fires up as the need arises.  We may not even be aware of our creative abilities if we are not put into situations that trigger those creative instincts.  Knowing your Enneagram type can help you tap into and maximize you own personal creativity.

Want More?

For more details on each Enneagram type’s creative style, see the following series of blogs:

Enneagram Type 1 Creativity – Perfection is no small thing, but it is made up of small things. – Michelangelo

Enneagram Type 2 Creativity – Create with the heart; build with the mind. – Criss Jami

Enneagram Type 3 Creativity – Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. – Thomas Edison

Enneagram Type 4 Creativity – Everything you can imagine is real. – Pablo Picasso

Enneagram Type 5 Creativity – Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought. – Albert Einstein

Enneagram Type 6 Creativity – The creative adult is the child who survived. – Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Enneagram Type 7 Creativity – You can’t use up creativity. The more you use the more you have. — Maya Angelou

Enneagram Type 8 Creativity – Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things. – Ray Bradbury

Enneagram Type 9 Creativity – But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. – Martin Luther King Jr.

How do you characterize your creativity?  What’s your source for ideas? What motivates you to action.  How does creativity play a role in your day-to-day life?

Filed Under: Creativity, Enneagram

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