What’s the best career personality test for healthcare workers? I would argue that the enneagram is the best personality test to help you understand yourself so you can choose a career that works for you.
The Enneagram is a personality testing system that allows you to learn more about yourself by understanding your core motivators and fears. Today we have on the podcast, enneagram coach and physician assistant Erika Davey. She is here to tell us how we can use the knowledge of the enneagram to design a life and career we love.
For me, as an adventure-seeking type 7, learning about my enneagram type has helped me cultivate daily practices to add more fulfillment and meaning to my life. For our guest Erika, as an overachieving type 3, The Enneagram has helped her move from worrying about what people think to learning how to self-validate.
Use the audio player above to listen, or tune in on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
What is the enneagram?
To understand why the enneagram is the best personality test, we first need to talk about what it is. The Enneagram is a wonderful tool to help you cultivate self-awareness. It is data-driven which means it provides an unemotional way for people to look at themselves.
As a coach, Erika has clients take the assessment to figure out which type they resonate the most with. Each type has information about it that’s been gathered over the years which Erika presents to them to help them cultivate self-awareness.
Why is it the best career personality test?
The Enneagram is the best career personality test because it helps you understand your own strengths and weaknesses. It’s based on core motivators and core fears and has 9 diff types which are divided into 3 triads: the gut triad, the heart triad, and the head triad.
The gut triad shares a deep desire for social justice and a default emotion of anger. The heart triad shares a reliance on feelings and emotions a common desire for identity, and a shared emotion of shame. The head triad shares a reliance on the mind, a default emotion of anxiety, and a shared desire of security.
Overview of each type
The gut triad includes types 1, 8, and 9.
- Type 1, The Principled Reformer: task-oriented, getting things done, inside experiences anger.
- Type 8, The Protective Challenger: go with their gut, quick action takers, decisive, sure of themselves, outside demonstrates anger
- Type 9, The Peaceful Mediator: needs a peaceful environment, loves calm, goes along to get along, suppressed anger
The heart triad includes type 2, 3 and 4
- Type 2, The Supportive Adviser – very focused on others, very helpful, unconditionally loving
- Type 3, Successful Achiever – focus on achievements, and what other people think of them
- Type 4, The Romantic Individualist – focuses on being unique, and special, and making sure everybody knows that
The head triad includes types 5, 6 and 7
- Type 5, The Investigative Thinker – logical outcomes, data-driven, doesn’t get too emotional
- Type 6, The Loyal Guardian – the desire for stability, lots of questions, likes to see all the different ways to do it before a decision
- Type 7, The Entertaining Optimist – very busy mind, ready to always come up with the next best thing
The best career personality test helps you understand yourself
One feature that makes the enneagram the best personality test is that it’s a tool to understand yourself deeply. Once you understand yourself and cultivate self-awareness you can start to accept yourself. The Enneagram helps give you the permission and understanding of a deeper sense of who you are. Getting to know your type brings you into equilibrium.
The struggles of being a type 3
The biggest problem with being a type 3 is driving yourself too hard. What you really want and need doesn’t matter as much as getting things done. As a type 3, you have a deep ability to read the room and be a chameleon. You provide whatever the other person wants from you and are a people pleaser.
Once you discover that you are a type 3 there are small shifts you can make and practices you can do to bring yourself back into equilibrium. Focus on the things that you HAVE done. One mantra you can use is “I’ve done enough”.
How to use the best career personality test
The enneagram can be the best career personality test if you know how to use it in a way that nourishes you. You can use it as a guide on what you are good at and identify your strengths. If you are wondering if you are in the right place career-wise, the enneagram gives you an unemotional way to look at yourself. Once you understand your strengths and look at areas that are easy for you, certain jobs naturally present themselves.
Why the enneagram is a game changer
The enneagram gives you permission to self-validate. It’s been such a wonderful feeling to stop worrying so much about what other people want or expect from you. With the self-knowledge from the enneagram, you gain the freedom and the ability to decide for yourself how your day is going, what you are going to do, and how you are going to feel about it. It’s a tool that helps you create your own definition of success.
Takeaway : Coach Chels MD:
Coaching is one of the most difficult jobs, on this planet today. I know because I tried and found that it’s just not working for me.
I don’t have that unique talent, needed to be a perfect coach, like Coach Chels MD. She has that unmatched coaching talent, of being able to probe & get to the root of her ‘clients burn out situations.’
Coach Chels MD can also get her clients to realize that if one has crashed & burnt in the past, all is just not lost. A lot can still be learnt if one is willing to look for pearls of wisdom, amongst the ruins!
When clients refuse to open up, she has the skill to understand and be sensitive & work around the edges. Then with great tact, she can smoothen out the rough edges, till finally she gets her clients to speak out and confess to the burnout!
Perhaps the best part is she manages, to do all this, without rufflling any feathers & without upsetting or offending anyone.
Coach Chels MD is an expert Coach (apart from being a bestselling author) & can offer a vast variety of precise solutions, to numerous burnout situations, across the board.
I wish her all success.
Respectfully,
Arun Sil, MBA (The University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Class of ’92), LL.B., LL.M.