Enneagram Emotional Intelligence: Heart as the Key to Success

Enneagram emotional intelligence describes how each Enneagram type uses their emotional capacity and how efficiently they integrate their emotions with their rational side. Moreover, depending on the level of emotional intelligence, each Enneagram type may display healthy and unhealthy patterns of behavior.

In this article, we’ll shed light on the correlation between Enneagram types and emotional intelligence and how Enneagram can support developing your emotional quotient (EQ). Let’s dive in!

Understanding Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence refers to our ability to recognize, name, express, understand, and regulate our own emotions as well as the emotions of other people.

The concept was first popularized by psychologist Daniel Goleman, who explored and analyzed emotional intelligence and described it as a multifaceted ability that is founded on five essential components.

These components are the following:

• Self-awareness: Being aware of your own emotions, triggers, strengths, and weaknesses allows you to assess the situation around you and other people realistically. For this reason, self-perception and self-awareness are the bases for developing EQ. It is impossible to understand others and interpret reality accurately without a proper understanding of oneself.
• Self-regulation: The ability to be emotionally aware and to manage and control your emotional reactions is what emotional regulation is about. This ability allows you to choose your reaction and avoid making impulsive moves.
• Motivation: In the context of EQ, this refers to the ability to foster intrinsic motivation instead of focusing on external validation and rewards.
• Empathy: Understanding how other people feel and empathizing with them is a prerequisite for making genuine connections and building a strong social network.
• Social skills: Being able to communicate effectively in groups, resolve conflicts, work within a team, influence others, and build networks generally is related to the social skill level.

So, depending on their core motivation and nature, each Enneagram type has the above-listed five components of emotional intelligence distributed differently.

Let’s see the EQ profile of each Enneagram type.

How Enneagram Types Use Emotional Intelligence

Each personality type uses their Enneagram emotional intelligence differently, depending on their life strategy.

So, let’s see the strengths and weaknesses of each Enneatype’s EQ:

• Type One: Ones are introspective and self-aware regarding their values and ethics. Their openness to personal growth is the key strength of their EQ. However, their perfectionism and tendency to suppress their emotions may limit their capacity to empathize with others and hinder their social and interpersonal skills, which are essential to EQ.
• Type Two: Twos are known for their ability to read others’ emotions. They have highly developed empathy and social skills, which allows them to connect with others easily. As a result, their interpersonal relationships are stable and meaningful. However, their self-awareness is usually low, so they struggle with self-confidence and self-respect and have trouble recognizing their own needs.
• Type Three: Threes have fascinating social skills, which is why they make great leaders and easily attract followers. Their confidence and adaptability also indicate a high level of self-awareness. However, they struggle with expressing and recognizing their genuine needs and emotions, affecting their emotional literacy.
• Type Four: Fours are experts in understanding emotions and expressing them in creative ways. Their emotional depth enhances their compassion, so they bond with others easily despite being introverted. The biggest challenge they face is emotional regulation. Due to the lack of emotional regulation skills, Fours can be very impulsive and unpredictable.
• Type Five: In terms of Enneagram emotional intelligence, Fives are exceptional in controlling their emotions, which allows them to remain calm and detached in crisis and approach problems with logic. However, they tend to detach too much from their emotions, which affects their ability to empathize and connect with others on an emotional level.
• Type Six: Sixes are highly compassionate and have a strong sense of community. Their social skills are well-developed, and they are excellent at providing support to others. Their weak points in terms of EQ refer to their lack of emotional regulation skills, particularly regarding emotions of fear and anxiety. They are easily overwhelmed with fear and tend to make big decisions based on their fears, not their desires.
• Type 7: The Enneagram emotional intelligence of Sevens is most evident in their great social skills. They are alsogood at expressing their emotions through creativity, and their optimism is one of their EQ’s biggest strengths. However, their self-awareness is usually only partially developed, and they struggle with emotional regulation and motivation—a struggle that affects every aspect of their general EQ.
• Type 8: Eights are highly self-aware, have excellent social skills, and are great at controlling their emotions. On top of it, they have no trouble with motivation, and they are self-starters who don’t struggle with self-discipline, which makes them exceptional leaders. However, they may struggle with anger management, and their self-centredness may affect their ability to empathize with others.
• Type 9: Nines are deeply compassionate and intuitively understand others’ emotions. Their empathy, combined with their highly developed social skills, make them great at mediating and resolving conflicts around them. The biggest challenge for Nines lies in their tendency to neglect their own needs and suppress their emotions for the benefit of others.

Tips for Developing EQ with the Enneagram

By improving their Enneagram emotional intelligence, every personality type will experience immense personal growth.

Here’s how each Enneagram type can leverage their strengths using emotional intelligence and, as a result, overcome their weaknesses and have better control of their life.

Type One—The Perfectionist

The key to improving emotional intelligence for Type One lies in developing self-compassion. Ones have to learn to forgive their own perceived and real mistakes first in order to be more forgiving toward others.

By exploring the origins of their strong inner critic, which usually stems from their childhood wounds, Ones will learn to identify their authentic selves from the voices they internalized while growing up.

As their compassion grows, Ones will experience more harmony in relationships, feel more motivated at work, and generally be more productive.

Type Two—The Helper

Raising self-awareness and learning assertive communication techniques is crucial for developing Twos’ Enneagram emotional intelligence quotient. They need to focus on self-care and learn to love themselves the way they love and expect others to love them back.

By developing a radical self-awareness of their needs, qualities, and talents, Twos will gradually build a sense of self-respect and learn to establish healthier boundaries in relationships with others.

Type Three—The Achiever

Type Three needs to learn to connect with their vulnerability and fully accept themselves. While their self-awareness is high in terms of knowing their own strengths, Threes also need to be aware of their feelings, as only by acknowledging them can they begin to understand themselves.

Threes are often ashamed of their feelings, especially when they don’t feel good about themselves. So, practicing introspection is essential for their personal growth and the development of Enneagram emotional intelligence.

Type Four—The Individualist

Emotional regulation is the key skill Type Four needs to develop to be able to fully use their creativity and talents. Instead of diving into their fantasy world and engaging in constant comparisons with other people, Fours should learn to focus on the here and now and connect with other people by sharing their feelings.

Fostering emotional stability through introducing daily routines and boosting self-discipline is the path of growth for Type Four.

Type Five—The Investigator

Investigators need to work on their social and interpersonal skills, and the key to improving these is reconnecting with their own feelings. By learning to integrate their emotions and their intellect, Fives will gain a new perspective and a deeper understanding of the world around them.

In addition, their new insights will also motivate them to connect and interact more with other people and, in turn, spontaneously develop their social skills.

Type Six—The Loyalist

By learning to relax and cultivating trust in life, Sixes will learn to manage their anxieties better, thus making room for emotional intelligence development. So, by practicing deep breathing techniques, meditation, mindfulness, or autogenic training, Sixes open the door to a healthier and more balanced version of themselves.

The key to developing Enneagram emotional intelligence for Sixes is learning how to stay grounded in the present moment even when their fear threatens to overwhelm them.

Type Seven—The Enthusiast

Enthusiasts have trouble processing unpleasant emotions. They particularly struggle with frustration, and instead of persisting through it, they resort to escapism and avoidance. As a result, they may remain stuck in the same immature behavioral and emotional patterns while their initially great EQ potential deteriorates.

Therefore, learning to deal with frustration and gradually increasing their frustration tolerance is essential for Sevens.

Type Eight—The Challenger

Compassion is the key to personal growth and emotional intelligence development for Enneagram Type Eight. Eights tend to repress their ‘emotional’ side, believing that their vulnerabilities make them weak, which is why they are notorious for turning off their empathy to avoid being perceived as soft.

That is why they need to give themselves permission to feel all of their feelings and to express the compassion they have toward others. The prerequisite for doing this is to let go of the false belief that gentle feelings are a sign of weakness.

Type Nine—The Peacemaker

Similarly to Enneagram Type Two, the Peacemaker also needs to work on developing their self-awareness and establishing healthier boundaries in their relationships. By adopting assertive communication techniques and practicing self-love and self-respect, Nines will release their creative potential too and enjoy life more.

Another thing Nines need to learn is to be accountable for their own lives. Their self-sacrificing nature may lead to a victim mentality, which is very limiting for their EQ.

Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace

Emotional intelligence plays a crucial role in the workplace and reflects not only in the way an individual interacts with others but also in how they cope with stress and manage their workload.

So, depending on their EQ level, each Enneagram type will or will not be able to use their strengths to their advantage in the workplace.

For example, Type Two with a high EQ will be a great team player but an even better leader who inspires others through the unique relationships they create. An unhealthy Two will also be a great team player but will eventually experience burnout as the result of trying to please everyone instead of using their empathy and intuition to leverage their position.

Furthermore, a healthy Five may not enjoy teamwork but is able to make the best out of it, while an unhealthy Five with a low EQ will behave like they are alone in the team, detaching from everyone.

So, it is safe to say that by determining your Enneagram type, you can create an efficient map for your self-development, thus enhancing your personal and professional success, improving your relationships, and every vital aspect of your life.

Final Thoughts

And that’s a wrap! We hope we encouraged you to thrive on your road of self-discovery and to develop your emotional intelligence further!

To boost your motivation, let’s round off with a few key insights about Enneagram and emotional intelligence:

• The five key elements of EQ are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.
• Each Enneagram personality type has five EQ elements differently distributed, and the key to growth is to become aware of the lacking EQ elements and work on developing them.
• Enneagram emotional intelligence level is also evident in the workplace, as every type is as successful as their EQ is developed.