- Home
- Preface
- Introduction
- Three Zones and Nine Sectors
- Three resources *
- Meeting the world
- Nine strategies *
- Nine types
- Gut types
- EIGHT *
- NINE *
- ONE *
- Gut types review
- Corruption and redemption
- Heart types
- TWO *
- THREE *
- FOUR *
- Heart types review
- Symmetry of the board
- Head types
- FIVE *
- SIX *
- SEVEN *
- Head types review
- All nine sectors
- Discerning home base part 1
- Gifts and temptations
- Developing all three resources
- Taking the advice of the opposites
- The path to redemption part 1
- Celebrating all of who we are
- Neurology
- Wings and Moves and other functions
- Biblical Journeys
- Prayer
- The Enneagram
- From the Enneagram to the Strategy Board
buy from amazon.com
buy from amazon.co.uk
Nine types
Your usual strategy determines your approach to anything new – so over time it comes to define the whole of the way in which you interact with the world around. It affects how you see the rest of the world. It affects how other people see you. If affects your patterns of thinking and feeling and doing. It even determines which temptations you face and which virtues and spiritual gifts are most easily within your reach. Identifying your usual strategy can help you to understand yourself and the spiritual journey in which you are engaged.
All of this is within just one sector of the board. The nine sectors repeat the process for each of the nine strategies – for each of the nine ‘types.’ This means that the strategy board can also help you to understand other people – their weaknesses, their potential gifts, and the struggles and the spiritual journeys in which they are engaged – making it so much easier to respect them, work alongside them, engage with them, and value their gifts.
We shall see in due course that the strategies themselves are both morally neutral and practically neutral – none is any better or any worse than any other, morally or practically. Different consequences flow from each strategy depending on whether it is used in a ‘corrupt,’ self-interested, and self-centered way, or in a more ‘redeemed,’ generous, and godly way. The strategy itself is neutral.
In our complex human lives, each of the types overlaps with the adjacent types on the board, and people also make moves across the board – often following specific well-trodden paths from sector to sector. Most people have at least some access to all nine sectors – but only one of the nine is home base: only one strategy is their usual strategy for engaging with the world through the complexity of the day.
The nine pen portraits that follow are ‘single strategy’ caricatures – but prepare to recognize distinctive aspects of yourself and other people nonetheless.