- 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
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Head types – introduction
We have worked our way down the right hand side of the strategy board, from the gut zone at the top of the board, through the heart zone, to the very foot of the board on the heart side at FOUR. We now cross from the heart side to the head side, to make the journey back up the board, from the foot of the board on the head side at FIVE, back up the left hand side toward the gut zone where we began.
It is a strange symmetry between the head side and the heart side – as though the pattern is repeated but in contrasting colors and shades. FIVE, like FOUR, shows the effects of being far from the gut zone – particularly conscious of the inner life of head and heart, and a long way from the gut zone’s direct, immediate, practical engagement with the world. SEVEN, like TWO, has a strong gut influence. And the pattern of heart types TWO and THREE and FOUR relating respectively to individuals, to groups and to the world is repeated in their respective symmetrical counterparts – SEVEN and SIX and FIVE. More generally, the head types share with the heart types the sense that there is a self within, then a boundary, then the world beyond, to which the self can relate – quite distinct from the gut approach, which is unselfconscious in its direct engagement with the world.
But here the contrasts begin. The head types like to lean out over that boundary: they find it natural to reach out to others, and need to learn how to protect and nurture the self. The head types prefer to observe the world from their own side of the boundary: they find it natural to protect and nurture the self, and choose from their place of safety whether and when to reach out to others.
The heart is often reliving past emotions and visions and dreams – in a timeframe that highlights the present and the past. The head is more often making detailed future plans – in a timeframe that highlights the present and the future.
The gut zone is about feelings – instinctive and immediate – and the heart zone is about feelings – emotional and contemplative. But the head zone is a place to think: a place for assessing and considering the world with objectivity, logic, and analysis; the home of observation, calculation, rationality, and language.
Stepping into that room full of strangers, the gut types immediately feel that they are a part of what is going on, and the heart types want to reach out and connect. In such a complex situation, the head types would rather be controlling the robot of the human form from the security of a watchtower where there is time and space to think and to plan, picking up the signals and sending back the commands.
That objective, logical, and rational place is the inner life of the head – and that is where we go now, into the head zone.