Abstract
The Enneagram Personality Test is the most basic multi-purpose tool identifier of a personality type by answering certain basic question. The Enneagram offers more than labeling and categorizing. It opens a critical debate about similarities and diversity amongst people and provides language for describing a wide range of human tendencies. It also helps students critically consider whether “the types” reflect their experience with different individuals.
The Enneagram has a strong connection to issues related to spirituality and provides a vehicle for the introduction of spiritual values, and thus, it should be considered, not for its categorizations, but as a tool to develop critical thinking, language enrichment and self-reflection. The Enneagram Personality Test was developed by Oscar Ichazo was a self-taught Bolivian philosopher in 1968 and is based on nine personalities reflecting three centers the heart, mind and the body. These types have a relationship based on the Enneagram symbol, lines of integration and disintegration that exist between types as reflected by the lines of the symbol.
Meet As You Really Are
My spirit is very radiant and energetic, yearning for new experiences, deep connections but with added security and emphasis on image and prestige. Thus, I receive a new name of Type Three personality type; The Achiever. Upon taking the enneagram test I got to realize that I am type three (The Achiever). Actually, before taking the test I taught my type is 1 (Reformer) but upon reading the descriptions that comes along with the enneagram test that I took, I got to realize that, yes I am more of a type three than type 1 and the description of a type three perfectly fits my personality. The top two categories being Image Focus (90%), Security Focus (82%) and two bottom categories being Helpfulness (34%) and Individualism (34%).
The Achiever, Enneagram Type Three, even though they are self-assured and attractive, seem to be overly self-conscious and image seeking, but still tend to inspire others by being a role model in their respective professions and achieve anything when they set their mind to it. Some famous personalities in the history that represent type three personality are Augustus Caesar, Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra, Brooke Shields, Cindy Crawford, Tom Cruise and Barbara Streisand. No wonder they are rightly called the stars of the human nature. In short the results of the Enneagram Personality type three assessment describes me as The motivator- The aggressive approval-seeker, The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type: Adaptable, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious.
The Two Highest Results Are Image Focus and Security Focus
The top two results being image focus and security focus are going to be very helpful in my nursing career. But, first let us understand the true meaning of image focus which means self-conscious or self-awareness; quite literally, it means to be conscious of self. ‘Self’ is you; your mind and your body and your constant state of being. To be ‘Conscious’ is to be aware; cognitive perception. Thus, to be ‘self-conscious’ is to be aware of your mind, body, and constant state of existence.
The stigma of self-consciousness is that one feels ashamed and embarrassment which is quite the opposite. In nursing being self-aware is the most important tool specially when it comes to the nurse-client relationship which leads to therapeutic healing and ability to achieve an understanding of the patient perspective and provide patient-centered care. I consider this aspect of personality gives me the abilities (verbal and non-verbal) and enables me to generate, recognize, express, understand and evaluate my own and other emotions in order to guide thinking and action and successfully cope with environmental demands and pressures that come along with nursing.
Similarly, security focus like safety, is the responsibility of caring for the mentally disoriented and the nursing community must work together to achieve this effectively to prevent them from harming themselves or others. Focusing on security will allow me to be vigilant all the time and prevent making medication errors by constantly checking using skills such as check-back, CUS, SBAR, Teach-back methods and not relying heavily on technology- it is important for the nurses to treat patients not monitors.
While technology has the potential to improve care, it is not without risks, technology has been described as both part of the problem and part of the solution for safer health care. Security focus also encompasses appropriate administrative, physical and technical safeguards to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and security of electronic protected health information-HIPAA. Hence, I can confidently say that being image focus and security focus will be extremely beneficial to me in nursing career.
The two lowest results are helpfulness and individualism. Characteristics of being helpfulness are not always beneficial in healthcare industry; it is one thing to be helpful and another thing to be moral. One should have high morals than to be helpful, so, importance of understanding professional boundaries, in order for helpfulness to be beneficial as, these boundaries exist to protect the patient, treatment and the profession and should not be violated; boundaries are critical and provide the guidelines essential to professional effectiveness.
Nursing profession requires one to think critically, therefore, critically thinking helpfulness, it seems to me, involves an inherent power with some strings attached whereas helping others without strings attached is called generosity. Helpfulness often necessitates an explanation, reason and plan for why one needs the help and how they will make the most or repay it. Generosity is one person wanting to make someone else’s life easier in some way, without any strings attached. This is where ethical dilemma of nonmalefiance and benefiance come to play; nonmaleficence must be balanced by beneficence, while providing treatment which benefits the patient must outweigh the discomfort caused. The nurse’s intent must be to help, not harm.
American culture lays emphasis on the value placed on individualism about the beliefs that, individuals have the ability to pull themselves up and that an individual’s rights are more important than a society’s. In nursing individualism forms the basis of notions such as autonomy, self-reliance, personal rights and entitlement.
Individualized nursing care is the key element in quality of nursing care, focusing on patient during care process is one main reason for supporting individualized care. Individual differences among patients in terms of their health, illness and needs which emphasize on providing individualized care and nursing care planners should pay more attention to the aspects of nursing support based on individuals. Hence, even though, I have low percentage (34%) in helpfulness and individualism it is more beneficial than being depicted as harmful in my nursing profession.
Scores to improve upon and the activities to undertake that will facilitate reaching goals towards succeeding in nursing. In nursing emphasis is on critical thinking, one must have a critical mind and so it the case with Evidence based practice that is so deeply imbedded in medical profession. “We must use critical thinking to provide better care for the patients,” is the most common statement made specially dealing in subjects with science as a base.
But, no one realizes that this creation was not created logically or by critical thinking. What we are referring to as creation is such a coordinated, fantastic design, it is unbelievable! No human being can logically ever arrive at this and say ok, I have gotten it; it is too much and yet at the same time everything is so cohesive and so fantastic that if you see it even for a moment, there is no way that you can ever be a same person. I firmly believe that one must raise ones consciousness if we really want betterment of humanity as a whole, for example; if I am an unhappy person from inside no matter how much I try, I can only give what I have, nothing else. Thus, the cause and reason of misery in this world is no one else but we ourselves. Therefore, if we all raise our consciousness to Buddha consciousness, Christ consciousness, we can achieve greatness.
According to me, the scores that I really need to improve on is not Intellectualism (46%); people think it in terms of intelligence quotient (IO), but to me, emotional intelligence (EI) is more important due to the fact that emotional intelligence encompasses motivation, empathy, social skills, self-awareness and self-regulation- core components in nursing profession Mind can be intellectual, which is a very poor substitute for intelligence.
Intellectuality is mechanical; one can become a great scholar, a great professor, a great philosopher by just playing with words; all borrowed, arranging and rearranging thoughts, none of which are my own, thus, intellect is absolutely bankrupt. Emotional intelligence has an eyesight of its own, a capacity to see into things, into problems and the only way to become one is through meditation; none other exist.
Whereas, other cultures do not follow the same ideology; other cultures are collectivistic in nature; loyalties of a person to a group exceed the rights of the individual. The ethical principle of autonomy in nursing is, the individual’s right to make decisions for him or herself, consistent with this principle is respect for the autonomy of others. Therefore, the lack of respect for the decision-making of culturally diverse people in nursing practice is unethical. Hence, being individualism …..
Conclusion
The theory of the Enneagram proposes that amongst all people there are nine personality types, that we all have a dominant personality type, which has established itself by the time we are ages four or five, that we have characteristics of all personality types, and in particular some of the characteristics of the “wings” that is the numbers on each side of our dominant personality number but it is important to understand that descriptions are universal and not everything in personality type will apply all the time and most importantly; no type is better or worse than any other all have unique capacities and different limitations.
Upon knowing that, I got to realize my strengths and weaknesses one of the most important factors is knowing yourself, but also to know how to control your strengths and weaknesses in order to improve yourself and be able to communicate effectively interprofessional.
Reference
- The Enneagram Institute. (2018). Type Nine. [online] Available at:
- https://similarminds.com/personality_types.html#.W7Ay9S2-LEb
- [Accessed 29 Sep. 2018]
- Last Name, F. M. (Year). Article Title. Journal Title, Pages From – To.
- Last Name, F. M. (Year). Book Title. City Name: Publisher Name.
