How Knowing Your Team Enneagram Archetype Turns Strengths and Blindspots into Strategic Advantage
High-performing teams don’t just happen. They’re built with over time, and through intentional development. One of my favourite ways to work with the Enneagram for teams is introducing them to their Team Enneagram Archetype. In a nutshell, the team archeytpe is a collective personality pattern that reflects the dominant drivers and challenges that shape how they operate as a system.
The Enneagram helps teams move beyond surface-level collaboration to deeper awareness and alignment. It gives language to otherwise invisible dynamics, including how we communicate, make decisions and manage conflict.
When applied collectively, it allows the team to not only understand each other better but also strategically design the way they work together to achieve their vision and ambition. Another way of describe this, is that it’s the “how” to the “what” of the team’s agenda.
Team “F” recently went through an Enneagram-based team development process. Their collective profile revealed a Preserving 729 archetype, otherwise known as the “Peacemaker Team.” This group is deeply caring, collaborative, and optimistic.
Their strengths were clearly visible: they create a warm, emotionally safe, and steady environment that encourages loyalty, effort, and harmony. They show up, they follow through, and they do it all with a smile. This emotional intelligence and dedication make them ideal for fostering trust and inclusion.
But, as with every Enneagram archetype, their strengths also bring shadows.
Team F’s dominant archetype means they value security, positivity, consistency, and harmony. While this creates an overall upbeat, optimistic and supportive culture, it can also lead to:
Avoiding conflict in the name of keeping peace (and being “happy team players”)
Overcommitting to help others, risking burnout (and unspoken resentment).
Suppressing bold ideas or failing to speak up when overwhelmed (going along to get along).
Their blindspot instinct, “Transmitting” revealed the less visible and less comfortable parts of this team: self-promotion, influence, and bold visibility. Team F tends to shy away from spotlight moments that could amplify their message or innovation.
During their workshop, Team F didn’t just analyse themselves, they opened up meaningful conversation around the dynamics that had been revealed. In fact, the CEO, who carries out frequent engagement and happiness surveys and has regular informal chats with his team members, said that he heard things during this team that he’d never heard before – new insights into the dynamics of the team that shifted his understanding, and with that, the action plan of “what next?”
These “what next?” conversations identified specific “antidote behaviors” to flip their challenges into team collaboration strategies and opportunities including:
The intentional practice of “radical candor” principles to ensure psychological safety includes honesty, not just harmony.
Implementing tools to manage team priorities and create line of sight of individual workloads.
Assigning specific “hats” or roles during meetings to challenge consensus thinking and encouraging productive challenge.
Focusing specifically on the concept work-life harmony as a shared team value.
In essence, the team used the Enneagram not as a label but as a lens for intentional transformation.
Knowing your team Enneagram isn’t just interesting. It’s actionable. It surfaces the invisible operating system of your team and equips you with practical levers for improving clarity, connection, and ultimately, performance.
Whether you’re a leader aiming to unlock higher impact or a teammate striving for more authentic collaboration, the Enneagram can serve as your map and compass.
And as Team F is learning: when you name your patterns, you gain the power to reshape them.