“Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.”

— F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

If you’ve taken a job with a large corporate employer, or signed on for a personal development retreat, you’ve most likely encountered some form of a personality test. Organizations love employing personality assessments during the recruitment process, as an easy way to gauge a candidate’s emotional stability and how they are most likely to respond under pressure or stress.

But as part of your personal development journey, have you considered taking your own personality assessment as a way to better understand yourself?

There are a multitude of pyschology-based systems and personality categories that can give you a starting point for observing your behavior and making meaningful changes in your life to improve its quality. Here at PoL, we have a soft spot for the Enneagram, and are sharing a list of our favorite, and most popular, resources for taking inventory of your personality.

Our Top Enneagram Tests

As most Enneagram experts will tell you, Enneagram tests are only about 60% accurate, as the Enneagram was designed to categorize personalities based on motivation rather than behavior. So two people might appear to do the same thing, but for very different reasons.

We recommend taking an Enneagram test as a way to eliminate the types that are clearly not you. Using your top three results, read through the descriptions of each, ask friends and family for their perceptions of you, and sit with them as you watch your behavior, emotions, and thoughts over the course of a few weeks. To get started, here are the tests we recommend:

THE ENNEAGRAM INSTITUTE

The Enneagram Institute Test, also known as the RHETI, is the most credible resource for Enneagram testing, and has a multitude of resources for helping you interpret your answers. While the assessment is not free, it is comprehensive and can give you materials to help decipher the differences between your top three results.

The RHETI will also show you your comparison to all other types so you can see how close you were to testing for each number, which can further help you in your process of elimination to finding your true type.

INTEGRATIVE9

The Integrative9’s Integrative Enneagram Questionnaire will give you a detailed explanation of your results, while also providing additional information about wings and subtypes that will help you further explore and find your type through deeper understanding and a process of elimination.

The Integrative9’s test is the most expensive (to see the full results) but it is a comprehensive starting point for your Enneagram journey.

THE NARRATIVE ENNEAGRAM

While this test requires a bit more up-front work, it compares a comprehensive look at your strengths, weaknesses, and coping mechanisms to help you determine your personality type. Not only will you learn about your type, but you’ll have a better understanding of the full Enneagram model along the way.

The philosophy behind the Narrative model is to encourage you to find your own type rather than diagnose you with a personality. 

What Comes Next

After taking a personality test with any of the above three recommendations, we encourage you to sit with your results and thoroughly read through the description of each type. Take some time to journal and take inventory of your response to each one. Then, consider asking family or close friends to weigh in on each type and what their perception or experience is with your personality.

Once you have this time to self-reflect and gather some feedback, sit with each type for a few weeks, paying attention to how you respond to the world as if you were each personality type and whether or not it feels natural. Consider purchasing an Enneagram book or reading an Enneagram blog for further information, knowing that the path to self-discovery is a lifelong process.