Type 3 Initial Self-Belief: “I am not valued as I am.”

Type 3 Compensation: "I must become accomplished and prove myself to gain value and regard in the eyes of others."

Type 3 Core Focus: Esteem comes from being valued and having the positive regard of others. This requires that I not only package myself and perform in ways that will garner that recognition and positive regard but also find ways of measuring my success toward those ends.

Personality characteristics that might arise from the type 3 core focus include:

• Looks to external indicators for how well they're performing.
• Packages and markets self-image that's admired by intended audience.
• Pushes aside feelings that get in the way of achieving goals.
• Sense of self-value comes from what they produce or accomplish.
• Competes in arenas where there is someone to beat and someone to notice.
• Chamelon-like shifts of image occur to match situational expectations.
• Confuses self-presentation with who they truly are.
• Avoids failure by avoiding pursuits where failure is a possibility.
• Gives priority to goals and achieving them over other things.

The Achiever, The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type: Adaptable, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious¹

Basic Fear: Of being worthless, without value apart from their acheivements¹

Basic Desire: To feel worthwhile, accepted, and desirable¹

How Threes Pay Attention: To an observer, a Three looks like a highly focused achiever; Threes report, however, that they are only trying to keep up. If someone else is good, the Three has to be better, because a Three’s self-esteem is riding on a win.²

Basic Proposition: You gain love, recognition and acceptance through performance, doing and success.²

Strengths: Enthusiastic, action-oriented, problem-solving, successful, efficient, practical and competent²

Challenges: Image-driven, over-worked, impatient, competitive, out of touch with feelings²

Energy goes into: Getting things done quickly and efficiently. Staying active and busy. Competing. Achieving recognition and credit for accomplishments. Adjusting to whatever is required for success. Promoting myself. Looking good.³

The Performer: Success-oriented, image conscious and wired for productivity, they are motivated by a need to be (or appear to be) successful and to avoid failure.⁴

Achievers are energetic, optimistic, self-assured, and goal-oriented.⁵

Focus of Attention: Threes focus attention on tasks and goals to create an image of success in the eyes of others. Threes identify with their work, believing they are what they do, and lose touch with who they really are.⁶

¹Book: The Wisdom of the Enneagram; Website: The Enneagram Institute

²Book: The Enneagram; Website: The Narrative Enneagram

³Book: The Essential Enneagram; Website: Dr. David Daniels

⁴Book: The Road Back to You

⁵Book: The Enneagram Made Easy

⁶Book: The Complete Enneagram; Website: Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy

Type 3 Fixation and Trap

Fixation: Vanity comes from gaining a sense of value through accomplishments and subsequent recognition.

Trap: Efficiency comes from pursuing the most effective path forward toward achieving your set goal.

The fixation of vanity points to the mental preoccupation of the type 3 ego. The trap of efficiency keeps an individual stuck in the fixation.

Type 3 Holy Idea

Holy Idea: Holy Hope is finding intrinsic value in just being rather than needing affirmation and validation through your accomplishments.

The fixation of vanity and trap of efficiency keep an individual stuck in the type 3 fixation. The way out of that fixation is through holy hope.

Type 3 Passion

Passion: Deceit involves taking on a persona that appeals to an intended audience. "I have difficulty knowing who I am separate from the image I'm presenting."

The passion of deceit is the emotional energy that serves the fixation of vanity and trap of efficiency.

Type 3 Virtue

Virtue: Truthfulness appears when you find a sense of self that is true to who you are instead of playing to the expectations of an intended audience.

The virtue of truthfulness is what appears when the passion of deceit subsides.

• Attention Need and Vanity
• Achieving Orientation
• Social Sophistication and Skill
• Cultivation of Sexual Attractiveness
• Deceit and Image Manipulation
• Other-Directedness
• Pragmatism
• Active Vigilance
• Superficiality

One method used to bring the types to life when teaching the Enneagram types involves interviewing people of a given type about how that type plays out in their life. This may be done through panels and one-on-one interviews.

Self-revelatory videos can also be useful where a person simply describes their type to a camera without the prompting of an interviewer.

Note that sometimes a person in a video may have been mistyped and may not offer an accurate representation of type when that happens.

Once their Enneagram type is known, celebrities or famous people can also offer interesting examples of and insights into Enneagram type as revealed through interviews, lectures, writings, and the person's work.

However, it's not like the Enneagram panels, interviews, and self-revelations where people are specifically describing how they experience Enneagram type in their lives. It's more a matter of looking for glimpses into how Enneagram type is operating in the person.

It can be difficult to type someone at a distance. Look for a consensus of opinion on a person's type from multiple sources and hold it loosely. Celebrities and famous people are often typed differently by different Enneagram authors, teachers, and enthusiasts.

It needs to be made clear that fictional characters are not real people, even when they are based on real people. There can be a temptation to assign Enneagram type to every character in a story, but many characters don't have that kind of consistency or depth.

Not only might there be a number of different people, usually of different types, influencing the creation or portrayal of a character but often the character is nothing more than a vehicle for telling the story and moving it along.

While once in a while a character appears that you can attribute an Enneagram type to, generally it's more accurate to look at specific scenes as examples of a type rather than the character as a whole.

Tom Condon wrote a book called The Enneagram Movie & Video Guide that you may find useful for seeing type in fictional characters.

Although they do exist, there are few song lyrics that can be attributed to one particular Enneagram type. Most songs have both lyrical and musical elements that can be attributed to a number of different Enneagram types.

Songs are extremely subjective. There are many songs that listeners, and even performers, interpret in a very different way than the song writer intended. A number of songs also emphasize the sounds of words rather than their meaning.

As such, different people hearing the same song often will experience it as representing different Enneagram types.

Enneagram type 3 wings (3w2 and 3w4)

Enneagram type 3 subtypes (sp 3, sx 3, so 3)

Enneagram type 3 tri-center (gut, heart, head)

• 3 vs 1
• 3 vs 2
• 3 vs 4
• 3 vs 5
• 3 vs 6
• 3 vs 7
• 3 vs 8
• 3 vs 9

Enneagram Type Preference Test
This test produces a scored list of all nine types.
Questions are forced-choice, similar to the method used by the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indictor (RHETI).
Use to determine type, wings, gut/heart/head types, and tri-center.

Enneagram Type Comparison Test
This test compares any two types. The preferred type will have the higher score.
Use when you've narrowed your type down to two or three possibilities you'd like to compare.