He keeps the peace, usually at his own expense. Maturity is the day that his easy calm grows a spine — a diplomacy that can, when it matters, finally state a demand.   SOME MEN fix the world by force. The Type 9 man — the Gentle Peacemaker — fixes it by making sure nobody ever has to fight over it in the first place. He is just as attuned to the imperfections of the world as anyone, and just as quietly idealistic about smoothing them over. But [...]

He leads with force and protects his own — hard. The strength he hasn't tried yet is the kind that can lower the guard, drop the armour, and let someone all the way in.   OF ALL nine types in this series, the Type 8 man — I'll call him the Powerful Protector — is the most solid, practical and reliable. Also the most immovable. Solid as a rock. He has almost no need to describe or explain things; he's about direct, immediate action. Suggest something to him [...]

He's off chasing the next bright idea before the last one's even landed. The freedom he's really after, it turns out, lives on the far side of finishing something.   THE RESTLESS Optimist sees the future as exciting and full of promise. He always believes things will get better, that somehow it will all work out. He expresses this in business by forever having some fantastic new idea, or chasing the next big opportunity. In both his business and his personal life, he tends to avoid dealing with [...]

He's already spotted the thing that could go wrong. The growth he resists is the quiet, radical act of trusting himself as much as he trusts the worst-case scenario. THE FAITHFUL Skeptic sees the future as something to protect himself from. Where another man looks ahead and feels excitement, he looks ahead and feels exposure — and so, in both his business and his personal life, he becomes a meticulous planner. He’ll do tons of research, and he’ll canvas the opinion of a trusted inner circle before he commits to [...]

He needs to understand the whole thing before he'll move on it. Maturity is finding the nerve to act while still unsure — wise enough, at last, to risk being wrong.   THE MEN with a knowledge orientation want to understand reality the way a scientist would, in order to build technical solutions. Picture scientists, engineers and tech geeks — though men in those professions aren’t limited to this type, and men of this type aren’t limited to those careers. At the very least, though, he’ll be a [...]

He'd rather feel everything than settle for ordinary. The twist he never sees coming: the depth he's been chasing was hiding in the plain, unremarkable days all along. THE MORE creatively oriented of these men believe they can “fix” the world by finding some perfect interpretation, or representation, of the world’s imperfection, and giving that back to the world in the form of art, music, poetry or literature. They believe that their creation will cause people to have that perfect insight that will forever change human nature and bring about [...]

He was built to win, and usually does. The harder, quieter victory is learning to want the people beside him on the podium as much as he wants the podium itself. SOME MEN walk into a room already at the top of the heap — and they fully intend to stay there. The Type 3 man has what we might call a winning orientation: whatever he does, in whatever field, he wants to be the best at it, and everything he does is geared towards building and protecting his social [...]

He'll drop everything to help you, then quietly resent that nobody thought to ask about him. Growth is the day his generosity learns to let a little back in.   A quick, tongue-in-cheek warning before we begin. This report is written for you — but in the third person. As “he,” not “you.” That’s deliberate. It’s highly unlikely you’ll ever read a report about yourself without someone else telling you to, because you’ll be so busy helping everybody else that you never give yourself the time or the [...]

He holds everyone to a high standard — himself hardest of all. Maturity is where that firmness finally learns it can bend without the whole world falling apart.   THE PRINCIPLED Perfectionist has a moral orientation, which you could just as easily call a process orientation. These are the men we need to keep a check on everyone else — the scientists, the dreamers, the chancers, and, frankly, the rest of us. They do it by setting standards and creating processes — which are really just elaborate forms of [...]

Your Enneagram type is more than a personality label — it's your whole strategy for life, and it points straight to your shadow. For men, the real work is using it to walk the four stages of male maturity, from denial to integration. This post is also available as a YouTube video (click here). ​ Or jump to the audio version. ​ So, you have your Enneagram number. So what? (And if you don’t, read on, you’ll find it below.) Here's a question that tells me more about [...]