Team building can be fun and exciting, it can also be hard and frustrating. Personality differences can often impede the health and overall performance of a team.

However, personality differences do not have to be a team’s weakness; when approached carefully and respectfully, differences can actually be the strength that gives a team its creative edge and ultimate success.

The Enneagram is not only a beneficial tool in helping individuals identify their core motivations and paths of personal growth, it is also a tool that offers help to teams in utilizing and leveraging each person’s unique gifts in order to be more efficient, effective and innovative in reaching their goals.

Here are three benefits to using the Enneagram for team building:

Improved Cooperation

The Enneagram is a tool that focuses on the whys behind our behaviors and emotions. By understanding the key motivational differences among the suggested nine personality types, individuals realize that certain behaviors might simply be the reactions, (masks), to things like discomfort, insecurity and vulnerability.

The Enneagram provides insight into each personality on a team that may lead to reassigning tasks, allowing for different approaches to be used, and listening to ideas that may seem unconventional at first. When used in this way, the Enneagram can allow each member of a team to lead from and thrive in their natural gifts.

Better Communication

The Enneagram is more complex than simply providing definitions for nine personality types. It is a tool that introduces terms like wings, paths of movement and triads. Among these ideas is the suggestion of harmonic approaches, which refers to the approach that each type takes when confronted with conflict or problems.

While there are certainly similarities between types when it comes to handling conflict, each type (indeed, each person) will approach conflict very differently. Understanding these differences allows each individual to not only recognize their own approach, understand how their behaviors may appear to others, and gain some insight into approaching others in a manner than will be both appreciated and well received.

Conflict is inevitable, and the better each individual becomes in approaching conflict in healthy ways, the stronger the bonds of communication can be among a team.

Greater Compassion

The Enneagram offers explanations to different world views. When individuals allow themselves to emphatically look through the lens of another, they will not only become more understanding, they will gain greater compassion.

It can be easy for individuals to think that their way of viewing the world and doing things is the right way, the best way, and one of the most powerful things the Enneagram does is open our eyes to the depth and richness that can be found when we welcome the beauty and strength found only through diversity.