You can help your boss by knowing their boss’ buttons. You may not want to share your tools, but you can share your influencing patterns.
Feel free to type as many of the people at work (your own team, even) to give you some insight into how to push buttons. Political acumen is about the whole context, not just the little patch in front of your face!
The table below outlines one “button” for each type. This is an immensely complex model, and I feel somewhat of a charlatan for reducing it to less than 30 words. The Enneagram has been applied to a lot of different contexts, many of which are quite esoteric. For clearly corporate application, see this post.
If you’d rather have it in the antique form of a book, I like The Nine Ways Of Working: How To Use The Enneagram To Discover Your Natural Strengths And Work More Effectively or this even simpler introduction book with comics: Enneagram Made Easy
| Enneagram Number | To get me on side tell me: | To get under my skin tell me |
| 1 | I’m right | I’m wrong |
| 2 | I’m helpful | I’m making it hard for people |
| 3 | I’m successful | I’m a fake |
| 4 | I’m unique and special | I’m just like everybody else |
| 5 | I’m wise and informed | I don’t know my stuff |
| 6 | I belong | I’m an outlier |
| 7 | I’m fun | I’m boring |
| 8 | I’m strong | I’m weak |
| 9 | I’m fair | I’m biased |