How the enneagram made me a better product manager
By: Kevin Capel
Tags: Enneagram, Product Management, Psychology, Personal Development, Product Design

Product Management

How the enneagram made me a better product manager

Dispelling the pressure to become a fantastic beast

I tend to sense in myself an abyss of emptiness and play dead like an animal when danger approaches. At least, this is how Richard Rohr describes type FIVEs in his exposition on the enneagram.¹ To my amusement, this is actually quite true. Unfortunately, it is exactly the opposite of what I am called to do as a b2b product manager — brave the storm and drive solutions to complex business problems.

The polarity between running away from problems and being called to solve them has been one of the most challenging aspects of reconciling my own personality tendencies and being a product manager at the same time. In other words, learning to be a product leader has not been rainbows and butterflies.

Thankfully, I do not think I am alone here. Product mangers are often described as “unicorns” (whether rightfully or mistakenly),³ who are called to a high pressure, make it or break it type role that requires multi-disciplinary expertise. This can easily be applied to many other tech roles that require a marriage of disciplines — designers, business analysts, etc.

I do not think that anyone comes across all the skills needed to be an effective product manager naturally. In fact, many product managers cycle through bouts of unproductive imposter syndrome (although there are ways we can rethink what is means to be an imposter in product). Instead, these product skillsets need to be cultivated and refined over time.

Searching for some answers, perhaps the best resource I have encountered on reconciling personality traits with overwhelming expectations is the enneagram. If you’re not familiar with the enneagram, think of it as an ancient typology that takes a more holistic approach to personality than other popular assessments out there like Myers Briggs or StrengthFinder. It uses expositions on character types (associated with numbers 1 through 9) to confront us with the compulsions and laws under which we live.² While personality assessments do share common elements, I’ve found that the enneagram takes a stronger emphasis on the “nurture” side of the nature vs. nurture spectrum and comes with a depth of analysis above and beyond the others.

While we tend to think of personality in strictly the personal realm, I’ve found the enneagram’s typology be quite an excellent window into the professional one as well. We might think of the enneagram in this context as a tool to confront the compulsions and laws under which we work, too. How?

The enneagram normalizes the centripetal draw of personality and promotes a healthy, more objective picture of success

The enneagram skillfully transforms “strengths” and “weaknesses” into opportunities

Applying these mindsets has allowed me to craft better results and stronger product outcomes from myself and my team members. Yes, these lessons are wholeheartedly my own, however I expect that I am not alone in these experiences. Whether you are looking for tools to improve your effectiveness as a product manager or how you manage a product team, you can use some of these lessons to evaluate if the enneagram can help you, too.

Not So Rare Unicorns

Unequivocally, the most positive effect the enneagram has had on me is that it has instilled in me the notion that I am not crazy. YES, there are other people that think the same way I do, have the same irrational fears, and have the same impulse to run. There’s really no need to make a fuss about being special or unique.

This is equally true of product managers! While being a product manger can (at times) seem lonely and pioneering, there are other product managers out there like you who struggle with the same things — who succeed in the same ways you do. You are not a magical unicorn that can mysteriously lead a team towards innovation — instead you are a normal person like everyone else.

This seems painfully obvious, however, for me, it was a major barrier to overcome. There is an incredible amount of pressure placed on product managers to succeed and produce — this often engenders an impaired vision of reality, over-saturated with an eye for failure and problems.

(It’s very likely that there are some of you who do not share this sentiment and are natural super stars, succeeding at (nearly) every step without much effort, however, I doubt you are in the majority.)

So what? For me, this has opened up a world of hope. It has released me from the inward impulse to meet some external set of expectations of what it means to be product manger and instead has freed me to focus on getting work done.

Strengths and Weaknesses as Opportunities

Rohr & Ebert use the language of “gifts” and “dilemmas” to help describe each type in their exposition on the enneagram. This is another, more refined, way of talking about strengths and weaknesses, of which we are so enamored with in the business world. In my personal case (identifying as a FIVE), some of my gifts, according to Rohr, are:

The gift of objectivity and detachment

The ability to soak up massive amounts of data

The ability to invent grand intellectual systems and understand connections

I love the way Rohr ties all of these gifts together:

“The gift of FIVEs is of great value to every community… They can follow the monologues of others for hours at a time. You can talk and talk — and the FIVE seams to have an unlimited capacity to listen and absorb everything. Their ability to withdraw themselves emotionally in the process can help those seeking advice to apprise their situation more clearly, soberly, and realistically. Because of their particular talent FIVEs can look at a very tense emotional situation objectively as say ‘Now I think the issue can be viewed from this side and from that.’”⁴

Some weaknesses of a FIVE are:

Emotional and intellectual greediness

Detachment and compartmentalization to a fault

Withdrawal from conflict

This is all nice and well, but how does it actually help? In my specific case, this exposition of gifts and obsessions creates opportunities instead of fleeting evocations of pride and shame. The shift is subtle yet strong — if others thrive in similar ways, so too, can I thrive by cultivating what I am naturally inclined to do — the enneagram has convinced me of this. The laws under which we live can be harnessed for good as opposed to a useless platitude.

Some specific examples — in the case of objectivity — appraising situations clearly and methodically is a key skill in product management. Analyzing and synthesizing broad swaths of information from multiple parties who all have different end goals requires a certain level of detachment. When product management is not done from a place of objectivity, it might look like this:

PMs get caught up in trying to appease a certain executive’s desires and lose track of the fundamental problem the product is trying to solve

Product decisions rely on intuition and preference rather than data and direct client or user feedback

PMs prioritize exciting or sleek projects over and against less sexy non-functional requirements

PMs choose to solve easy or even logical problems vs. the problems that solve a business objective

Through study of the enneagram, I’ve learned to distinguish successful strategies from unsuccessful ones particularly as these strategies play to my strengths and weaknesses. I thought everyone went through the same well-reasoned, unbiased study of the facts before reacting to emotion or events before making decisions (not so!). Feedback I have independently received in the product realm from others happens to correlate with the strengths associated with FIVEs.

This is not because all FIVEs happen to make good product managers — no! Instead, the enneagram has been able to reinforce and emphasize my strengths allowing me to be more confident in my decisions, exactly because these strengths and weaknesses are corroborated by others.

By learning this, I’ve been able to reinforce some product practices for both me and my team. Some examples:

I am more emboldened to press hard for a business need when one isn’t apparent. No, a feeling, intuition, or directive from a client is not enough to make sound product decisions. Instead, a business need must be present. This has made its way into requirement templates and success criteria for product managers in performance views.

I am able to lead cross-functional teams towards resolution even when tensions run high. By recognizing this, I have felt more empowered to offer a solution after hearing each team’s perspective. In the past, I was perfectly content standing on the sidelines and absorbing as much as I could — now it is imperative to reach a conclusion and clearly create a plan even when knowledge isn’t complete.

I am better equipped make priority decisions through rubrics. Identifying or creating a rubric is a great way to draw on a desire for objectivity in making priority calls. In one example, our team shifted from delivering on a net new UI to a completely invisible back end API because the number value ascribed was objectively higher to the client vs. what end users said they wanted.

Marchitecture — drawing diagrams to reduce subjective understandings of a path forward has proven immensely helpful in aligning teams towards crafting a product vision. This plays well to the gift of creating intellectual systems.

Again, this is all specific to my experience, however, the same insights can apply to you, too, through study of what makes you thrive.

Roadmap for the Soul

We might consider the enneagram in the context of product management like a roadmap for the soul. For me, the enneagram has given me the gift of security in my career ambition and affirmation in my skill sets. It’s transformed the all too common “product manager gloom” into opportunity. Product unicorns do not exist — only hard-working people who can recognize what makes them thrive and therefore take advantage of it in every discipline required to lead and craft. The product world needs more people who can play to their strengths, not more magical roadkill.

What have you learned about yourself as a product manager through the enneagram?