What is The Enneagram Head Triad?

Let’s look at the Enneagram Head Triad, one of the three intelligence triads that the Enneagram proposes.

Though it’s powerful to understand your dominant Enneagram type or types, knowing whether it belongs to the Gut, Head or Heart Triad also helps you know what your dominant emotional theme is and get a handle on your fears and desires.

What Are Triads?

To give you some context, there are nine Enneagram personality types, numbered 1 to 9, and each belongs to one of the three intelligence triads, called the Gut triad, the Heart triad, and the Head triad.

Each is a unique way of understanding and interacting with other people and the world around us.

Types 8, 9 and 1 belong to the Gut triad; 5, 6 and 7 form the Head triad, and 2, 3 and 4 form the Heart triad. Since the types within each intelligence triad are all adjacent, the Enneagram diagram gives a nice visual representation of the triads:

Let’s look more closely at the Enneagram Head Triad.

What is the Enneagram Head Triad?

As we know, the Enneagram Head Triad consists of Enneagram Types 5, 6 and 7. It also includes four of the eighteen wing types, 5w6, 6w5, 6w7 and 7w6, while the four wing types 5w4, 4w5, 7w8 and 8w7 are partially in the Head triad. To keep things simple, we’ll focus on Types 5, 6 and 7, but it’s quite possible you are a wing type.

You might see this called the Thinking triad.

The three Enneagram Head triad types have some common traits. A person centred in one of these types tends to…

• tend to rely on cognition to make decisions,
• be analytical, rational, curious,
• mistake mental world for reality,
• primarily experience fear in challenging situations,
• aim to find safety and security, and function best when they do,
• seek to gain knowledge,
• manage relationships via planning and intellect.

The challenges of being a Head type include being out of touch with the emotional and objective worlds, getting lost in negative or disempowering thought spirals, and relying too much on cognition.

In the Enneagram, there is the idea that each triad has one predominant emotion associated with it: anger (Gut triad), shame (Heart triad) and fear (Head triad).
I understand why the Enneagram theorists described it in this way, but I find it hard to believe that these are the three dominant human emotions and that your type fully determines which one you experience. It seems reductionistic and oversimplified to me.

The Enneagram Head Triad: Types 5-7

Let’s look a little at the three types that form the Head Triad. You’ll find that they’re similar enough to form a group, but different enough to be distinct types.

Enneagram Type 5: The Investigator

The Ennegram Type 5 is called the Investigator. Investigators are knowledge- and idea-focused, introverted, and innovative. 5s thirst for knowledge, information and expertise, and are intellectual and reserved.

5s dislike the limelight, excessive emotion, ostentation and depending on other people.

Like all Enneagram types, the 5’s strengths can also be weaknesses. For one thing, 5s fear being incompetent, which in part drives their continual accumulation of knowledge. Also, they learned early in life to retreat into their inner world, and naturally this world can be a dungeon rather than a sanctuary.

Enneagram Type 6: The Loyalist

Type 6 is called the Loyalist. This type is great at solving problems yet outer-focused and keen to contribute to group tasks. 6s think things through and weigh up different approaches before tackling an issue.

Type 6s dislike betrayal so seek to form strong bonds with people and deeply understand them. They are suspicious and skeptical, so dig below the surface to find hidden motivations in people and will tread where others won’t dare.

Their need to take action and be a changemaker often has several drawbacks, like feeling impotent when things don’t work out. Obsessed with knowing the ins and outs, they can be overly cautious and risk-averse.

Someone who is a 6w5 predominantly shows Type 6 traits but a significant number of 5 traits, and vice versa for a 5w6.

Enneagram Type 7: The Enthusiast

The Enneagram 7 is called the Enthusiast. This type is deeply curious, adventurous and larger than life. 7s are spontaneous and highly energetic.

They spend a lot of time seeking out new delights and have their hand in many cookie jars. On one hand this means they constantly expand, though when unable to explore they can feel restless and restricted, and often avoid firm commitment.

They love socialising and having fun, sometimes forgetting to attend to their inner world and taking time out to recharge.

Someone who is a 7w6 predominantly shows Type 7 traits but a significant number of 6 traits, and vice versa for a 6w7.

In the Enneagram Head Triad? What to Do Next

Perhaps you’ve taken a test or read the descriptions above and have garnered that you’re predominantly an Enneagram Type 5, Type 6, or Type 7, or one of the all-Head wing types (5w6, 6w5, 6w7 or 7w6). What do you do with now?

First of all, your personality type and triad is neither fundamentally good nor bad. All nine Types and three Triads have upsides and downsides. In certain situations they help, in others they hinder.

For me, it was very helpful to uncover my type because I realised that many of my personality traits, including the quirky ones, are essentially normal and to be expected given my type. Isn’t that a huge relief?

You can then begin to ask how your type and triad help you live fully in the different domains of your life, like work, family and friendships. Where do they give you an edge or vital skills that you would be lost without?

On the other hand, where do your type and triad hinder you in these domains? Where do they create issues in your life?

It’s important not to think that your personality type and triad definitively describe who you are and will always be. We are remarkably moldable and adaptable, and in any case all these categories and labels are just approximations, shorthand ways of describing human personality. They don’t define us.

I like to think that our type and triad present specific challenges that it’s our job to work with, to work through, rather than be accosted by. For example, if you’re a Type 5 and notice you’re always trying to accumulate knowledge at all costs, just realise that. Observe yourself when caught in this behaviour, and watch how its both a blessing and a curse.

Then you can work to accentuate the positive and iron out the negative. Perhaps as an antidote to this obsession with knowledge, you decide to practice self-compassion. After a while, you might realise that you’ve reworked or transmuted this inherent quality of 5 so that the pros are accentuated and the cons are tempered.

The same goes for the many qualities of the types and triads. Be self-observant and creative as you channel them to your benefit.