Threes organize their lives to achieve specific goals and to appear successful in order

to gain the respect and admiration of others.

Worldview of Threes I am only as good as my last performance, so I must appear to be
at the top of my game at all times.
Strengths | energetic | entrepreneurial | confident | results oriented
Development | competitive | abrupt | overly focused | selectively disclosing

Center of Intelligence: Heart Center

Heart Center Styles | Three Enneagram styles formed as a response to sorrow.

Your Enneagram style may be in the Heart Center styles Two, Three, and Four. Individuals
with Heart (Emotional) Center styles work hard to project a particular image as an unconscious
substitution for who they really are hence, the sadness or sorrow and they use their
emotions to perceive how others are responding to them. Twos try to create an image of being
likable, and they look to others for affirmation of their self-worth. Threes work to project an
image of success, and they seek the respect and admiration of others for what they
accomplish. As the most inwardly focused of the three Heart Center styles, Fours try to create
an image of being unique or different, and they use their emotional sensitivity to defend against
rejection. Enneagram style Three is the core style of the three Heart Center styles, with styles
Two and Four being variations of Enneagram Style Three.

Core Beliefs

The world values winners and ignores or ridicules losers

Who and what you know is important, but how youre known is more important.
Stay focused on your goals; everything else falls into place.

Emotional Patterns

Maintain a demeanor of self-confidence

Keep most strong feelings to themselves and even from themselves, particularly fear
and sadness

Behaviors
Focus intensely on goals and plans Have well-developed interpersonal skills
Become abrupt and short-tempered under stress Become angry when obstacles
block their goals Enjoy competition
Threes use their Heart Center to focus on how other people are responding to them in
terms of the Threes gaining their respect and admiration. Because most Threes read
their audience adroitly, they are able to change their persona specifically, what they
are saying and how they are saying it, as well as their nonverbal behavior in order to
elicit the response they desire. For this reason, Threes are called the chameleons of
the Enneagram.

Typing Questions for Threes

1. Do you do the things you do to impress others so that they will value and respect you?
2. Are you so busy doing things that you dont even know what simply being means?
3. Do you avoid failure by engaging only in activities you will be good at, focusing on
goals and making sure you achieve them, and reframing failure by calling it a
learning experience?

Threes search for success and avoid failure at all costs. Symbolized by the target, Threes take
steady aim at their goals, develop a plan for hitting the bulls eye, and then do everything they
can to hit their mark.
High energy, confident, and achievement oriented, Enneagram Threes focus on results they
believe will bring them the respect of others and on efficient and effective plans for
accomplishing these goals. As a result, they create a persona of confidence and success, but

often at the expense of being completely genuine. They lose touch with their deeper feelings
and sense of who they really are, confusing their public image with their real selves.
Although all Threes share a success orientation and constant need to have goals and plans,
there are also differences among them. Some Threes are highly self-reliant, strive to be the
model of a good person, and create an image of being authentic and having no image; other
Threes create an image of being high status, having prestige, and being important as a result
of their ability to perform and their credentials, position, and high-influence friends; and some
Threes focus more on creating an image of being extremely attractive in a highly masculine or
feminine way, having less need for visibility and a greater desire to support the success of
important people in their lives.
The Threes interpersonal style is one of having strong, deliberate, and confident stage
presence. They convey their ideas in a well-conceived and highly self-assured way, have
strong social skills except when they are stressed at which times they can be cold and abrupt
and often appear as if they were born to give public presentations.
While we can all be results-oriented and have difficulty differentiating between what we do or
how we try to appear and who we really are, for Threes, the search for success and the
avoidance of failure is their primary, persistent, and driving motivation.
The Enneagram styles on both sides of your core Enneagram style can also influence your
personality
Wings are the Enneagram styles on each side of your core Enneagram style. These are
secondary styles of your core personality style, which means that you may also display some
of the characteristics of these Enneagram styles. Wings do not fundamentally change your
Enneagram style; they merely add additional qualities to your core personality. As can be seen
on the Enneagram symbol, Nine and Two are wings for Ones, One and Three are wings for
Twos, Two and Four are wings for Threes, and so forth.
You may have one wing, two wings, or no wings at all. It is also common to have had one wing
be more active when you were younger, and to have had another appear as you matured.
People of the same Enneagram style and identical wings may use their wing qualities
differently. However, the general wing descriptions for all nine Enneagram styles given here
may serve as guidelines to help you explore this aspect of the Enneagram and also help you to
identify your wing or wings.

Wings for Threes

Two Wing | Threes with Two wings are far more sensitive to the feelings of others and more
generous with their time and resources, and they often focus on helping others in their
professional and/or personal lives.
Four Wing | Threes who have a Four wing are far more in contact with their own feelings, are
willing to engage in emotional conversations with others, have a deeper personal presence,
and may engage in some form of artistic expression or refined level of artistic appreciation.

The two styles with arrows that point toward and away from your Enneagram style can also
influence your personality
Arrow lines refer to the two styles on the Enneagram symbol that have arrows pointing away
from or toward your core Enneagram style, and you may show some characteristics of one or
both of these two additional styles. Access to your wings and arrow lines can be beneficial to
you, adding complexity, nuance, and flexibility to your personality, but they do not change your
fundamental style that is, your patterns of thinking and feeling and motivational structure
remain the same.
Arrow lines are best thought of as providing additional resources to our character structure
because it is possible to access the best of both styles; however, they are also referred to as
stress and security points because under stress, a person may move toward the arrow pointing
away from their core style, while when relaxed, the same individual may move in the direction
of the arrow that points to their own core style.
Arrow Lines for Threes
Arrow Line to Nine | When Threes have a strong connection to arrow line Nine, they use this
to relax, slow down their pace, and engage in activities simply for the pleasure of doing them.
Being able to access style Nine also helps Threes to be more mellow and easygoing.
Arrow Line from Six | Although many Threes are smart, accessing their arrow line Six
augments their normal intelligence with an enhanced analytical capability and insightfulness. In
addition, Threes with a link to style Six tend to be more aware of their own true reactions rather
than engaging in work as a way to avoid their feelings.

There are 3 variations of each Enneagram style, which actually give us 27, not just 9, different
character structures
Enneagram subtypes are an additional element that may affect your personality character
structure. Subtypes are the way in which the particular emotional pattern for each Enneagram
style most frequently manifests in that persons behavior. There are three different subtypes for
each Enneagram style: one subtype manifests the style through a particular behavior related to
issues of self-preservation; another subtype focuses primarily on social relations, often
behavior in response to social groups; the third subtype for each style is more oriented to oneto-one relationships.
Each of the nine Enneagram personality styles comes in three distinct varieties, depending on
which of the three subtypes is dominant. The repeating emotional pattern (referred to as the
passion) of the Enneagram style combines with the dominant subtype to create a
fundamental, driving need (mostly unconscious) that fuels the behavior, feelings, and thoughts
of the personality, yielding 27 distinct character structures (or three versions of each style) that
further elaborate on or present different flavors of the nine Enneagram styles. For most people,
two of the three instincts may be active, with the third less so or dormant.

Three Subtypes for Enneagram Threes | the passion of deceit.

All Threes feel they must appear successful in order to gain the admiration and respect of
others, and they avoid failure in any form by hiding parts of themselves that do not conform to
their image of success, deceiving not only others, but also themselves as they come to believe
that the image they create is actually who they are. There are three distinct ways in which
Threes manifest these characteristics.
Self-Preservation Subtype Threes try to be seen as self-reliant, autonomous, and
hardworking, thus portraying an image of being a good or ideal person. The self-preservation
Three may even create an image of having no image.
Social Subtype Threes want to be seen as successful and admirable in the context of specific
reference groups that is, the groups in which they want to be seen as successful. They like to
be around other successful people, because this proximity reinforces both the Threes image
and status.

One-to-One Subtype Threes want to be viewed as successful by people who are very
important to them, partly by appearing attractive to these people in some way but also by
helping them to achieve success.

Potency, resilience, moral power, firmness, and courage these are all concepts that align
with real strength. How can the Enneagram help each of us develop true strength, not physical
prowess or outer toughness?

Threes | Threes perceive themselves as strong, even stronger than others, but this strength is
so dependent on their last success, their last performance, their reluctance and inability to
share their uncertainties and woes with others, and their moving of feelings off to the side as a
way of keeping active and confident. Storms need not be hurricanes if they deal with their real
feelings and desires as these emerge. Learn that strength is not covering up anxiety or trying
to escape from who you really are deep inside; it comes from examining and working with
these to build resilience so storms pass more easily.