Our Five Lens approach takes the Enneagram model and adds significantly to it. Most Enneagram  based assessments  primarily  focus  on  the Enneagram as a stand-alone “typing” model. In other words, they define a person’s dominant Enneagram “type”  and describe the likely behaviours exhibited by that “type”. 

Our  philosophy  is  not  to  type  or  box  people,  our  view  is  that  humans are far  too  complex to be reduced to a single “type”. Specific behaviours tend to fall somewhere  on a continuum ranging from not present at all to very present and the frequency of  particular  behaviour  can  change  depending  on  the  context    (external environment  and  internal  experience).  Also,  emotionally  integrated  people  display “growth”  rather  than  fixed  mindsets and  behaviour.  They  are  able to  learn  from  their  experiences and adapt to changing circumstances. 

The Five Lens methodology evaluates individuals across all nine Enneagram patterns  and  reports  on the  frequency  of  use  of  each  pattern.  We  report  in  detail  on  individuals’  two  most  frequently  used  patterns  and  their least  used  pattern.  (Sometimes the least used pattern is most significant for a person’s development.) 

As already mentioned, our belief is that behaviour changes in response to changes in  a person’s external and internal context. So, although the most dominant pattern is  usually most entrenched  in  a  person’s  “way  of  being”  the  frequency  of  use  of  the  other  patterns  can  shift  more  readily  in  response  to  the  context.  This  is  why  we  measure and show the frequency of all nine patterns in our reports. This is not done  in many other Enneagram reporting systems. 

Our approach to the Enneagram is somewhat different in that it takes into account a  range  of  other  variables  in  a  developmentally structured  way  that  enables self discovery rather than labelling which tends to reinforce fixated behaviour.