Typology

This week I sat down with Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott, an Enneagram Eight and Two who have been married for more than forty years, for a fun and personal conversation about love, mental health, and self-awareness. We talked honestly about what it actually takes to stay curious, connected, and growing in our relationships. And, we explored the ways our best qualities can sometimes get distorted, wh...

What if intimacy with another person begins with learning how to be intimate with yourself? Ian talks with Enneagram teacher and transformational coach Suzanne Dion, co-author with the late Dr. David Daniels of The Enneagram: Relationships and Intimacy , about vulnerability, self-acceptance, defense mechanisms, and the ways our personality patterns can keep us disconnected from ourselves and the p...

What if you had learned the Enneagram when you were a teenager? In this replay of my conversation with Ainsley Britton, author of The Enneagram for Teens , we explore what self-awareness can look like during adolescence and how parents can use the Enneagram without turning it into another way of labeling or controlling their kids. Ainsley and I talk about why she believes teenagers can benefit fro...

There's a particular kind of loneliness that comes from caring about something before anyone else in the room does. My guest today knows that loneliness intimately. Rev. Dr. Derwin L. Gray played in the NFL before founding Transformation Church in 2010. He's also an Enneagram Eight — and in this conversation, we get into what it actually feels like to live inside that number: the passion that gets...

What happens when a Three stops performing and starts telling the truth, even to herself? Anthony and I sat down with Stephanie Barron Hall, author of Enneagram in Real Life and host of the Enneagram in Real Life podcast, for a conversation that starts with instinctual stacking and ends up somewhere much deeper. Steph, a sexual (or what she calls a "spark") dominant Three, unpacks how the sexual i...

Dr. Alison Cook, bestselling author of Boundaries for Your Soul, returns to Typology to talk about her new book, The Secure Soul: Finding Inner Strength and Connection When Trust Doesn't Come Easy . Alison is candid about her own lifelong wrestle with insecurity as an Enneagram Three, and we dig into two of her book's central characters: the controller, the part of us trying to earn love by managi...

What happens when the type you've claimed for years turns out to be wrong? Today, I sit down with returning guest Beatrice Chestnut — Enneagram teacher, author, and co-founder of the Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy — for a wide-ranging conversation on one of the most common (and most human) struggles in Enneagram work: mistyping. We dig into why mistyping happens, how to hold a hypothesis about so...

True spiritual transformation often begins at the exact moment our old answers stop working. This week, I'm sharing Chapter One of my newly revised novel, Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim's Tale . We follow Chase Falson, a megachurch pastor whose public confession of lost faith triggers an unexpected journey of the heart. While Chase's story is fictional, his hunger for something authentic mirrors my ow...

Most Enneagram teaching is very good at describing what's wrong with you. This episode is about what's right. Every Enneagram type has a Passion — the chief emotional distortion the ego runs when it's disconnected from its truest self. Anger for the One. Pride for the Two. Deceit for the Three. Each of the nine types has one, and most of us have spent a lot of energy trying to manage ours without...

When you combine an Enneagram type with a dominant instinct, you get a subtype — and there are 27 of them. This is the level at which most people finally, fully recognize themselves in the Enneagram. Not at the type level, not at the instinct level, but here — where the two come together into something precise enough to actually fit. In this episode, Anthony and I walk through what subtypes are, w...

Here's something I've noticed after years of teaching the Enneagram: there's usually a moment when someone who knows their type well suddenly encounters something that doesn't fit. A behavior they can't explain. A pattern that seems to contradict everything their type is supposed to do. More often than not, the answer lives in the instincts. In this episode — Episode 3 of our Enneagram Essentials...

Most people who know the Enneagram know their type. Fewer know their Basic Fear. And even fewer have sat with it long enough to understand why knowing your basic fear is so important. In this episode — the second in our Enneagram Essentials series — Anthony and I go beneath the type descriptions and into the motivational core of the system: the nine Basic Fears and their counterparts, the nine Bas...

After nine seasons of Typology, Anthony and I thought we should revisit some of the basics.  This is the first episode of a five-part series we're calling Enneagram Essentials. Think of today as the front door — we cover the ground every listener needs, from how to find your type to how the Enneagram works in relationships, in faith, and in seasons of genuine suffering.  Then, in Episodes 2 throug...

There's a particular kind of courage it takes for a Nine to write a book called Good Boundaries and Goodbyes — and Lysa TerKeurst has earned every word of it. Join us as we revisit Ian's conversation with the New York Times bestselling author to explore what it actually looks like to wake up from the Nine's trance of self-forgetting, find your voice, and learn to hold the line with compassion and...

What does it mean to "get it right" as a parent? Not perfectly. Not without regret. Not with some airtight system that guarantees your children will become exactly who you hoped they'd be. But with intention. With humility. With the long view in mind. In this replay episode of Typology , I sit down with Andy and Sandra Stanley—both Enneagram Ones—to talk about their book, Parenting: Getting It Rig...

We're going back into the vault for one of our most popular mailbag episodes from Season 3 — and the questions are just as good as we remembered. In this episode, Ian and co-host Anthony Skinner answer listener questions on some of the Enneagram's most nuanced and personal territory: Can trauma actually change your type? What is the "sunny Four," and why do subtypes matter so much for Fours and Si...

What if the reason your closest relationships feel stuck isn't about how much you care — but about how differently you and the people you love communicate? Today, I sit down with Jason VanRuler, therapist, Enneagram Two, and author of Discovering Your Communication Type: The 5 Paths to Deeper Connection and Stronger Relationships , as he introduces us to his P.A.T.H.S. framework — five communicati...

What if the very thing driving your success is quietly breaking you? Brooke Taylor, Enneagram Three, career coach, and author of Healing the Success Wound,  joins me for a searingly honest conversation about achievement, identity, and spiritual hunger.. Brooke grew up in Silicon Valley where worth was measured in gold stars, landed at Google by her early twenties, and found herself drowning in a s...

Have you ever known where you want to go—but felt mysteriously stuck getting there? In this episode of Typology, I sit down with Dr. Henry Cloud, clinical psychologist, leadership expert, and bestselling author of  Boundaries , to talk about his new book, Your Desired Future: The Five Essential Steps That Take You Where You Want to Go . Together, we explore the intersection of faith, psychology, t...

"Emotions drive 90 to 95% of our unconscious decision-making." Attia Qureshi is back — and this time, we go deeper. After her first interview, Attia's insights on persuasion and negotiation were so helpful that Anthony put them to the test in a real-life negotiation and said, "they changed the game." So, we invited her back to go deeper into the ideas behind her book, Never Settle: Persuasion and...

Every once in a while, a conversation comes along that makes you pull out your earbuds and stare into the middle distance. This is one of those. My guest today didn't come to promote a book or launch a course. He's here because he's a good friend with hard-won wisdom — and the rare ability to articulate what's actually going on inside . Meet Brian Boecker, therapist at Restoring the Soul in Denver...

What happens when two powerful paths—Buddhism and the Enneagram—sit down for a conversation? In this episode, Ian welcomes author and Buddhist teacher Susan Piver (The Buddhist Enneagram) to explore the overlap between these two systems. Susan's new book, The Buddhist Enneagram, offers a fresh lens on personality—not as something to fix, but as something to understand, soften, and ultimately hold...

Most of us think we're avoiding hard conversations because we don't know what to say. But that's not really the problem. In this episode, Ian and Anthony dive into the real reason we sidestep the conversations that matter most—and it has a lot less to do with skill and a lot more to do with what's happening inside of us. Because here's the truth: you can have the best negotiation strategy in the w...

What if the conversations you're avoiding… are actually the doorway to the relationships you want? In this replay from our Courageous Conversations series, I sit down with conflict resolution expert James Guinn to explore a truth most of us would rather sidestep: conflict isn't the problem—our style of engaging it is. Together, we unpack the hidden patterns that shape how you show up when tension...

Last week, we kicked off our Courageous Conversations series with a fresh look at building emotional confidence. This week, we lay the groundwork for how personality, emotional regulation, and awareness all play into navigating conversations that matter.  I sat down with Attia Qureshi—an expert in negotiation and persuasion—but what unfolds isn't just about getting what you want. It's about why we...