Enneagram Europe - the Transformative Tradition

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐓𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫. 𝐄𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡 𝐢𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮.

Swipe left or right. Discover what secretly drives you.

Not a test. Not 180 questions.

What's My Point? is a card game and the easiest and fastest way to discover your type.

Two cards. Three descriptors each.

You choose the one that feels most like you, without overthinking it, and swipe that to the right.

Or, if it is easier for you to see the one that applies to you little or not, swipe that one to the left.

This game is built with the awareness that we are all different and that what works for one, works differently for the other.

You can play it alone or even better with someone else. This second option tends to start a conversation you did not expect.

Why not play it with a colleague during your lunch break?

Give it a go and let me know: what did it bring you?

Link in the first comment.

𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐭. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧?

There is no shortage of leadership development programmes.

Frameworks, assessments, workshops, online courses. Many of them are good.

They develop skills, sharpen communication, improve performance.

And yet, leaders who have done all of this still find themselves reacting in the same old ways under pressure.

Still hitting the same ceiling, in themselves and in their teams.

Leadership from the inside out. It is not the kind of leadership built on acquired knowledge and skills.

It is built on character. On who you are, not what you can do.

It begins with a different questions.

Not: what do I need to learn? But: what is actually driving me?

What are the beliefs, the fears, the deep motivations that shape every decision I make before I have even consciously made it?

This is where the Enneagram comes in.

Not as a personality test. Not as a label.

As a precise, deeply human map of nine fundamental character structures. Nine patterns of attention and motivation.

Nine ways of perceiving the world. Perceiving others. Perceiving situations.

What makes the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition different is that it is, at its core, an inside job.

It does not type you from the outside. It is not about behaviour.

It invites you into a living process of self-discovery, through your own story, your own patterns, your own inner experience.

And it works with the whole person. Head, heart and body.

Each centre carries its own wisdom. Each has its own blindness. Real development means learning to access, integrate and balance all three.

The leader grounded in all three does not just think about leadership. They embody it.
They are present in the room. They stay grounded when the pressure is highest. They meet people where they actually are.

This is the work we do in the Personal Leadership Year Programme at Enneagram Europe.

Over the course of a year, you go deeper into your own character structure than any workshop or assessment can take you.

Not just intellectually but experientially, in community with others doing the same work.

The leaders who complete this journey do not just lead better. They lead differently.

From genuine self-knowledge, grounded presence, and the kind of character that people naturally trust and want to follow.

Whether this is new to you or you have been on this path for a while, there is always a next step.

Perhaps now is the time to take another one.

To your growth!

Jeanette van Stijn
Enneagram Europe
____________________
The Personal Leadership Programme at Enneagram Europe is for leaders and professionals ready to develop from the inside out. Grounded in the Enneagram in the Narrative Tradition, one of only 25 IEA-accredited schools worldwide.

We go where it matters most: whether that is a crisis, or a genuine desire to grow.

𝐁𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧.

Why people hear something different than what you say.

You speak clearly. They feel criticised.
You seek harmony. They sense avoidance.
You offer direction. They experience pressure.

Communication does not fail because of bad intention. It fails because different character structures listen differently.

Before words are evaluated, they are filtered.

There are nine character-informed listening structures that shape how every message is interpreted. I wrote about them.

If you lead, coach, advise, or work with teams, this framework will shift how you communicate. If this interests you, I turned it into an ebook.

I am curious which of the nine you recognise. In yourself. In the people you work with.

Jeanette van Stijn
Enneagram Europe

𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝. 𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮?

You can have the best intentions as a person, as a leader.

And still, when it truly counts, when the pressure is on, when something important is at stake, when the room is watching, something else takes over. Something faster than your intention. Something deeper than your values.

Do you recognise this? Have you ever experienced this? That you might have even questioned yourself: 'where did this come from?'

We have all developed patterns deep within us, from the way we were raised, the family constellation we grew up in, our life experiences. They shape how we think, feel and act, most often without us knowing.

And beneath that, there is an even deeper hidden driver within us: our innate nature. The Greeks referred to it as being carved into us, 'engraved': our character.

Our character is our deepest operating system. The one that runs silently in the background. The one that activates when the stakes are high.

When we are unconscious of it, our character structure may drive us from its lower aspects: pride, greed, lust, the hunger for power, for possession, for recognition.

We see leaders fall on exactly these points every day. And it is no coincidence because leadership positions do not only increase the temptations. The possibilities increase too.

But character has a second meaning.

It is also the quality of someone who knows where they stand and what they stand for.

The kind of strong, pure character we would want in our leaders and in ourselves. Someone who has their spine straight not because it is easy, but because they have done the inner work to get there.

This is why practising the Via Negativa is not optional in leadership development. It is the path of purifying yourself from within so that you can lead from higher values, and hold your ground when the challenges demand it.

How can you lead others if you cannot lead yourself?

Character-aware leadership starts here. Not with knowing others. With knowing yourself at the level where it is no longer comfortable.

At the Summer School Retreat, Jeanette opens with the following session on the Friday morning:

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈𝐬 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐘𝐨𝐮? · 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘝𝘪𝘢 𝘕𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘢 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶.

Jeanette van Stijn · Type 1 Sexual · Netherlands · founder of Enneagram Europe/Netherlands, one of 25 IEA-accredited Enneagram schools worldwide · early licensed affiliate teacher in the lineage of Helen Palmer and David Daniels · over thirty years in teaching, coaching, mediation, team and organisational development.

If something in this resonates, you are welcome to join us.

𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫? 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠?

Leadership is hot. In training programmes, in organisational development, in boardrooms and on LinkedIn.

And yet, quietly, most people do not really think of themselves as a leader. Do you?

Here is what Islam Abokandil has observed in over fourteen years of working with leaders across the Middle East and Europe: most people lead more than they realise. A team, a project, a family, a conversation.

Leadership is not a title. It is what happens between people.

Islam knows this from the inside. Born in Egypt, he spent years in Canada before returning home with a question that would not leave him alone: why do intelligent, capable, well-intentioned people keep producing the same results, in different contexts, with different people, year after year?

The answer, he discovered, was not a skill gap. It was a loop.

As the founder of Transcend, one of the most respected human development companies in the Middle-East region, Islam has worked with multinationals and organisations whose people are technically excellent, relationally intelligent, and still somehow circling the same problems.

A loop is not a bad habit. It is a structural pattern driven by a deeper fixation, a belief about yourself, others and what leadership requires of you. Until that fixation is seen clearly, the loop continues regardless of skill, intention or self-awareness.

Islam works with the three energies the Enneagram reveals in the Law of Three: active, receptive and reconciling. Most leaders are dominated by one.

That imbalance is precisely what keeps the loop in place. His work makes the pattern visible, traces it to its root, and opens the question: what becomes available when the loop loosens its grip?

This is not coaching. This is inner work at the level where leadership actually lives.

At the Summer School Retreat, Islam joins us on the Saturday morning.

Breaking the Loop · Working with the Law of Three.

Islam Abokandil · Type 1 Self-Pres · Egypt · founder of Transcend · IEA-accredited Enneagram teacher · leadership consultant for multinationals across the Middle East and Europe · trained in the Narrative Tradition.

If something in this resonates, you are welcome to join us.

𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮. 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐰. 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭.

Before you formed an opinion or had an emotional reaction, your body had already responded. Before you decided whether to speak or stay silent, something deeper had already been chosen. What we try to understand cognitively is already present in our body as information. Before words. Before type.

And yet most personal development or leadership development never goes there.

We simply do not pay attention to the workings of our instincts.

Maura Amelia Bonanno has spent thirty years at exactly that intersection.

As a Somatic Movement educator she learned how instincts live in the body.

And as an Enneagram teacher, trained in multiple traditions over 25 years, she brought all of that together into Enneagramma Integrale®, an approach that awakens, engages, and harmonises the three Centers.

Her premise is simple and radical: theoretical self-knowledge is not enough. Emotional awareness is not enough. The Enneagram is a map. The body is the territory.

At the Summer School Retreat, Maura brings this to the Saturday afternoon.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝 · 𝘉𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵. 𝘉𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘺𝘱𝘦.

The three instincts live below thought, below type, below everything you have learned about yourself. Cells relate to one another before the development of the nervous system. Maura calls it the cellular intelligence of the instinctive centre. You carry it with you everywhere. It responds before you do.

Her session moves from a structured idea of leadership to an organically flowing experience of personal leadership within the three instincts. What does your personal leadership feel like when your instincts are natural? What does it feel like when they are distorted? Most people have studied these instincts for years. Few have actually met them in the body. That is what this session is for.

Maura Amelia Bonanno · Type 5 Sexual · Italy · creator of Enneagramma Integrale® · forty years of somatic and movement disciplines research and inner work · Coach, Counselor · IEA-accredited professional Enneagram teacher.

If something in this resonates, you are welcome to join us.

𝐍𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐞𝐬. 𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐲. 𝐇𝐨𝐰?

Two conductors. Same orchestra. Same piece. Completely different result.

The notes were not the variable. The person was.

An orchestra does not follow a baton. It follows the person holding it. A hundred musicians feel that before a single note is played. And when the conductor carries inner disharmony, the musicians feel that too, before the first downbeat.

That is not a metaphor for leadership. That is leadership.

Martin Salzwedel spent years on both sides of that dynamic. As a professional cellist, solo cellist in the RIAS Youth Orchestra in Berlin, performing with the Radio Sinfonie Orchester Berlin, recording for TV, radio and film across Europe, he felt from the inside what it does to a musician when a conductor truly leads from within.

And what it does when they do not.

Then he left music entirely. Eight years as PR Director in the US. Six years in marketing and sales leadership in Europe. Since 1995, founder of CCI Communications Consulting International, three decades coaching executives across Europe, North and South America, India, China and Japan.

That last question never left him: what actually makes people follow someone?

When he trained with Helen Palmer in the Narrative Tradition, she touched a string in him that had been silent for years. He picked up his cello again.

The cello rests against the body while you play it. Its vibrations travel directly into the chest. Into the heart.

Leadership works exactly the same way. Not through the head. Through resonance. Through the heart. That invisible quality that makes people want to move for a leader.

What emerged is Leadership by Music, a programme through which Martin has trained captains of industry across the globe.

For Martin, the Enneagram is not a system of labels but of driving energies. Form follows function. Function follows energy.

Participants first deepen their awareness of their own driving energy, then they step in front of a live orchestra as conductor. You cannot fake it in front of a hundred musicians.

The orchestra resonates with exactly what the conductor radiates, nothing more, nothing less. Nine energies, nine very different qualities of presence. You feel the difference in the room the moment it happens.

At the Summer School Retreat Martin takes us with him in this experience on the Friday evening, after a full afternoon of embodied leadership work with Peter O'Hanrahan.

Two very different doors, the body and the heart, into the same inner territory.

Leadership by Music · Nine energies. One Harmony.

Martin Salzwedel · Type 4 · Germany · founder of CCI Communications Consulting International · senior consultant at Boston Business School and St. Gallen Business School · author of Authentisch führen mit Charakter · trained by Helen Palmer in the Narrative Tradition.

If something in this resonates, you are welcome to join us.

"𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐊𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐞": 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐟𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤?

This book became a global bestseller in 2014 and brought something into the mainstream that the academic world had been slow to acknowledge: psychological patterns, depression, trauma do not just live in the mind. They live in the body.

In the world of body therapy and somatic work, this was never a discovery. It was always the starting point.

Wilhelm Reich had already mapped it. In 1933.

He called it body armour: the way unresolved psychological material crystallises into chronic muscular tension, into the very way we hold ourselves, move, breathe and relate.

Peter O'Hanrahan was trained as a body therapist in Reich's work in the 1970s.

Long before somatic approaches became fashionable, he was already working with the body as the primary site of unresolved emotion, chronic tension, suppressed impulse and disconnection from self.

When he discovered the Enneagram, the connection was immediate: here were nine distinct character structures, each with its own physical signature, its own habitual holding patterns, its own somatic story.

The embodied Enneagram, working with character and instincts as something you feel and move rather than merely understand, became his territory.

He became one of the founding teachers of Enneagram Worldwide alongside Helen Palmer and Dr. David Daniels, and served as its director for years. Teaching the Enneagram globally for four decades.

Peter has been coming to the Netherlands for over two decades too. He supervised the very first Dutch-language Enneagram Intensive in 2007, and has been part of our European Enneagram family ever since.

At the Summer School Retreat this July, he joins us again.

His session: Embodied Leadership · Your presence is your power.

Each of the nine types has a physical signature. A way of holding tension, of moving towards or against or away from others, of where the breath goes shallow.

Most of us have been studying these patterns conceptually for years without ever exploring them from the inside. Peter works the other way around: start with what the body is already doing, and let that lead you to the deeper pattern.

This includes working with the large Enneagram floor mat, a diagram big enough to walk. Moving through the circle by type, sensing what shifts when you stand at each point, when you walk to your security point, when you step into the energy of your stress point. Not as metaphor. As direct physical experience.

Peter O'Hanrahan · Type 8 Social · USA · IEA-accredited Enneagram teacher with Distinction · trained directly with Helen Palmer and Dr. David Daniels for almost four decades · founder of The Enneagram at Work · somatic Enneagram pioneer.

If something in this resonates, you are welcome to join us.

𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 '𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬'? 𝐎𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 ‘𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐬'?

We, participants and facilitators at the Enneagram Europe Summer School Retreat, belong to both.

We deeply believe we can all learn from one another, and that that works highly inspiring and connecting.

Because at the heart of the Enneagram lies the recognition, appreciation and celebration of diversity. Not as a concept, but as a lived experience.

In the European Enneagram approach, the Enneagram is not a system of labels. It is a system of mirrors.

We are mirrors for each other. Through that reflection, we see ourselves more clearly, grow more honestly, and learn in ways no theory can offer.

That is what the Summer School Retreat is for. A living circle of Enneagram teachers, professionals and enthusiasts from across Europe and beyond. To stay connected in The Work.

So, it is not a conference. Not a training. Not a promotional marketplace. But a place where we truly meet, gather, explore, exchange, practise, inspire, support, learn, co-create and grow. This year's theme: Leading From the Inside Out.

This Summer School Retreat the gathering is facilitated by five colleagues from three continents. From five countries. All different types, different subtypes, different professional backgrounds, different practices, different teachings, different thoughts and ideas.

Let me introduce them.

𝐏𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐎’𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐫𝐚𝐡𝐚𝐧 (USA) · most senior ambassador of the Narrative Tradition globally, trained for almost four decades directly with Helen Palmer and David Daniels. He works with what your body already knows about leadership, and what happens when you finally stop overriding it.

𝐈𝐬𝐥𝐚𝐦 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐤𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐥 (Egypt) · founder of Transcend, transforming leaders across the Middle East and Europe. He works with the loops that keep us stuck, and the ancient law that breaks them.

𝐌𝐚𝐮𝐫𝐚 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚 𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐨 (Italy) · founder of Enneagramma Integrale®, Somatic Movement educator, Coach and Counsellor. An IEA-accredited Enneagram teacher, rooted in forty years of somatic and movement research and practice.

𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧 𝐒𝐚𝐥𝐳𝐰𝐞𝐝𝐞𝐥 (Germany) · former professional cellist and leadership consultant, working across the globe for decades. The only person in the Enneagram world who does not explain the nine energies and leadership theory but lets you feel them. Through music. As a conductor.

𝐉𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞 𝐯𝐚𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐣𝐧 (Netherlands) · founder of Enneagram Europe, early licensed affiliate teacher of Helen Palmer and David Daniels. What is actually leading you from within? An introduction to the ancient practice of The Via Negativa.

Does the above resonate with you? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Jeanette

PS. Even if you cannot join us this summer, you are welcome to become a member of the Enneagram Circle Europe community right here on LinkedIn.