What It’s Like to Be an Eight
(You don’t understand why we’re starting with Eights? Reread page 27.)
- I have been told that I’m too blunt and aggressive.
- Doing things halfway is not my spiritual gift.
- I enjoy a good verbal skirmish, just to see what others are made of.
- In relationships that matter to me I insist on being honest about conflicts and staying in the fight till things are worked out.
- It’s hard for me to trust people.
- Justice is worth fighting for.
- I can sniff out other people’s weakness the first time I meet them.
- Saying no isn’t a problem for me.
- I welcome opposition. Bring it.
- I make decisions fast and from the gut.
- I don’t like it when people beat around the bush.
- I’m wary of people who are super nice.
- When I walk into a room I know immediately who has the most power.
- I don’t have much respect for people who don’t stand up for themselves.
- One of my mottos is “A good offense is better than a good defense.”
- Don’t mess with the people I love.
- I know I’m respected. But sometimes I want to be loved.
- I have no problem confronting a bully.
- If God wanted people to wear their hearts on their sleeve, he would have put it there.
- Under my tough exterior is a tender, loving heart.
3
Type Eight
The Challenger
Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.
Healthy Eights are great friends, exceptional leaders and champions of those who cannot fight on their own behalf. They have the intelligence, courage and stamina to do what others say can’t be done. They have learned to use power in the right measure at the right times, and they are capable of collaborating and valuing the contributions of others. They understand vulnerability and even embrace it at times.
Average Eights tend to be steamrollers more than diplomats. They are dualistic thinkers, so people are good or bad, opinions are right or wrong, and the future is bright or bleak. They prefer to lead, struggle to follow and use aggression to emotionally protect themselves. Many Eights are leaders, and others follow them with little or no hesitation. They have little patience with people who are indecisive or who don’t pull their weight.
Unhealthy Eights are preoccupied with the idea that they are going to be betrayed. Suspicious and slow to trust others, they resort to revenge when wronged. They believe they can change reality, and they make their own rules and expect others to follow them. Eights in this space destroy as much as they create, believing the world is a place where people are objects to be used and contributions from others have little or no lasting value.
When we first moved to Nashville our family was invited to a dinner party at the home of a new neighbor. Over dinner my then thirteen-year-old son Aidan began to talk about a story he’d heard and enjoyed on the way home from school on the NPR show All Things Considered. Aidan wasn’t three sentences into describing the premise of the story when a middle-aged man across the table interrupted him by booming out, “The only people who listen to NPR are latte-drinking, skinny-jean-wearing, clove-cigarette-smoking hipsters.”
Aidan’s eyes grew wide as his face reddened. He hadn’t yet learned that our community is for the most part politically conservative, and some of its residents regard NPR as no more than a propaganda machine for Ivy-League-educated communists. The neighbor then launched into a doozy of a tirade about left-wingers inventing global warming to destroy capitalism, the Supreme Court’s plan to impose sharia law, and something about his pit bull’s right to carry a handgun in the dog park.
An excruciating silence fell on the room. I was about to say something on Aidan’s behalf when, from the vicinity where my daughter Cailey was sitting, I heard the unmistakable clearing of the throat that I knew translated to “Pilot to bombardier, open bomb bay doors.” She was directly over her target and preparing to drop her rhetorical ordnance. I was about to yell, “Run, Bambi, run!” but there was no time. I commended the man’s soul to God.
At the time Cailey was a twenty-two-year-old senior at Middlebury College, one of the better liberal arts colleges in the country. This girl is smart as a whip, and she doesn’t suffer fools gladly, particularly fools who pick on people she loves.
Cailey picked up her napkin from her lap, dabbed the corners of her mouth, calmly folded and placed it next to her plate, then turned to face the man who had smacked down her younger brother. “You’re kidding, right?” she said, glaring at him like a panther marking its prey.
The man’s eyebrows made a retreat up his forehead. “I’m sorry?” he responded, sadly unaware that the gates of hell were now unguarded.
Cailey turned to the rest of us at the table and gestured toward the man the way a circus ringmaster gestures to a clown about to be shot out of a cannon: “Friends, I give you another wingnut who uncritically believes everything he hears on conservative talk radio.”
The man shifted uncomfortably in his chair and sniffed. “Young lady, I—”
Cailey held up her hand to the man’s face like a cop stopping traffic and proceeded to uncover and shred every weakness in his argument. It was an unrelenting fusillade of criticism, after a few minutes of which I felt a moral obligation to step in and stop.
“Thank you, Cailey,” I said.
“Sir, do us all a favor and have a point the next time you shoot your mouth off,” she said, finishing the man off with a stinging flourish. She then unfolded her napkin and returned it to her lap. “Would you please pass the salt?” she said, licking her paws.
Cailey is an Eight on the Enneagram.
The Eight’s Deadly Sin
Eights are called Challengers because they’re aggressive, confrontational, high-voltage people who approach life the way Alaric and his Visigoths approached Rome: they sack it.
The deadly sin of the Eight is lust, but not in the sexual sense. Eights lust after intensity—they are high-voltage human dynamos who want to be wherever the action and energy are, and if they can’t find any, they’ll cook it up. Eights have more energy than any other number on the Enneagram. They are fiery, zestful, earthy, full-throttle people who drink life down to the dregs and then slam their glass down and order a second round for everyone else at the bar.
Eights don’t need a Marine band to play “Hail to the Chief” to let a group of people know they’ve arrived. When Eights walk into a room you feel their presence before you see them. Their larger-than-life energy doesn’t fill a space; it owns it.
Visualize a men’s locker room in which a group of guys is standing around whining about how “challenging” their restorative yoga class was. Then imagine the awe-soaked silence that would fall over them if a towel-clad Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson walked by and glanced their way. You’d have a bunch of guys squinting down at the floor, saying, “Can any of you see my contact lens?”
You get the idea.
Not all Eights speak loudly or karate-chop the air with their hands to drive home a point in conversation; nor are they all physically intimidating people. These are stereotypes, not personality types. The defining feature of an Eight is the overabundance of intense energy they radiate wherever they go. Regardless of whether they are introverts or extroverts, big or small, male or female, liberal or conservative, every Eight I’ve ever known oozes confidence, fearlessness and strength. Like Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek, they’re juicy people who respond with gusto to whatever life throws their way.
Spiritually healthy, self-aware Eights love to do what others say can’t be done. When their energy is harnessed and channeled they can change the course of history. Think Martin Luther King Jr.
On the other hand, a spiritually undeveloped Eight who tests poorly on the self-knowledge scale is someone you want to keep away from the kids. Think Joseph Stalin.
All About Eights or Challengers
Anger is the dominant emotion in an Eight’s life. They are fiercely independent people whose oppositional energy expresses itself in a need to be strong and go up against power. Eights assume others are untrustworthy until they’ve proven themselves otherwise. It’s no surprise, then, that anger is their go-to emotion. It’s so close to the surface that you can sometimes feel like it’s radiating off them like a space heater. And because anger is so easy for them to access, an average Eight can be a little too quick to the draw, firing off a few rounds at people without thinking beforehand about the consequences. Their flashes of anger, however, are unconscious defense maneuvers to avoid acknowledging or revealing weakness or vulnerability. Eights use anger like a palisade to hide behind and defend the softer, more tender feelings of the open-hearted, innocent child they once were, the one they don’t want others to see.
Eights don’t come equipped with dimmers. They are on or off, all in or all out. They “go big or go home.” They want to express their animal drives and satisfy their appetite for life without limitations or constraints being placed on them by anybody. This impulsive, all-or-nothing approach to life leaves Eights prone to being overindulgent and excessive. They can overwork, overparty, overeat, overexercise, overspend, over-anything. For an Eight, too much of a good thing is almost enough. As my Eight friend Jack likes to say, “If something’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” (You don’t want to play beer pong against Jack. It doesn’t end well.)
All this hot-blooded, passionate and combative energy can feel overwhelming and threatening to people who aren’t Eights. Most folks go to parties hoping to have fun and talk to interesting people, not to find themselves verbally sparring against the wunderkind captain of the Harvard debate team. Try not to take it personally. As strange as it sounds, what feels like intimidation to you feels like intimacy to an Eight. For them, conflict is connection.
In my experience Eights don’t see themselves as angry people. In fact, they’re genuinely surprised when they learn other people experience them as intimidating, insensitive and domineering. “Every year during my annual review I’d get the same feedback,” Jim, a former Nashville record label executive and Eight told me. “My boss would say when it came to sales I killed it, but my staff consistently complained to him that I was overbearing, gruff and ran roughshod over their ideas. I honestly had no idea that’s how people felt around me.” Eights see themselves as honest, straight-talking people who aren’t afraid to go nose to nose with whatever life throws at them and always leave everything on the field.
Lucky for us, Eights care deeply about justice and fairness. They are fierce advocates for widows, orphans, the poor and the marginalized. They have no problem speaking truth to power, and they are perhaps the only number on the Enneagram who are brave enough to confront and take down the oppressors and dictators of the world. Go on my daughter Cailey’s Facebook page and I guarantee you’ll find a photo of her marching in a recent protest to end police brutality, raise the minimum wage or force a university to divest from companies that produce fossil fuels. You’ll have to look elsewhere for cute kitten memes.
Though Eights’ concern for justice, fairness and defending the underdog is genuine, there is another drama underway here as well. Having witnessed or experienced the negative consequences of powerlessness as a child, the Eight identifies with the easily preyed upon and rushes to their aid.
Eights’ concern for justice is great until they throw on tights and a cape and arrogate to themselves the role of the superhero sent to avenge the defenseless and restore balance to the scales of justice. This is a temptation to Eights who are more often dualistic than non-dualistic thinkers. They see things as black or white, good or bad, fair or unfair. People are friend or foe, weak or strong, streetwise or suckers. In an Eight’s mind, you and I have opinions while they have facts. They absolutely believe their viewpoints or positions on issues are irrefutable. They reject taking a nuanced view of anything because not having clarity or absolute certainty about your position represents weakness or—God forbid—cowardice. If you want to try to convince them otherwise, I suggest you pack your pajamas because it’s going to be a long night.
Eights can start an argument in an empty house. A good old-fashioned verbal brawl gives them the opportunity to “get big” and disabuse people of any illusion they might previously have held about the Eight being weak. Eights value truth, and there’s nothing like a nose-to-nose confrontation to bring it to light. Eights know other people can show their hands in the heat of a fight. A confrontation can expose what’s really happening behind the scenes, force people’s real intentions or hidden agendas into the open, or reveal whether people can stand their ground and be trusted.
“You lose nothing when fighting for a cause. In my mind the losers are those who don’t have a cause to care about.”
Muhammad Ali
Each number has a signature communication style. Knowing the talk style of each number will not only give you insight into other people’s types but will help you narrow down your own number as well. The talk style of Eights is commanding. Often their sentences are littered with imperatives and end with exclamation marks.
Whereas most people experience conflict as anything but invigorating, Eights get their energy from it. If conversation at the holiday table takes an unexciting turn, Eights will pull out their phones and secretly check their email under the table. If it stays boring they’ll take off their gloves and say something like, “I’d rather throw myself under a bus than live with this president for another four years,” then sit back and watch the fun.
Eights as Children
So where do these forces of nature come from? A common story Suzanne and I hear from Eights is that something happened in their formative years that required them to prematurely abandon their childlike innocence in order take responsibility for their own lives and often the lives of others. Some Eights were raised in unstable environments or homes where toughness was rewarded with praise. (This does not apply to my own daughter. She grew up in Eden.) Others report they were bullied at school until it became clear they could rely on no one but themselves. These struggles may or may not reflect your experience as a child. Don’t reject out of turn the possibility you’re an Eight or any other number solely on the basis that you don’t identify with a particular childhood story.
Regardless of the root cause, as kids Eights picked up the wounding message that “the world is a hostile place where only the strong survive, and the weak or innocent get emotionally beaten up or betrayed. So put on your armor and never let them see your soft side.” Eights worry a lot about betrayal. It’s why many of them won’t trust more than a small circle of friends over the course of their lives.
As they grew a little older, Eights looked around the sandbox or their home and saw a “might makes right” world in which there were two types of people—those who controlled others and those who submitted. They figured out that weaker kids ended up as followers and vowed, “Not me, pal.” You can’t tell by looking at them, but Eights don’t feel like they have to be the person in control—they just don’t want to be controlled. (That last sentence is so important that I will set my alarm clock to wake me up to Nickelback’s song “Rockstar” every morning for a year if it means you reread and remember that sentence. You’ll never fully understand Eights if you don’t grasp that distinction.)
One of my favorite stories about Eights as kids involves Suzanne’s daughter Joey. When Joey was five, Suzanne got a voicemail message from the head of the daycare center she attended. If you’ve raised children, you know that a call like this means that your kid is either throwing up in the Lego bucket or is in need of some crucial item that you, woefully pathetic parent that you are, failed to send them to school with. It’s also possible you have a serial biter who is not responding to “ongoing positive guidance” that morning and needs their muzzle. In any case, it means you have to go face the principal.
But Suzanne was surprised to discover that the problem wasn’t any of these typical scenarios. She learned to her bewilderment that Joey had come in earlier in the week to schedule an appointment with Mrs. Thompson, the director of the daycare.
“Suzanne, as you can imagine, we’ve never had a five-year-old request a formal meeting,” Mrs. Thompson explained. “My secretary wasn’t sure what to do so she went ahead and scheduled it.”
“Why did she want to meet with you?” Suzanne asked.
“Well, Joey walked into my office ahead of me and suggested that we take a seat. I did, but she didn’t, so she was eye level with me. She handed me a folder she’d been carrying under her arm and said, ‘Thank you for meeting with me, Mrs. Thompson. I have a problem and I tried talking to my teacher about it, but she wasn’t much help. I understand that most kids need to take a nap. But I don’t. So rather than being bored and made to lie down during that time I have an idea.’”
Mrs. Thompson then handed over Joey’s folder containing all her papers—all of which bore gold stars. Joey had brought the folder to Mrs. Thompson as Exhibit A to demonstrate her impeccable credentials and the genius of her plan: since she didn’t need a nap and her own papers were flawless, she should be permitted to help the teachers by checking papers during naptime.
“And I can do this for you for only $1.47 an hour,” Joey said, straightening her back to bring herself to her full height.
“Suzanne, I can’t pay her! It’s against the law!” said the director after she had finished the story.
“So did you just tell her no?” Suzanne asked.
The frown of disbelief on her face indicated that Mrs. Thompson had not even considered this possibility. Joey hadn’t given her the impression it was an option.
The point of this story is not to show that Eights are bullies and Joey had a leg up on it. (In fact, unless they’re very unhealthy, Eights are not characteristically bullies. Bullies act out to compensate and cover their own fears, while Eights aren’t afraid of anyone. Because of their concern for justice and desire to instinctively protect and defend the disadvantaged, Eights are more likely to stand up to bullies.) It’s to show how deep the wiring of the Eight’s number runs. Joey was flexing her Eightness even at the age of five.
Like Joey, kids who are Eights often run ahead of the pack and want to be allowed to act independently. These kids trust themselves more than they trust most adults, and they have plenty of stamina for meeting challenges and getting things done.
Young Eights will get in line when limits are placed on them, but their motive has less to do with pleasing and more with hoping they’ll be rewarded with more freedom and independence for good behavior. They don’t feel a need to conform, but they know when it’s to their advantage to follow the rules. These kids literally take over when it seems that no one else is at the helm, and they usually do a good job—so good a job that when people point to our daughter Cailey as evidence that we must have been reasonably decent parents, we say, “What makes you think we had anything to do with it?”
Unfortunately, the downside of their independence and self-reliance is that these kids can forget their innocence much too early, and it is difficult to reclaim it later in life. They need to recover a little of the open-heartedness that defines childhood for others. They need to remember that time in life when they didn’t need to be in charge or control to feel safe, when they could trust others to protect them. They need the lessons that mistakes and weakness teach us: the value of an apology, the experience of forgiveness and the lessons we only learn from following another leader. If their boldness doesn’t get shaped and channeled toward becoming a force for good in the course of development, later on it can bloom into full-blown oppositional stances toward the world.
The Challenger in Relationships
I love the Eights in my life. I wouldn’t trade my relationships with them for anything in the world. This doesn’t mean that Eights are easy in relationships, only that the care and energy you have to expend to be their friend or partner is worth it.
Eights want people to challenge them right back. Eights admire strength. They won’t respect you if you’re not willing to stand toe to toe with them. They want others to be their equals and stand up for what they believe. The last thing you want to do is hoist the white flag when Eights start pounding their chests and trying to push you around.
One night a family friend who is an Eight came over for dinner. Living one door down from my childhood home, Ed watched me grow up from the time I was a baby. I love him like a father, but he can be a lot to handle. Over dessert I mentioned how much I had enjoyed the movie Birdman.
“That movie sucked,” he announced. “It was too long, the premise was stupid, and Michael Keaton sure isn’t what he used to be. Why anyone would think Birdman was a good movie is beyond me,” he said, waving his fork in the air like a fencing saber.
Like most Eights, Ed lives by the “Fire, Aim, Ready” rule. He’s a no-nonsense guy who speaks first and thinks later. Maybe. Over the years I’d learned to peel myself off the pavement and brush myself off after Ed mounted his bulldozer and ran me over this way. But as a student and teacher of the Enneagram I decided to see what would happen if I met him on the field of battle.
“Who are you, Roger freaking Ebert?” I said, mustering my big-boy voice and jabbing my finger across the table at him. “The script was great, the direction was flawless, and I’ll bet you fifty bucks Michael Keaton gets nominated for an Academy Award. Why anyone would think that Birdman is a bad movie is beyond me.”
No one at the table moved. My kids steeled themselves to become orphans. Ed sat back and for a brief moment looked at me curiously.
“Touché,” he said, smiling and stabbing his tiramisu.
And that was that.
The group of us returned to normal conversation as if our momentary skirmish had been no more than a brief commercial interruption. That’s how it is with Eights. They’ll respect you if you hold your ground with them, and once the confrontation is over, it’s as if nothing happened.
Eights want the unvarnished truth. Unless you like lengthy estrangements, never lie or send a mixed message to an Eight. You have to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Information is power, so Eights want to know all the facts. For a case in point, fast forward fifteen years to Suzanne and Joey. Joey was headed home from college when she was involved in a serious car accident that left her with a fractured shoulder, a dislocated hip and nasty bruising. When Suzanne saw Joey just before she went into surgery, she was shocked to see her looking so beat up, every inch of her face pockmarked from rolling in the gravel.
Fighting tears, Joey asked, “Mom, do I look horrible?”
“Yes, sweetheart,” Suzanne said, “you do.” A gasp went up from the nurses nearby, the kind of gasp that Suzanne tells me women universally recognize as an intentional expression of judgment. The louder the gasp, the deeper the judgment. But Suzanne knew that Eights always want the truth, so she didn’t paper it over. Eights don’t want you to protect them from the facts or coddle them by leaving out the unpleasant details. In an Eight’s mind, there’s a lot at stake. If they don’t know the truth, then they don’t know what’s really happening, and if they don’t know what’s really happening, then they’re not in control, and not in control is where Eights never want to be. If you hold back any relevant information, Eights will feel like you’ve left them flapping in the wind and dangerously exposed. You don’t want to lose an Eight’s trust. It takes a long time to get it back, so always lead with the truth.
Eights want to be in control. Eights never want to feel like they’re not in control. This is one reason they don’t often say “I’m sorry.” If you tell them they’ve said or done something that hurt you, they may even make matters worse by accusing you of being too sensitive. When things go wrong Eights who lack self-awareness are super quick to blame others rather than own up and take responsibility for their mistakes. For spiritually immature Eights, expressing remorse or admitting their part in what’s gone wrong represents weakness. Eights worry that if they own up and apologize for their behavior, you will bring it up and use it against them in the future. If it’s any consolation, when in the silence of their own hearts they realize they’ve hurt someone they love, some Eights will beat themselves up mercilessly (as long as they’re convinced they’re wrong).
Remember that Eights are imposing, commanding personalities who need to be “the boss.” Unless you put the brakes on they will take charge of possessions, the family social calendar, the TV remote and the checkbook. Because they are so expansive and self-extending, Eights can walk into a room where you’re sitting, and within minutes their full-throated voice, larger-than-life gesticulations and unsolicited but emphatically offered opinions will begin to assert control over the environment like an occupying power.
Eights are “Don’t complain, don’t explain” people. They don’t make excuses, and they expect you not to either. If you’re in a romantic relationship with an Eight, you have to know who you are and be independent. They don’t want you to draft off their energy; they want you to bring your own. They love debates, risky adventures and getting people riled up.
All this excess and intolerance for constraints means Eights need friends and partners who can help keep them in check. As you’ll learn, “self-forgetting” is a hallmark of all three numbers in the Anger Triad (8, 9, 1). In addition to forgetting their childhood innocence, one of the things Eights forget is that they’re not invincible super humans. Many Eights feel physically bigger and more powerful than they are, so they’ll place unreasonable demands on their bodies and put their health and well-being at risk. They’ll bristle when you say it, but Eights need to be reminded that moderation is a virtue, not a restraining order.
“Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Eights have a tender side. If you’re fortunate enough to have an Eight in your life, you know that beneath all the intensity and anger energy there is a heart brimming with tenderness and love. Eights will step in front of a speeding train or take a bullet to the chest for their small circle of friends.
Feel honored when an Eight displays tenderness or shares vulnerable thoughts or feelings with you. A big problem for Eights is confusing vulnerability for weakness, so they rarely let down their guard to allow others to see their fragility or their deep desire to be understood and loved. This is why Eights are often attracted to Enneagram feeling types (2, 3, 4), who can help them get in touch with and outwardly express their affection.
Eights are eager to support people who want to realize their potential. They know how to empower and bring out the best in others, and they’ll block or tackle to help someone get to where they want to go in life. All they ask is that you show up and give 150 percent of yourself to reaching the goal. If you don’t, the once-supportive Eight will move on to find someone else willing to put in the effort.
When Eights are in a healthy space they’re a blast. They laugh easily, entertain generously and tell the kind of jokes that make you donkey snort. But they are serious competitors as well. Whether you’re playing against them in the finals at Wimbledon or just in a chummy game of croquet on the front lawn, you’ll soon discover that Eights hate to lose more than they love to win.
Eights’ antagonism can sabotage their relationships. The Enneagram reveals how our solutions are often worse than our problems. By regularly testing authority, being overly blunt and insensitive, acting in a confrontational manner, insisting their perspective is always the right one, or acting impulsively, Eights don’t protect themselves from attack, from losing their grip on control or from experiencing emotional harm and betrayal—rather, they invite it.
People can become fed up with feeling pushed around or intimidated by a spiritually immature Eight, and will either walk away from a relationship with them or band together to overthrow them professionally or exclude them socially. Sadly, when this happens it only confirms Eights’ worst fears about the dangerous nature of the world, the untrustworthiness of others and the likelihood of betrayal.
Eights are looking for an answer to the question “Can I trust me with you?” At the end of the day, they want to find someone with whom they can feel safe enough to relax their defenses and reveal their heart.
Eights at Work
Eights can be found in any profession. They make phenomenal prosecutors or defense attorneys, coaches, missionaries, business people and organization builders. Because they like to be in charge, free from limitations imposed on them by others, Eights often work for themselves.
As employees, Eights can be huge assets or a lot of work, and they’re usually both. If you’re fortunate enough to have an Eight on your team and want her to perform well, keep the lines of communication open and don’t surprise her by changing the rules or announcing a sudden change of plans. Eights are highly intuitive and read the world from their gut, so they can smell deception or a lack of integrity from a mile away. If they trust you, you’ve got it made. If they don’t, sleep with one eye open.
Eights always want to know who has the power, so they will consistently challenge and test authority. So you have to set limits, provide regular, honest feedback, and establish clear and reasonable boundaries. Eights will follow a leader so long as it’s clear the leader knows where they’re heading. They have no patience for a leader who waffles or lacks the moxie to commit to a course of action and move. Because they’re looking for a strong leader, you have to either cowboy up and provide them with clear direction or put someone in charge of them who has more gumption than you.
You also need to keep them active. A bored Eight is like a puppy who’s been cooped up in the house all day: keep him busy or he’ll gnaw everything in your house down to the studs. But when your back’s against the wall, you want Eights on your team. They’re creative, smart and fearless, they’re terrific troubleshooters, and they’ll sleep on the floor to make sure the job gets done.
Corporate America worships Eights. (Corporate America also prizes Threes, but we aren’t there yet.) They’re people like Jack Welch, the former chairman of GE, whose infamous candor and hard-hitting leadership style grew General Electric’s bottom line exponentially but also earned him the nickname “Neutron Jack.” (One has to wonder whether this gave him pause.) Regardless, Eights’ commanding presence and boundless energy instills confidence in others, and people follow them.
As long as you’re a man, that is.
Female Eights
Gender plays a role in how life unfolds for Eights. In the mid-1960s my father was unemployed and our family was broke—“newspapers in your loafers to keep your feet dry in the rain” kind of broke. To put bread on the table, my Eight mother took a secretarial job at a small publishing house in Greenwich, Connecticut. In those days old-boy networks dominated the publishing world, and to get ahead women didn’t have to break through glass ceilings; they had to blast their way through steel-reinforced concrete walls. That didn’t stop my mother. Fifteen years after she was hired to take dictation and make coffee, she was named vice president and publisher of her company.
“When men cut jobs, they’re seen as decisive. When women do, they’re vindictive.”
Carly Fiorina
That’s an Eight: hard driving, tough, decisive, innovative, resourceful and accomplishing what people say can’t be done. They just make things happen.
When she reflects on her years in the business world, my mother will tell you that female Eights are the most misunderstood and unfairly treated number on the Enneagram. In our culture a male Eight is respected and revered. People lionize men who “kick ass and take names.” Sadly, we all know the word people use to describe a woman in the workplace or the community who takes charge, stands up for what she believes, refuses to take crap from people and gets the job done.
I don’t need to spell it out for you, right?
Many female Eights go through life scratching their heads and thinking, Why do people experience and treat me this way? Will the easily threatened and insecure please put a sock in their yaps and let these gifted women out of the penalty box so they can get on with their lives without further interruption?
Wings
Remember, each basic personality type incorporates the attributes of at least one of the numbers on either side of it on the diagram. This is called your wing. If you’re an Eight and you know which of your wings colors your type more than the other, you would say either “I’m an Eight with a Seven wing” or “I’m an Eight with a Nine wing.” Or as my Scottish friends put it, “I’m an Eight with a wee bit of Seven in my blood.”
We haven’t learned about the hallmark traits of Sevens (the Enthusiasts) or Nines (the Peacemakers) yet, but that shouldn’t stop you from seeing how each of these wings adds flavor and nuance to the personality of an Eight.
Eights with a Seven wing (8w7). This can be a wild combination. Eights with a Seven wing are outgoing, energetic and fun, reflecting the Seven’s sunny personality. They are also ambitious, impulsive and sometimes reckless. These Eights live life to the fullest. They are the most energetic of all numbers and the most entrepreneurial. The Seven energy masks the more wary Eight so they are more social and more gregarious than other Eights.
Eights with a Nine wing (8w9). Eights with a Nine wing have a more measured approach to life. They are more approachable and more open to cooperation over competition, in keeping with the Nine’s tendency to play a peacemaking role. Because of the Nine’s gift for mediating, these are not ordinary Eights—8w9s can be conciliatory. They are supportive, modest and less blustery, and others are happy to follow their lead. When the Nine’s gift of seeing both sides of everything is available to Eights, they become successful negotiators in situations both big and small.
Stress and Security
Stress. When Eights get stressed out, they move to and take on those qualities you’d associate with unhealthy Fives (the Investigators). Here they withdraw and become even less connected to their emotions. Some experience insomnia and neglect to take care of themselves, eating poorly and not exercising. In this space Eights become secretive and hypervigilant about betrayal. They also may dig their heels in and become even more uncompromising than usual. That’s something.
Security. Eights move to the healthy side of Two in security, where they become more caring and aren’t so conscious of hiding their tender and gentle nature. Eights in this space don’t insist their beliefs and opinions are absolutely right, but learn to listen and value other people’s points of view as well. They start to trust in something bigger than themselves (yes, there are things in the universe larger than Eights) and allow others to take care of them—which, if even for a short time, makes everyone happy. Eights connected to the positive side of Two realize that justice is usually a reality beyond their control and that vengeance is something best left up to God. At least for now.
Spiritual Transformation
In his book The Holy Longing, Catholic writer Father Ronald Rolheiser describes eros as “an unquenchable fire, a restlessness, a longing, a disquiet, a hunger, a loneliness, a gnawing nostalgia, a wildness that cannot be tamed, a congenital all-embracing ache that lies at the center of human experience and is the ultimate force that drives everything else.” Suzanne and I have a hunch that Eights are more in touch with, or perhaps even endowed with, a greater measure of this divine eros than the rest of us. They’re finite creatures trying to manage an overfull tank of infinite desires. That’s a lot to manage. When contained correctly, their fire can safely welcome and warm people. But like all fire, if not surrounded with a hearth of self-restraint, it will burn your house down.
When Eights are spiritually on the beam and self-aware, they are powerhouses: fearless, magnanimous, inspiring, energetic, supportive, loyal, self-confident, intuitive, committed and tolerant toward those who are weaker than they are.
When Eights switch their lives over to autopilot and spiritually fall asleep at the wheel of their personality, they become shamelessly excessive, reckless, arrogant, bull-headedly uncompromising and sometimes even cruel.
I’d love to help Eights tap into the childhood innocence they gave up too early and restore their trust in humanity. I’d like to promise them they won’t be betrayed, but I can’t. Eventually we all go under that knife.
The healing message Eights need to know, believe and feel is this: there are lots of trustworthy people in the world, and though the risk of betrayal is always real, love and connection will forever elude them unless they welcome and reconnect to the innocent, less defended child they once were. Yes, betrayal is exquisitely painful, but it doesn’t happen as often as Eights fear it does. And if or when it does, they’ll be strong enough to survive it.
Since Eights like people to be straightforward and direct with them I’m going to be brutally frank: living behind a façade of bluster and toughness to mask one’s fear of emotional harm is cowardly, not courageous. Risking vulnerability and love is what takes courage. Are you strong enough to come out from behind the mask of boast and brusqueness? That’s the real question.
I like Brené Brown’s books The Power of Vulnerability and The Gifts of Imperfection. Actually, I suggest that Eights read each of them. Twice. In The Gifts of Imperfection Brown writes, “Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” Brown is on to something: vulnerability is the base metal of love and relationships. If Eights want to love and be loved they will have to risk opening their heart and revealing their innermost feelings to a trusted few. It’s the price of admission.
“When I am weak, then I am strong.” That’s what St. Paul said, and I think he was right. Eights should write those words on a 3 x 5 card, tape it to their bathroom mirror, and make it their life’s mantra. It will serve them better than “It’s my way or the highway.”
Ten Paths to Transformation for Eights
- Too often, your intensity and lust for life runs the show. Give a friend permission to tell you when you’re going overboard or exhibiting extreme behaviors. Remember, “Moderation, moderation, moderation.”
- To recover a piece of your natural childhood innocence, tend and befriend your inner child. I know, you don’t have time for this sort of crap, but it helps.
- Watch out for and avoid black-and-white thinking. Gray is an actual color.
- Broaden your definition of strength and courage to include vulnerability. Risk sharing your heart at deeper levels with someone in your life.
- Remember, your tendency is to act impulsively. It’s “Ready, Aim, Fire!” not “Fire, Aim, Ready!”
- You don’t have a corner on the truth market. In the heat of battle, stop and ask yourself, What if I’m wrong? Say that a hundred times a day.
- Your personality is twice as big and intense as you think it is, and what feels like passion to you often feels like intimidation to others. Offer an unqualified apology when people tell you that you ran over them.
- Don’t always play the part of the rebel, and try not to pit yourself against appropriate authority figures. They’re not all bad people.
- When you power up and get angry, stop and ask yourself whether you’re trying to hide or deny a vulnerable feeling. What feeling is it? How do you use aggression as a way to hide it or defend against it?
- Don’t judge yourself or others as weak for sharing tender feelings. It takes courage to drop your guard and expose your inner child. (I know, you still hate that phrase.)