Left Off the Invite? How Enneagram Types React at Work
Most of us know the small, specific sting of learning about a meeting after it has already started. A colleague mentions it in passing, or a calendar notification flashes on someone else's screen, and before we have time to decide how we feel about it, something old and familiar rises up in us and starts telling a story.
Recently, one of our colleagues here at Henley found that moment. She heard about a larger team conversation secondhand, joined it anyway, and arrived giggling about her own reaction to being left out, which quietly gave the rest of us permission to confess how we would have responded in her place. What followed was one of our favorite conversations of the year, and Courtney Caldwell, our Director of Innovation and Program Delivery and a certified Enneagram practitioner, gathered those confessions into the piece you'll find below.
The Enneagram helps people at work understand the motivations underneath their reactions, so even a moment as small as a missing meeting invite can become an invitation to notice your own patterns with curiosity and a little humor.
The Enneagram describes nine types, each organized around a core motivation and a familiar way of protecting itself when that motivation feels threatened. In our work with leaders and teams, we have watched it give people a shared and generous language for the things they used to take personally. Something real tends to happen to people when they recognize themselves in a description of their type, and something lighter and more forgiving tends to happen to a team when everyone can finally recognize one another.
As you read, you may find yourself in more than one of the descriptions, since all of us carry traces of every type. We'd invite you to read them with the same generosity you would offer a good friend, and to notice which one makes you wince in recognition.
If you're not yet sure which number is yours, our guide to exploring the nine Enneagram types is a place to begin.
How does each Enneagram type react to being left off a meeting invite?
Yesterday, a colleague (with lots of Type 4 energy) was left off a meeting invite for a larger team conversation. She heard about the meeting from another colleague of ours and joined the meeting, giggling about her 4-coded reaction to being left out. This started a hilarious conversation among all of us about how we would each react to being left off a meeting invite. The following builds on that conversation - humorously - as we like to say constantly, we contain multitudes, so we have all sorts of foibles and not just those of our core type. In the words of the Indigo Girls, “We have to laugh at ourselves, or we’d cry our eyes out.”
Responses to being left off a meeting invite:
Type 1: Not upset. However, just noting, for the record, that the invite also has the wrong link, no agenda, and a typo in the subject line. Can now spend the time drafting a process improvement doc.
Type 2: “No worries at all!” Then sends the organizer a coffee “for the long call,” drops three helpful links in the team channel “in case they’re useful for the meeting.” When it ends, they DM someone: “How’d it go? Anything I can help with?”
Type 3: Immediately checks LinkedIn to make sure they haven't been quietly demoted. Schedules a more important meeting at the same time and makes sure everyone knows about it.
Type 4: Of course. Nobody ever truly sees them. Writes a moody journal entry, puts on a sad playlist, and secretly feels a bit special for being the misunderstood outsider.
Type 5: Pure, unfiltered joy. Has quietly blocked the slot as "deep work" and is praying nobody notices the oversight. Will ask for the notes later. Will read them only if expected to comment on the situation.
Type 6: Is this a layoff meeting? Is it about them? Messages three coworkers to build a coalition. Builds a contingency plan. Updates resume "just in case."
Type 7: Didn't notice. Was already in four other meetings, started two side projects, and booked a trip to the Arctic in the meantime because they saw a meme about polar bears.
Type 8: Shows up anyway. Sits at the head of the table. Nobody dares point out they weren't invited. By minute ten, they're running it.
Type 9: "Oh, that's okay, I didn't need to be there." Genuinely relieved. Forgets about it. Three weeks later, quietly realizes they were a little hurt and decides not to bring it up.
Why does laughing at yourself make you a better leader?
There is a particular kind of relief when someone names their own reflex out loud and laughs at it. We felt it that afternoon, and we have felt it in countless rooms with the leaders and teams we work alongside. It turns out that relief has some serious research underneath it.
Self-awareness is rarer than most of us would like to believe. In organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich's research on the subject, published in Harvard Business Review, her team estimated that only 10 to 15 percent of the people they studied actually met the criteria for being self-aware, even though most people assume they already are. The Enneagram offers one doorway into that work, because it helps us see the patterns we fall into when we feel overlooked or uncertain, and seeing a pattern clearly is usually the first step toward choosing something different.
Humor helps that seeing happen in front of other people. Amy Edmondson's foundational study of 51 work teams described psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking, and found that it was associated with the learning behavior that drives team performance. Admitting that you would have quietly updated your resume over a missing calendar invite is a small interpersonal risk, and when a leader takes it first, with warmth and a sense of humor, everyone else learns that it is safe to be a little bit human here, too.
There is evidence that this kind of lightness also shapes how we are seen. Across eight experiments, researchers at Wharton and Harvard Business School found that humor that lands well signals confidence and competence and can raise a person's standing with colleagues, while humor that misses or crosses a line can lower it. The humor in Courtney's piece works because it is aimed at ourselves and shared with affection among people who trust one another.
A practice to try this week
The next time you feel that familiar reaction rising in you, perhaps over an unanswered message or a decision made without you, pause before deciding what it means. Eurich's research found that people who grow in self-awareness tend to ask themselves what questions, which keep them curious about the moment they are in, so you might gently ask: What am I feeling right now, and what is this reaction trying to protect in me?
You may find that the answer sounds a lot like one of the nine descriptions above. If it does, let yourself smile at it. Which of your own reactions would you be willing to laugh about with your team?
Bring the Enneagram to your team
Henley Leadership Group offers Enneagram trainings for teams, guided by coaches who have spent decades helping people understand themselves and one another from the inside out. Over the course of a training, your team discovers how each person is wired and how those patterns meet in the daily rhythm of work, so that the moments which once created friction begin to feel like moments of recognition, and sometimes even laughter. Teams leave with a shared language they keep using, and it shows up most in how they give feedback and move through conflict together.
If you're curious about what this could look like for your people, we'd love to hear what your team is working through right now.
Book a 30-minute intro call to talk with us about an Enneagram training for your team.
Frequently asked questions about Enneagram types at work
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The Enneagram is a framework of nine personality types, each organized around a core motivation and a familiar way of protecting itself when that motivation feels threatened. In the workplace, it gives teams a shared and generous language for understanding why people react the way they do, which helps colleagues extend more patience to one another and to themselves.
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Each type tends to respond according to its core motivation. In Courtney Caldwell's playful take, a Type 6 wonders whether the meeting is about them and starts building a contingency plan, while a Type 8 shows up anyway and is running the meeting by minute ten. Most people recognize pieces of several types in themselves.
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Many people begin by reading descriptions of the nine types and noticing which one feels uncomfortably familiar, and Henley's guide to exploring the nine Enneagram types is a good place to start. In an Enneagram team training, a facilitator has each participant take a certified Enneagram test, then helps each person discover their type with more confidence and understand how it shows up at work.
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Laughing at our own patterns makes them easier to see and easier to talk about with others. Amy Edmondson's research shows that teams learn more when people feel safe taking interpersonal risks, and research by Bitterly, Brooks, and Schweitzer found that humor that lands well signals confidence and competence.
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Teams tend to get the most from the Enneagram when they learn it together with a skilled facilitator, who helps each person understand their own type and helps the group see how their types interact. That shared language makes it easier to talk openly about friction and to laugh about it together.
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Yes. Henley Leadership Group, a Seattle-based leadership development firm, offers Enneagram trainings for teams. You can book a 30-minute intro call through the contact page.
About the author
Courtney Caldwell is Director of Innovation and Program Delivery at Henley Leadership Group. A certified Enneagram practitioner, she has been working with the Enneagram for more than twenty years, helping leaders and teams understand themselves and one another with more depth and more grace. She is a Type 8, which means that if she had been left off this particular meeting invite, she would have been running it by minute ten.