Type 4

The Authentic Individualist

FOURs excel in work that allows for unique contributions and opportunities to be distinctive in their field. They conduct life as a work of art. They need to know that their feelings and vision are heard. They inspire creative alternatives to the mundane and are drawn to design, aesthetics, and the refined. They are at their best when they feel emotionally connected to their work. When they overdo their striving to be unique, they begin feeling separate from the ease everyone else seems to have in creating a connection. They can avoid doing things the way everyone else does them, fearing the value they add through unique contributions will be lost.

Key Strengths: Creative, original, sensitive, distinctive contributor, highly attuned to aesthetics and emotions.

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FOURs Communication Style: offer their related experiences, colorful inspiration, passionate perspective, push-pull dynamics

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FOURs Like Others To Communicate With:  emotions, inspiring creativity, avoiding comparison of the FOUR to others, and without being too pedestrian or unemotional. 

How They Engage The World:  Life is like a work of art where every emotion on my palette serves to create an honest beautiful picture. 

Blind Spot: Self-absorption. FOURs can tune into the depth of their own experience in a way that fills their screen of awareness without much sustained room for other's experiences. They have a sense that others have been given an advantage in life, and that FOURs themselves are missing some essential piece that would make it all come together. This validates their need to have an inward focus and leads to too much self-referencing and personal stories.

Other Common Snares:  Not liking to be the same as others, idealization creates impossibly high standards,  push-pull dynamics, efficiency is tied to mood, and needing distinctive work.

Assumption:  Fours assume that "Everyone else has an ease in life that I have not been given access to which leaves me deficient or on the outside in some way".

How others experience them: Creative, inspiring, creators of beauty, moody, dramatic, complicated.

They respect coworkers who are: highly successful in non-competitive arenas, who appreciate the importance of how things feel, are authentic, open to new ways.

What they like at work: distinctive projects, creative license, having a highly valued area of expertise, having their feeling/opinions validated 

What irritates them: group planning, being compared, being undervalued creativity, being lumped in with everyone else.

Self-assigned role on the team: "I bring the inspired vision to create something truly unique to this organization that seems bound by practicality."

Want to learn more? Check out these resources on the type:

Enneagram Institute: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-4/

CP Enneagram: https://cpenneagram.com/enneagram-type-four