‘It’s meant to set you free’

As a teacher, Tamara Kroeker got used to feeling excitement, coupled with mild panic, as August turned into September.

“There is… something fun about a brand-new year,” said Kroeker, who taught music to early years students for 13 years. “It feels refreshing, it feels creative. It feels like anything could happen.”

But for the second school year in a row, Kroeker is not returning to the classroom. The 40-year-old Winnipeg resident left her teaching job in 2024 to start Enneagram Aware, a consultancy that helps employers and employees better understand themselves and how they work with one another.

Kroeker’s offerings, which include workshops and one-on-one consultations, are based on the enneagram, a typology that defines nine personality types which are represented by the points of a geometric figure.

At the most basic level, Kroeker said, the enneagram shows that there are nine different ways of seeing the world, each with their own core motivation. But rather than label and limit people, it is meant to give those who learn it greater self-awareness and the ability to look at life with “a more open perspective,” she said.

“When the enneagram is taught the way it was designed to be taught, it is not meant to box you in — it’s meant to set you free,” Kroeker said.

Kroeker offers workshops of varying lengths on the enneagram to help participants develop self-awareness and a positive workplace culture. She also does leadership training, which she describes as a multi-day in-depth enneagram group training to develop “connection-focused leaders.”

Additionally, Kroeker offers individual coaching to help people find their enneagram type and understand what to do with it.

According to Kroeker, using the enneagram can expose blind spots that are holding people back, provide actionable strategies for leveraging strengths and offer a framework for mastering communication.

“What I believe I offer is a space for people to feel heard, understood and really themselves within their workplace,” Kroeker said.

The former educator discovered the enneagram via a podcast about a decade ago. She purchased the book the podcast host recommended, The Road Back to You: an Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery, by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile, and discovered her type.

Kroeker had dabbled in a few other personality systems but said they never resonated with her. Reading about her enneagram type for the first time was eye-opening.

“I couldn’t figure out how someone knew what was going on in my mind,” she said. “I didn’t even think some of my characteristics were that notable or definable, and suddenly they were showing up in a published book… It was eerie, comforting and wild all at the same time.”

From there, Kroeker said she consumed every book and podcast she could find on the subject before eventually entering a two-year certification program through the CP Enneagram Academy.

Kroeker said while she enjoyed being a music teacher, “it was never something that lit me up the same way” running Enneagram Aware does.

Leaders need to know themselves well in order to mentor others and the enneagram is a useful tool for gaining self-knowledge, said Deborah Egerton, president of the International Enneagram Association. The Ohio-based organization counts 3,000 accredited professionals in 50 countries as part of its membership.

The enneagram is popular in the business world right now, added Egerton, who has published numerous books on the subject. One thing people who learn about the enneagram appreciate is it has applications in all aspects of life, she said.

“It changes relationships with partners, it changes relationships with family (and) it helps people with some of their biases and binary thinking,” Egerton said. “It opens people up to an opportunity to grow and expand.”

Professional development is important because, along with promotion, it’s one of the two key ways employers can retain their employees, according to Tory McNally, vice president of professional services at Legacy Bowes, an organization consultant company specializing in human resources.

In McNally’s experience, personality tests like CliftonStrengths and DISC are more popular in business settings than the enneagram, but employers should choose which assessment they want to use based on company culture.

“The idea with all of those assessments is (that) your personality is innate and you should build on your strengths and be very self-aware of where your weaknesses lie, and either call in assistance from those around you or work to build some of (your) soft skills,” McNally said.

Kroeker agrees people need to use whatever assessment most resonates with them. In her experience, the enneagram has a way of incorporating the knowledge from other assessments and gives people a chance to go deeper with what they may have learned elsewhere.

“I’m very grateful for the organizations that have found me,” she said. “It has been people who really want to see growth within the organization and really care about their people.”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca