People who measure themselves by external achievement and the roles that they play. May be truthful, accomplished and sincere or conniving, competitive and false.

Threes identify less with roles of interpersonal helpfulness and more with images of success and productivity. Threes often expect to be loved for what they do rather than for who they are. Their image-confusion is between seeming accomplished and being true to their less-than-perfect inner self. Less healthy Threes tend to cut off deeper feeling in favor of outer appearances. They deny their imperfections and present a public image that the world will find laudable. This image is precisely the opposite of who the Three secretly fears she might be.

Healthy Threes are often highly accomplished and live by creeds of excellence and professionalism. They are strong at setting and meeting goals and usually master many life skills. Threes learn fast, make good leaders, and do well in high profile, socially established occupations where performance can be measured by results. Most are organized, flexible and industrious. When healthy, they usually make excellent role models and talented teachers of whatever skills they have mastered. Threes can also display a sometimes amazing capacity for taking efficient, effective action. They are especially good at multi-tasking, doing many things at once.

Healthy Threes can be energetic and cheerful, with a positive eye to the future and a self-confident, open approach to challenges. Their actions are often governed by a sense of honor and they value family and friendship in addition to work. Threes sometimes arrive at these priorities after a struggle with moral expediency and a conscious search for meaningful values.

When Threes are less healthy, their strategy of being successful and well rounded yields to a desire to seem that way and they start to cut corners to maintain an image. Threes can slip into impersonations and play a role of themselves, adopting chameleon-like poses in order to seem noteworthy in different contexts. They begin to deny their personal feelings and increasingly identify with a mask. Most Threes have an Achilles heel, a sense of inadequacy that they compensate for with achievement and role-playing. 

Intimate relationships can suffer as Threes re-route their feelings through their image of who they should be. They may present a persona to friends or partners, hiding a deep sense of flaw and, instead, offering a mask for others to love. Expediency and efficiency become more important, and an unhealthy Three may begin to enjoy the feeling of non-feeling. They may think of themselves as high-performance engines whose purpose is to race from task to task, securing outcomes before dashing on to new finish lines. Its not uncommon for Threes to talk in sports metaphors and believe that life is only a game, a game that’s played to win.

To win, they push themselves harder, deriving a kind of high from being hyperactive and using their relationships mainly as springboards for professional gain. Their once healthy flexibility degenerates into arrogant calculation and amoral strategizing. Threes comfortably operate in occupations where appearance and persuasion are important -- public relations, sales, advertising -- and they often turn themselves into a commodity to market.

For very unhealthy Threes winning becomes everything and a Three’s mask can fully eclipse his soul. They can be amoral, Machiavellian, heartless, slick, and plagiarizing. They start to believe their own lies and con people without conscience. Their aim is to maintain an illusion of superiority from which they derive a vindictive sense of triumph. Anyone who has ever been deliberately and maliciously deceived has felt the sting of this attitude.
 

About the Contributor:

Thomas Condon has worked with the Enneagram since 1980. He has taught classes at schools like Antioch University, and the University of California, Berkeley, as well as hundreds of workshops in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. He is the author of 50 audiotapes, 19 videotapes and two books, soon to be more. You can find more information like this, his books, and his tapes at his wesite here.