What Happens When a Type 7 and a Type 9 Run a Business Together: An Enneagram Leadership Story
Written By Erin Saylor and Courtney Seely
Most people would not look at a Type 7 and a Type 9 on the Enneagram and think: yes, these two should build a company together. And honestly, they might be right to hesitate. But two years into Phoenix Rise Consulting, we are here to tell you that the combination is not just workable. It is one of the greatest assets we have.
If you are not familiar with the Enneagram, here is the short version: it is a personality framework that describes nine distinct ways of moving through the world, each shaped by a core motivation, a characteristic set of strengths, and a predictable pattern of behavior under stress. It is not a party trick or a horoscope. Used seriously, it is one of the most powerful tools available for understanding how you lead, how you relate, and where you tend to get in your own way. We use it with the leaders and organizations we work with at Phoenix Rise Consulting precisely because it gets underneath behavior to the why behind it.
Type 7s, like Erin, are energetic, visionary, and future-focused. They generate ideas at a pace that can feel dizzying to the people around them, and they are at their best when they are building something, imagining something, or moving toward something new. The shadow side is that detail work, repetitive tasks, and slowdowns can feel genuinely painful. When stress hits, Type 7s often move toward perfectionism and self-criticism, a sharp gear shift from their natural enthusiasm.
Type 9s, like Courtney, are steady, grounding, and deeply perceptive. They are the person in the room who sees all sides, absorbs the energy around them, and has a gift for keeping things from escalating. The shadow side is that the same steadiness that makes a Type 9 calming can also tip into avoidance of conflict, of urgency, and sometimes of the pile of things that need doing.
Put them together and you get, depending on the day, either a beautifully balanced partnership or a very interesting case study in personality dynamics.
On a regular Tuesday
In practice, our division of labor did not come from a spreadsheet or a strategy session. It emerged organically from who we each are.
Erin generates ideas at a pace that is constant, prolific, and often faster than either of us can capture. She is also the one who makes things beautiful. Our office space, our visual brand, and the aesthetic texture of everything Phoenix Rise puts into the world carry her fingerprints. Most recently she has added web design to that list, teaching herself an entirely new skill set with the same energy she brings to everything else. She holds the details: the thing we said we would schedule three weeks ago, the follow-up that needs to happen, the list that keeps us accountable to our own goals. Where Courtney can live comfortably in the digital and creative space, Erin is equally at home in the real world, remembering to follow up with people directly, nurturing relationships in person, and bringing a warmth and attentiveness to those interactions that people feel immediately. Without her, Phoenix Rise would be a very warm, well-intentioned creative fog.
Courtney brings a different kind of contribution. She is the one who will spend a Saturday afternoon happily editing podcast audio, mapping out a content calendar, or going deep on learning a new tool, not because it is urgent, but because she genuinely enjoys the creative and relational work of building something. She manages the social media with an artistic eye and finds real satisfaction in the slower, steadier work of nurturing relationships and showing up consistently online. When she is at her best, the Enneagram would describe this as moving toward the productive energy of a Type 3, getting focused, getting things done, and channeling her natural creativity into tangible output. The counterbalance Erin provides, through the list, the deadline, and the gentle reminder that there is a world outside the content calendar, keeps that energy pointed in the right direction.
Neither of us designed this. We just started noticing it.
When the pressure is on
A few months into building Phoenix Rise, we submitted paperwork for a grant. Erin, being the more detail-oriented of the two of us, handled most of the submission. A few days later, an email arrived: the wrong document had been uploaded and would need to be corrected.
We each read the email separately.
Erin saw it first. What followed, by her own account, was a rapid internal spiral of the kind Type 7s know well when they move into stress. She went straight to self-blame, then straight to action. Within hours she was deep into fixing the problem, working late into the evening and apologizing to Courtney for potentially jeopardizing their chances.
Courtney saw the same email and thought, essentially: we will figure this out.
What Courtney noticed, and what Erin in her focused urgency had missed, was a single line near the bottom of the email. They had a week to correct the issue.
Here is where it gets interesting. Courtney did not immediately call Erin to share that information, partly because she trusted Erin's instinct to move fast, and partly because she knew Erin would rather correct it that night than wait until next week regardless. So instead she kept reminding Erin that it was fine, that she had no doubt they would work it out, and that there was no catastrophe in progress.
Erin later said that Courtney's steadiness was genuinely grounding in that moment, not dismissive, not avoidant, just certain. But it went beyond calm. Courtney's reassurance was so authentic and so free of any hint of blame or frustration that Erin found herself able to let go of the self-criticism that had been driving her and move through the steps with more ease. She would have gotten it done either way, but what surprised her was that by the end of the evening she was actually enjoying the process. That is not a word most people associate with an urgent late night document fix, and it is not something that happens by accident. It happens when the person beside you makes you feel genuinely safe rather than just reassured.
They fixed the problem. They got the grant. And they still laugh about whether Courtney should have mentioned the week-long deadline a little sooner.
The answer, for the record, is probably yes. But Courtney also knew exactly who she was working with.
What this actually means for leadership
We tell this story not because it is funny, though it is, but because it illustrates something we think is undervalued in conversations about leadership and organizational culture: the difference between tolerating someone's differences and genuinely understanding them.
Tolerating differences looks like working around someone. Understanding them looks like knowing exactly why they are doing what they are doing, trusting that it is coming from their strengths, and orienting your own response accordingly.
What made that grant situation work was not that we have complementary skill sets, though we do. It was that we both had enough self-awareness to recognize our own patterns in real time. Erin knew her stress response was kicking in. Courtney knew she was relying on steadiness rather than urgency, and that was a conscious choice rather than an unconscious drift.
That level of self-knowledge does not happen automatically. It is built deliberately through the kind of reflection and feedback that most leadership development skips entirely.
The leaders we work with at Phoenix Rise Consulting are often surprised to discover how much of what they experience as personality conflict with a colleague or direct report is actually two people operating from completely different internal frameworks, neither of which is wrong. A Type 7 in a room full of Type 9s will feel like the only person with any sense of urgency. A Type 9 surrounded by high-drive personalities will feel like the only one who can see that the pace is unsustainable. Both are seeing something real, and neither is seeing the whole picture.
The question is not which perspective is correct. The question is whether you have built the self-awareness to know which lens you are looking through, and the trust to let someone else look through theirs. Most leadership challenges are not about strategy or skill. They are about two people looking at the same situation through entirely different lenses and never stopping to ask why. That combination, knowing yourself and genuinely valuing how someone else sees the world, is where the most effective leadership actually lives.
We did not build Phoenix Rise in spite of our differences. We built it because of them. And if there is one thing our work has taught us, it is that the leaders who understand themselves most clearly are almost always the ones whose teams feel it most.
Know yourself. Then learn the people around you. The combination is more powerful than either one alone.
Erin Saylor and Courtney Seely are the co-founders of Phoenix Rise Consulting, a Connecticut-based executive coaching and leadership development firm. They work with leaders and organizations on the development, self-awareness, and culture work that makes leadership mean something. If this resonated, they would love to connect.
