Wagner Enneagram Personality Style Scales (WEPSS)

J. P. Wagner, Ph.D.

The Enneagram model of personality posits nine personality styles, each with a distinctive way of viewing and responding to the world. For each person, one style stands out, characterizing his or her personality.

The Wagner Enneagram Personality Style Scales apply this theory in assessing personality type. These versatile self-report scales measure both adaptive and maladaptive characteristics of each of nine personality types. Used in business, counseling, and educational settings, the WEPSS is a useful and engaging way to identify interpersonal dynamics, work preferences, coping styles, values, and teaching/learning styles. Its applications are almost unlimited.

9 Types

The WEPSS is composed of 200 items covering 9 scales, which represent the following personality types:

Each of these types is characterized by a specific outlook and response style. And each encompasses both “positive” and “negative” (or “resourceful” and “non-resourceful”) reactions and attitudes.

20 Minutes

Items are simple words or phrases. The respondent merely rates each item on a 5-point scale, indicating the extent to which it “fits” him or her. The inventory takes 20 to 40 minutes to complete, and it can be hand or computer scored. (Computer scoring gives you a complete interpretive report.) The WEPSS generates a Total Score, a Resourceful Characteristics Score, and a Non-Resourceful Characteristics Score for each of the nine scales. Norms are based on a sample of nearly 1,500 individuals, ranging in age from 18 to 83.

100 Uses

In business settings, the WEPSS is an ideal way to explore communication patterns, decision making styles, and conflict resolution methods. It helps explain interaction between colleagues and supervisors who have the same or different personality styles.

And it also helps employees and managers make more informed choices about job preferences, career decisions, and work environments.

In counseling, the WEPSS can be used to help clients identify their coping strategies--and alternatives that they tend to ignore.

In couple, family, and group therapy, the scales shed light on interpersonal dynamics and differing values.

Used in schools, the WEPSS reveals useful information about teaching and learning styles, helping instructors identify optimal learning strategies for each of the nine personality types.

Employees, clients, and students typically find the WEPSS an interesting and enlightening exercise. WEPSS results have the ring of “common sense,” which makes them easy for people to accept and apply in various areas of their lives.