Type Three
The Successful Achiever

Center of Intelligence: Heart center
Motivation: To be seen as successful, competent, attractive, and admired
Core Fears: Being a loser, incompetent, unmasked, exposed, or failing

Threes are motivated to be viewed as successful, attractive, accomplished, and competent. They derive their sense of self by gaining a favorable response from those in their world. They learned early on that they received admiration and praise by becoming someone who wins, so, Threes make it their business to be the best at everything they do. They are naturally gifted at adjusting to others' responses to them and are the most image-conscious of all of the nine Enneagram types. Threes always strive to put their best foot forward to achieve their desired results. Threes value competency and efficiency and need the feeling of progressive success in their lives to feel worthy of the attention they crave. They are hard workers and see themselves as deserving of praise and accolades because they work hard and look good while doing it.

Image Management and Hyperactivity
Threes' focus on success and image often requires them to put their genuine interests, emotions, and thoughts to the side to do what is needed to achieve their desired ends. They can become human doings rather than human beings as they adjust and calibrate their presentation and image to become the image of success. On the high side, this allows Threes to be extraordinarily successful in their professional lives and generally well-liked by those around them because they know how to project a winning image.

Threes are the Enneagram's natural motivators. Threes are a galvanizing force and teach others the value of positive self-worth, motivation, and hard work. Threes seek achievement and success to maintain a healthy self-image and, when self-aware, they can be immensely inspirational to others. They understand that to have a genuinely balanced sense of self, they also need a healthy dose of genuine humility. The obsessive doing of average Threes turns into conscious and present action. This presence replaces pathological artificiality and hyperactivity, imbuing their achievements with more meaning. 

Inauthenticity and Fraudulence
Threes strive to be the perfect person. They want to say and do the right thing and look good while doing those things. Threes can substitute polish for depth, and to avoid being unmasked, they can keep others at a distance to prevent others from seeing behind the proverbial curtain. When Threes become more unhealthy, they become obsessed with winning at all costs and become deceitful. Their characteristic confidence then devolves into cocky arrogance. As Threes begin to devalue their authentic expression and put more stock into the image they project. They lose touch with themselves and others. They can become ruthless in pursuing their goals and aspirations and seek to win at any cost. At this point, Threes have mistaken their winning image for themselves and can run themselves ragged trying to achieve their next goal, win the next race, and crush the competition without being unmasked for being a fraud.

When Healthy and Balanced
Healthy Threes can safely embark on an internal journey toward spiritual or psychological health without feeling the need to impress others by playing the "most" spiritual person, which can trap them when not self-aware. Threes become attractive and successful both internally and externally at their best because they recognize that our true worth is not measured by the way we look or what we have accomplished but by our mere existence. Self-aware Threes bring presence into their action, enabling them to be even more effective and reminding them and others that they are human. More importantly, healthy Threes have learned that artifice and mimicry can only take them so far and thus become refreshingly honest with themselves and others about the need for human validation in constructing self-esteem.

Exemplars: Tony Robbins, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, David Bowie, Sting, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Elvis Presley, Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, Tom Brady, Jay Z, Ivanka Trump, Rob Lowe, Lenny Kravitz, Justin Bieber, Tina Fey, Halle Berry, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, John Cena, Bruno Mars, Andy Warhol, Ryan Seacrest, Pete Buttigieg, Christie Brinkley, L.L. Cool J, Jared Leto, Demi Moore, Vanessa Williams, Lucy Liu, Angela Bassett, Michael Jordan, USA, Corporate America, Wall Street, Gordon Gecko, Joe Jonas, Chris Brown