Economic Times and ODA is doing a research on the personality type and leadership styles of 10 young politicians and other prominent leaders using a personality type tool called Enneagram, one to one interviews and peer feedback. For the first time a psychological profiling tool is used to analysis the personality type of our future leaders. Though there are no good personality types and bad types, we thought this study will shed some light into the strengths and growth areas of these future leaders and readers could get a feel of the brand identity of each of these leaders.

The Enneagram is the single most powerful tool used to understand self and understand others. The Enneagram is currently being applied in many fields and disciplines, among them business, education, psychotherapy, entertainment, medicine, sales, and law. In business, for example, an increasing number of organizations are using the Enneagram in both training programs and organizational change initiatives because the Enneagram system provides a thorough foundation for understanding why people actually behave in the ways that they do. Among the organizations making use of the Enneagram in India are GENPACT, Airtel, Microsoft, Virgin Mobile, Pepsi, Hewitt etc. Enneagram talks about Nine types of people. Below is the description of each type. Within each type, there a level of development as there are some who are evolves and some below average.
Ones seek perfection and work diligently to improve everyone and everything, including themselves.

• Twos want to be liked, needed, and considered indispensable, and they indirectly orchestrate the people and events around them.

• Threes seek the respect and admiration of others through achieving goals, appearing successful, and avoiding failure.

• Fours desire deep connections with both their inner worlds and with other people, savor authentic self-expression, and focus on what is missing.

• Fives thirst for knowledge, use emotional detachment to keep entanglements with others to a minimum, and try to minimize their dependence on others.

• Sixes search for certainty and support, worry, have incisive minds, and create worst case scenarios.

• Sevens crave stimulation, engage in elaborate future planning that preserves all their options, and try to avoid pain.

• Eights pursue truth, want situations to be under control, exert themselves to make important things happen, and hide their vulnerabilities.

• Nines yearn for peace, harmony, and positive mutual regard and have an aversion to conflict, tension, and ill will.