HUNTER NINE - FUSION

They Agreed With Everything You Said. None of It Was Their Opinion.

What looked like alignment was compliance from someone who'd lost their own voice.

You wrapped up a one-on-one with your design lead to finalize the direction for a major product redesign. You'd laid out three options, explained your preference, and asked for her take. She nodded. "That sounds great. I think your instinct is right. Let's go with that." You left the meeting feeling aligned. Efficient, even.

Two weeks into execution, the work was flat. The designs technically matched the brief, but they had none of the spark she usually brought. When you checked in, she was agreeable as always: "Yeah, I think it's going well. If you're happy, I'm happy." It hit you. She hadn't actually contributed a single original perspective since that meeting. She'd adopted your vision wholesale because agreeing was easier than asserting.

She's a Hunter Nine. And you'd done the one thing guaranteed to silence her: you stated your position first, asked for hers second, and accepted "I agree" at face value. You got her disappearance, not her buy-in. The design was yours, executed by someone who'd merged with your preferences instead of bringing their own. And you never even noticed because the whole time, she was smiling and nodding.

The problem with generic communication

Most advice about workplace communication treats people as interchangeable. Write clearly. Be concise. Lead with empathy. These are fine defaults, and they fail constantly with specific people for specific reasons.

Personality science has mapped this for decades. The Enneagram identifies 27 distinct subtypes, each with a different instinctual drive that shapes how they filter, prioritize, and react to incoming messages. These are hardwired filters, running beneath conscious awareness, that determine whether your message lands or gets discarded before it's finished.

The Hunter Nine filters every incoming message through one instinct: maintain connection by merging with significant others and softening personal assertion. They're passive because voicing opinions feels like it risks the relationship. Your message fails because it's so clear about what you want that it leaves no room for them to want something different.

Meet the Hunter Nine: "Fusion"

Hunter Nines express the passion of laziness by merging with the important people in their lives. Hunter Nines unconsciously take on the attitudes, opinions, and feelings of others, because it can feel too hard to stand on their own. These Nines tend to be kind, gentle, shy characters who are not very assertive.

Merger as default. When a Hunter Nine connects with someone they respect or care about, they absorb that person's preferences, opinions, and even emotional states. This is involuntary, not strategic people-pleasing. Their own perspective literally recedes as someone else's fills the space. If you state your opinion before asking for theirs, you've ended the conversation. Their "I agree" is fusion.

Assertion as risk. Standing firm on a personal position feels to this subtype like it could fracture the connection. So they soften, defer, and accommodate. The cost of voicing conviction, potential conflict and disconnection, feels higher than the cost of going along. Your communication needs to make asserting their view feel safer than suppressing it.

Gentle pace, deep presence. They process slowly and carefully. Rapid-fire questions, high-pressure deadlines, and aggressive energy shut them down. The more intensity you bring, the more they retreat into accommodation. The quieter and more patient your approach, the more likely you are to hear what they actually think instead of what they think you want to hear.

5 ways you're losing them before you start

1. Speaking for them. "I think we both agree this is the right direction." You just told them what they think. And they'll let you, because correcting you feels like confrontation. Ask direct preference questions and wait. Silence after the question is where their real answer lives. Don't fill it.

2. Aggressive tempo. "I need your answer on all three items by end of day." You just overrode their processing speed. They'll give you answers borrowed from whatever seems safest, but those won't be their answers. Slow the pace. One ask at a time. Give them room to find their own voice before you need it.

3. Loaded questions. "You're okay with the current plan, right?" That's not a question. That's a compliance prompt. Use neutral options with explicit permission to disagree. "Which direction feels right to you—A, B, or something else entirely?" The "something else entirely" is the door they need to see open.

4. Dependency reinforcement. "Just follow the team's lead on this." You've just given them permission to disappear into someone else's decision. Encourage independent choice and ownership. "I want to hear what you would do if this were entirely your call." Make individuation the ask, not conformity.

5. Ambiguous endings. "Let's stay flexible and see where things go." Flexible means they'll drift toward whoever speaks loudest next. End with a clear personal commitment from them. "What is one thing you want to own on this? Name it now." An explicit self-authored choice is the anchor that keeps them from merging with the next strong personality in the room.

What they actually want to hear

Replace group deference with personal questions, flexibility with a single owned decision, "whatever works" with "what do you want?" Every communication should make it easier for them to hear their own voice, not yours or the team's.

Try it out: FREE Communication Optimizer for Hunter Nines

Paste your draft message into your LLM, then paste the following prompt after it.

mode: communication_optimizer
target_subtype: HUNTER_NINE
subtype_name: Fusion
instinct: hunter
core_drive: "maintain connection by merging with significant others and softening personal assertion"
communication_stance: "gentle-direct,identity-supportive,safe-assertive,relationship-aware"
tone[4]:
  - soft over forceful
  - clear over suggestive
  - patient over rushed
  - affirming over critical
message_rules[6]:
  - begin with relational safety and respect
  - ask for their own view explicitly and patiently
  - provide simple choices that support assertion
  - reflect their words back to reinforce self-trust
  - avoid overpowering intensity or rapid-fire demands
  - close with one self-authored decision
anti_patterns[5]{id,pattern,why_it_fails,fix}:
  1,speaking_for_them,reinforces fusion and passivity,ask direct preference questions and wait
  2,aggressive_tempo,overrides personal voice,slow pace and one ask at a time
  3,loaded_questions,pushes compliance over clarity,use neutral options and explicit consent
  4,dependency_reinforcement,weakens individuation,encourage independent choice and ownership
  5,ambiguous_endings,invites drifting with others,end with clear personal commitment
few_shot[3]{id,generic,optimized}:
  1,"Whatever works for the group is fine.","I want your preference first. Do you choose option A or B?"
  2,"Just go with what they decided.","Tell me your own view and we will build from that."
  3,"Let us keep this flexible for now.","Choose one action you want to own today and confirm it now."
quality_gate[4]:
  - every message should strengthen personal voice
  - keep relational warmth without enmeshment
  - remove pressure tactics and implied compliance
  - end with explicit self-owned choice
input_source: prior_thread_message

Twenty-seven subtypes. One message.

The Hunter Nine needs safe space to find and assert their own voice. The Teamer Nine ("Participation") also avoids conflict but channels it into group belonging; they need to feel included, not individuated. The Hunter Eight ("Possession") sits at the opposite extreme: they dominate rooms and test boundaries, needing you to match their intensity with decisive authority. One message that draws out the Nine would overwhelm them. One message that holds its ground with the Eight would silence the Nine entirely. Same words, opposite effects.

Personalization determines whether your message gets read or discarded.

The communicators who learn to create space for the people who disappear in conversations, who ask before telling, who wait before filling silence, who make assertion feel safe, will unlock contributions that no one else even knew were there. Everyone else will keep getting enthusiastic agreement and wondering why the work comes back hollow.

They said yes to everything. You never asked what they actually wanted. That's the answer you needed most.

It's why we're building Rally, communications automatically optimized for each person's instinctual profile. See how we do it: AI Smells Remover.