TEAMER EIGHT - SOLIDARITY

Your Empathy Sounded Great. They Needed a Shield.

Telling this person you care proves nothing until you prove you'll fight.

You noticed tension on the team after a round of layoffs. People were anxious, morale was low, and you wanted to address it. So you sent a thoughtful message to your most trusted team lead: "I know this has been hard on everyone. I really care about the team and I hope things start to improve. Let's keep collaborating and supporting each other through this."

The team lead, a Teamer Eight, read your message and felt something between disappointment and contempt. Your message was the heartless one: you named the problem and offered feelings when they needed you to name who was exposed and offer a plan. "I care about the team" told them nothing. "I have the team covered, here's who owns what and when" would have told them everything.

They didn't reply. Instead they started making their own protection plan, cutting you out of the loop entirely. You lost credibility by leading with empathy when they needed action.

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 Teamer Eight processes every message through one filter: use strength and aggression to protect others and lead with loyal action. They're listening for whether you'll stand up when it counts. Empathy without a concrete protective action registers as weakness dressed up as concern.

Meet the Teamer Eight: "Solidarity"

Teamer Eights express lust and aggression in the service of others. A group-focused yet antisocial person, this is the countertype of the Eights, a helpful Eight who appears less aggressive and more loyal than the other two Eight subtypes. The name "Solidarity" emphasizes their tendency to offer help when people need protection.

Protective mission. Everything gets evaluated against one question: who is vulnerable and what are we doing about it? Strategy disconnected from real people at real risk is just noise to them. If your message doesn't connect analysis to the humans it protects, you're talking to yourself.

Loyalty as currency. They don't trust charm, credentials, or position. They trust demonstrated solidarity under pressure. Standing with them when the decision is hard means everything. Your communication earns trust through explicit, accountable promises.

Decisive action orientation. Deliberation without commitment reads as cowardice. They need you to decide, commit, and move. Hesitant commitments sound like you'll bail when things get difficult.

5 ways you're losing them before you start

1. Detached analysis only. "Let's review the data and assess our options." You just removed the people from the equation. Connect every strategy to the real humans it protects. Tell them who's at risk and what the plan does about it.

2. Self-serving spin. "This initiative will position our division for growth." They can smell when the framing serves the sender, not the team. Center the welfare of the people involved. Show shared risk, not personal positioning.

3. Hesitant commitments. "We're thinking about possibly adjusting the timeline." That's three layers of non-commitment. Make explicit promises with named owners and hard timelines. Back your words with your name.

4. Performative empathy. "I truly empathize with what everyone is going through." If the next sentence isn't a concrete protective action, you've just proven you'll say the right things and do nothing. Replace the empathy statement with what you're actually doing to fix the situation.

5. Blurred accountability. "We'll all work together to figure this out." Who, doing what, by when? Blurred accountability undermines the one thing they need most: trust that someone will actually lead. Assign clear command and follow-through.

What they actually want to hear

Replace care language with protection language, hope with commitment, collaboration with command. They need you to do something, visibly and accountably, for the people who are exposed.

Try it out: FREE Communication Optimizer for Teamer Eights

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

mode: communication_optimizer
target_subtype: TEAMER_EIGHT
subtype_name: Solidarity
instinct: teamer
core_drive: "use strength and aggression to protect others and lead with loyal action"
communication_stance: "protective-leadership,mission-first,loyalty-coded,decisive"
tone[4]:
  - strong over soft
  - loyal over detached
  - direct over political
  - action-led over talk-heavy
message_rules[6]:
  - lead with who needs protection and what is at risk
  - frame action as standing with people under pressure
  - communicate loyalty and shared responsibility clearly
  - use direct language with rapid decision paths
  - show strength without unnecessary domination
  - close with protective next action and accountable owner
anti_patterns[5]{id,pattern,why_it_fails,fix}:
  1,detached_analysis_only,ignores protective mission,connect strategy to real people protected
  2,self_serving_spin,signals disloyalty,center team welfare and shared risk
  3,hesitant_commitments,reads as weak backing,make explicit promises with owners and timelines
  4,performative_empathy,feels fake and unserious,use concrete protective actions
  5,blurred_accountability,undermines trust in leadership,assign clear command and follow-through
few_shot[3]{id,generic,optimized}:
  1,"We should review this situation.","Our people are exposed on X. We secure them with plan A by end of day."
  2,"I care about the team and hope this improves.","I have the team on this. Here is who covers what and when."
  3,"Let us keep collaborating.","Stand with me on this decision now and we move immediately."
quality_gate[4]:
  - every message should signal protective intent and power
  - no vague care language without concrete action
  - keep loyalty and responsibility explicit
  - end with decisive next protection step
input_source: prior_thread_message

Twenty-seven subtypes. One message.

The Teamer Eight needs protective action and loyal commitment. The Teamer Two ("Ambition") also leads groups, but through strategic influence, and they need to see how your request elevates their position and reach. The Farmer Five ("Castle") operates from the opposite instinct entirely, needing minimal intrusion, maximum self-sufficiency, and a clear boundary around their resources. Same workplace, completely different operating systems deciding what gets through.

Personalization determines whether your message gets read or discarded.

The leaders who learn to communicate through each person's actual instinctual filter will earn loyalty that lasts under pressure. Everyone else will keep writing empathetic messages and wondering why the person they needed most just went quiet.

You said you cared. They needed you to say you'd move. That's the gap that cost you their trust.

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