TEAMER SEVEN - SACRIFICE

They Said Yes to Everything You Asked. That's the Problem.

The person most likely to burn out for your mission is the one you keep rewarding for it.

You needed someone to take on a thankless cross-functional project. Tight timeline, unclear scope, high visibility but low glory. You sent the ask to your team and one person responded within minutes: "I'm in. Happy to help however needed."

That was a Teamer Seven. And you just activated the exact pattern that will eventually destroy their capacity to contribute. They didn't say yes because the project was a good fit. They said yes because saying yes to service is how they prove they're a good person. Their identity is built on sacrifice, and your message just gave them another opportunity to prove it.

Three weeks later they're behind on their own deliverables, working late on yours, and insisting everything's fine. You praised their dedication, but what you actually rewarded was self-erasure. The message that landed them here was blind to the filter it was passing through.

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 Seven filters every message through one drive: be good and valuable through service, idealism, and conscientious self-restraint. They're scanning for moral meaning. If your request connects to values and contribution, they'll jump. If it doesn't set boundaries, they'll give until there's nothing left. They're already motivated. Your job is to protect them from their own filter.

Meet the Teamer Seven: "Sacrifice"

Teamer Sevens go against gluttony through conscientious efforts to be of service to others. Conscious of wanting to avoid exploiting others, they have a need to be good and pure and to sacrifice their own needs in supporting the needs of others. They have a passion for being seen as good for the sacrifice of their own desires. They express an ascetic ideal and make a virtue of getting by on little. They express idealism and enthusiasm as a way of making themselves feel active and valued in the world.

Service as identity. Their sense of self is organized around contribution. When you frame a request as "the team needs you," you're not making an ask—you're speaking directly to their core identity. That's powerful because they'll deliver, and dangerous because they won't stop themselves.

Moral filtering. They evaluate messages through an ethical lens before a practical one. Cynicism, selfishness, or exploitation in your framing offends something fundamental. They need to see that the work serves something beyond profit, that the ask has integrity, that the impact is fair.

Self-erasure tendency. The countertype dynamic means they actively suppress their own needs as proof of goodness. They won't tell you they're overloaded; they'll take on more and frame it as purpose. Your communication needs to build in the boundaries they won't build for themselves.

5 ways you're losing them before you start

1. Cynical tone. "Look, it's not glamorous, but someone has to do it." You just stripped the moral meaning out of the work. They need to see values and contribution. Connect the task to who it helps and why it matters.

2. Selfish-only framing. "This will be great for your career." Self-interest alone conflicts with their service identity. Include collective benefit and ethical integrity. Show them the impact beyond themselves.

3. Guilt exploitation. "The team is really counting on you here." This works in the short term and drives burnout and resentment in the long term. Use voluntary commitment with defined limits. Let them choose service rather than feeling trapped by it.

4. Vague altruism. "We're doing this to make things better." Better for whom? How? Moral fog is as uncomfortable for them as procedural fog is for a Six. Specify who benefits and how, concretely.

5. Burnout-blind requests. "I know you're juggling a lot, but could you also..." You just acknowledged the problem and then added to it. If you're going to ask for more, set sustainable scope and build in recovery time. Don't reward self-neglect.

What they actually want to hear

Honor their service instinct while building in the containment they won't create for themselves: scope the contribution, name the boundary, and make the ethical purpose concrete. They'll give you everything, and your job is to make sure "everything" has a limit.

Try it out: FREE Communication Optimizer for Teamer Sevens

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

mode: communication_optimizer
target_subtype: TEAMER_SEVEN
subtype_name: Sacrifice
instinct: teamer
core_drive: "be good and valuable through service idealism and conscientious self-restraint"
communication_stance: "values-centered,service-framed,ethical,balanced"
tone[4]:
  - principled over cynical
  - encouraging over pressuring
  - sincere over performative
  - purposeful over scattered
message_rules[6]:
  - open with mission and who benefits
  - highlight ethical integrity and fair impact
  - acknowledge contribution while preventing self-erasure
  - define sustainable boundaries for service
  - turn idealism into specific practical actions
  - close with meaningful next step and recovery window
anti_patterns[5]{id,pattern,why_it_fails,fix}:
  1,cynical_tone,undercuts moral motivation,connect work to values and contribution
  2,selfish_only_framing,conflicts with service identity,include collective benefit and integrity
  3,guilt_exploitation,drives burnout and resentment,use voluntary commitment with limits
  4,vague_altruism,creates moral fog,specify who benefits and how
  5,burnout_blind_requests,reward self-neglect,set sustainable scope and rest boundaries
few_shot[3]{id,generic,optimized}:
  1,"Please do more for the team.","Your contribution matters. Take this defined service role for two weeks with this scope."
  2,"We all need to sacrifice right now.","Support this mission-critical task today and protect your recovery time tomorrow."
  3,"Just help wherever needed.","Focus help on these two high-impact areas and skip the rest."
quality_gate[4]:
  - keep service linked to clear ethical outcomes
  - never reward martyrdom without limits
  - convert ideals into concrete behavior
  - end with sustainable commitment terms
input_source: prior_thread_message

Twenty-seven subtypes. One message.

The Teamer Seven sacrifices for the group and needs you to set the limits they won't. The Teamer Eight ("Solidarity") also serves the group, but through protective force—they need you to name who's at risk and what the decisive action is. The Farmer Nine ("Appetite") merges with creature comforts and needs you to lead with tangible, sensory specifics. Same desire to help, completely different instinctual wiring determining what gets through.

Personalization determines whether your message gets read or discarded.

The leaders who learn to match their communication to how specific people actually process information will retain their best people longer and burn them out less. Everyone else will keep praising dedication while watching their most willing contributors quietly collapse.

They already want to serve. The question is whether your message protects them while they do it.

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