TEAMER THREE - PRESTIGE

"Let's Do Our Best" Is the Fastest Way to Lose Your Highest Performer

They had all the motivation they needed and nowhere to track their wins.

The quarterly kickoff email went out at 8 AM. Elena, VP of Sales, had spent an hour on it. Positive tone, inclusive language, team-focused: "Let's do our best this quarter. I appreciate everyone's hard work. We'll keep improving together."

By 8:04, Dev had already archived it. Not because he didn't care—he cared more than almost anyone on the team. But the message gave him nothing to compete against, nothing to measure, nothing to win. To someone who needed a number to chase, "do our best" meant nothing, "keep improving" without a target was just noise, and "hard work" without visible recognition was wasted energy.

Dev spent the morning updating his LinkedIn instead. Unactivated. Elena's message had the warmth of good leadership but lacked the precision a Teamer Three needs to perform. She was missing the trigger.

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 Three processes every message through one filter: where's the win? Their core drive is to achieve visible success, status, and influence through competitive performance. If your message doesn't contain a metric, a ranking, a timeline, or a clear path to recognition, it registers as background noise. Their filter simply found nothing to lock onto.

Meet the Teamer Three: "Prestige"

Teamer Threes focus on achievement in the service of looking good and getting the job done. They act out vanity through their desire to be seen and have influence with people. They enjoy being on stage in the spotlight. Teamer Threes know how to climb the teamer ladder and achieve success. These are the most competitive and most aggressive of the Threes. They have a driving need to look good and possess a corporate or sales mentality.

Competition as operating system. Teamer Threes are the most competitive of all Three subtypes. They want to outperform. Everything gets ranked: who closed more, who shipped faster, who got the leadership mention. Messages without competitive context feel directionless. They need to know: what's the target, who's ahead, and how do they get there first?

Visibility hunger. Achievement that nobody sees doesn't count. Teamer Threes need the spotlight because recognition is their proof of value. Private praise is pleasant; public praise is fuel. If your message promises work without a visible payoff, you've described a cost with no return.

Corporate ladder instinct. They intuitively understand organizational dynamics, influence networks, and what moves the needle on reputation. Every request gets evaluated through a lens of career impact. For them, "Will this make me look good to people who matter?" is an honest assessment of whether the investment is worth it.

5 ways you're losing them before you start

1. Vague excellence language. "Let's strive for excellence" or "do our best." This fails to trigger their achievement drive because there's nothing to measure. Define hard metrics and rankings. Give them a number, a percentile, or a benchmark to beat.

2. Private-only recognition. "Great job on that project, Dev." Said in a one-on-one, never mentioned again. This removes the prestige incentive entirely. Make wins visible to relevant audiences: send the team-wide email, mention it in the leadership review, give them the stage.

3. Slow deliberation bias. "Let's take our time and think this through carefully." This kills momentum and competitive edge. Teamer Threes process fast and move fast. Time-box decisions and move. Long consensus-building without deadlines feels like organizational drag.

4. Unclear success criteria. "We'll know it when we see it" or "just do good work." This creates status ambiguity because they can't tell if they're winning or losing. Declare objective scoring before execution starts. What does done look like? What does great look like? How is it measured?

5. Understated impact. "This project contributed to the overall improvement." Shrinks the perceived value of their effort. State business and reputation outcomes directly: revenue impact, adoption numbers, executive visibility. Make the win proportional to the work.

What they actually want to hear

Every revision replaces encouragement with scorekeeping. A Teamer Three needs to know they're winning, and that everyone else knows it too.

Try it out: FREE Communication Optimizer for Teamer Threes

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

mode: communication_optimizer
target_subtype: TEAMER_THREE
subtype_name: Prestige
instinct: teamer
core_drive: "achieve visible success status and influence through competitive performance"
communication_stance: "high-performance,visibility-focused,results-led,competitive"
tone[4]:
  - sharp over soft
  - fast over slow
  - ambitious over cautious
  - metric-centered over vague
message_rules[6]:
  - open with the win condition and key metric
  - position effort as path to visible success
  - emphasize speed execution and market perception
  - assign clear ownership and scoreboard rules
  - celebrate results publicly and specifically
  - close with next target and timeline
anti_patterns[5]{id,pattern,why_it_fails,fix}:
  1,vague_excellence_language,fails to trigger achievement drive,define hard metrics and rankings
  2,private_only_recognition,removes prestige incentive,make wins visible to relevant audiences
  3,slow_deliberation_bias,kills momentum and edge,time-box decisions and move
  4,unclear_success_criteria,creates status ambiguity,declare objective scoring before execution
  5,understated_impact,shrinks perceived value,state business and reputation outcomes directly
few_shot[3]{id,generic,optimized}:
  1,"Let us do our best on this.","Target is top quartile performance by month end with these KPIs."
  2,"Nice work team.","You delivered a 22 percent lift and outperformed peer groups. Present this to leadership."
  3,"We will keep improving.","New target is 10 percent cycle time reduction in two weeks."
quality_gate[4]:
  - every claim should map to measurable performance
  - keep urgency high and direction unambiguous
  - tie recognition to concrete outcomes
  - end with a visible next objective
input_source: prior_thread_message

Twenty-seven subtypes. One message.

The Teamer Three needs metrics, visibility, and a scoreboard before they'll fully engage. The Farmer Two ("Privilege") needs to feel personally valued and prioritized before they'll open up. The Teamer Five ("Totem") needs intellectual depth and connection to a larger framework before they'll invest energy. Your highest performer and your deepest thinker need completely different messages to produce their best work.

Personalization determines whether your message gets read or discarded.

You're speaking a language their filter doesn't recognize. For a Teamer Three, vague encouragement is silence.

They already know how to win. They're waiting for you to tell them what the game is.

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