Karen Horney would suggest that the Azure Blue leader tends to move toward other people when there is anxiety and tension in the relationship. This moving towards might be done in an effort to comfort or nurture the other person—or it might be done to somehow smother the other person with “kindness.” For Will Schutz, the Azure Blue orientation is aligned with an strong interpersonal need to be open in the sharing of personal information. With regard to the MBTI taxonomy, the Azure Blue leader is likely to be highly intuitive. As in the case of the extreme Ruby Red, the extreme Azure Blue is ironically inclined toward introversion. While they seem, on the surface, to be highly engaged in their relationships with other people and to find energy in these relationships, it is often a one-way street: the extreme Azure Blue is giving to others, but finds it hard to receive the caring themselves (there is an inclination toward self-sacrifice and martyrdom). We find three Enneagram types that are aligned with Azure Blue. They are Enneagram 2 (the helper), Enneagram 6 (the pessimist) and Enneagram 7 (the visionary).
The alignment of Azure Blue with Enneagram 2 offers us an important insight regarding this leadership style. The extreme Azure Blue will often come to a helping relationship with an Enneagram 2 hook. They want something in return but never indicate what it is [a common dynamic among Enneagram 2 types]. The alignment of Azure Blue with Enneagram 6 offers us yet another insight. The Azure Blues are inclined toward helping other people because at some deep level they believe that our world is always wounding us—hence there is always the need for healing and support.
This leads us, in turn, to the role played by Enneagram 7 in our understanding of Azure Blue. In essence, Enneagram 7 is about looking upward and forward so that we might ignore or seeking to transcend the bleak picture offered by Enneagram 6. The Enneagram 7 is fully aware of reality—and knows that it is not very pleasant. That’s why the Azure Blue asks us to look up at the sky rather than down at the muddy and murky real world in which we are now standing. Even more dramatic is the realization that we are actually standing in (or sinking in) quicksand. We need a helping hand to pull us out (even if this hand is nothing more than a fragile dream of the future).
The Enneagram 7 type also instructs us about the visioning of the Azure Blue. It seems that the extreme Azure Blue is inclined toward promoting their own dream of the future, rather than entertaining the possibility that other people might also hold a valid and completing vision of the future. It often takes a Rainbow leader or a leader who blends Azure Blue with Purpose (as an advocate) or Green (as an informed helper) to bring other people into the collaborative journey toward a shared vision. We will have more to say about this in our second essay.
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