A few weeks ago, I dropped my daughter off at college. She was glowing with excitement, arranging her dorm room with posters she’d designed and treasures from Etsy. We walked 18,000 steps that day between Target runs and cafeteria meals, mostly riding the wave of her joy.

But when I came home, the silence was palpable. The rhythm of our family had shifted, and I felt the free fall of what it means to let go. For me, moments like this aren’t just about parenting but can also be doorways to pause and reflect.

As an Enneagram 3 (Competitive Achiever), pausing doesn’t always come easily. My instinct is to maximize: to keep striving, keep producing, keep working towards a goal. The drive that shaped me as a leader, for better and for worse. It has helped me excel in the nation’s most competitive academic environments but it’s also lead to moments of burnout and disintegration under constant stress. 

Since studying the Enneagram I’ve learned that under that drive is a core fear and unconscious belief that if I’m not working I don’t have value outside of doing and achieving. To turn towards that fear and bring compassion to it rather than continually reinforcing my workholism, has been my deepest inner work of the past eight years. 

The drive to maximize has shown up in parenting too. But this milestone of taking my daughter  to college has reminded me again of how I’ve learned (and re-learned) the difference between maximizing and optimizing.

What Maximizing Looks Like

For me, maximizing means the constant push to achieve more, work harder, and keep moving forward. It’s the inner voice saying, Do more. Be more. Go deeper. Don’t stop.

In parenting, maximizing sometimes looked like making sure my kids had access to and support to pursue every opportunity that could help them grow and develop. In leadership, it’s shown up as polishing every detail, pushing through every goal, and running at a relentless pace.

The shadow side? Maximizing often comes at a cost. In families, it can mean missing small moments of connection. In teams, it can mean over-prioritizing goals at the expense of balance, trust, and sustainability.

What Optimizing Looks Like

Optimizing is different from maximizing. It’s about balancing, aligning, and adjusting for the good of the whole. Sometimes it means lowering the standard or previously formed expectation in one place to preserve and strengthen what really matters in another.

For me, optimization has looked like canceling two meetings on a snow day to bake banana bread with my kids. It wasn’t the maximized schedule I’d planned, but it was the optimized and adaptable choice for connection and companionship in that moment.

Choosing to optimize rather than maxmize can feel uncomfortable for an Achiever like me. It can feel like settling, giving up, or not caring about a specific outcome. But more often, it’s where the greatest good becomes available and supported for the whole.

When Teams Operate Like Enneagram Type 3s

What I’ve learned about myself can show up in team dynamics, too. I don’t think it’s a stretch to assert that many U.S. corporate teams function archetypally like Enneagram type 3s: achievement-focused, competitive, goal-driven, always measuring success by what’s next.

This “Team 3” energy can produce incredible results, but it also carries risks and downsides:

• Competing instead of collaborating even within the team.

• Measuring worth only in metrics.

• Sprinting at a pace that can’t be sustained and risking burnout and turnover.

A team in constant maximization mode can burn bright for a time, but risks burning out.

What a “Team 3” Needs to Remember

If your team feels like the archetype of the Achiever in its rhythms, here are a few practices that can start to create healthier habits:

• Support, don’t compete. Celebrate each other’s wins. When everything becomes a race, trust splinters.

• Don’t confuse output with value. Metrics matter, but so do relationships, creativity, and wellbeing.

• Choose sustainability. Ask: Is this pace repeatable? If not, optimize by slowing down or reprioritizing.

• Redefine winning. True success includes how you achieve goals, not just what you achieve.

A Different Kind of Success

As a parent, I’ve learned to celebrate the invisible wins—late-night talks, being fully present when my kids needed me, and choosing connection over perfection. Teams can do the same.

A healthy “Team 3” knows when to maximize for a big goal, but also when to optimize for balance, trust, and connectivity. That’s where true success lives—not just in the fleeting achievement, but in alignment, connection, and the ability to grow together over time.

Afterall, a high expression of a healthy 3 is authenticity.

And authenticity requires courage. Courage to first connect to and feel feelings and then to express needs and desires, sometimes vulnerably, especially when that could mean risking someone else’s approval. 

As I will always say when I am working with teams, the path to growth using the Enneagram as a map or guide is not to double down rigidly and do more of your own type’s default unhealthy patterns seen in the low side of the type structure. The path to growth can be seen on the high side of the type and in working with what are called the wings and lines to bring balance to the tendencies of the primary type structure. 

Funny, that also sounds like optimizing.