1/3 Human Design Profile – The “Inspector” Leadership Archetype

In this post, we’re going to dive into the 1/3 Profile of Human Design, what I call the “Inspector” Leadership Archetype. It is made up of two themes, the “1” theme which is the theme of the “Investigator” and the “3” theme, which is the theme of the “Martyr” (a very auspicious name. But don’t worry, it’s very powerful. And it will all make sense in this post how to get the most out of this theme.)

If you have the “3” in your profile, you may find yourself feeling like a victim, or a Martyr. If so, that’s likely because that’s how the world sees you – or saw you at one point.

But you are far from a victim. It’s more that you’re gifts and genius are misunderstood. And really it’s a shift in perspective so you don’t buy into how others saw (or see) you and understand your own power. There’s a reason I call you the Inspector Leadership Archetype.

The “Inspector” Leadership Archetype of the 1/3

And that’s because the way these 2 themes are designed to operate through you is like a “Home Inspector”, in the best possible way. Just like a home inspector inspects the integrity of the building, it’s structure, and it’s foundation, you “inspect” the foundations of society, the foundations that your teams, communities and connections are building on.

You don’t make mistakes. You find mistakes. ‘

You find the mistakes that others make. As a society, we’re swimming in “mistakes”, ways that we could be doing things better. And the “3” in your profile is designed to find all of those mistakes. To the outside world, that can look like doing something all the “wrong” ways before doing it the right way. It can look like clumsiness. It can look like errors.

But in reality, any “mistake” is you poking at the already faulty foundation we’re living on. It just falls down when you poke it. You’re finding the holes in the foundation, the parts of the structure that are not safe to continue to build on.

And just like a home inspector understands the theory behind the integrity of how structures have been set up and what makes them safe or unsafe, you are also drawn to study what works and what doesn’t in the world. This is the “1” Investigator theme of your profile.

The “3” Martyr theme of the profile learns through trial and error. Like a home inspector, you poke and hit the “walls”, you test all the “light switches”, “faucets”, and “structure” for its integrity. And if something isn’t up to “code”, you’ll find it.

So, you are designed to both investigate the world through study and “bump” into the world through experimentation. You are here to find the mistakes and point them out to others so they can do something about it. The Inspector isn’t meant to actually do the work to fix the foundation. They “write up a slip” and let everyone know this is what’s not working.

Out of the 12 Human Design profiles, you are the foundation. You are here to investigate on one side and experiment on the other to really understand what works and what doesn’t in the world. Society is built on top of your discoveries. And so you play a very important role.

In Leadership

As a leader, you are designed to understand what is working and isn’t working within your team, organization, or community and to find the ways it can work better. You can help create efficiency by pointing out what isn’t working with communication or systems and to create space for your team to come up with ideas to create a stronger foundation. They might not even notice what isn’t working until you tell them.

Childhood and Nervous System Patterns

Because of the natural way that you find what doesn’t work around you, you may have gotten scolded, made fun of, put down, or judged by peers, parents, or teachers for “making mistakes” all the time. Or for being clumsy. And that’s because they didn’t understand you were actually finding mistakes. That you were bumping into life and experimenting to discover what truly works or doesn’t. They didn’t understand your genius. Often, they’re so used to operating in a way that truly doesn’t work well because they’ve adapted to it, that it’s hard for them to see the genius.

A 1/3 child really needs to be encouraged to learn, experiment, and “make mistakes”. So if you as a child, were not and you made a lot of mistakes and were punished for it, you may have learned to become pessimistic, hard on yourself, or self-suppressive. . And these patterns likely are now on autopilot, operating in your nervous system to prevent you from doing what you’re naturally good at – experimenting, discovering, and finding what can be improved – because your nervous system is trying to protect you from the pain it thinks you’ll experience (the pain you experienced as a child).

Rewiring Your Nervous System to Your Genius

So, if that’s you, if you’ve become pessimistic, hard on yourself, or self-suppressive, the first step is to understand why. Because you had to in order to protect yourself from mental and emotional pain. And, from that place, you can start to bring Awareness to the auto-pilot nervous system pattern and begin to shift it through Acceptance. The key for you is to find the joy in experimentation once again. To let yourself laugh at what others perceive as “mistakes”. Because it’s such a gift. Without you in the world, we would be building on faulty foundations and we’d have to start over time and time again.

The more you can step back into this natural genius of yours, the more you’ll have your biggest impact and be in a natural flow that allows abundance to reach you with much more ease.

You help the world make progress. You help the collective make progress. This is really about stepping back into your creativity.

Let It Be Fun and Mischevious

Pay attention if you find yourself always thinking you need to read one more book, take one more course, or learn one more tool before taking action out into the world. Let your body’s wisdom and authority guide you to when to investigate and when to take action. The Inspector does a bit of both and their job will never be done if they’re always reading up on the latest research. They have to act too!

Bring some levity to it again. Let it be fun. Let life be an adventure and experiment that you’re laughing about and learning. And if you’re still surrounded by people who don’t support that and don’t encourage that, it might be time to think about changing your environment. Or if not changing, it might be time to add in a new community or new friends.

And it’s also important to take a look at your internal environment. Notice any ways that you judge yourself. One of the biggest challenges the Inspector can have is always thinking they could have done better. Remember to be gentle with yourself. Practice compassion and breathe into the fear to give yourself some time to be present in the body and out of the head.

Perhaps practice being a little mischievous.

Conclusion

Let yourself start by poking the world a bit, at first only when you’re around people that celebrate and enjoy your mischief. And in the moments when it feels too scary to do that, be gentle because behavior change Is rooted in self-compassion and self gentleness. You have to slow down the firing of that autopilot defense mechanism before you can change it.

I hope this post resonated with you and supported you. If you’re not a 1/3 but have a 1/3 in your life, be gentle with them. They are powerful. They are the Inspector Archetype, coming with their clipboard and finding what doesn’t work so it can work better. So you can get results with more ease. So everyone can.

They understand how things have run up until now and what the best integrity is to move forward. It’s a really, really powerful archetype.