The iNtuitive-Feeling (NF) Empathist — warm, spiritual and communicative.
As an intuitive-feeling leader, you are first, last and in-between a people-person. You are client-centered, end-user centered, and it is important to you that you interpret your work mission as serving some basic human need.
You focus on the possibilities of the people and organizations in your realm of personal influence. You encourage your associates and subordinates to strive for their highest levels of personal achievement. Self-actualization is a goal you recognize both for yourself and others.
As a leader, your style is best characterized as catalytic, and you are never surprised to find yourself slipping into the role of a charismatic guru for your associates and subordinates.
You make an effort to represent yourself, your colleagues and your organization effectively, and you may often find yourself at the forefront, serving as the group leader or spokesperson. Extraverted EMPATHISTs, in particular, function well in such a high-visibility position.
You have the potential to excel in public relations, and your personal warmth and enthusiasm are natural "selling" techniques for any service or product.
Your exceptional communication skills will stand out in any management position. Of all the temperaments, EMPATHISTs seem to be the best creative writers, and they often have excellent skills in public speaking or drama.
You use reinforcement as a powerful tool in dealing with others. You communicate enthusiasm and support as a routine matter in your everyday working interactions. You are such a conscientious appreciator and admirer because you need the same thing back from others: superiors and subordinates alike.
If you work with thinking types, there's no need to tell you that—even at their peak effort to reinforce your accomplishments—they often miss the mark.
They may acknowledge your achievements, your intuition, and your skill, but they don't really know how to acknowledge you as an individual, and that's what pushes your buttons!
Being dealt with personally is essential for you. Lack of appreciation for your unique qualities is discouraging to you, and criticism is difficult for you to take at anything other than a personal level.
You will always need to be on guard for one of the most destructive snares for intuitive-feeling managers: feeling unappreciated, undervalued, and taken for granted. That's how folks like you often "burn out"!
You will need to strive to understand that thinking-type people (of all the other temperament types) simply do not share your intense value system.
To the extent that you can, you'll be smart to develop your skills at self-reinforcement and try to seek out support systems from outside sources (mates and friends), when the appreciation you need isn't forthcoming from your superiors and colleagues at work.
As a general rule, judging-type EMPATHISTs seem to survive more happily and productively in a bureaucratic structure than their perceptive-type counterparts. The judging characteristic imparts a bit more acceptance of structure and hierarchy than other EMPATHISTs can muster.
But even those folks are happiest in small, creative organizations, where individual needs and aspirations receive continuing attention. In a large impersonal outfit, sensitive people like yourself may experience continual distress.
Alas, the ideal may not be a realistic objective for you right now, so let's look at some of the typical problems which confront the EMPATHIST mid-level manager in a typical, large, impersonal organization.
First, the personal approach of the EMPATHIST often translates into playing favorites in the business environment: a characteristic which critics, above or below on the hierarchy, may interpret as unprofessional partiality and irrational management.
Especially if you're a perceptive EMPATHIST (whose favorites may shift up and down and back and forth, from time to time, as your moods and emotional preferences change), your detractors will be quick to label you as fickle, unstable, unpredictable and lacking in fidelity. (Needless to say, you can't survive many appraisals of that sort on your performance reviews if you hope to be a rising star in your organization or career field!)
At heart, you're a giver. For those in your favor, you are the definition of sympathy, self-sacrifice and generosity— so much so that you may compromise the business relationship for the sake of friendship.
Understandably, it's difficult for EMPATHISTs to relate to others merely as roles, job descriptions, or names in boxes on organizational flow charts. To you, people are people, and you tend to relate to others at a personal level.
But, in a bureaucratic organization, that tendency can lead to managerial problems, whether you're dealing "up" or "down" the chain of command.
For example, when you like your boss and your work assignment, you may see the tasks you perform as a personal service or a favor. Dawns the day you're assigned a task you don't want to do, or comes the time when you and your superior have a serious disagreement, you may find it virtually impossible just to follow orders and get the job done.
In the other direction on the hierarchy—when you are wearing the management hat—you may find it distressing to deal with insubordination as anything but a personal affront, insult or rejection.
In the kind of bureaucratic battles that plague most large organizations from time to time, the EMPATHIST's reflexive inclination is to support the underdog: another tendency which can lead to problems for you as a manager.
First of all, your time and energy may be eroded by your kindness, generosity, and compassion. You may find yourself spending large chunks of your working day counseling dissident workers in your office or letting employees cry on your shoulder in the hall.
Then, your idealism may fire you up to go explain or represent minority concerns to the higher-ups, thereby identifying yourself with the institution's critics and opposing the vested interests of owners, directors, and management.
No matter how noble or just the cause, you may draw fire from the organization for such misplaced idealism. Long-lasting credibility problems with superiors may emerge from such well-intentioned confrontations, and their negative reactions are doubly painful to you, since, as an EMPATHIST, you take it all personally.
A final ironic outcome of these battles often occurs: by sympathizing with the insurrection's leaders, you may unwittingly encourage and enlarge the uprising, with the end result of getting people disciplined or dismissed.
This is a typical EMPATHIST tragedy in a bureaucratic organization.
Here's a more common one.
As an EMPATHIST, it's hard to deal with being ignored, disagreed with, or disliked without taking it personally. And as an EMPATHIST who trusts intuition and feeling so totally, you may read personal rejection into interactions when it simply isn't there.
If your superior lacks your sense of tact and sensitivity, you may hear constructive suggestions as attacks, and low-key criticism as hostility.
By the same token, if your subordinates don't think you're wonderful, you may get your feelings hurt. Effective management sometimes demands taking unpopular positions.
Especially if you're working in a typical professional environment, with the majority of managers belonging to the various (insensitive) thinking-types, you may slip into a particularly hazardous form of EMPATHIST self-defense and hypersensitivity, involving: villainizing management, telling tales out of meetings, campaigning for sympathy and support, and criticizing others at a personal level.
Extraverted empathists seem especially prone to slipping into such behavior patterns—ones that are not taken lightly or positively by most organizations.
In meetings, you favor democratic decision-making, and you are comfortable with brainstorming or otherwise unstructured discussions. Especially if you're a perceptive-type EMPATHIST, you may feel suffocated in meetings with a firm agenda, especially if an authoritarian leadership style prevails.
It seems natural to the EMPATHIST to include some personal remarks in meetings: introductions and small talk to warm up the participants. As useful as these efforts may be to the spirit of the meeting and the cohesiveness of the group, you may sometimes draw criticism or dirty looks for getting the discussion off on what thinking-types see as "unrelated issues."
When your natural abilities as a group facilitator are supported, the EMPATHIST is great at monitoring participation, encouraging involvement of all group members, supporting the expression of differences of opinion while down-playing conflict, and protecting vulnerable members from exclusion or hostility.
Extraverted and judging-type EMPATHISTs may become excellent group leaders. Their outgoing nature, natural verbal ability, instinctive comfort with agendas and productive structure, together with their interpersonal skill and sensitivity, help them create person-centered groups that accomplish their intended goals.
In committees, meetings, task forces or other teamwork ventures, EMPATHISTs are better able than other personality types to understand unstated sentiments, nuances of feelings, hidden fears and concerns, and then forecast the human consequences of new schedules, ideas, programs and policies.
As an EMPATHIST, you are sensitive to the importance of the personal element in all aspects of the working environment. Esprit de corps, enthusiasm, sensitivity and cooperation are important factors which you promote and encourage. You recognize the importance of side-stepping conflict, and you communicate the belief that work can, indeed, be a pleasure if human needs receive conscientious attention.
EMPATHISTs typically feel a strong need to have an input into any decision that will affect any aspect of their life and work, and any organization that employs you had better remember to ask your opinion before initiating any rules, regulations or procedures which will require your cooperation.
You're an influential person, and you have the ability to facilitate changes or sabotage them!
You tend to be sociable and well-liked by those who work for and with you—closely attuned to people's feelings in the day-to-day interactions within a hierarchy.
You have a tendency to foster close interpersonal relationships with your staff—a boon to knowing their likes and dislikes, ups and downs, but often a disadvantage when their private lives periodically interfere with your ability to function professionally and dispassionately.
Any work that is boring or hum-drum, and any job that curtails your autonomy, will quickly do you in.
When you're dealing in your favorite world of the possible, tackling a new project, creating a new plan, working on a idea, you're the image of energy and focused concentration. But, when the inevitable routine sets in, or when the only problems remaining are what seems to be an endless progression of small, tedious jobs, you may begin to feel bored, claustrophobic, imposed upon and irritable.
If you can, you may pass the remaining tasks on to someone else. Otherwise, you'll half-heartedly continue, yawn your way through a slack period of abbreviated work days and occasional sick-outs, and—as soon as possible—take off on a new idea—or a new cause—or a new romance.
As a manager, that tendency can lead to real problems: jobs that stay half-finished for longer than you'd like to acknowledge; creative fabrications explaining how correspondence you didn't answer somehow disappeared in the mail; phone calls you don't want to return, and don't; small problems that turn into big ones because of neglectful planning, inattentive supervision, and lackadaisical trouble-shooting.
Perceptive-type EMPATHIST managers often experience these problems in spades!
To be sure, the picture we've just painted is an extreme composite of the intuitive-feeler's darker side. Judging EMPATHISTs rarely become so totally afflicted by the EMPATHIST manager's NF ("never-finished") syndrome. Even perceptive EMPATHIST's may show only one or two of these symptoms. And, in either case, introverted EMPATHISTs are usually steadier workers.
Nonetheless, EMPATHIST managers do have some problems, and can benefit from a careful analysis of their management style.
In a nutshell, EMPATHISTs, like all other personality temperaments, look for their own characteristics in their subordinates. In turn, EMPATHIST managers reflexively give their employees the kind of treatment EMPATHISTs crave themselves. And, therein lie most of the EMPATHIST manager's problems!
EMPATHISTs universally pride themselves on their warmth and interpersonal sensitivity: their reflexive insight into human relations. They like other supportive, appreciative folks around themselves, and they tend to devalue employees who strike them as cold or uncaring.
Frankly, EMPATHISTs tend to regard all of the other personality types as rather insensitive. Give an extraverted and judging EMPATHIST an invitation, and he or she may provide a heartfelt analysis of others' callousness, coldness, or unconscious way of conducting their interpersonal relationships.
As a manager, you may need to monitor this tendency in yourself, if it's ever been a problem for you.
EMPATHIST managers often hire other EMPATHISTs for positions which might better be filled by other types: thinking-types for jobs requiring dispassionate analysis and insightful theorizing about systems, sensing-types for jobs demanding patience and careful attention to detail. The EMPATHIST manager who places EMPATHIST employees in positions like these has two problems: the jobs won't be done well, and the employees won't be happy.
Most EMPATHIST managers love acquiring new knowledge and learning new skills in the area of aesthetics, psychology, philosophy, sensitivity, communication, teamwork, interpersonal relations and self-actualization.
Assuming that everyone shares this EMPATHIST characteristic, the EMPATHIST manager may battle with the organization to reward favored employees with personal growth training experiences.
For EMPATHIST employees, that's great! They'll love it, and they'll return to their tasks with renewed energy and identity with the company and their fellow workers. They may talk about transforming experiences, eye-opening insights, and unconditional love for their fellow man.
But what about the other types?
Unless some kind of theory development or technical skill acquisition are involved, many (NT)ANALYSTs will not be enthused by an "opportunity" to attend a "touchy-feely" seminar or group process. Expect a higher-than-normal level of "illness" or other absenteeism among your ANALYST employees on the day or days the training is to occur.
Don't misunderstand. Arranging effective human factors training for most intuitive-thinkers is extremely important. But the training program should make use of the fact that ANALYSTs prefer to learn by reading, watching films, and listening to lectures.
Any training exercise which obliges them to learn by potentially emotional interactions forces them to deal with one of their weakest psychological functions: feeling. The effect may be to leave them feeling vulnerable, exposed and embarrassed when they return to the work environment.
Sensing-types, especially the thinking varieties, will be hard to convince that the training has anything to offer them.
For most (SP)REALISTs, training or schooling of any kind is fundamentally boring, unless some kind of hands-on, practical skill development is involved. And most (SJ)LEGALISTs may regard unnecessary training of any sort as a nuisance: a frivolous interruption of the comfortable rhythm of work—unsettling, not stimulating.
EMPATHIST managers are born innovators. Moreover, they have a hard time understanding how anyone can tolerate a repetitious job. To see someone do the same job, the same way, year in and year out, drives an EMPATHIST manager around the bend!
EMPATHISTs do not seem to realize that sensing types actually enjoy the predictability of a familiar task and derive peace and comfort from perfecting their skills through practice and repetition. Not surprisingly, then, sensing-type employees may not respond with great warmth to an EMPATHIST manager's continual "improvements" of their procedures, schedules, assignments and such.
This is only one of the many ways in which the EMPATHIST manager displays the darker stripes of the intuitive: intolerant and unappreciative of the preferences of sensing employees. In one form or another, this particular blind spot may be the EMPATHIST manager's most serious problem in most work situations.
Unless the EMPATHIST manager can learn to recognize sensing-type people, value them as they are, and match them to sensing-type jobs, work operations requiring steadiness, reliability, craftsmanship and precision may suffer—along with the manager's reputation and the productivity of his or her operation.
EMPATHIST managers are self-starters who dislike intensely being told how and when to do anything. They want to set their own schedules and do things their own way, figuring everything out as they go along. They may feel insulted and become impatient if given what they regard as too many rules and too much guidance and direction.
If you're like most EMPATHISTs, especially perceptive-type-ones, authoritarian power structures tend to threaten your potent need for self-determination. Even the intimation of structure may be a bit unnerving to your individualism.
Consequently, EMPATHIST managers are most comfortable with their own behavior when they give their employees free reign. This "no rules-no regs" life is, in fact, a real gift to like-minded intuitives, but, again, the EMPATHIST manager's natural inclination fails to meet the needs of most sensing-type workers.
(SJ)LEGALISTs, particularly, may feel uncomfortable with an absence of guidelines, timetables and rules—both for themselves and for others. And—more often than not—any judging-type employee, especially an (SJ)LEGALIST, will regard the EMPATHIST's laissez-faire management attitude to be a sign of disorganization, lack of drive, soft-headed weakness, irresponsibility and incompetence.
The intuitive-feeling employee needs to be appreciated as a unique member of the work team: a flesh-and-blood, sensitive person whose contribution and cooperation are valued at an intensely personal level. It follows that this type is most easily frustrated and irritated by being treated merely as a Social Security number, a job description, or a nameless, faceless member of a particular department or task force.
Consequently, any wise manager makes it a point to know the familiar names of (NF)EMPATHIST employees—their spouses' and children's too, if possible and practical. That's the kind of name-dropping that really impresses the EMPATHIST!
Intuitive-feeling types express themselves emotionally by their clothing. Even when constrained by a modest budget, EMPATHISTs like to dress in their own unique style, often showing a flair for unusual colors, patterns, or color combinations.
In certain tradition-oriented work situations, the EMPATHIST's sometimes-avant-garde garb may arouse comment and concern. If changes must be suggested, please remember to wear kid gloves!
Make it a point to compliment outfits which come closest to the needs of the work place or the task. EMPATHISTs are sensitive to such differential praise, and, given a few well-placed hints, you'll probably find that the subtle message hits its mark!
In all situations, bear in mind that intuitive-feeling types love praise and approval. They'll work to earn your favor. An intelligent manager makes use of this characteristic and always minimizes overt criticism of the EMPATHIST employee. Even when the critical comments are prefaced by the request that the employee not "take it personally," understand that the EMPATHIST will, anyway!
The EMPATHIST employee is most likely to annoy others at work by a particularly personal kind of fickleness: deciding work-related issues on an emotional basis—when they might be dealt with more effectively and acceptably at a logical level—and then changing sides or positions with what others may interpret to be whim, the wind or the weather!
Values and feelings rule the EMPATHIST's judgment. Make a note.
The breadth and depth of an EMPATHIST's feelings are awesome to other types. Accept the fact that the EMPATHIST's personal self and work self are one. For better or worse, this type reflexively relates to people personally, evaluates a myriad of aspects of others, and draws a complex assessment which encompasses the concepts bad, devious, dishonest and untrustworthy.
Don't expect those negative feelings to be set aside for the sake of work. It won't happen. Assign EMPATHIST employees to work with those they like, whenever practical. Harmony at work leads to productivity, whenever EMPATHISTs are concerned.
The EMPATHIST's personal radar can be used to good advantage by a sensitive manager. Ask your EMPATHIST how the working situation might be improved to increase the general level of happiness and satisfaction. The EMPATHIST probably will have a suggestion.
Consult with your EMPATHIST employees when you want to improve communication or develop consumer- or client-centered policies or products. Those problems are natural tasks for the intuitive-feeling type.
Ask the EMPATHIST to help you out when you need to understand the basis of office discontent, alliances and feuds. The EMPATHIST knows!
But, keep reminding yourself that the EMPATHIST's opinions are not necessarily logical or objective, and that the cast of characters in the office may appear to be dressed in a rainbow of colors, rather than in black and white, when seen through the EMPATHIST's eyes!
As much as the intuitive-feeling types may value harmony, nonetheless, they often are found at the root of conflict in the work-place.
Championing today's underdog, siding against today's meanie, fighting for the needs and concerns of others and themselves, those anti-authoritarian EMPATHISTs are persuasive folks—often discontent and unintentionally divisive. Without sensitive management, influential EMPATHISTs—especially the extraverts—may place themselves at the forefront of every employee rebellion.
When a management change is considered—and the change will affect EMPATHISTs at any level of the hierarchy—a wise manager involves these key employees from the earliest stage of the planning.
The old management dictum of "make no fast or unnecessary changes!" applies doubly when dealing with intuitive-feeling types. Unless your EMPATHISTs feel a part of the decision-making, they may perceive changes as done to them, rather than for or concerning them.
In all matters, EMPATHISTs have a strong need to feel autonomous. At the very least, intuitive-feeling types must see themselves as active participants in the architecture of their lives and work. They bridle at authority and heavy-handed guidance. Management by sensitive and conscientious leadership, not fiat, is the order of the day when EMPATHISTs are involved.
What about the interpersonal chemistry? If an EMPATHIST is obliged to deal with any sensing-type, you may hear some criticism that the sensor has absolutely no imagination or insight! In dealing with sensing-thinking sorts, especially, the EMPATHIST may be totally baffled.
Both thinking (SP)REALISTs and (SJ)LEGALISTs may accuse EMPATHISTs of having no sense of humor, since the sensors' concept of a joke may take the form of ridicule or biting, personal sarcasm.
Thinking-type (SP)REALISTs may appear to most EMPATHISTs as impulsive and cavalier with change, insensitive to the personal consequences of work decisions, and basically selfish.
Thinking-type (SJ)LEGALISTs will strike many EMPATHISTs as obsessive-compulsive, rigid, rule-oriented, tradition-bound: organization people at heart. Needless to say, coming from an EMPATHIST, that's not a compliment!
In moments of hurt feelings, confusion and misunderstanding, a wounded EMPATHIST may characterize the thinking-type (SJ)LEGALIST as nearly heartless and clearly lacking a sense of fun or personal warmth—"approximately dead", as one extraverted, perceptive EMPATHIST described her introverted and thinking (SJ)LEGALIST boss.
The word boss encourages another comment. The thinking-type (SJ)LEGALIST's natural tendency to parent, advise, criticize and direct will not find a happy reception with the sensitive, autonomy-seeking EMPATHIST!
All these comments aside, every EMPATHIST needs a sensor, whether as a boss, a subordinate or a colleague with a coordinated job assignment.
In fact, if both parties can be educated to understand the sources of their inevitable interpersonal conflict, and if both are willing to work on the relationship, the alliance of an EMPATHIST and an thinking-type (SJ)LEGALIST is difficult to beat for effective and sensitive management.
But the relationship will require work and commitment on both sides, and the alliance may benefit by engaging a third party, trusted by both, to act as a consultant and mediator, from time to time.
Both EMPATHISTs and (NT)ANALYSTs regard creativity as their personal hallmark. Especially if both are extraverted and perceptive, these types may resemble each other superficially by showing a similarly intuitive and enthusiastic spirit, by bucking the system, and by living in a world of ideas.
Then, too, the fact that intuitives are so dramatically outnumbered by sensors in the overall population prepares them to recognize their like features and greet each other as long-lost kin.
In a sense, this resemblance is unfortunate, for the facade of similarity between (NT)ANALYSTs and perceptive EMPATHISTs is an illusion. In a close working situation, that veneer quickly is eroded by the reality of their different interactional styles.
The EMPATHIST often will be hurt and confused by the (NT) ANALYST counterpart's lack of personal sensitivity and warmth—or by an inconsistency in both. (The (NT) ANALYST may well be oblivious to the EMPATHIST's concern, until an emotional confrontation occurs!)
The ANALYST's fundamental preoccupation with ideas, processes, theoretical systems and abstract concepts unrelated to people confuses the EMPATHIST, who comes to face the unpleasant fact that the ANALYST may actually be like one of them (other thinker-types).
The problem goes both ways, of course.
The (NT)ANALYST may pass over the first signs that the EMPATHIST is different. But, eventually, the thinker may unabashedly accuse the feeler of logical lapses or not thinking clearly. In time, the (NT)ANALYST may express discomfort in collaborating with the EMPATHIST and may question the feeler's intelligence.
Dispelling the effects of dashed expectations in interpersonal relationships at work often is difficult, awkward and uncomfortable. Insight-oriented management programs may be very helpful in ameliorating such problems, as may a session or two of private counseling.
But, bear in mind as a manager that a feeling of mutual betrayal may remain. Even after both types have come to recognize the nature of their different stripes, the history of conflict and rejection may poison the interaction.
So, how do you put the natural personality of an EMPATHIST to work?
First, remember that EMPATHISTs focus on the possibilities, the broad-brush reality of any situation. Perceptive-type EMPATHISTs, in particular, do not do well in any job which requires them to pay precise attention to facts, figures, and details.
Placed in such a position, the typical EMPATHIST will "escape" by excessive socializing. Extraverted EMPATHISTs may manufacture excuses for meetings, work-related conversation and telephoning, and even personal chatter and gossip, as a panacea for boring work.
EMPATHISTs start projects well, but finish them poorly. This is particularly true of perceptive-types.
Let your EMPATHISTs plan, conceptualize, create, and design. Let them organize others to get the job done, but don't expect these folks to follow up on the hum-drum routine and fine-tuning that may stretch on for weeks or months in a big project. Give key EMPATHISTs a sensing-type assistant or colleague.
If a job requires predictability, punctuality and a steady pace of progress, don't assign it to an EMPATHIST (or to an NT, for that matter)! That intuitive energy can't be metered or regulated. It bursts and surges and gushes. Then it trickles, flickers and fades.
Don't worry: it'll return as soon as the system's recharged, refilled and restored. And that process can be speeded along by a manager who understands that intuitives run hot and cold, just as matter of style.
When you recognize burn-out in your EMPATHIST employee, you may suggest that a Friday or Monday vacation day be taken. Let the employee know you understand that the intuitive cycle requires R & R. And, if a three-day weekend can't be scheduled, shift your fizzled intuitive onto a new project and watch that energy return!
Let your EMPATHIST employees' natural orientation toward people-problems and human concerns find expression. Let EMPATHISTs participate in personnel policy-making and hiring decisions.
Let EMPATHISTs perform informal counseling and advisement functions to and for management. Let them be conduits of employee sentiments, attitudes and opinions.
By all means, utilize the EMPATHIST's flair for writing, speech, drama and communication in the employee newsletter or house publication. Assign EMPATHISTs to initiate employee parties and gatherings.
Let EMPATHISTs express their aesthetic sensibilities when designing or redecorating work, eating or recreation spaces in the office environment. Feeling-type REALISTs and LEGALISTs may also lend a helping hand, with good results.
Listen to your EMPATHISTs' counsel in designing new marketing or advertising campaigns. Trust their assessments of the tastes and wishes of the consumers or clients.
Assign at least one EMPATHIST to every committee to foster harmony and to ensure attention to each group member's inputs and ideas. EMPATHISTs make excellent committee participants, since cooperation is their natural tendency.
Given a relatively unstructured, or democratically structured, committee, EMPATHISTs excel at brain-storming or otherwise sharing ideas. But, please, make sure you allow time and flexibility for EMPATHISTs to stray off the subject and onto unrelated personal matters. That's inevitable, when EMPATHISTs are around!
Don't demand logical, linear thinking from EMPATHISTs. Accept the fact that a graphic depiction of an EMPATHIST's decision tree resembles a bushy shrub, blooming with people-concerns, and that the EMPATHIST's thought process may hop from branch to branch in ways which baffle most thinker-types. Even the most organized judging EMPATHISTs live in a world nearly beyond the imagination of all the other types.
From her Connections series. Read her introduction first if you want the frame.
Relationships are the central concern for the existence of the intuitive feeling (EMPATHIST) temperament. Values are what matter in life.
As an EMPATHIST you strive for a special union, a mystical connection, a knowledge of the other that is so profound that words aren't needed for communication. The EMPATHIST wants to experience a deep relationship with one special partner: growing, learning, understanding, maturing, as a continuous process throughout life.
Coming to know oneself, coming to understand one's needs, one's fears, one's strengths, one's intuition, one's sensitivity: that is the mission of the EMPATHIST.
The EMPATHIST spares no time, energy or commitment in relationships. The EMPATHIST will compromise all other parts of life for the sake of caring, for the sake of satisfying the life-mission.
The EMPATHIST hopes to find a partner to share life's journey. The EMPATHIST seeks a fellow pilgrim open enough and flexible enough to encounter self and mate without pretense or facade, to embrace the unfolding process without reservation, to love unconditionally, to accept another totally and to be accepted in return.
The EMPATHIST generally sees this lifetime as an interlude, a preface to some more cosmic form of existence and being.
Joan of Arc was an EMPATHIST. They thought she was crazy and they burned her at the stake. EMPATHISTs: take this as a serious harbinger of the fate that befalls you idealistic souls who search for a flawless relationship, especially with any of the other temperaments!
The EMPATHIST is romance personified. The phrase "falling in love" was certainly coined to describe this type. Love may come with a glance, a single word.
The object of an EMPATHIST's affection will be called "dear" and "honey" and original pet names. "I love you" will punctuate each phone conversation and note. The EMPATHIST wants to spend every moment with the loved one—or at least a lot of time. Taking care of the mate is a reflexive activity for EMPATHISTs, and gift giving is a natural part of any EMPATHIST love relationship.
The EMPATHIST is usually more interested in romantic possibilities than in the day-to-day reality of relationships. Thus, when disillusionment strikes, when the relationship degenerates to hum-drum predictability and staleness, the EMPATHIST may immediately begin eying the greener grass on the other side of the fence. Then the honeymoon is usually over for good!
The EMPATHIST can use that characteristic sensitivity to tune in to every ripple of mood and sentiment in a mate. Or the EMPATHIST can become destructively hypersensitive and suspicious. In the course of any relationship, both modes usually occur.
For the EMPATHIST, sex is fraught with meaning. The EMPATHIST overwhelmed by love aches for union. The EMPATHIST, angry about some routine matter, can't think about sex. Everything must be right, the mood, the setting, the person. Sex may always be an on-again, off-again thing for EMPATHISTs in the usual up and down love relationship.
The EMPATHIST's conflicts with all the other types will revolve around definitions of the words relationship and love. The EMPATHIST's meaning for these terms is central to the EMPATHIST identity. The EMPATHIST's frustration and pain over missed communications and hurt feelings are totally incomprehensible to all the other types.
A chronically broken heart is a way of life for many searching, seeking EMPATHISTs.
Stolen glances, romantic meetings, exotic flirtations, painful infatuation, smoldering passion, shivering sighs and shuddering palpitations, willing self-disclosure, tearful pledges of commitment, intense intimacy, and almost mystical fireworks are the way EMPATHIST-EMPATHIST love relationships begin.
Disillusionment, hypersensitivity, hurt feelings, tears, a cosmic sense of abandonment, and a broken-hearted depression which can be alleviated only by a new romance: that's how EMPATHIST-EMPATHIST love relationships end.
To EMPATHISTs, love is such a roller coaster that other types must wonder if the "goin' up is worth the comin' down," but that's the way passion operates among these temperamental types. These are the relationships that F. Scott Fitzgerald heralded.
When EMPATHISTs mate, their shared idealism is usually involved: a common quest, a spiritual commitment, a philosophical common-ground.
Relationship, per se, usually is a conscious focus of life, as is the exploration, expression and perfection of self. Combining those two objectives often presses EMPATHIST mates toward a continual redefinition and reworking of the relationship: a process of evolution and growth.
With such change comes a sense of excitement, aliveness, newness; with it, also, comes some degree of turmoil and discomfort.
Growth is the goal, the process, the pitfall and the glory of EMPATHIST-EMPATHIST matings.
When two EMPATHISTS are in a situation which allows them to share their intuition and feeling, they are happiest. That's when the relationship usually works best: sharing a spiritual experience, critiquing a play.
Unfortunately, most real-world relationships involve a certain amount of "taking care of business": attending to the sensing and thinking demands of society (working for a living, washing dishes, doing laundry, taking out trash, paying bills, keeping the car running and the house repaired, going to the grocery, the cleaners, the PTA, and such). So, in a typical pair-bonding situation, EMPATHIST couples need to volunteer for, delegate, or otherwise cover the reality chores of living together. And that's not usually an easily hurdled obstacle.
One of the first major adjustments that occurs in most EMPATHIST pairings is that one (or both) of them appears to change type. The one who's less gung-ho as an intuitive may be transformed into an (SP)REALIST or an (SJ)LEGALIST. The one whose preference for feeling is less strong may take on the robes of the "thinker." Pretty soon, you might be hard-pressed to recognize them as EMPATHISTS.
Then, you can bet, one or both feels compromised, dishonest with the inner self, and resentful of the other and of the relationship. "The grass is always greener" phenomenon may strike particularly hard when two EMPATHISTS try to carry on a long-term relationship.
Ah, but in its moments of glory, the EMPATHIST couple is the stuff of which sonnets are written! Since communication skills are peak for this temperament, speech and writing about love's ups and downs are likely to be part of the relationship: poems, notes, letters, and heartfelt telephone conversations may punctuate the days and nights.
Communication, in a general sense, is of interest to the EMPATHIST couple. Critiquing plays, stories and novels is an accepted dinner-time conversation, and the fine-honing of personal philosophy is usually somewhere at the heart of these sharing experiences. Do EMPATHISTS talk (and talk) about their relationship? Do they breathe?
Two EMPATHISTS together may become "self-actualization" junkies: following one personal development or spiritual training experience after another, sharing meaningful books and films, following after one or another guru. When there's no money in the budget for frills, there may still be funds for group therapy or private counseling sessions. The quest for self and identity is unceasing for many, if not most, EMPATHIST types, especially when they can feed off each other's energy and commitment.
In a connected relationship, EMPATHISTs tend to ponder the meaning and significance of every gesture, posture, glance, expression, word and silence. EMPATHISTs, in their own unique way, probably "work" at love more than any other type, and—when carried to extreme—the continual analysis of what everything means can be exhausting, even to another EMPATHIST! It may be very difficult for two EMPATHISTs to "lighten up" when it comes to just enjoying a relationship.
In their most intense state of connection, the EMPATHIST pair is almost psychic: anticipating each other's mood swings, wants, needs, fears, dreams, thoughts and aspirations, without ever speaking.
As one EMPATHIST woman put it: "We have our hard times, sure, but we have times together when we breathe in rhythm; I feel his thoughts. I hurt with him. I sense his joy. And he's capable of feeling me the same way. We can tell each other our deepest thoughts. I wouldn't trade that kind of connection for anything!"
But, when the magic needs a tune-up, the dark side of that EMPATHIST sensitivity may rear its head. Suspicion, paranoia, hypersensitivity, and other products of runaway imagination may pollute every interaction, color every communication.
"Somehow, she got the impression that I was having an affair. I wasn't. I told her I wasn't. Then she got angry because she could accept the fact that there was another person, but not the fact that I was lying. Except there wasn't another person, and I wasn't lying.
"For one crazy minute, I thought it might be easier to lie, tell her I was having an affair—that she was right—and make her feel better. But I didn't, because I don't like to lie to her!
"Now she says she thinks she knows who the person is—a good friend of ours—and she's going to confront her. But I'm not having an affair! Now what do I do? When she confronts our friend and she denies it, she'll just assume that it's another lie! I can't win!"
The innocent NF man returned home to find that his NF spouse had chopped off all her raven-black hair in revenge. For nothing.
These are some of the troublesome typical pitfalls of the EMPATHIST-EMPATHIST pairing, but we've only been looking at the aspects that are generated by the "temperamental cornerstone" of iNtuition and Feeling. Those are important characteristics, but not the only ones.
First of all, the partner whose preference for intuition is stronger may see the other as a sensor! And the partner who's most comfortable with "pure" feeling may regard the other as a hard-hearted thinking type.
In other words, EMPATHIST couples who differ markedly in the strength of their preferences for feeling and intuition may actually regard each other as "foreign" types!
Other important conflicts and misunderstandings may revolve around the dimensions of judging-perception and introversion-extraversion.
For example, an EMPATHIST who prefers judging may consider a perceptive-type partner to be unclear on personal values or inadequately committed to the relationship or to other "causes." The perceptive, in turn, may call the judge narrow-minded and rigid, both in terms of defining the relationship and pursuing personal goals. In either case, they may minimize their areas of compatibility and focus instead on their differences.
By the same token, introverted EMPATHISTS may find their need for peace, privacy, and personal territory continually violated by extraverted EMPATHISTS, whose requests for socializing, contact, conversation, compliments and other strokes and feedback are frustrated by introverted partners.
Neither may recognize the other as a kindred soul because their needs for interaction are so different.
The significance of differences along the introversion-extraversion dimension cannot be overstated. Even though they're both of the EMPATHIST temperament, an ENFP and an INFP represent vastly different personality styles in a close relationship. And an ENFJ and an INFJ may have to work very hard at understanding each other's needs—even though they have three out of four of the personality factors in common.