ENFP

You Are an Extraverted Intuitive

Invention, innovation, instigation, imagination, individualism, initiative, ingenuity, inspiration, insight and intellect. Who could be the subject but someone like you?

You live continually in the realm of the possible, and when you're absorbed in your latest project you can think of little else. Your energy level is sometimes exhausting to behold. You are virtually tireless in the pursuit of your latest goal—as long as your interest in the project holds, anyway.

You are an enthusiastic explorer of a world where the horizon is the only focus of interest. In your search for new experiences, new ideas, and new projects, you discover over and over again that your goal loses its attractiveness just as soon as it falls within your grasp—or as soon as its pursuit degenerates to hum-drum routine.

When the end's in sight, and your interest wanes, it's a real struggle for you to muster enough self-discipline to see the task through to its completion. You're a great starter, but you have a hard time finishing!

More than once, you've reached that point of lost love for a project and have artfully handed it to a colleague or associate to be completed. You rarely are at a loss for devoted followers. That commitment and self-confidence you radiate is infectious, and you have the ability to be a guru for many others who lack your talent and perseverance and personal drive. Your combination of extraversion, intuition and perception arms you well to be a leader. You have a natural ability to understand others, to figure out what motivates them, and to appreciate their unique qualities without judging or criticizing. That kind of open acceptance is seductive, and it wins you many friends.

You tackle an amazing variety of problems with ease, and the diversity of your interests is mirrored by the diversity of your friends. You are a collector of people.

You may be accused of shallowness in your relationships, from time to time. On the one hand, you meet people quite easily, and you are much more selfdisclosing than most at the early stage of a relationship. On the other hand, you know people almost instantly as deeply as you'll ever know them.

You do not mean to be fickle, but you have a tendency to move from one person to another, or from one group to another, with the same ease that moves you from one grand cause to the next. You tire of people as easily as you tire of projects.

Diversity is the universal key to happiness in your life. Unless you make a concerted effort to develop your less-favored psychological processes: insight that comes with the reflection of the introvert, the attention to detail of the sensing type, and the ability to make decisions and complete unpleasant tasks that characterizes the judging personality, you may find yourself frittering away your brilliance and impulsive energy on poorly thought-out projects or ones which never manage to reach successful completion.

Your Auxiliary Process

You are a perceptive person, with intuition as your dominant personality process. Your sense of judgment is guided by feeling, sentiment. That represents your non-dominant or auxiliary process. Feeling dominates your inner world of thoughts and ideas, and it interacts with your extraverted side to give you the unique temperament you show. You are actively sensitive to others, and you easily accommodate the satisfaction of others' needs into the accomplishment of your goals.

Of all the sixteen personality types, yours is the most enthusiastic and infectious! Your relationships with others, the admiration you receive from your daily interactions with them, fire you to the highest level of your personal achievement.

When intuition and feeling combine, the result is a temperament we call the EMPATHIST: the very cornerstone of your personality.

Intuition plus feeling fires the idealist, the truth-seeker. You focus much of your energy on the knowledge and perfection of self—to identify your goals, to build meaningful relationships, to be an authentic person, to be in touch with yourself and, therefore, to be capable of really touching others.

It is important to the EMPATHIST not merely to be accepted by others, but to be accepted as your true self—without facade or pretense. You may be come highly self-critical for failing to achieve the personal authenticity you strive for. And then you may get down on yourself for being egocentric and self-conscious!

Give yourself a break! You are among the most sensitive and responsive of personalities. You provide a rare gift of insight, understanding, appreciation and support to all your friends. Take the time to bask in the glow of your own amazing qualities!

In general, relationships and communication form a central focus in your life. You are sensitive and optimistic when you enter a new relationship. Believing that intimate, significant contact between people is attainable, you reach out actively, invest a great amount of time and concern in others, and you often become disappointed when they do not respond with an equal measure of caring and enthusiasm. When you are struck by the frustration of personal relationships, you may become hurt and disillusioned.

The most persuasive writers are intuitive-feeling sorts, and when those inclinations are found in an extraverted perceptive, all the makings of effective leadership are present. The combination of feeling and perception puts you in touch with others' needs, helps you to be truly open and accepting with others—a good listener, a great appreciator. Intuition helps you abstract and conceptualize the climate of thought and express it effectively. Extraversion makes it natural for you to reach out, talk, persuade, sell, make the human connection.

For people like yourself, life is a never-ending drama. What less creative souls may see as mundane occurrences often strike you as meaningful, significant. You tap sources of stimulation and insight from all around, just in the course of your day-to-day living.

You are capable of keeping life new and fresh, and your infectious enthusiasm communicates your sense of the possible to those lucky enough to work at your side—or in your shadow.

You have the feeling, often, of being on the brink of a great discovery about people, life. Your intuition gathers together information from the real world and mixes it with your imagination to synthesize a unique view of reality. Sometimes you can communicate your vision so well that less creative souls can share it, too, and that is a rare gift—whatever your professional calling.

The intuitive-feeling person reflexively draws knowledge from sources which the various sensing and thinking types cannot recognize, understand or accept as valid. Any time you find yourself trying to deal creatively, or even cooperatively, with these foreign personality types, you can expect there to be serious difficulties with communication.

From their perspective, you deal with almost metaphysical sources of information. You just know things, and that drives them around the bend and up the wall. You intuit good and evil, and you trust that intuition about "unknowables." You can predict the outcomes of interactions on the basis of hunches.

Maybe more importantly, you know from experience that your hunches often are correct, and you're willing to rely on them—whereas other personality types, solidly and stolidly grounded in a less imaginative, more here-andnow version of reality, aren't willing to trust their own best instincts, much less yours! Surprisingly, you can often bring these people around to your point of view, if you're willing to marshal all that intuitive insight to understanding how constricted their visual field is, in comparison with the panorama you perceive. Pitch them on your ideas at their level of facts, data, dollars-and-cents, logic, practicality and pay-off, and you may succeed.

You have an enormous impact on other people. You know it, and you enjoy the effect you have on others' lives. You have the ability to enlist the support of less creative types because you are such an outgoing, effective, and insightful "people-person."

You are the consummate communicator. You write well, and—as an extravert—you may find that you talk even better! But, beyond your written and spoken verbal skills, your greatest triumphs of persuasion may be scored at the level of non-verbal communication.

You radiate intensity and focused attention. It shows through your effective use of facial expression, directed gaze, and body language. You are attractive—magnetic—in the most literal sense. People can feel the conscious and unconscious energy you exert to "be there" emotionally when you are interacting. It's both seductive and influential.

You'll have to remember, always, to be on guard for misinterpretation by others of your outgoing interpersonal energy. Empathy, sensuality, and sexuality use similar cues, and since 95% of the population has a different personality style than yours, you need to recognize that other well-meaning people can become confused by your earnest style of interaction.

When you turn your combination of intuition and feeling to the negative side of observation: being hypersensitive, hypercritical, and hyper-alert in looking for problems, threats, and conflicts, you may imagine slights, insults and injuries, and you can get yourself into a lot of trouble.

Especially if you are already predisposed to see a problem with another person, you may tend to perceive only what you already believe and disbelieve contradictory information. It's hard for your established belief systems to be shaken, because you accept as certainty so many unverifiable sources of information (the same trait that underlies your creative genius!).From time to time, your perceptions—your account of what happened, when, and where—may be quite accurate, but the conclusions you draw may be off-base. Then, ironically, when you most need that perceptive openness to help you amend and revise your vision in the direction of objective reality, it may abandon you! You may find yourself to be prone to a unique sort of brooding suspiciousness when it comes to deeply held beliefs about people (the good-evil reality, again).

If this is a problem for you, write a note to yourself and put it in a desk drawer for future reference: "When it comes to issues in which I have a large emotional investment, I tend to emphasize the data that confirm my prejudices and discredit information opposing my concepts. That pattern can blind me to the faults of friends and of friends' pet ideas, as much as to the good side and good work of those I see as enemies."

You may have already dealt effectively with this snag in your life, or it may not have been a particular difficulty for you, but many with your personality often find themselves on the horns of a chronic sensing-thinking deficit. There's certainly no shame in it. It's merely the back-side of that intuitivefeeling strength that makes you so insightful and effective under different circumstances.

Conformity isn't your long suit. Neither is obedience. And it's pretty hard to awe you with sterile rank and titles. You're your own person. You're an optimistic, independent soul, and you believe in yourself when no one else does.

You're used to having your unusual perspective of reality ignored, criticized or misunderstood by the bulk of humanity, so you probably have learned to stay away from the bulk of humanity. The bulk of humanity rains on the parades of folks like yourself, and you can do without their wet blankets.

It's understandable for people like you to surround themselves with like minds and to learn to ignore criticism. If you listened to everything people said, you'd never get any of your great ideas off the drawing board. The trick is to balance that necessary independence with a reality-testing mechanism. As a general rule, you may find it helpful to keep around some folks who complement your personality: some judging, thinking, sensing aides to give you the benefit of another viewpoint from time to time.

In a loving relationship, your personality is sensitive, outgoing, sympathetic, and creative, but you may be a bit unpredictable, both as a mate and as a parent. Mood swings are a natural companion of your creativity, and they will affect your intimate life now and then—maybe all the time.

Harmony matters to you in your home, and it causes you concern when you are at the root of conflict. You will be wise to deal openly with your loved ones about your temperamental nature. Together, you may be able to devise some effective and creative tactics to advise those around you about your changing emotional state.

How about a half-comic barometer with a movable indicator needle you set when you arrive home? Consider a range from: "I've had an awful day and I need a hour of peace and quiet," to "All's quiet on the western front. I'm lovable." Learn to ask for what you need emotionally from other family members to help you navigate through your ups and downs with as smooth sailing as possible.

You aren't terribly conscious of economy, thrift, and conservative financial planning—except occasionally, when you initiate one of your campaigns. Then you may get very frugal for a while. Next, you may turn around and buy something extravagant—usually something you conceive of as a gift for your mate or children.

Life with you can be a roller-coaster at times, especially if your mate is trying to exercise some kind of unwanted control over your behavior. Then, look out! You really like feeling in charge of yourself, your life, and your home. It's not that you really want to dominate others, but you seek selfdetermination aggressively. Anyone who expects to control you better be a diplomat or make it a practice to wear kid gloves.

The Extraverted Intuitive in the World of Work

In the world of work you'll find that your extraversion will arm you well to deal with both variety and action.

All other things being equal, you'll tend to work faster than your introverted co-workers. Depending on the job circumstances, that's a mixed blessing. In tasks that require quick decisions and quick action, you're supreme, but you must constantly be on guard not to act too quickly, particularly without thinking things through completely before you move.

If the nature of the work itself is slow, or if it involves long-term projects, you may need to devise a few tricks to ward off boredom; otherwise, your efficiency may suffer.

You are interested in the results of your job, in getting it finished, and in comparing how other people tackle the same chore. While few people enjoy being a "small cog in the great wheel," passively performing some minor function that is swallowed up by a large complex operation, your personality type is especially distressed by losing touch with the over-all impact of your work.

Your outgoing personality prefers working with human companionship, so you may wish to think long and hard before accepting a job or work assignment which forces you to work in isolation.

Communication comes more easily to you than to your introverted associates. You're comfortable with words, and you communicate well. You may wish to consider ways to capitalize on this asset to further your career.

You are an intuitive person, always scanning the horizon for the possibilities in any situation, rather than keeping your eyes on the road ahead. This characteristic arms you well to be a discoverer, a visionary. Your interest is in new ideas, new theories, and you muster a great deal of patience and energy when it comes to tackling new problems in life.

But, watch out when life forces you to work at a job that makes no demand on your intuition! Worse yet is one which forces you to make use of your relatively undeveloped sensing side—making observations, keeping track of facts and figures! You'll do better to target yourself toward work that involves the big picture, not details, on bold concepts, not precise facts. You'll be wise always to surround yourself with a couple of practical sorts: people who look at things with their sensory capacity. While you may find this difficult—since intuitive people usually prefer the company of other like-minded souls—you will probably find their counsel valuable.

An intuitive person with a sensory-type sidekick may achieve more than the intuitive alone, since facts and details will not be overlooked along the way.

Intuitive workers, such as yourself, are in their glory when the work is challenging and novel. When you're inspired, you fire up your furnaces and work with a level of energy and exuberance that staggers the imagination of your sensing-type co-workers. A new task at hand? A new technique or skill to master? No problem for you. You will find the time to tackle the most difficult problem and unravel the most complicated situation.

Then things settle down. You stifle a yawn, while your frazzled co-workers sigh with relief. While you yearn for the next crisis, they make no effort to disguise their earnest hope that routine (blessed routine) is re- established as soon as possible.

Then, one morning, sure as death, you wake up, staring blankly at the ceiling, and you know you've been stricken, once again, by the insidious dark side of the intuitive enthusiasm: boredom.

You try to fight it, and you deny it to your friends and enemies alike, but the fact is: you know you don't want to go to work. Your energy's gone, your spirit's flat, and, once again, you realize you've fallen into one of your slack periods.

That's part of your style, and you may as well accept it without embarrassment. You run hot and cold, up and down, just as a matter of personality. If you accept it, acknowledge it, with the same pride you hang on your problem-solving, high-energy characteristics, you may learn to temper those down-swings and pull out of them with a bit more style, grace, and professionalism.

And if you can't modify your behavior, once you understand it as the natural "flip-side" of the part of you you love best, then maybe you can find an employer who understands your cyclic nature, and enough stable, well-grounded co-workers to cover those other segments of your personality that haunt you in the work place.

You know the parts I mean: your tendency to hop from humch to hunch, your habit of not paying enough attention to precision, or your inclination to worry too little about completing projects or checking your work to be free from errors of fact.

If and when you find that job, or that employer, or those co-workers, you'll be valued for the glittering bundle of intuition you provide as a spark to the humdrum of everyday work life. Otherwise, you may be regarded as a flighty nuisance: a judgment which shouldn't get you depressed, now that you know its origin.

You know, just because you're enlightened enough to appreciate both the "bright" and "dark " sides of your personality, that doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of the world will share your open acceptance. There will be times when you will have to face rejection, even open hostility, in order to remain your own best friend.

The perceptive in you likes diversity in work, has no trouble shifting gears from one assignment to another, one technique to the next, just so long as the work doesn't require a lot of decision-making.

Your perceptive side is open: patient to changing situations, patient when a task requires repeated revisions. On the other hand, your perceptive side has a tendency to start too many changes without being asked, revising when it isn't necessary. Many of these self-started activities may wind up in a desk drawer, first postponed, then forgotten. Much of what you start may never reach completion.

Your perceptive quality ensures that you have the ability to be curious, open, willing to hear all sides of an issue before deciding on a course of action. Of course, you may find that you tend to keep topics open excessively long; coming to a decision is almost painful to you. You're a master of the delicate art of postponement.

As a perceptive, you may lack patience with judging sorts when they jump to conclusions, point an accusing finger at your indecisive nature (which you generally deny or explain away!), and suggest that you're basically gullible to everyone's inputs, long after an issue should have been closed and settled.

Try to calm down when you hear those comments; try to weed out the judgmental indignation and see if your occasional critics might not have something worth considering. After all, you know that there are both positive and negative aspects correlated with every personality feature, and you are no exception. Let that perceptive openness lead you to personal revision when it's in your own best interests.

You value sentiment over logic, in the work place, as in all other aspects of your life.

You are very sensitive to other people's feelings and needs. You praise others' accomplishments, lend a sympathetic ear to their problems, and you try to avoid being the bearer of bad news or criticism.

Your feeling side can make it difficult to be a supervisor. You care too much about being well liked and respected to be objective and impersonal in appraising others' performance on the job. Reprimanding an employee you like is painful, and the prospect of firing someone, without respect for the personal consequences to the employee's family, would be extremely difficult for you.

Even in situations which threaten your sentimental nature less directly, you may often have to battle your tendency to be tactful when the unvarnished truth is needed. Your need for acceptance may nudge you into acquiescence when your independent judgment is called for. In an effort to get along with others, you may let your decisions be swayed by the group spirit, or by personal considerations which might better be ignored in the interests of impartiality.

You are so keenly aware of others' feelings that the ordinary politics of most business endeavors causes you anguish and concern. Your working ability— attitude as well as efficiency—can be crippled by an obvious office feud. You need harmony to work happily and well.

********Your skill in handling people—coupled with your extraversion, perception and intuition—is a magic package of personality when applied in a number of skilled professions.

In teaching, all writing fields and the creative arts, those of your personality type succeed. In counseling, they achieve their highest marks, partly because the work satisfies them so totally. They are in their element.

Any work which allows your communication skills to be exercised will be a good choice for you, especially if your intuition is given free reign. How about public relations and advertising, political writing, screen or play writing?

Your empathetic tendencies will be well applied in character acting, and— whether your official career is that of an actor—there'll be more than a touch of the actor in all you undertake.

That's why people with your personality are often award-winning sales people!

Look out if life corners you into some bureaucratic institution. You'll be interested in people, people-policy-making, institution-fighting, and you'll tend to ignore rules, procedures, chains of command and such-like. You aren't likely to survive very long or very happily.

Chances are decent you'll blow yourself right out of a job by getting into a fight about human factors or protection of the underdog! Your meteoric career in a big organization may leave behind you a vapor trail of humanitarian changes you brought about at the cost of your own employment, and it may leave you personally scarred and disillusioned.

Life needs people like you. Institutions need people like you, even if they won't tolerate your presence very long. It's all right to take a whack at a big organization and come away a bit bruised. The institution may be licking its wounds, too.

In the long run, you'll be wise to opt for a career which offers you control over your work, or for one which puts you in the companionship of other creative, like-minded souls who also detest structure for its own sake and admire ideas for their intrinsic worth.