ENTJ

You Are an Extraverted Thinker

You are a natural leader. You use your reasoning ability to control as much of your world as you possibly can. You have respect bordering on reverence for impersonal logic, the unvarnished truth, and clockwork-efficiency planning.

Analysis and objective criticism are second-nature to you, and you have a hard time understanding or appreciating appeals based on anything other than reasoning. You try to organize facts, situations and operations long before you set your sights on a goal. Then you mount a systematic campaign to achieve your carefully planned objectives on schedule.

It seems reasonable to you that everyone's conduct should be guided by logic, since you govern your own that way so far as you possibly can. You live your life according to a definite code of rules derived from your basic judgments about the world. Any change in your behavior must be prefaced by a conscious change in the rules.

You have what it takes to be a good executive, and—when offered the chance to show your abilities—you pour your energy into the job. You enjoy being in charge of the show.

You relish the opportunity to map out what needs to be done and to assign the right people to each task. But they'd better be up to the challenge. You have little sympathy for ineffective or inefficient work, and confusion unnerves you. When the situation calls for it, you won't hesitate to reprimand an employee, or fire a person who really can't be dealt with in any other way.

Being a judging type of person, you may tend to ignore the value of perception. In any situation, business or social, that may be a serious mistake. Unless you take the time to slow down and attend to other people's points of view, you may judge too quickly, without all the facts at your fingertips, and without enough concern for what your friends and associates may think and feel.

You may have to seek out others' views actively, since people may not volunteer them. This is especially important if those people are under your control and feel that they can't talk back to you freely. This is seldom easy for you to do. But unless you can learn to do it, you may misjudge and antagonize. It's in your best interest to cultivate your ability to understand. It's not a sign of weakness, and you can develop it!

You are a thinker, first and foremost, and feeling is the direct rival of your dominant characteristic.

Many people with your personality type tend to manage their feelings by repressing and denying them, or by discharging them in ways which may be both inappropriate and destructive.

One approach, which will combine the development of your perception with the cultivation of your feeling side, is to learn how to appreciate other people's good qualities and worthwhile achievements. This may be more easily said than done.

Appreciation doesn't come easily for you, since you're a natural critic—both of yourself and of others. But if you can develop the ability to recognize accomplishment, or at least effort, and you will find it a welcome asset, both on the job and in your personal relationships. Give it a try! Your Auxiliary Process As a judging person, it is your thinking capacity which forms your dominant process. Your outer personality is thinking and judging. The inner you is perceptive. Your perceptive side gains its knowledge of the world primarily through your intuitive ability. Intuition, then, is your non-dominant, or auxiliary, process.

As an intuitive individual, your perceptions of the world are yoked to your expansive concept of the possible. You are intellectually curious, and you thrive on the ethereal: theory, intricate problems, ideas.

The combination of intuition and thinking forms the very cornerstone of your intellectual, creative personality: the ANALYST temperament!

In love with learning, fascinated by the very concept of intelligence, all intuitive-thinking types share an inner drive toward performance and a highly self-critical nature which continually strives toward self improvement.

You are driven to understand, predict, and explain reality, and you may slip into a favorite habit for those with your core personality: living in an abstract world of ideas, trying to figure out what everything means, and, thereby, missing out on a lot of direct experience in life. You live in the future more than you live in the present!

Whether or not you feel inclined to control others' behavior (and, directly or indirectly, the ENTJ usually does!) you always set high standards for yourself. You're continually reciting a mental list of things you ought to learn, accomplish, master. You view your life as a sack you're always filling with new skills and abilities. Sometimes you set your personal standards for achievement impossibly high.

If you're occasionally stricken by the dark thought that you're on the brink of failure, you're not alone.

Since intuitive-thinkers tend to measure their own value by a yardstick of accomplishment—and since there is always more to know, more to do—you folks often feel twinges of inadequacy. When you compare the wealth of your accomplishments with others', still, you don't give yourself a break. Sure, you know a lot. Sure, you excel at a broad assortment of skills.

Just because the rest of the world can't keep up with you doesn't mean that you're OK. It just means that others are less OK. In fact, you don't really expect too much in the way of performance from other people. In many ways, you don't expect the majority of the world to understand you, and you don't go out of your way to be understandable! Scratch an intuitive and thinking person and you'll find more than a bit of arrogance beneath the veneer.

Scratch a little harder, and a full-fledged workaholic may appear! Many people who share your intuitive and thinking approach to life have a hard time ever really relaxing. For one thing, work is your life and your life is work. Whether you're working at the job that pays the bills or working at learning some new avocational activity, you probably tend to work a lot.

You may realize that you even work at play. You may relate to recreation most comfortably as exercise (It's good for you, you know!) or as time reserved to perfect one or another athletic skill.

Learning to relax and do nothing will be good for you. You might consider taking a quick course in self-hypnosis or learning yoga and setting aside some time every day to really unwind.

You are almost fearless when it comes to approaching problems others may regard as impossible, and you can be patient with complex and long-range projects—so long as the problems remain.

When everything's settled, though, and the end or the answer is clearly in view, you'll need to muster all that self control that comes with the judging personality, in order to keep enough interest in the project to see it through to the finish. All intuitive-thinkers often have to struggle against the impulse to abandon projects before they're completed.

In their personal relationships, intuitive-thinkers have a tendency to relate almost unconsciously to others at times. Since your feeling side is less developed than your logical ability—your Achilles' heel, in fact—it's a real effort to stay in touch with others at the "people-level," rather than at the "idea-level."As an -NTJ, you may be more lavish with complaints and criticism than with praise and appreciation. You may even lapse into personal attack from time to time—a response which is unlikely to yield the results you want.

As an extravert, another wrinkle may be added to this potential interpersonal snare. If you're like most extraverts, you do not tend to form the kind of intense, devoted, self-sacrificing friendships which characterize the long-term affiliations of introverts.

Frankly speaking, you do not understand an introvert's concept of friendship—or of love—and that is one of the major differences which decrees that introverts and extraverts are doomed, always, to speak separate languages, borrowing each other's terms without really understanding or appreciating what each other means.

Thinking back over the major relationships of your life, you probably can recall times when you've heard or sensed the judgment coming from an introvert (a hurt one, probably) that you are a fickle or superficial friend. You need not look upon this as a fault of yours, but rather as a natural expression of your personality as an extraverted intuitive-thinker.

With awareness of this innate tendency, you can exercise more control in this important area of interpersonal relations. At the very least, you can look at your own behavior with a more objective and accepting eye.

When intuition and thinking join forces in a judging extravert, the product is a unique and powerful personality found in only about 5% of the population. Carl Jung, the great psychologist whose personality theory forms the basis of this report, regarded Charles Darwin as the most appropriate historical figure representative of your type. Darwin's achievements embody the intellectual characteristics of the extraverted thinker with intuition: the creative intellect that challenges accepted theory boldly.

As a mate and parent, your personality type demands to be in charge. Your work is your home. Your home is your refuge. Anything that disrupts that safe-harbor aspect of your domestic situation will make you unhappy, and— in time—will trouble all those who share your life.

You value discipline, and you have expectations for your children's behavior. Your personal power is so great that you'll rarely need more than a stern glance or a subtle gesture to make your displeasure known to your children. Unfortunately, your mate may also be overwhelmed by your power, and you may have to be on-guard to prevent your intimate relationships from being overpowered—by you!

The Extraverted Thinker 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. As a judging and intuitive extravert, this pitfall of extraversion is exaggerated for you, since all of these tendencies will press you toward reaction.

If the nature of your 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. Here, extraversion and intuition will accentuate this effect, while judging will tend to make you stick to the task until it's finished.

As you can see, the four factors of your personality will always be highly interactive in determining how you'll behave in a particular working situation. You have within yourself many of the checks and balances necessary to exercise control over the parts of your personality which may cause you problems from time to time.

As an extravert, 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 overall 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're a thinker, and when you walk into the work place, everyone around you hears a computer switch on. When it comes to matters you assign to your thinking side, you probably tend to be unemotional: both unaware of and uninterested in people's feelings. It's certainly not that you intend to be unkind, but—where work is concerned—you tend to make decisions on an impersonal, logical basis.

Depending on the strength of your thinking tendency, you may inadvertently hurt people's feelings in your working environment.

You can reprimand people when necessary. You can even fire them, when you feel the situation really demands it. To be sure: that can be a valuable asset: the ability to do what needs to be done, free from self-recrimination and guilt.

You probably know that such impersonality crushes more feeling-type people, but you also recognize that separating your personal views from your work personality is an important ability to keep if you're to succeed in any number of highly competitive work fields.

As a person who values logic over sentiment, you probably don't demand personal treatment yourself; you simply ask to be treated fairly.

What's more, you understand that there may be adverse reactions to your impersonal stance, and you take some consolation from the fact that you are more capable than others of getting along without harmony.

But if you're a person whose head always rules the heart, you may wish to spend some time examining this part of your personality. If you suspect that most of your associates candidly consider you to be hard-hearted and insensitive; and if you find believable sympathy only among other "thinker-type" workers, you may wish to invest some time and energy in considering alternative points of view.

Remember, there are no "rights" and "wrongs", "weaks" or "strongs" when it comes to personality. There are only differences. You may find added insight and sensitivity an asset, both in the practical and personal sense, when it comes to your co-workers.

Your judging tendency will have a major impact on your behavior in the work place. For example, this part of your personality may be used to temper some of the instability that plagues some extraverted intuitive workers now and then.

You also need to be aware that your judging side can act to set up psychological blinders, and that they can function both to your advantage and disadvantage.

On the one hand, you are good at filtering out extraneous information, so that you can focus on the critical issues to formulate plans, settle conflicts and wrap up deals with a minimum of delay.

On the other hand, you may restrict the flow of information too closely to what you consider to be "the essentials," and, by so doing, commit yourself too early to a solution. Worse yet, your tendency to be satisfied with yourself once you have decided on any course of action may make it impossible for you to recognize at an early stage when a mistake in judgment has occurred.

It's not unusual for judging people to find it difficult to interfere with their own plans: to shift gears, to interrupt one project for a more urgent one which emerges.

From time to time, this tendency may rear its head, as you fail to notice new things that need to be done, after you've already set your sights on some other objective.

You are an intuitive worker, 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 which 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 which 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 sensory-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 reestablished 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. If your judging tendency is well developed, it may arm you with enough discipline, organization and drive to temper those periods of intuitive exhaustion. Even so, you may recognize that the up and down cycle of the intuitive may disrupt your life from time to time.

If you recognize this as a phenomenon which has occurred in your life now and then, just understand it as the natural flip-side of that intuitive energy, drive, and creative problem-solving ability you love.

Accepting the "darker side" of a personality trait, understanding it, learning to take responsibility for your behavior, and learning to laugh at yourself can pay off with high dividends. Only then can you develop the personal power to control your maladaptive traits.

You'll find that your thinking-judgment may be called in to pull you out of your intuitive downswings with a bit more style, grace, and professionalism.

And even if you have to accept your personality as one which will always run hot and cold, you can set up a lifestyle for yourself which supports your own temperament.

You can target yourself professionally toward a career which is both creative and short-project oriented, and you can aim for a field populated by other intuitives: people who'll understand your personality because they share it. You can bear in mind that you may need supportive co-workers who attend to details and facts and figures.

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.

In a work field or an organization dominated by sensing types—especially the conservative sensing-judging personalities—those with your traits often are regarded as creative renegades intent on reckless revisionism. You may be eyed with suspicion and distrust.

Don't let that judgment get you down. 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.

So, where should you go to find your ideal career?

Scientific careers are attractive to those with your personality, and—whether science is your chosen profession or not—your mode of thought in any work field is basically scientific.

The highest echelons of medical practice and scientific research are well populated with your personality type, not only in distinguished positions as surgeons, administrators, and medical directors, but as dynamic teachers and leaders on the forefront of evolving knowledge.

Being an inventor or a promoter may also attract you as a life work, and, again, whether or not your job description actually uses those words, there'll be a bit of the inventor/promoter in whatever work you choose. Understand it as the unique expression of your personality characteristics.

You will be at home in careers destined to carry you to the top of any organization: business, professional, military, medical, legal.

In law, your personality type is the unrivalled leader in courtroom oratory: the aggressive attorney informed by excellent scholarship and the leadership abilities essential to direct a forensic team.

In any career you choose, power will be of critical importance. You must feel that you are in power, or are headed toward power, in order for you to be happy.

For example, you'll be willing to follow the rules, procedures, lines of power and channels of communication in a bureaucracy—but only as long as you see them making sense. When your personality sees the rules as senseless obstacles, you'll ignore them or blatantly break them. With enough power, your stand will be taken as assertive. Without enough power, you'll be seen as defiant. What happens next is anybody's guess.