ESFJ

You Are an Extraverted Feeling Type

Of all the personality types, yours is most outgoing and friendly. Your chief concern in life is other people, and in fostering harmony and cooperation: between yourself and others and among others. Warm personal interactions—strokes of approval and appreciation—keep you going in life. Indifference and rejection absolutely crush you.

You are more than willing to do your share in relationships. You try, always, to be friendly, sympathetic, and tactful. You make a consistent effort to say and do the right thing—so much so that conforming to others expectations (or your notion of what others expect) is occasionally a problem for you.

You are a judging-type person, but your judging characteristic is not manifested in the usual way of enjoying decision making. Instead, feelingjudging shows itself as enjoyment of clear-cut situations, in which things have already been decided—whether by others, by tradition, or by you.

You deal in values, beliefs, and sentiments, and—from your point of view— they are absolute, settled, and that's that! Having life at loose ends is very uncomfortable for you, especially if competing factions are vying for your support.

The combination of feeling and judgment is the fertile soil upon which righteous indignation flowers. You may find it helpful to temper your strong feeling with a less emotional thinking approach to judgment, and to balance your judgment with more open-minded perception. Without some attention to those underdeveloped perceptive abilities, you may find yourself fighting a never-ending battle against jumping to conclusions or acting—always with the very best intentions—upon poorly founded assumptions.

Your particular personality characteristics can combine lethally in your interpersonal relationships to create a destructive cycle. First, you may look upon your mate, children, and closest friends as a reflection on you: an extension of yourself—your report card to the world.

Just as you have high expectations for your own behavior, you expect a great deal from them, too. When they fall short of your standards, you may give them a rough time.

Needless to say, for one who values harmony so intensely, your reaction conflicts with the ideal you, so you get down on yourself.

Next, you feel guilty, and you want to make it up to them. You let them impose on you. You make them impose on you. You give them no other choice. You wait on them hand and foot, forgive all sins, "go the second mile." That's the only way you can redeem yourself in your own eyes.

Wow! They need you. You feel useful. You feel great, at least for the moment.

Whoops! Next, they get helpless. They really need you. You get depressed. You feel taken for granted. You feel imposed upon. You look at their behavior as inadequate. You react, then feel inadequate for reacting. Guilt. And so it goes.

Maybe this isn't you. Maybe not all of it is you. But if you see a bit of yourself, you may wish to think about the pattern.

You are kind, unselfish, and charitable, naturally attracted to underdogs and to others in need of a champion. You give a lot and enjoy being able to give.

That may be the reason that people with your personality often find themselves with mates who have some conspicuous problem, some weakness. You may notice a tendency to parent those closest to you: taking care of them, scolding them, forgiving them, keeping them from having to take responsibility for their lives. Even a strong, well-adjusted person may become childlike in that kind of relationship.

Burdened with such dependent family members, you may feel quite afflicted and discouraged, but the $64,000 question is: "Are you sure you aren't doing this to yourself?"

Are you sure you are making a life for yourself that meets the greatest number of your needs? Is it possible that you might be happier satisfying your "rescuer" drive in your choice of work or in some charitable activity, rather than by perpetuating unhealthy dependencies at home?

Many people with your personality enter service professions as a creative solution to their need to give. If you are among those, congratulations for finding an intelligent outlet for your giving nature!

In many life situations, you probably tend to be a bit hard on yourself. When there's a discrepancy between your own performance and your ideal behavior, you may struggle against guilt feelings and depression which other personality types can't fathom. As hard as you may try to use your feelings in positive, up-beat ways, you may find yourself using them self-destructively, slipping into private moments of brooding and emotional pain.

You can liberate yourself from this darker side of your personality by showing yourself the compassion you show the other people who casually stroll through your life-space on a daily basis, the people who receive your smiles, attention, empathy, chatter, kindness, loyalty, and affection. You are offering the world what you need most, what you want. You deserve to get it.

Learn to love yourself. You can do it. You're a highly lovable, generous, giving soul, and you deserve the inner harmony you seek to create in the world around you.

Your desire to please others is so strong that you may occasionally gallop off on some noble mission you think you're undertaking on someone else's behalf, only to discover that your gesture isn't needed, and may, in fact, be quite unappreciated. Then, look out! Your feelings get hurt easily, and you have been known to pout or act out angrily in such situations. Try to remem-ber to ask people what they want before you undertake projects or make sacrifices for them. Then your good deeds will hit their proper target.

Otherwise, it may be important for you to remind yourself constantly to take full responsibility for your own behavior—especially when you take action with the objective of pleasing other people.

Pleasing others matters to you so much that you may have a hard time taking criticism as anything but personal. When faced with an appraisal of your work or ability that frankly hurts, you may try to avoid the issue, ignore the comment, or rationalize away the criticism as invalid. It's nearly impossible for you to look at any criticism objectively, and that shortcoming limits your ability to learn from mistakes and to avoid making the same error next time around.

Again, it's that fateful pairing of feeling and judgment causing problems. Use your thinking ability to analyze criticism, weigh its value, and apply it to your future behavior. Use your perceptive ability to acknowledge that you might, in fact, improve your performance with help.

Your Auxiliary Process

As a judging person, it is your feeling capacity which forms your dominant process. That's the extraverted side of your personality the world sees, day in and day out. That's the basis upon which most of your judgments and decisions are made.

Your perceptive side gains its knowledge of the world primarily through your sensory ability. Sensing, then, is your non-dominant, or auxiliary, process. It guides your introverted side, your moments of contemplation. It rules your unconscious mind.

The combined effects of feeling and sensing in the extravert create an individual whose perceptions of the world are firmly rooted in reality. You live strictly in the here and now and you are interested in real-life: experience, things and people. You are a keen observer of life, and you supplement your data-gathering by conversation. You are an entertaining conversationalist, a sympathetic and attentive listener. You take note of everything you hear and hold an amazing number and variety of facts in your memory.

You impress your friends as being a no-nonsense person: practical and conventional, sentimental and caring, all in the best sense of the terms.

As a sensing type, you're not impressed by abstractions and theory. Sensing plus feeling translates to curiosity about people first, followed by an interest in material things and day-to-day occurrences. Chances are good you know a remarkable amount of trivia and that you enjoy collecting personal tidbits to fuel your conversations.

If asked to consider an idea, you prefer to see it translated into firm plans. Idle speculation and playing with theories do not interest you in the least, unless people are, somehow, at the heart of the matter. Then you may turn that sensing-feeling capacity into high-energy effort to accomplish your goals.

It is a natural consequence of your personality for tangibles to be of great importance to you. You are unabashedly interested in material possessions: houses and cars and clothing and such.

Adding judging to this cauldron of personality features carries you a step farther than simply valuing possessions. You are willing to work hard to get them, and you believe that you need possessions to be OK.

You see your physical surroundings as an extension of yourself, and you may slip into judging yourself harshly (again!) if your possessions don't "speak well for you." In your closest relationships, you may need to be on guard to keep from nagging your mate to produce more or to provide a better, cleaner, or more luxurious home environment. That impulse will make you unhappy in the long run, since you value harmony in your nest.

The combinations of sensing and feeling, feeling and judging, account for a significant part of your personality, but the combination of sensing plus judging probably accounts for more. The combination of sensing plus judging is the cornerstone of your personality, your core temperament. Yours is the outlook of the traditionalist: an individual who believes in structure, responsibility, and rules for living. That's why we call this temperament the LEGALIST. Let's see what happens when the LEGALIST is an extraverted feeling type.

You are armed with a strong sense of justice, a feeling of right and wrong which other types rarely share. In fact, our legal system is largely created, enforced and maintained by the sensing-judging temperament. "Shoulds" and "oughts" are important words in your inner vocabulary of motivation.

You mind your p's and q's, and it seems reasonable to you that the rest of the world should do likewise. You don't mind letting others know what your feelings and values are, and—given the authority—you may insist that others follow your code and your standards.

You are happiest when living a simple, well-spelled out life, both at home and at work. You appreciate a predictable environment, and you are both patient and comfortable with routine.

You probably prefer conventional roles within the family. Wife-mother, husband-father, older and younger children, all have particular functions in your mind. You like a harmonious, orderly home.

You emphasize traditional values, and you feel it is important to transmit these values to your children.

You expect reasonable behavior from your children, but as a feeling type, you try always to temper your discipline with affection. When your needs are not met in the home—when your children are disobedient or refuse to share in household responsibilities—you are likely to take their behavior as a personal affront. How could they do this to you? You take disharmony as a personal injury.

Your home is your castle. You want to know where things are and when things will happen. You'd just as soon not have any more change than absolutely necessary, especially rapid change, change that you don't see as necessary, change which isn't an obvious improvement over familiar patterns. You want your feelings and needs taken into account, in any case. You value tra-dition and history, and you see the family as your connection with both the past and the future.

Even if your ties with the extended family aren't particularly nurturing or loving ones, the rituals of clan gatherings and family celebrations probably receive your devoted attention.

You value your possessions. Given a choice, you'll spend your money on useful or home-related things: major pieces which will see many years of service. You tend to take care of things (furniture, cars, tools, and such), and you like to see others do likewise. You are unsettled by waste and conspicuous consumption.

Most people with your temperament are conservative financially and protective of your and your family's future security. You keep an eye on future comfort, at times to the compromise of present pleasure. You believe in saving, and a credit-card existence is an unsettling thought to you. You believe in planning for financial catastrophe.

You may notice a sense of pessimism pervading your view of reality. I know. I know. You call it realism.

Nonetheless, you'll probably concede that Murphy, the famous author of Murphy's Law(s) (i.e., "Whatever can go wrong, will, and in the most expensive and disastrous way possible!") was probably a sensing-judging person, not too unlike yourself.

As a general trend throughout all parts of your life, you have a need to feel useful, important to other people. Your sense of obligation and responsibility may be a driving force, pushing you to take on more and more tasks for the benefit of others.

You use your actions to prove to others and to yourself that you are a worthy and capable human being. The only problem is that you may not really believe it yourself. You may be afflicted by a kind of chronic underestimation of your abilities and talents that often troubles sensing-judging types. You may take yourself for granted.

You're patient and conscientious. You make a concerted effort to stick to a job until it's finished, and you believe it's important to pay attention to detail. Perhaps more significantly, you base your work habits on a feeling of personal obligation to the people who want to the task accomplished, on a sense of loyalty to your boss or supervisor, or on a spirit of camaraderie for your fellow workers. When you're happy in your work, you may idolize your boss.

You perform your services with a conscious dedication to those who will enjoy the fruits of your labor. You're less motivated to accomplish things for the sake of institutions, causes, or ideas. That's your feeling nature shining through!

You prefer structured situations, and you don't insist on setting all the rules yourself. You believe the natural cascade of authority, in the orderly, timely accomplishment of whatever tasks life offers, whichever ones you take on yourself.

Whatever tendency you may have to be a bit childlike and flighty—to let a job sit unfinished or imperfectly done—clashes painfully with your sense of personal responsibility.

You are far more comfortable lending than borrowing, giving than receiving.

Being independent—as in not depending on others—is of paramount importance to you. But, ironically, being independent—as a free spirit, unfettered by responsibility—is virtually impossible for one with your personality characteristics. You have a strong need to be counted on, to feel useful to others. You are almost driven to accept obligation.

Your view of life is so strongly liked to the work ethic that you feel play must be earned by work. Then, ironically, when you recreate or socialize, you may often find yourself working in that setting, too!

If you're like many sensing-judging people, you probably spend your leisure time doing projects, fixing things, making things. When you put together a party you may spend so much time working on it that you don't ever relax. Or—worse yet—if you get invited to someone else's house for a party, you may insist on helping clean up! When those with your personality type join organizations, it is only partly to satisfy your drive to fraternize and socialize. You have probably found that you quickly accept responsibility in any group you join. People rely on you, and you seek out that reliance. Look at the bedrock of any organization: the officers, the founders, the chairs of the working committees, and you'll be in the company of others with your super-dependable personality. Yours is the personality that establishes, nurtures, and maintains organizations.

You expect a great deal from yourself, and you are always judging your own behavior by tough standards. Since you set your goals so high, it's rare that you satisfy your own scrutiny of how you should perform. It's hard for you to be entirely satisfied with your own accomplishments, no matter how much you achieve.

Ironically, you probably don't think as much of your character and accomplishments as those around you do.

You expect performance from others too, but not nearly so much as you demand from yourself. When others don't achieve what you think they should, or when they don't even try, you are disappointed.

As a judging person, one pitfall you will always have to consciously avoid is becoming judgmental of others. It may be to your advantage to apply your capability as a judge only to things, not people. Use that well-honed ability to decide and act to guide your behavior in other realms of endeavor. Many with your personality structure have a hard time asserting their own personal needs. In the process of taking on more and more responsibility, taking care of more and more people, you may get yourself into a situation in which you feel frankly overwhelmed by your obligations.

Then you may feel resentful. After all, if others just behaved as you do, then you wouldn't have to take on all of these tasks and chores. Guess what happens next in this scenario. In walks someone who asks you to take on another responsibility, and you jump at the chance!

Whoa, slow down! You have a right to say "No." You have a need to say it, too. Learning to be assertive may be the key to freedom for you, liberating some time for rest and relaxation. You deserve it. Take a break and don't feel guilty about it!

The Extraverted Feeling-Type 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'll find that your combination of sensing and judging with extraversion will put a lid on a good bit of your extraverted nature. You'll be more capable than most extraverts of sticking to a task, paying attention to details, and taking your time in business matters. Patience, too, will be an endowment of your sensing-judging side.

And if your unbridled extraversion periodically causes you difficulty in the work place, take advantage of the knowledge that your own personality has within it the check-and-balance mechanisms necessary to help you achieve whatever moderation you might wish. 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 the misguided 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 may cause 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.

Ta-ta! To the rescue, once again, comes your sensing and judging personality duo: a powerful down-to-earth mechanism within yourself which can give you the qualities you need to override your sentimentality when it frankly gets in your way, whether in friendships or careers.

Now that you understand how your personality parts combine their effects, you can use this knowledge to become a more effective person in all you do! Your judging tendency will have a major impact on your behavior in the work place. Be aware that your personality type tends 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.

Take one part of judging, one of sensing, and an equal measure of feeling, and you may occasionally come up with a good observer who takes careful note of every trivial event in the office or store, takes all business interactions personally, and then reacts judgmentally, blaming others for what doesn't suit.

Whoa! Are you sure you want to clutter up your work place with that kind of destructive chemistry? Be aware that such behavior can cause problems and disrupt the harmony you value so dearly.

You trust your senses. You're rooted in the real world, not fantasy, and—in the world of work—that translates to patience with familiar tasks, familiar skills, familiar routine.

You work steadily toward your goal, and—with much greater accuracy than the intuitive sorts—you have a good idea of how long it will take to reach the conclusion of the task at hand. You are good at precise work, and you seldom make errors of fact. Those with less attention to detail, schedules, and precision strike you as unreliable.

While others may thrive on novelty, you are frankly uneasy with new problems until you settle on a sure way to solve them. You may become impatient if work becomes too complicated. Change not only makes you uneasy, but sometimes disagreeable, as well. You have to admit that you sometimes drag your feet when someone turns the tables on you (new task, new technique, new schedule, new rules) after you were comfortably targeted on your original goal!

When you have to deal with intuitive sorts, you may find it difficult to trust their inspirations and adopt them as a basis for trying out changes.

You may want to look at that resistance. On the one hand, your wellexpressed objections to their flights of fancy may help keep them from taking off—and taking you off—on joy rides that lead to nowhere. But, on the other hand, with their ideas and your ability to get things done, you may be able to accomplish great things as a team—if both of you give a little.

Professionally, you're happiest in work that puts you in daily contact with people. You're well suited to sales or service occupations, as well as to some kinds of supervisory work.

Teaching, nursing, school or office administration, law enforcement, counseling, and the ministry are among the diverse occupations which attract many with your personality type.

In a working environment, you adapt well to routine. You are less concerned with the specifics of what you may be doing than with the environment in which you're doing it. That translates to a work place where human factors receive considerate attention, where you can socialize—at least to some degree—while you do your work. In the most general sense, any work activity that combines face-to-face contact and human cooperation is attractive to you, especially if talking is part of the job. From time to time, you may find it necessary to curb that gift of gab and socializing in order to get your work done. Brief, businesslike communication just isn't your style!

You appreciate small gestures of humanity at work: the birthday card, the going-away party, and you join in the small festivities that punctuate the work year with a genuine spirit of friendship and camaraderie. You accept the necessity for a business hierarchy, and you are unlikely to bridle at reasonable supervision. You are capable of being an excellent organization person, disciplined and loyal, so long as your personal needs for human attention are recognized and met by your managers.

Your sensing-based concern for the physical, when coupled with your feeling and judging characteristics, prepare you well for careers in the health professions. You enjoy providing physical comfort and aid to others, and you like to see the results of your labor translated into the improvement of life.

The most important thing to keep in mind in choosing or developing a career suited to your personality is your personal strong point: service within a well-defined structure. Any job that doesn't suit that short-hand description isn't made for someone like yourself, and you'll never achieve the happiness you deserve in your life. SJ