Are You an ENFP? Struggling in a Corporate Role?

The Healer/Champion of personalities

Can your Meyers-Briggs profile give you clues to a successful corporate role?

I understand not everyone likes to be greeted by a shiny happy person. I get that my “Happy Friday,” or “Happy Hump Day,” or even, “Have a good weekend,” are often annoyances to my less “E” colleagues. They’d rather not talk at all and go over the milestones on the Gantt chart. Even a “How was your weekend?” is not a welcome greeting for some people.

Okay, learning to lower my energy and investment in my connection with these less “responsive” people is part of my strategy. Let’s say I’m an ENFP (big ideas, love love love, and “we can go over the details if you want, but…”) and a recent manager was an INTJ. Our 3-out-of-4 mismatch caused some issues until I was able to adjust to their tone and pace.

My FB friends gave me a great metaphor for the struggle I was having connecting and staying connected to my manager. They are SPOCK and you are BONES. They want the facts, logic only, and zero emotions. You want warm fuzzies and talk about the details and project later. Okay, I adjusted.

In meetings going forward, after I got this great handle on our struggle, I could see how much easier it was for my manager when I didn’t ask…