About the Author
Molly Owens is the founder and CEO of Truity. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and holds a master's degree in counseling psychology. She began working with personality assessments in 2006, and in 2012 founded Truity with the goal of making robust, scientifically validated assessments more accessible and user-friendly.
Molly is an ENTP and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she enjoys elaborate cooking projects, murder mysteries, and exploring with her husband and son.
Have you ever tried to explain something that your conversation partner simply could not understand? Chances are, you were speaking to someone at the opposite end of the Sensing-Intuition spectrum. The two terms describe how a person creates meaning from the information they receive from the world.
How Sensors and Intuitives Communicate
As a quick reminder, let’s take a look at the way Sensors and Intuitives process information.
When asked to describe a great leader, which type of person springs to mind? The all-guns-blazing, exuberant networker? Or how about the dominant visionary who flips tradition on its head? Certainly not the understated loner who listens more than they speak, right?
We all know the guy who has a million business ideas. At parties, he’s cornering someone with an energetic demonstration of his latest invention. On Facebook, he’s spewing a constant stream of Tim Ferriss quotes. If you don’t consider yourself entrepreneurial, or even if you do, you may wonder: what makes some people motivated to start their own business? Do you have to be a certain personality type to strike out on your own, or do all of us have the potential to transform ourselves into successful business owners?
Early in your career you dreamed about making it into management. But now that you’re there, your dream is turning into a nightmare. Rather than elevating your status, the corner office seems to be alienating you from your team who accept your guidance out of obligation rather than loyalty. So, what’s going on?
Freewheeling, independent-spirited INFPs don’t just want any job. If you've scored as INFP on a personality test, you know that you want to do something you care deeply about. You want a career that ignites your passion, expresses your values and contributes something good to the world. And you want to do it all on your own terms.
You're outgoing; he's reserved. She researches everything to death; you rely on hunches. Does this sound familiar?
You and your employees can fall into any one of the 16 different personality types, so don't be surprised if you find yourself supervising someone who is your diametric opposite. But, don't fret! Follow these ideas to manage personality opposites effectively.
Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging—even the labels don’t make you sound so friendly. And let’s be honest, you probably aren’t going to win any prizes for being the office joker anytime soon.
Diversity is always valuable to have in workplace teams, but the strengths of each personality type need unique support to emerge. Employees who are introverts may especially prove to be challenging to work with for some extraverted managers or teammates, so it's crucial to take a few specific steps when working with them. Use these three tips to help you bring your introverted employees out of their shells so that they can make their best contribution to the organization.
So you picked a career in a profession you thought you’d love, but now you’re just not feeling it. You decide it’s time to forge a different path, but how do you break into a new career when you’ve spent your entire working life strapped to this one?
Don’t worry — lack of direct experience is not a barrier to a new career. Believe it or not, you actually have plenty of talents you can utilize no matter which job you choose. They’re called transferable skills, and they pack a powerful resume punch at any stage in your career.
It's no surprise that Judging and Perceiving types do things differently at work, especially when it comes to managing their business goals. Judgers approach life in a structured manner, creating plans to fulfill tasks in a predictable way. Perceivers, on the other hand, tend to feel constrained by structure, as they prefer to keep their options open and use their time to explore problems as they come. To a Perceiver, a Judging personality type is rigid and single-minded, while to a Judger, the Perceiver is an aimless drifter.
THE FINE PRINT:
Myers-Briggs® and MBTI® are registered trademarks of the MBTI Trust, Inc., which has no affiliation with this site. Truity offers a free personality test based on Myers and Briggs' types, but does not offer the official MBTI® assessment. For more information on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator® assessment, please go here.
The Five Love Languages® is a registered trademark of The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, which has no affiliation with this site. You can find more information about the five love languages here.
