We are constantly told how important social skills are to career success. But what if you don’t have many people skills — and don’t want to acquire any, either? Here’s a look at five stimulating, well-paying jobs where the quality of your work matters more than your ability to schmooze.
In the personality typing system developed by Myers and Briggs, the Thinking/Feeling pairing describes how a person makes decisions. A Thinking type uses objectivity to solve a problem, even when considering a moral or aesthetic puzzle. Feelers, on the other hand, make decisions based on their internal belief system. Feelers also solve problems using a system guided by their internal values and motivations rather than extrinsic facts. Because of these opposing styles, Thinkers and Feelers face challenges when tasked with solving problems as a team.
Q. I think a lot of people would love to know which types experience the happiest marriages together. I've read "Just Your Type" in which the Tiegers share their research. It's very helpful, but they don't share which types are happiest together. I would love to know which types are happiest with ENFPs and which types ENFPs are happiest with. Please share this information if you have it.
-April
A. Hi April,
Disagreement is inevitable when you work with others; people have diverse opinions, contexts and viewpoints that can sometimes escalate to full-blown conflict. How you handle that conflict determines whether you get a productive outcome or the conflict destroys your team.
One common source of workplace conflict is the clash between thinking-judging (TJ) and feeling-perceiving (FP) types on the MBTI scale. Fortunately, it's possible to cut through the dissonance by understanding what makes these dichotomous personalities tick.
Who steps up to the plate when you establish a group-brainstorm environment? All too often, it's the go-getting ENTJs, ESFPs and other extroverted types who take the lead — often because they associate leadership with extroverted traits such as speaking up, taking control and directing others. The problem however, is that these dynamic voices end up drowning out the introverts in the group. Here's how to put the "I" in "team" and help your organization's introverts thrive in a group environment.
When I worked as a consultant using the MBTI®1, there was one type of call I dreaded: the calls from firms who wanted to start using the assessment in their hiring process. They’d heard about the MBTI® and its popularity in organizations. Maybe they’d even assessed some of their existing employees, with inspiring results. Now, how great would it be if they could use it to weed out all the undesirable candidates in their hiring pool?
In a previous post, we talked about how job satisfaction varies widely from one personality type to another. Some types overwhelmingly give their jobs high ratings, while others seem to dread every day in the salt mine. So what’s going on here? Why are some personality types so much more satisfied on the job?
Personality is at the center of how we interact with each other on a daily basis. It provides a framework for understanding why our lives look like our own, and not like our neighbors. Whether we’re choosing a job, a partner, or even a home, our personalities drive our choices and shape the paths that our lives take.
We often hear this lament from American conservatives: the majority of our universities are run by liberals, attended by liberals, and turning out more liberals by the thousand. Theories abound as to why this is. Perhaps we're dealing with a vast conspiracy of power-hungry eggheads, masterminding schemes of liberal indoctrination from ivory towers full of pipe smoke.
Perhaps—but we don't think so. We think there's a reasonable explanation for all of it: science. Specifically, personality psychology.
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.
