As a marketing coach who made no secret of being an Introvert, I had many business-owner clients confide to me their distaste for self-promotion.
“It’s not in me to brag,” said Len, a former corporate training company head now offering web development advice to firms in that industry.
“Marketing gurus tell us we need to show off and be in-your-face. To me that’s icky and not my personality,” said Donna, who specialized in family photography.
Introversion and extraversion are opposite ends of the personality spectrum. Few people sit right at the edges of the spectrum, however, and this means that extraverted personality types will show introverted tendencies when they need to and, likewise, Introverts will tap into their less-dominant extraverted side in certain environments and situations.
Introverts are gaining more appreciation in recent years but they may still be misunderstood and undervalued, especially in the workplace. Yet, in their quiet way they’re probably making meaningful efforts which aid in their own success, that of the company, and even of their coworkers.
“Nobody’s perfect.” Osgood Fielding III from Some Like It Hot
“Practice makes perfect.” Benjamin Franklin
“They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.” Wilt Chamberlain
Ah, the elusive concept of perfect. We’d all love to meet the perfect person for us. Live in a perfect world. Golf a perfect game.
Productivity has become a hot topic in recent years. With the shift to remote working, more businesses are looking at ways to make their workforce as productive as possible, even when they’re not in the office. And outside of the workplace, people are looking for ways to manage their ever-busier lives, without resorting to caffeine or missing out on a couple of hours of sleep each night.
When we talk, we give clues about ourselves. From the way we speak to how long we hold eye contact for, we all drop hints and clues about our personality type every time we open our mouths.
While personality type is very individualized, there are some patterns that can tell you about someone’s personality type from the way they speak. You probably won’t get a detailed reading of someone just by talking to them for a short time, but you can get a pretty good idea of some key character traits that dominate their personality.
Your unique personality type is suited to particular kinds of roles in the workplace. INTJs – people with preferences for Introversion, Intuition, Thinking and Judging – seek work that allows them to implement innovative solutions to complex problems.
INTJs want a career that feels challenging from start to finish, and they can struggle to find it. While all careers require a certain amount of training and skills development, INTJs get frustrated if they get stuck in grunt work.
The ISTJ and INTJ are similar in so many ways. These personalities appreciate introverted periods of alone time, use their heads instead of their hearts to make Thinking decisions, and like planning and structure to stabilize their daily Judging lifestyle.
The difference between them lies in the way they handle incoming information.
Most know INTJs as efficient, hardworking, and excellent problem-solvers. As Extraverted Thinking Te-users, these personalities rely on facts and logic to make decisions, and usually prioritize reasoning over feeling. Still, though INTJ types share common characteristics among themselves, no two INTJs look exactly the same.
In a culture where leadership is personified as loud, proud, and people-centric, you would perhaps hesitate to picture an introverted personality in charge.
This view is built on a misconception.
THE FINE PRINT:
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