Extraverted
Feeling with
Introverted Sensing
STRENGTHS
Sensitive to others' needs, ESFJs
are warm, friendly, thoughtful individuals. Having an Extraverted focus of attention,
they take a keen interest in the people and events around them. Supportive,
co-operative and altruistic by nature, they dislike discord, disagreement and
conflict, and will actively seek to promote harmony. Having a strong sense of
duty and responsibility, they are loyal to friends and colleagues. Valuing tradition,
and needing to feel that they belong, they will be committed to the organisation
they work for, and to their family and friends. Pragmatic and detail-conscious,
they approach problems in a systematic, methodical way. Although they tend to
focus on the hard facts in a given situation, they do not view life from an
overly cool, detached or analytical point of view. Realistic and down-to-earth,
they respect established systems and procedures. Focusing on the practical,
detailed requirements of a task, they will be motivated to complete tasks on
schedule and to the required standard.
INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
ESFJs are helpful, co-operative individuals
who are keen to work for the common good. Being sensitive to others' feelings,
and taking a genuine interest in those around them, they will actively work
to promote harmony, consensus and compromise among their colleagues. Dependable,
reliable and conscientious, they will focus on achieving results in ways that
maintain good working relationships. When working in teams, they will wish to
have a clearly defined role, and to be set well defined, practical and achievable
goals. Enjoying organising people, tasks and situations, they will wish to contribute
to the team effort by producing detailed plans and schedules. Keen to please
those around them, they will generally be happy to go along with others' wishes
and opinions, unless these clearly disagree with strongly held core values and
beliefs. Showing a deep, genuine empathic concern for others, colleagues will
often turn to them for emotional support, understanding and encouragement.
THINKING STYLE
Using their Sensing function directly to
perceive the known facts in a given situation, ESFJs recognise the importance
of attending to the important details that others sometimes overlook. Orderly
and methodical in their work, they are more concerned to get to grips with the
procedural aspects of a task, rather than try to understand it from a theoretical
perspective. Thus they aim to find practical, achievable solutions to concrete,
real-world problems. Being pragmatic and realistic, they do not seek change
for change's sake. Rather, they carefully examine new procedures to consider
whether they offer clear benefits over tried-and-tested methods. Marshalling
facts in an orderly and systematic manner to support their point of view, they
like to take things one step at a time. Caring, considerate and thoughtful,
their decisions will take into account the personal needs of their colleagues
and friends. Comfortable with routine, they focus on the present, and base their
decisions on hard facts and data.
HOW OTHERS MAY SEE YOU
Warm, friendly and happy to oblige, ESFJs
are courteous and tactful in their dealings with others, and have a strong customer
service orientation. ESFJs enjoy attending to those little personal details
that make people feel valued. Thus, their friends and colleagues will appreciate
the genuine interest and concern they show in those around them. However, as
they need, and actively seek, encouragement and approval from others, they may
quickly become disheartened if their colleagues show indifference, unkindness
or a lack of concern for their feelings. Moreover, if colleagues fail to appreciate
their genuine offers of help, this may generate feelings of resentment. Well
organised and reliable, they will be trusted to see tasks through to the end.
Loyal, dependable and committed, they will be respected for their ability to
persevere with work that requires attention to detail. However, some colleagues
may on occasion misinterpret their detail-conscious, pragmatic realism as indicating
a lack of imagination and flexibility.
After publishing his seminal work on psychological types in 1921, Jung did little further work in this area. However the importance of his work was recognised by the mother and daughter team, Elizabeth Myers and Catherine Briggs. Realising that if Jung's ideas were to have any practical application it would be necessary to develop an easy method for assessing a person's psychological type, Myers and Briggs published the first type indicator in 1949. Moreover, they developed the now famous four-letter type code as a short hand way of describing a person's type.In addition to providing a short-cut route for describing a person's psychological type, the four-letter code also reveals a set of complex personality dynamics which provide insights into the order in which the preferred psychological processes are likely to manifest themselves in the person's daily life.
The way to discover the dynamic relationship between these psychological processes is by examining the middle two preferences; SN for perceiving, and TF for judging, types. These are referred to as functions. For any type, one of these functions is dominant and this dominant function is used in the preferred world (external or internal as indicated by the EI preference), with Extraverts using their dominant function in the external world and Introverts using their dominant function in the internal world. Moreover, the function which the type code indicates is not preferred is called the auxiliary function. Thus, if either the S or N function were indicated as being the preferred function, then either the T or F function would be the auxiliary function.
So, introverts are more likely to exhibit their auxiliary function when relating to the outer world, whereas their dominant function will be used mainly when relating to the inner world, and will thus not be readily accessible for others to see. In contrast, because Extraverts use their dominant function in the outer world, it will be available for all to see.
