ENFJ Personality Type Secret

JOEL MARK WITT: Hi, welcome to Personality Hacker. My name is Joel Mark Witt.

ANTONIA DODGE: And I’m Antonia Dodge.

JOEL MARK WITT: Today we are going to talk about the personality type ENFJ in the Meyer’s Brigg System or “Harmony/Perspectives” in the genius system.

ANTONIA DODGE: Yeah, so this type is actually not as well represented as you would think in the population. Statistically, they’re less than 4 percent of the population and that’s sad because there’s some really great things about ENFJ’s, or harmony perspectives users. We see them in some really interesting positions of leadership. In fact, whenever I think of this type, the ENFJ type, I always think of the consummate cult leader.

JOEL MARK WITT: Yeah.

ANTONIA DODGE: I mean that in the best way possible. The cult leader-

JOEL MARK WITT: You know who I always think of, right?

ANTONIA DODGE: Who?

JOEL MARK WITT: Oprah Winfrey.

ANTONIA DODGE: Oh, always, right.

JOEL MARK WITT: That’s like boom, instantly.

ANTONIA DODGE: Yeah.

JOEL MARK WITT: She’s what you’re talking about. She’s that cult leader personality.

ANTONIA DODGE: Yeah, so the phrase cult leader probably sounds like it has negative connotations, but like Oprah has a cult. She has just legions of soccer moms that when she says jump, they say how high while they’re already in the air.

JOEL MARK WITT: Yeah.

ANTONIA DODGE: That’s the power and the magnetism of this type when it’s developed, when it’s done well. There’s this charismatic persuasiveness to the type that I think is really great. I think it’s because they marry a feeling process, harmony we call it in the genius system. They marry this ability to understand what’s going on for other people, what’s important socially, how to connect, not just connect two people together, but connect an entire social group together.

They’re really amazing at understanding dynamics between people and how we’re all impacting each other and they marry that with the ability to get out of their own perspective and get into the perspective of other people. That means that- I’ve seen them in such incredible roles as like counselors and therapists of relationships because they don’t just see the one person and then the other person and then how they’re relating. They see the relationship as almost yet another perspective because they’re really in tune and in touch with dynamics. Because of that, they make the most exceptional relationship therapists and coaches and counselors of anybody. That extends out beyond the two people in a relationship.

JOEL MARK WITT: Yes.

ANTONIA DODGE: It extends out into how families work, in general, how cultures work, en mass. If you start zooming out, the ENFJ really understands how all of us interplay together on a really sophisticated level and I think that’s why they make such good cult leaders because they know what is going to have an impact and it be meaningful to an entire group of people.

JOEL MARK WITT: They’re very inspiring. If you’ve ever seen ENFJ on a stage presenting or inspiring a group of people, they can really get people motivated to do something for good or for whatever they actually want to do, whether it’s good or evil, but often times these are good people that show up and they want to inspire people to do better things with their lives or be better versions of themselves or whatever and it’s inspiring to watch an ENFJ that is this kind of cult leader personality.

ANTONIA DODGE: Oh yeah.

JOEL MARK WITT: Not everyone’s going to be like that, ENFJ.

ANTONIA DODGE: No.

JOEL MARK WITT: You’re not maybe that cult leader, maybe you’re not going to be on stage leading, but there’s other ways you’re leading. Maybe your family or your social group or your church or whatever you’re involved in in your community or family, so-

ANTONIA DODGE: Yeah. The leverage point for this type is to make that they’re getting their own individual needs met.

JOEL MARK WITT: Yeah.

ANTONIA DODGE: People who use harmony, but especially those who have it as what we call the driver position or they lead with this process, they have a tendency to get everybody else’s needs met and forget to get their own needs met. If you have ambitions to be something bigger, to really play a big game or bring your best self forward in any context that you want to, the key to the whole operation is making sure that you get your needs met as well because otherwise you tap out and you’re not able to give to a bigger context, right, to a bigger group of people.

It’s really important for ENFJ’s to have their finger on the pulse of their own personal needs and of course the highest leverage thing to do for any type, but we’re talking about ENFJ’s right now. The highest leverage thing to do is to develop your perspectives process which is your co-pilot in the genius system. That’s your intuitive process. That’s the part of you that goes inside and really understands how your mind is working and how other peoples’ mind is working.

That’s what helps get some space from other people’s emotional energy. If you go into that space, even in like a meditative state, right, you get some alone time, you get to wander the garden of your mind, you’re going to come up with your best ideas, you’re going to see the biggest perspective, you’re going to really see how to make an impact on the largest group of people.

JOEL MARK WITT: One of the things that could trip you up as an ENFJ, if this is your personality type, is not going to that co-pilot to grow and instead going to the process that sits right behind that which is sensation. It’s a great place to be if you’re building intimacy or you’re in a playful state, but if you go there in a defensive state, it can be really bad because it could trip you up as an ENFJ. It’s really important to think about how you’re interacting with that, what we call tertiary process, if you’re looking at the car model. Really work on going to your co-pilot to grow that perspectives process.

ANTONIA DODGE: Yeah. If you want more information on what that looks like on a granular level, we have the genius assessment on the personality hacker website. You go to a button that says, “Take this test”. If you test out as an ENFJ, if you have taken the assessment and you’ve tested out as an ENFJ and you really want to understand how that 10 year old sensation process can trip you up and maybe some tools and tips and tricks to get into your perspectives process to become the best version of yourself, we have a premium assessment that we highly recommend that you go for and maybe get a bigger, more zoomed out and also more zoomed in perspective of how your type works and how to bring your best self forward.

JOEL MARK WITT: We’d love to have you do that, so you can find that at PersonalityHacker.com.

ANTONIA DODGE: What is the secret about ENFJ’s, Something maybe other people don’t know about them that is really high leverage for an ENFJ to know about themselves? They probably know this about themselves, but what do other people not know?

JOEL MARK WITT: I would say that they are so socially focused and their very in tune with everyone’s feelings, so I think they sometimes don’t present themselves in a way that, how do I say this? I want to make sure I’m very clear on how I say this. They present themselves in a way they don’t give themselves enough credit for how much they show up and the intelligence they can bring to the table.

ANTONIA DODGE: Yeah.

JOEL MARK WITT: Because their sometimes looking at getting everybody’s needs met and focused on the feelings in the room-

ANTONIA DODGE: Yeah.

JOEL MARK WITT: Often they neglect their own intelligence that they could bring to the discussion, to the table.

ANTONIA DODGE: Yeah, I think they defer a lot. I think they want to keep that rapport and that connection with another person, so sometimes they’ll throw themselves under a bus and not really show up as powerfully as they could. In fact, I remember somebody asking, taking for example Oprah, I remember somebody asking her, “What’s something about Oprah Winfrey that most people wouldn’t know?” She said, “Underneath all of it, I’m a teacher at heart.” I think a lot of ENFJ’s forget to bring that aspect of themselves forward. They neglect how much they have to give, not just in getting your needs met way, but also in bringing really interesting perspectives to the world, like really helping people understand something and really being teachers, not just maybe the silent counselor. I think you’re right. I think that’s something that a lot of ENFJ’s could really step into is that teaching role and bring more of that component of who they are to the forefront. Thank you very much for joining us on a riff of the ENFJ personality type.

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