Podcast – Episode 0092 – ENTP Personality Type Advice
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In this episode, Joel and Antonia dive deep into the needs and desires of the ENTP personality type.
In this podcast on the ENTP personality type you’ll find:
- ENTP – Exploration/Accuracy in Genius System
- Car Model
- The driver process for ENTPs is Extraverted Intuition, which we have nicknamed “Exploration.”
- Learning process. Perceiving process.
- Finding connections between disparate things in the outside world. Pushing buttons and looking for patterns in the outside world.
- This is the ENTPs flow state. Novelty becomes very important to them.
- It is about exploring. Imagine there is six foot tall grass and you are there to blaze a trail with your machete. That is Exploration.
- The mundane can get very boring quickly.
- They are good at reinventing the wheel. Trying new things and creating new patterns to optimize things for the better.
- Very optimistic process.
- ENTPs complain of getting bored easily.
- To get a return on investment ENTPs need to follow something through to the end. Many ENTPs stop when a project is 80% finished. This makes it possible for other people to finish their work and get the kudos.
- They need to create systems that acknowledge this weakness.
- ENTPs are excited about new situations and will often outperform those around them because they are so engrossed in what they are doing. Then they master it and get bored. Going from rising star to D player within six months.
- How do ENTPs stick with something after they have stopped making love to it?
- 2 styles of boredom:
- Sitting around doing nothing boredom where you can make up a game in your mind; or
- Repetitive, manual tasks that require enough mental real estate that prevents you from daydreaming. (This is the worst!)
- Focus on autonomy, mastery and purpose.
- Daniel Pink Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us: People aren’t motivated by carrots and sticks like in the past. Now they are motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
- The co-pilot is an introverted decision making process called Introverted Thinking, which we have nicknamed “Accuracy” (Ti).
- Accuracy asks, What makes sense?
- Any situation where an ENTP feels disempowered to leave their mark or optimize something is going to be very frustrating.
- Most ENTPs are entrepreneurs.
- If an ENTP thinks they have run out of options they are probably depressed. They need to keep looking for opportunities.
- Ti is high leverage for ENTPs.
- Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth by Brad Blanton
- Show up to the world being radically honest with the people in your life.
- It is so easy to get in the habit of looking for approval from other people.
- The 10-year-old process is Extraverted Feeling, which we have nicknamed “Harmony.”
- Harmony is all about making connections with other people.
- ENTP Survey mentioned that ENTPs struggle with connection.
- ENTPs can become people pleasers if they don’t have enough connectivity in their lives.
- They try to find the most acceptable way of going about things in order to maintain whatever connections they do have.
- Radical honesty forces them out of thinking in terms of social acceptance and instead focus on what makes analytical sense to them.
- When an ENTP starts working on radical honesty “it begins at home.” Their inner wisdom will blast them out of relationships or paradigms that aren’t resonating with them authentically.
- They will have quality relationships rather than quantity because their authentic connections will be deeper.
- Focus on quality connections over quantity!
- ENTPs really do care about other people’s feelings. If they receive negative feedback from others when they have only been implementing true radical honesty they can make peace with the fact that others won’t always honor the profound truths the ENTP brings.
- The difference between skill and talent. Discipline copilot. Work on making it a beneficial part of your life.
- Formal logic is a great tool for Ti users. It develops the ability to focus. The better they get at focus, the better they get at understanding concepts on a surgical level.
- ENTPs can see clean slice the difference between 2 disparate concepts another may have conflated. They understand how those two things are actually separated. They bring a surgical component to thoughts, ideas and concepts.
- These can also be limiting beliefs that prevent us from getting to where we want to go.
- This helps them get clearer on their purpose and goals and to stop gumming up thoughts with superfluous info.
- So much undiscovered territory is in the copilot. Who you are and what we want to bring to the world can be found in disciplining that copilot.
- We are serially monogamous with our passions. We don’t have to focus on the same things till death. We can move on when we are ready to move on.
- In the survey, ENTPs complain of lack of focus. If you have a 100 choices and you can’t choose one you will choose zero. Choosing one thing is better than choosing nothing at all.
- ENTPs fear getting trapped on a single rail. The real trap is not allowing yourself any focus and choosing nothing.
- ENTPs don’t fear discomfort nearly as much as some of the other types. They do fear looking incompetent.
- Modesty is understanding your limitations. Or recognizing when you don’t have a limitation. If you learn to accept compliments for things you do well, you will feel less compunction in trying new things and looking less capable. When we are falsely modest and don’t accept compliments we feel a greater need to ensure we never appear incompetent. But if we acknowledge our abilities when we do well, we can more easily acknowledge when we don’t do so well.
- With ENTPs if they are really struggling with putting themselves in a student role it is probably because they haven’t allowed themselves to acknowledge their competence level in other things.
- Female ENTPs see societal expectations and imprint on themselves things that are usually inaccurate. Ti questions self and asks what evidence they have that something is accurate.
- Ti can be an ENTPs salvation
- The 3-year-old process is Introverted Sensing, which we have nicknamed “Memory.”.
- It can inspire you as an aspiration to want to change the infrastructural world. It is rare for an ENTP to not want to play a bigger game by disrupting the status quo.
- Figure out what you want to be doing and bring your best self forward so you can be the most disruptive as possible.
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Antonia, do you practice radical honesty like the one mentioned in the book?
it’s kinda scary
I do not currently practice the extreme version Blanton suggests in the book “Radical Honesty,” but I did for a time. It was incredibly helpful for breaking out of my addiction to my 10 Year Old / tertiary Extraverted Feeling (Harmony) function.
It is scary. For me, it was terrifying to be that honest and risk censure and dislike. But, man, was it a trim tab to integrating my Introverted Thinking (Accuracy).
-A-
I would like to listen to the Podcast but Joel’s voice is to high toned. Can we have him toned down a bit. Mono or a deep toned would be great. Just a suggestion. No a fence.
I have discovered that I am able to connect with all of my functions as an ENTP when I have smoked a Bong. Because, when i am high my mind is open and not refrained from unlimited possibilities. It is my source of power. Without out weed my mind is a maze, and I’m always running into dead ends.
I’m having so much trouble getting into the student role. I know I’m competent in my classes but I can’t make any connections that build me up and strengthen my confidence. I’ve been having a really hard time making friends and connecting with people and it’s starting to make me pretty sad because I’m just not sure where to turn next.
Also, I’ve been thinking and drawing about where the other cognitive functions go when you are a certain type because I think we all use all of them in some way or at some points. Like how you said who you are influences Ti, so like could an evolved sense of authenticity be behind it? I feel like we all need authenticity in our lives.
Thanks… really excited to have found your website! Ready to get going on dev. my Introverted Thinking process. I have started to become aware of this true strength and accept compliments about it. I can’t wait to have a stronger judging voice than extroverted feeling which has told me all my life how incompetent I am for not being “good” at social connection. I can stop asking why God made me a woman with this personality and begin to bring my best self forward …to make qualitative disruptive change.
I’m crying laughing: I am supposed to be working on job applications/cleaning up my resume right now, which is TOTALLY the “second type of boredom” for me. I have to pay attention just enough that I can’t really multitask. That doesn’t stop me from trying, so I turn on this podcast… 15 minutes in and Antonia explains ENTP boredom. Tuche….
Greetings!
Glad I found personalityhacker.com, really enjoying it. I’ve been reading about Myers-Briggs Types off & on for years and find it fascinating. The big challenge for me has always been deciding which type I am. I just took your free test -Thank you!- and I came out an ISTP, which has a good chance of being right. Here”s more detail. I have thought I was likely _either- a ISTP OR ENTP Or possibly INTP it INTJ. Like an INTP, I like precise definitions in language and to understand concepts thoroughly. But the Peanuts cartoon character, Linus, is thought to be an INTP and he can’t stop philosophizing. I DO very much enjoy reading or discussing philosophy and psychology but also have more if a need to go outside and be out in nature or do something physical. Not strenuous, more eye-hand coordination. Also, it is said intp’ s gave trouble expressing themselves but I can vividle and easily eplain most anything that interests me. And I’M m more outgoing. Am I an ENTP? Every time I hear an ENTP on YouTube, I immediately feel I would enjoy conversation with those people and that am like them. I love playing devil’s advocate, exploring different arguments, views and possibilities. On a feeling lvel, I feel I can be engaging in a 1 on 1 talk with others, like I feel most ENTP’s are. But– I don’t know that I get *that* easy. And I think I have better follow-through. Although, there are times when once I feel I understand something, it becomes less interesting. But not always. Often I “keep” it and master it or at least add to it. More like an ISTP? I do like be competent & knowledgeable but ISTP’s are often described as so aloof and like ” a man of few words”. Clint Eastwood is thought to be an ISTP but I’m more playful & outgoing. An Estp? Naaah, I’m not a thrillseeker or Daredevil or sports-nut. So…more conversational, LOVE to explore, intellectually and outdoor-physically (ENTP?) but also love Competence and Independence, question rules, and feel “appropriateness” is often overdone. So either ISTP or ENTP is likely “it”. ISTP probably has the most things that fit.
PS—sorry for the typos, above. I’ve always been a poor typist. Am more lucid & clear in real life.
I like chickens
Your writing style shouts ENTP. And the fact that you would try on so many personality hats also weigh more towards ENTP. I’m also ENTP 🙂
I have to say that I recognize that I need to work on my accuracy skills because as an ENTP, which I discovered yesterday that I am, and currently I am having an obsession of learning everything about it (I already prepared my Logic book for reading as soon as I finish writing this message), so eventually, I would like to tell that I almost cried since whole my life I was being shut down, told to shut up, I was misunderstood, I was called an ultimate philosopher with lack of emotions, and finally I feel like this is something where I can develop my internal logic skills and release myself over the compromises that I make daily in sabotaging my thoughts that make sense to me, not in a bad way. My life experience made me very anxious, where I ended up going to psychoanalysis, who helped me listen to my internal logic and not to be so insecure about myself. I have been a university student for a pretty long time and I got to the point where I am exhausting my self mentally just to give those few last exams, even though I was bored with the subject that I study years ago but I feel like I am at the dead end and I need to finish it, even trough daily I have 76 ideas of what I would like to do. I can relate to approximately 99,6% of things that ENTP chick said, and I am very happy to know that somebody went through difficult process of self recognition and made it, because that gives me an assignment and hope. So this is like a thank you letter, which comes from the place of harmony.
I always look at myself as a ‘nice & friendly’ ENTP (some stereotypes overstereotype the ‘harsh debator’), Ti & Fe struggle when interacting with people is very real for me, when i’m working with myself i love it because i can’t hurt no one, but in group works that consciousness can kill me.. or i follow the group (not being super happy), or i’m honest and i’m not super happy cause no one likes me (or at least it can seem that way) , it really hurts me when i’m being super nice and open, talking in an honest manner and people think i’m critizing them in a negative way. (so much that i actually ended up being esoteric in my own interesting starting to hate ‘people’ while i actually want to like them and i ended up wanting to see myself as an INTJ dead stare, one-person-vision-person, who doesn’t need anyone stereotype) I really want to be honest with anyone but (almost) no one seems to be able to do it as honestly as i really want to.
Pro-tip: If you have a podcast for ENTPs… Give us some pictures to look at while we listen, at least.
That would be catering to visual learners (in the auditory/visual/kinesthetic learning styles), which isn’t specific to ENTPs. For example, I’m an ENTP and an auditory digital learner which makes podcasts one of my preferred mediums.
There are a lot of things that make us show up the way we do beyond our Myers-Briggs type. It’s easy to conflate all these models together (since we all overvalue our own experience), but fillet them out is how we get to the heart of our individuality.
-A-
I love reading about ENTPs. As a INFJ, I want to read more about the interplay between these two personalities. I am interacting with possibly my first real life ENTP and it is the most intense interaction I have EVER had with another human being. Period. I have had it explained to me that our functions somehow complement each other in some weird way and that leads to some pretty freaky stuff from my “perspective” (ha! ha! pun intended). Would really appreciate some more insight into this, particularly from the ENTP point of view. BTW your website is the BOMB! The INFJ podcast made me cry and rejoice simultaneously that people do “get” me. Thank you!
Thanks Antonia (and of course Joel) for this incredibly accurate and most importantly inspiring podcast! An ENTP here who has been trying very hard for a few years now to overcome a big feeling of social exclusion (what you call unmet need for connectivity and search for approval): this idea of radical honesty as an enabler of fewer but deeper connections really helps. Can’t wait to listen to all the other podcasts now!
I too had an incredible moment of self-acceptance when Antonia covered the difficulties ENTP’S face trying to forge new relationships. I, as a female ENTP, have long deliberated over why it is that I struggle forging friendships with other women. Popular culture would have us believe all women run in packs, gaggles of girlfriends who manage to sustain multiple friendships, in an interconnected web of brunches and IM’s. I have always been the outsider and it has become cause for embarrassment. I ,generally, make a good first impression. I make them laugh, ask questions. I ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ in the right places, but I simply cannot maintain the facade. When observing said groups of girlfriends, I’ve often been struck by the pleasantry.
Thank you for making me understand that what I yearn for is a deeper connection. I have a handful of people that I truly consider friends. And having only a handful is okay.
I’m so scared of radical honesty, but I can actually see it making sense.
Hm, I’m having the oddest empathetic responses to your podcasts. I’d been debating between being an INTJ and INTP for some time until I realised I finally settled on INTJ, due in part to listening to listening to your INTJ Personality Advice podcast. That gave me a pretty huge feeling of “Oomph, that right there is what I’m going through”. Did a listen through for INTP immediately after and while I did a lot of agreement with that podcast, it wasn’t as dramatic as what I felt with the INTJ podcast.
Then here I am listening to your ENTP podcast, and I have to admit, a lot of this stuff resonates with me particularly in regards to how clean-slicing data and a desire to make an impact on the world is presented. I’ll probably give the INTJ podcast a listen-through again just to compare how I’m reacting to either, but at this point, even if my response to the INTJ podcast is stronger, this podcast is a very close second. That strikes me as particularly odd given how very little similarity the ENTP has to the INTJ while having so much similarity to the INTP, right down to having identical cognitive functions rearranged into different positions.
For the longest time, I thought I was an INTJ. After two years of reflection and observing my responses to spontaneous events, I have concluded that I was an ENTP (I highly recommend the Extraverted Intuition vs. Introverted intuition podcast). I personally think ENTPs and INTJs have so much in common, not in terms of their cognitivie function stacks, but in terms of traits. Perhaps it’s because they are shadow types (Same function order with opposite attitudes) of each other? I’m not entirely sure.
lol Armed Forces are not that bad. The trick is to work in an innovative area where you get to play with exciting things with intelligent colleagues. Im a female ENTP and i work with testing of.. well.. things.. mostly related to IT.
Im the only female ENTP i know of, which means I have never had the opportunity to study any other female ENTPs in “the wild” so to say, like in their natural habitat. That would be interesting. I do so wonder if I would find them annoying or exciting?
In fact, I think the closest I have ever gotten to a female ENTP are my two male ENTJ colleagues. So not that close really i guess. Even though they are both very exciting indeed.
It feels a bit like wanting to see a giraff for then to end up spending a day with a cow. They both got 4 bellies, eat plants, are huge and very hairy….but despite all these similarities they are soon different! Nothing wrong with cows, but they are definitely not giraffs.
I’m an ENTP in the military (I know, right?) and I have butted heads with every commander I’ve ever worked for because I haven’t had autonomy, mastery and purpose. I just hit the novelty wall at my new assignment and I’m definitely feeling it right now.
I say this with no agenda or judgement: I cannot imagine being in the military. Every time I think about what it would be like I get the heebie-jeebies. The routine, the blind obedience for authority… I just can’t put myself there even in my imagination. All respect to you for serving.
-A-
I have thought about how the military could provide the most development for the Si. i found another video that described memory as loyalty, duty and most importantly faith. i can see their relation to memory…what do you think Antonia?
if Si is the soldier…and the function we need to develop to mature as people, the military might not be entirely bad
also iron man (entpest of them all) lived like a rebel and died like a soldier, I assume that’s because he has a good Si…
I think if an ENTP is looking for examples of setting up Si, being in the military is a great place to set that internal metronome. Eventually, an ENTP will have to take on the task themselves and create their own rituals / routines. But sometimes it’s nice to get a ‘feel’ for it first before trying to model it.
-A-
Same here. 6 years on the flightline in the USAF. It drove me up the wall. The repetition, the illogical, inefficient (and even counterproductive) horse crap “leaders” … I got out in 2010… dropped my CAC card on the desk, took my DD214, drove right out the gate and never looked back!
Antonia I’m in love with you, and you’re totally hitting the nail on the head. I’ve had doubts about whether I am an ENTP (sometimes I really feel like an INTP), but I agree it’s as though so much of life feels like a game, or a joke, or a riddle. It struck me as contradictory that sometimes I don’t mind menial activities or being organised, but then again at those times I was either playing a game of optimising, or racing the clock, or I was daydreaming about something else at the same time.
Excellent podcast, guys!
It amazing how much of this can apply to me as an INTP. The “serial monogamy” for passions; the struggle with boredom, especially the second kind where enough mental real estate is used up with a boring task that you can’t just sit and think awesome things in your mind; the lack of connections until you meet the right sort of person, and then the intimacy level gets really far really quick (you’re best friends in a matter of days or hours); the desire for autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
This podcast was full of good stuff, good job!
I’m an INTP too and i feel exactly the same. This podcast helped me as much – and maybe even more – than the one for the INTPs. Very good content.
Also, thanks for articulating the 2 types of boredom. I’m not an ENTP but I fully understand what Antonia means when she talks about the 2nd type and “gaming” the system to make repetitive tasks less tedious and unbearable. When I worked in a factory, I did the most redundant work possible, but it was mindless labor and I appreciated the time it allowed me to think and philosophize. When I was promoted to an office position, the work was still tedious and repetitive, but required enough thinking that I couldn’t really think about other stuff. However, the job didn’t take a ton of thought once I’d mastered it, but enough that I had to stay focused on the tasks at hand and couldn’t let my mind wander. I therefore have learned to turn many tasks into games, to find better or different ways of doing things to keep it interesting and add some variety to a job that is otherwise soul-suckingly dreary and boring.
I think INTPs and some NTJs can be far more “persnickety” about data, to be honest.
I think if you use “persnickety” in a detail-oriented way, you’re probably right. But I think ENTP’s can be very quick (or even quicker) to jump on things they think are wrong. At least my ENTP brother is exactly like that.