INFP Careers – 4 Work Styles Of The Personality Type | Podcast 0484
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In this episode of the Personality Hacker podcast, Joel and Antonia explore the 4 work styles that influence INFP careers.
Discover more about subtypes in Dr. Dario Nardi’s “The 64 Subtypes in Depth”
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In this podcast you’ll find:
- Why are Joel and Antonia discussing careers for each of the personality types?
- What are some popular career choices for INFPs?
- Introducing the INFP subtypes by Dr. Dario Nardi.
- How to approach the concept of the four subtypes.
- Check out our previous podcast episode where Dario introduces the four subtypes of each personality type.
- The energy and flavor of the four subtypes.
- The four INFP subtypes:
- Dominant subtype – how these INFPs utilize their strong personalities.
- Creative subtype – how these INFPs thrive through their playfulness and imagination.
- Normalizing subtype – how these INFPs develop specializations through their work.
- Harmonizing subtypes – how these INFPs utilize their understanding of the human condition.
- What’s the relationship between our career and our subtype?
- The potential for your career path as an INFP.
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Thank you so much for the podcast. I am an INFP and at the beginning of my career I worked as a secretary/assistant in hotels, a non-profit organization and then at my family’s consulting business. I then turned my hobby into a career as a singer, songwriter and vocal coach. I am self-empolyed and consider myself a creative entrepreneur (and always feel like an imposter when saying this!).
I find myself identifying with characteristics from every “subtype” depending on the situation or setting I am in. E.g. I have some leadership role in our church and work with a lot of creatives. So I find myself taking the role of the dominant (because nothing would get done, and I am strongly beleive in our “mission”). My husband is an INTJ and in our partnership I would probably be more a creative. In my role as vocal coach I find myself attracting people who have some trauma related to their singing voice and want to find their voice again More ambitious singers find me sometime too nice. Over all I would type myself today as harmonizing.
So, I was wondering if we not only grow from one flavour to another over time but also switch between them according to situation or setting we find ourselves in.
I have been the harmonizing subtype my entire life and have started to grow and incorporate the others as a mature 50 year old. So definitely this sub is not reserved for mature INFPs.
I am an INFP and listened to all the subtypes and was sad that none of them sounded like me at all….until I got to the harmonizing sub!!! Then I started laughing out loud and screamimg. Hahahaha I have been this subtype my entire life not just older. This describes me since I was a toddler and have memories. My family would agree. So not just for older people!
Now it’s getting clearer! I’ve always typed as INFP but I’ve never considered myself as creative. Ever! You can only imagine the frustration of knowing that I resonate deeply with INFP but also being unable to identify with our famous “creativity”. Ugh! I think I’m the normalising subtype and now I understand I need to (sort of) compartmentalise my day-to-day job from my other impulses coming from extraverted intuition.
Thank you, Antonia and Joel! I can finally feel less like an impostor.
PS: I would love to work in a library, matching people to the particular fiction books they would enjoy but I think AI would probably do that nowadays.
It’s been years since I’ve consumed any Personality Type content as it does work on the back of my mind 24/7 anyway lol. but man does this hit home for me. after watching this on YouTube I’ve identified the most with the Harmonizing sub type.
The part about analyzing people around me and is so spot on. It comes so natural and unconscious it’s crazy, for example I find myself typing people even my 1 or 2 year old nieces. And this “typing” process isn’t something that I’m “deciding” what type they’re most likely are. It just their traits and behaviors and appearance and all other sings and signals just synchronizing towards a type it’s becomes crystal clear to me with time. Especially after understanding cognitive functions around 10 years ago.
I can go on and on about that.
What really hit home for me when Antonia said “ this INFP sub type feels like they’re gonna die with that richness inside of them”
So true. And hopefully I can use this richness to enrich my life in all facets.
I have always considered psychological therapy as a career but I think it’s very overwhelming for me. Especially considering the part of the world I come from and live in.
But this harmonizing trait still drives me and the pursuit of finding a new career as I work in the customer service of a bank and think that I don’t want to do this for the next 35~ years of my life. I’m thinking of studying physical therapy especially since I can use my drive for harmonizing and helping heal people while it satisfies my “healthy” side of me that I’ve developed thanks for the work of Dr Peter Attia the last year or so.
So thank you guys for this amazing work.
Librarian discussion was funny… LOL An INTJ here, so just for your information: https://www.ala.org/educationcareers/libcareers/become
It looks quite obvious to me that we are all these subtypes through my life i am all of these no question about it.
Yeah and trying to do simple things like opening stuff up i struggle the so called easy stuff . So far i would say you are spot on with everything you are saying. I am a normalizing INFP and i love research and as long as its a challenge the less people know about it the better. Visualisation lol is one of my best attributes when i take the British intelligent test i am in the top 5 percent i think that mainly is if you had been playing sport as a child to be honest it could be because i am sure we get overly nervous in front of others when asked to do stuff in front of others.
I loved the humorous back and forth between Joel and Antonia about librarian careers. Transparent fallibility is one of my favorite character traits. 🙂
Thanks to everyone who has posted, I have read all your comments with interest.
I think the biggest thing that deterred me from ID-ing as ‘normalizing’ INFP was the word ‘calm’ – I’ve done my fair share of over-dramatizing things! But I also contain the contradiction of being both an organisation-freak and someone with impatience to do something creative, exploratory or random. This isn’t simply about wanting to transition from one corner of ordered sane-ness and sobriety to the opposite end, it’s like I need to be both, just not at the same time. The end result is someone who struggles to concentrate doing boring repetitive tasks but who also struggles with truly freed-up creative thought, though I have been developing this muscle. I’m still very analytical and think I value that too much to really let go and properly drift off into woo-woo land.
I think all this (and other contradictions I could have mentioned) might be better represented by normalising ENFP, not that I know that much about it but no one really does as the sample size studied would have been small and likely not a scientifically balanced cross-section.
(Sorry if I’m blabbering-on I just don’t normally get the chance to express myself in this manner).
I think people get confused with analytical does not mean you want everything to be fact I am a normalizing INFP and i agree with what you are saying but i think its because we need to see whats round the corner. Creativity is everything and anything so to just isolate it what does it mean. Also if you compare everything said to how you feel they will always be contradictions watch other people and you might learn you actually are patient and probably a lot of things you think your bad at is only because you have a desire to do a lot better as a person.
I can relate to the notion of a journey through different INFP subtypes depending on roles and life circumstances. During my adolescence/early twenties I was more of a creative subtype, I spent a lot of time exploring creative outlets, especially writing. I struggled to apply myself and lacked motivation, drive and direction. After drifting along for a period longer than most of my peers I went into academia, completing two undergrad degrees back-to-back and later a masters degree whilst working. I initially became more of a normalizing INFP, more driven towards a purpose, definitely more research orientated, I spent a lot of time thinking – I took great pleasure in understanding abstract concepts and loved the challenge of creating novel essay structures and arguments. After graduating I worked in a clinical field and more recently as a senior leader in healthcare. I struggle to recognize the dominant subtype in myself because to me it sounds too closed and fixed in nature. Although I can be assertive and decisive when it’s necessary and important, I relate more to the harmonizing subtype. I use my rich inner knowing and understanding gleaned from listening to people, being open and curious, to guide and shape quality improvement and bring about positive change. I find this highly motivating and rewarding. I do sometimes struggle to cope with the volume of inner work it requires and also to communicate my inner knowing to people so that they can share my vision. However, I’m good at finding leverage points, particularly trading on trust I’ve built up with people of influence and I use my one-on-one skills to their full advantage.
I have been an avid listener of the PH podcast for years now and the knowledge I’ve gained about myself helps me to better navigate interpersonal relationships by helping me to make better decisions based on my truth. Thank you for all you do.
I am an INFP and I work at a library! 😂😂😂 It’s pretty common for people not to know that librarians need a degree. But it’s also a misconception that anyone who works at a library is a librarian. There are a lot of different positions and they all require different levels of education. My position only requires a high school diploma. (Customer Service Rep). So yes, some people can go from fast food to working at a library lol I did it!
But, I really enjoyed this podcast. I am definitely Creative and this explains why I often feel like INFP paradox – why does my Ne feel like its driving me more than my Fi? Why is my Fi so shifty?
It also gave me some clarity as to why it seems like other INFPs in my life seemed to have “hacked the system” and I struggle so much more with stability and tradition jobs.
This podcast really gave me a lot of clarity I needed.
Thank you for this podcast! My thought –maybe a question– is that I recognize a journey through the INFP subtypes, especially related to or manifesting through my career. I work in the mental health field (didn’t see that one coming, did you?) and see clearly in my earlier career a pattern more associated with the dominant subtype. I was motivated to be in leadership, supervising other clinicians. After five or so very intense years, I shifted into a normalizing subtype role professionally, working more in a clinical quality improvement set of jobs over the last seven years. I found myself getting frustrated and bored in that role in more recent years, with a strong creative urge manifesting. I find that I feel most fulfilled and gratified when I am able to exercise more creativity in my work through writing and presenting trainings. I get more recognition from peers and leadership due to my creative output, too. I have moved to a new position within the mental health field where I can be more expressive, though there’s a bit of work I may associate with a harmonizing subtype (community organizing). So, it’s just interesting that as I mature as an INFP, I can see a journey through the subtypes, at least as you described them in this podcast. Very interesting! Is that common, moving through subtypes depending on the “nurture” of life circumstances? Anyway, I look forward to the ENFP podcast as I am almost an E! Thanks again for the great work you both do!