Struggles of an ENTJ Father Confessor

My work­place has been a bit tense of late; the dys­func­tional econ­omy, our own dys­func­tion, our customer’s dys­func­tion – a bit of a mess. Need­less to say, there are many opin­ions of what is wrong and what should be done to fix what is wrong. Also need­less to say, these many opin­ions are rarely in agree­ment with the other opin­ions. As in so very often true in cases like this, the peo­ple with the dis­agree­ing opin­ions do not seem to be able to talk to each other about their opin­ions. Oh no, they sit around in small groups and gripe and moan and get all spun up. And when they do decide to talk about the issues (which are per­haps real, just not nec­es­sar­ily exactly as they per­ceive) who is it that they seek out to dis­cuss (vent) their thoughts too? You got it, me.

If you have fol­lowed our blog much, you know that I test as an ENTJ per­son­al­ity type in the Myers-Briggs Type Indi­ca­tor (MBTI) assess­ment. My nat­ural incli­na­tion when pre­sented with a stream of peo­ple com­ing to my office to talk about a sit­u­a­tion and offer­ing their view of the prob­lem and the solu­tion would be to lis­ten but quickly try to guide them to my view of issue. After all, if I have been involved, I have already formed some opin­ion of the solu­tion. Unless the per­son pro­vides me with new infor­ma­tion that changes my opin­ion of the solu­tion, I will by my very nature be in “lead” mode not “fol­low” mode (but I will always be look­ing for new evi­dence – the para­noia gene is strong – never miss a chance to catch your own mistakes!)

But this is dif­fer­ent. This prob­lem goes beyond the spe­cific issue. This is a peo­ple issue. In my younger days I would not have under­stood this very well. I have matured men­tally at least some as my body has matured quite a bit. But even with this higher level of men­tal matu­rity it has taken a lot of restraint to allow each of the peo­ple who has come to me to vent their ver­sion of the sit­u­a­tion and to place blame as they see it, even though in sev­eral cases they placed blame squarely on the per­son who was last in to see me. Oh how tempt­ing it was to take con­trol of the con­ver­sa­tion and just start explain­ing my view. It sure would have been a lot quicker. But instead I engaged in a very long inter­change of ques­tions that tried to lead them to see other aspects.

In the end, I believe I have two “con­verts”. Two peo­ple who have come to under­stand my point of view. What is encour­ag­ing is that these two peo­ple are two of the more senior among those who have come to see me and, prob­a­bly most impor­tant, they are openly dis­cussing their new-found point of view.

Con­vert­ing the pop­u­la­tion is such a slow process. I am essen­tially an impa­tient per­son once I know what direc­tion needs to be fol­lowed. This has been very drain­ing. The issues from work make no sense with­out pro­vid­ing so much back­ground that I would pre­fer just not talk­ing about them. Still Here Too, my dear INFP life part­ner, really would like to share much more of what hap­pens at work. Just bring­ing it up makes me feel so drained.

I have always had many inter­ests out­side of work, most of which I share with Still Here Too, that are very far removed from my career. This is prob­a­bly a pri­mary rea­son why Still Here Too and I have been able to have the rela­tion­ship we have when so many other cou­ples in intense pro­fes­sional sit­u­a­tions drift apart. Main­tain­ing those inter­ests has often meant that I need to try to not make work issues a pri­mary topic of con­ver­sa­tion when I am in my “Still Here Too” world.

But ten­sion and stress from work are hard to keep out of my “Still Here Too” world. The mis­take I gen­er­ally make, and I have made this time, is not rec­og­niz­ing that I am stressed and talk­ing about the stress and pres­sure. I know why I avoid bring­ing the sub­ject up. Still Here Too will want to under­stand the sit­u­a­tion and share and will ask what has hap­pened. The mis­take is not hers for ask­ing. The mis­take is mine for not learn­ing to explain in quick terms so I do not increase my stress. She has the right to know. She should under­stand why I am stressed.

Maybe some­day I will learn … perhaps.

Is Still Here