ENTJ or INTJ — Extrovert or Introvert

Peo­ple who have only been around me in a small group that is not a work or other goal ori­ented envi­ron­ment tend to view me as an intro­verted per­son. I know this because they have often com­mented on this to my dear part­ner Still Here Too and to oth­ers. I can fully under­stand why I appear to be so because in such an envi­ron­ment I find myself becom­ing very quiet exter­nally. I may be quiet exter­nally but I am gen­er­ally inter­nally very obser­vant of the peo­ple I am with and how they are interacting.

Peo­ple who are have been around me in a sit­u­a­tion that is work or other goal ori­ented envi­ron­ment view me in a very dif­fer­ent way and usu­ally as a very extro­verted per­son. In these sit­u­a­tions I am most likely to seek to take over the con­ver­sa­tion. If the inter­ac­tion involves prob­lem solv­ing I will strive to lead the effort, espe­cially if the group is hav­ing trou­ble focus­ing of the goal. I thrive on pub­lic speaking.

I have long felt that Myers-Briggs type indi­ca­tor (MBTI) test­ing offers a appro­pri­ate method to help under­stand and dis­cuss one’s per­son­al­ity and behav­ior. As I have dis­cussed before, I have taken MBTI a large num­ber of times. I have tested essen­tially the same way each time I have taken the test. Extro­ver­sion (E) over Intro­ver­sion (I) but not very strongly, Intu­ition (N) very strongly over Sens­ing (S), Think­ing (T) strongly over Feel­ing (F), and Judg­ment (J) strongly over Per­cep­tion ( P); in other words, an ENTJ with a lit­tle lean­ing towards an INTJ. I have tested this way over decades. I recently took a Stengths­Finder assess­ment that sug­gested I might actu­ally lean more toward INTJ than ENTJ. But so many MBTI assess­ments have come up ENTJ.

My inter­pre­ta­tion of my behav­ior, lean­ing toward intro­verted in some envi­ron­ments and extro­verted in oth­ers was that I was in MBTI terms an ENTJ but only mildly E over I, i.e. an ENTJ who was close to being and INTJ. How­ever I read what Thor­gar posted in a dis­cus­sion on the topic “What are some dif­fer­ences between ENTJs and INTJs?” on the Per­son­al­ity Café forum and his com­ment lead me to believe I really must be an ENTJ. What Thor­gar posted is:

INTJs usu­ally come off as a lot more nerdy than ENTJs, although ENTJs can be pretty nerdy behind their more approach­able and pol­ished exte­ri­ors. Although there are excep­tions, many ENTJs can be pretty reserved such that you might think they are intro­verts until you see them give a talk or work a party. They can be as reluc­tant as INTJs to share per­sonal details with peo­ple they don’t know extremely well.

I think INTJs more often fall in love with ideas, while ENTJs are pretty focused on what util­ity the idea has rather than its intel­lec­tual merit. If there isn’t an imme­di­ate appli­ca­tion, they lose interest.

INTJs can get excitable under stress, while ENTJs get even more calm and delib­er­ate. I think INTJs are bet­ter at cre­ative and “out of the box” think­ing, while ENTJs are bet­ter at choos­ing a course and putting things into action.

The ENTJs I know are all very “pro­grammed” and not very spon­ta­neous. Every­thing is planned out weeks, months, and years in advance. I real­ize this is a TJ trait in gen­eral but ENTJs seem much more entrenched in this than INTJs.

When I read Thorgar’s com­ment, three points really made me feel as if I must be an ENTJ

1. “ENTJs can be pretty reserved such that you might think they are intro­verts until you see them give a talk or work a party.” – this one should be clear from what I said above.
2. “I think INTJs are bet­ter at cre­ative and ‘out of the box’ think­ing, while ENTJs are bet­ter at choos­ing a course and putting things into action.” – When I was in aca­d­e­mics, I believe that I con­tributed much to the research efforts that I worked. How­ever, I must admit that per­haps my biggest weak­ness was iden­ti­fy­ing the ini­tial approach to take. My strength was in clos­ing on a prob­lem once a glim­mer of an idea was in place. I could fill in the pieces bet­ter than most. I have had my share of orig­i­nal thoughts, but I would not com­pare myself to the best that I worked with. On the other hand, dur­ing my career I have dri­ven more prob­lems to the path to clo­sure than most that I know.
3. “INTJs more often fall in love with ideas, while ENTJs are pretty focused on what util­ity the idea has rather than its intel­lec­tual merit” – If one thing drove me out of Aca­d­e­mic research it was the thought of hav­ing to build a career focused on one area of study that was def­i­nitely never going to lead to an actual appli­ca­tion. The prob­lems I worked on were chal­leng­ing and fun to solve but were of inter­est only because they fur­thered Humankind’s knowl­edge of the phys­i­cal uni­verse. When I left I got to work on prob­lems that lead to imple­men­ta­tion in prod­ucts, and then I got to work on prob­lems in Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, and then I got to work on prob­lems in Finance, and then I got to work on prob­lems in per­son­nel man­age­ment, and then I got to work on prob­lems in Busi­ness Plan­ning, and then … and all of them had to be dri­ven to clo­sure and com­plete­ness with real con­straints and deadlines.

I guess I am an ENTJ (and have an ego appro­pri­ate for one). For what it is worth, Thor­gar is an INTJ.

Is Still Here