Why It’s Important to Know Your Personality Type

Firstly, it’s important to understand that personality typing is not designed to classify a person/people or to say that one personality is better than another. Each personality has its unique characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. Personality typing is an empowering personal development tool and it will help you to:   

• Understand your thoughts, feelings, and motivations. 
• Be confident in a job interview. 
• Make smarter education and career choices.
• Network successfully.  
• Identify your strengths and weaknesses. 
• Be happy at work.
• Improve your relationships. 

Introduction to Personality Typology 

The road to modern personality typology was first paved by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. Based on Jung’s work, psychologists Isabel Briggs Myers and Katharine Briggs created the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI identifies 16 different personalities, and it’s one of the most popular methods of personality typing today.  

Myers and Briggs use the following preferences for their self-evaluation personality assessment as a way to further explain how people differ in the way they use their cognitive functions.

• Introversion (I) or Extraversion (E). Where you get your energy from. Do you draw your energy from your inner world or the external world? 
• Sensing (S) or Intuition (N). How you receive information. Do you prefer to use your senses to receive information from your surroundings, or use your intuition to interpret and add your meaning? 
• Thinking (T) or Feeling (F). How you make decisions. Do you take a logical approach, or do you prefer to look at people and circumstances before deciding? 
• Judging (J) or Perceiving (P). How you interact with the outside world. Do you prefer to have things decided and organized or do you like to remain open to new information and options? 

The letters that are assigned to each of the above preferences make up a four-letter code for each of the 16 personality types. This simple coding system shows you how each of the four preferences interacts, and which one you tend to use first.  

Of course, how you use these preferences can change over time and some of these preferences may be used more often than others.  

The ENFP personality type uses the following preferences in this order; extraversion, intuition, feeling, and perceiving. 

ENFPs are extroverts 

ENFPs are extroverts, meaning they draw energy from the external world, and they like to be around a lot of people.  

Extroverts are easy to spot as they are outgoing, friendly, cheerful, talkative, and energetic. At a party, an extrovert will be there making everyone laugh with their jokes and witty stories.

Despite their constant cheerfulness and light-heartedness, ENFPs are deeply committed to their closest relationships.   

Personality Profile of the ENFP and Characteristics 

The ENFP personality has been given the nicknames “The Champion” and the “The Motivator” because these types of people love to help others to reach their potential.  

ENFPs are natural leaders. People are drawn to them because they are approachable, kind, charismatic, charming, confident, optimistic, empathetic, and generous. Their passion for life is contagious, so it’s hard to stay sad when you are around them. 

ENFPs are a bit of an enigma. They are easy-going but ambitious. Fun-loving yet serious. Gregarious but contemplative. Interdependent and independent.  

Out of all the MBTI extroverted personalities, ENFPs are the most energetic. They like to stay busy and 24 hours is not enough time for them to do everything they want to achieve. Their insatiable curiosity about the world compels them to meet new people and experience new adventures.  

Incredible aesthetic, ENFPs appreciate beautiful things like an exquisite painting, a dramatic sunset, a stylish outfit, or a colorful design. They tend to be drawn to the creative arts where they can express their sometimes unconventional ideas about the human experience through art, music, fashion, media, and literature.  

ENFPs prefer to focus on abstract ideas and concepts instead of facts and concrete data. They love to learn new skills through hands-on experience. ENFPs are especially talented at generating original ideas and finding innovative ways to improve products, streamline business practices, and solve complex problems. 

As they rely on their imagination for their creativity, they can be prone to chronic daydreaming and may forget responsibilities and deadlines. There are more interested in the future and can miss little details which are just as important as the big picture.  

ENFPs have lots of ideas whirling around in their brain so they can be disorganized and not follow through with all their ideas. They must be careful not to burn out quickly as they tend to over-commit themselves to projects and their relationships. 

Cognitive functions 

Intuition 

Intuition is very important for ENFPs  as they use this powerful gift to receive information from their surroundings and determine future outcomes. To interpret and add meaning to information, they use their insightful impressions and perceived patterns they have picked up from the external world.  

Some ENFPs may describe their intuition as having a “hunch” or a “gut feeling” about a situation or person and the strange thing is, they are often right about their strange “hunches”.