Why You Need to Know Your Personality Type 

It’s important to understand that personality typing is not designed to pigeonhole a person or to say that one personality is better than another. Each personality has its unique characteristics. Personality typing is an empowering personal development tool that will help you to:   

• Identify your strengths and weaknesses and understand your thoughts, feelings, and motivations.     
• Make smarter education and career choices   
• Be confident in a job interview  
• Thrive in the workplace 
• Network with others successfully 
• Improve your relationships 

Introduction to Personality Typology  

Understanding one’s strengths and weaknesses, needs, and wants can help with:  

• Identifying relevant opportunities  
• Accessing career information  
• Planning and taking career-related decisions  
• Presenting oneself effectively to gain access to courses or jobs  
• Networking and building relationships

The road to modern personality typology was first paved by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst. Based on his 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.  

To explain how people differ in the way they use their personality preferences/cognitive functions, Myers and Briggs use the following four preferences for their self-evaluation personality assessment.

1. Introversion (I) or Extraversion (E). Do you draw energy from your inner world or the outer world? 
2. Sensing (S) or Intuition (N). How you receive information. Do you prefer to focus on information from your surroundings, or prefer to interpret and add your meaning? 
3. 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? 
4. Judging (J) or Perceiving (P): How you interact with the outside world. Do you like to have things decided and organized, or remain open to new information and options? 

The letters assigned to each of the above four preferences make up a four-letter acronym for each of the 16 personality types. This simple coding system shows you how your four preferences interact, and which one you prefer to use first.  

How you use these preferences can change over time and some of these preferences may be used more often than others.  

For example, the ESTP personality type uses the following preferences in this order: extraversion, sensing, thinking, and perceiving. 

Personality Profile of the ESTP  

ESTPs are extroverts and they gain energy from being around people. Unlike introverts who like to spend time by themselves or with a few friends, ESTPs are gregarious people who love to socialize with a large group of friends.

ESTP Characteristics

ESTPs are known by a few nicknames: “The Dynamo”, “The Entrepreneur”, “The Persuader”, and “The Daredevil”, because they are extremely energetic, charismatic, driven, innovative, and adventurous.  

ESTPs have excellent leadership abilities. People are naturally drawn to them because of their confidence, positivity, friendliness, and cheerful manner. They are often described as “fast-talkers” because they are very clever at persuading others to do what they want. 

While they are fun-loving people, ESTPs are down-to-earth realists who take a logical approach to life. Gaining knowledge is important to them for practical purposes, but they prefer to learn through hands-on experience as opposed to reading books or attending college. 

Even though they like to party, they are disciplined, hard-working people. Once their eyes are firmly fixed on a goal, they’re unstoppable. You won’t find them sitting on the sidelines, or talking about what they’re going to do, they will be working with others to turn a goal into a reality. 

These thrill-seeking daredevils don’t play it safe. They are risk-takers and choose the “road less traveled”. While they are organized, they aren’t the best planners. Their plans are always subject to change because they want to keep their options open. Although their impulsivity has its merits, it can result in dangerous behavior and ESTPs can say things they later regret. 

Despite their easy-going nature, ESTPs are perfectionists, and they produce exceptional results. As they tend to set very high expectations for themselves, others can struggle to reach them.   

ESTPs believe their way is the right way, and often it is, but others may think they are just being stubborn, dogmatic, and arrogant. Quieter, introverted people can also find them to be overbearing, manipulative, and aggressive.  

It’s unusual for ESTPs to get depressed, but they will become stressed when they are isolated from others, not achieving their goals, someone criticizing their ideas, or they are forced to make quick decisions. When they get stressed, they will become withdrawn, distracted, paranoid, or even angry.   

There are so many benefits to be enjoyed from knowing an ESTP. You will appreciate their bright happy nature, solid work ethic, resourcefulness, and impressive humanitarian abilities.

Cognitive functions of ESTPs

Sensing  

ESTPs use their senses to receive a wide range of information from their surroundings, which means they are highly observant, detail-orientated people who notice the little things that others miss. Their senses help them to fully experience everything that is going on around them, so they are very good at reading people’s body language. 

Thinking  

ESTPs have a sharp, logical mind and they prefer to make decisions based on facts, details, and objective data rather than personal feelings, ideas, or abstract concepts.   

They like to consider all the facts before deciding and look for rational explanations for events.  

Perceiving 

The perceiving function helps ESTPs interact with the outside world. Instead of becoming anxious like an ESTJ would when their life is not well-organized, an ESTP is more flexible, adaptable, spontaneous, and happy to go with the flow. 

Being relaxed about things can pose a problem for others as ESTPs tend to change their plans quickly and can struggle to commit to responsibilities. Regardless of these characteristics, ESTPs are insightful perceivers who can anticipate people’s needs and fulfill them.