What does Success mean to an ESTJ?
People with the ESTJ personality type have a high value for social order
and structure. Throughout his or her life, the ESTJ develops a set of
judgement standards that
they use to order events and impressions that exist in the world.
These standards are essentially social principles. The ESTJ believes
very strongly in their principles, and strongly disapproves of any violation.
The ESTJ believes that their principles define appropriate behavior and attitudes,
and therefore should be followed unconditionally. Just as they naturally
create rules, and are therefore natural leaders, ESTJs also believe in following
existing social rules. They often lead, but can follow easily if they trust
the authority of the system they're following. The ESTJ can be quite harsh
about the violation of a principle. It is more important to the ESTJ that the
principle is honored than that they consider the position or feelings
of the individual who transgressed against the principle. Their harshness of
manner may damage personal relationships, until the ESTJ incorporates standards
for behavior within personal relationships into their system of social rules.
The ESTJ truly enjoys being around other people, and wants to promote
traditional relationships. An ESTJ may feel successful if they are able
to live their lives within their defined system of principles, but their true
and lasting success will come from the ability to create and sustain good
and lasting principles, and thus to address all situations in their life
adequately and consistently.
Allowing Your ESTJ Strengths to Flourish
As an ESTJ, you have gifts that are specific to your personality
type that aren't natural strengths for other types. By recognizing
your special gifts and encouraging their growth and development, you
will more readily see your place in the world, and be more content
with your role.
Nearly all ESTJs will recognize the following characteristics in themselves.
They should embrace and nourish these strengths:
ESTJs who have developed their Introverted Sensing to the extent that
they regularly use their tremendous inner stores of data when forming their
principles for behavior
enjoy these very special gifts:
Potential Problem Areas
With any gift of strength, there is an associated weakness. Without "bad",
there would be no "good". Without "difficult", there would be no "easy".
We value our strengths, but we often curse and ignore our weaknesses.
To grow as a person and get what we want out of life, we must not only
capitalize upon our strengths, but also face our
weaknesses and deal with them. That means taking a hard look at our
personality type's potential problem areas.
Most of the weaker characteristics that are found in ESTJs are due to
Extraverted Thinking taking over the personality to the extent that other
functions work only to serve Extraverted Thinking's agenda.
In such cases, an ESTJ may show some or all of the following weaknesses in varying degrees:
Explanation of Problems
Nearly all of the problematic characteristics described above can be
attributed to the common problem of Extraverted Thinking overtaking the ESTJ
personality to the point that all other personality functions exist only to
serve Thinking's needs. A healthy and successful personality needs to have a good balance
between its dominant and auxiliary functions. For an ESTJ, dominant Extraverted
Thinking needs to be well-supported by the auxiliary Introverted Sensing function.
If Introverted Sensing exists only to support the agenda of Extraverted Thinking,
then neither function is living up to its potential, and the subject ESTJ is
not reaching their potential in their job or their personal relationships.
In the case where auxilary Sensing is underused, the ESTJ will live entirely
within the boundaries of their existing principles. They will hold up their
own set of principles as an inalienable representation of the Right Thing To Do,
and apply everything they encounter in life to this principle system.
If they perceive behavior that does not fit into their set of principles, they
will ruthlessly judge it and shut down any alternative view of the violation.
In being so tied to their Extraverted Thinking process,
they lose the ability to truly consider incoming information, and therefore lose
the ability to synergize with other people and solve problems in an effective
way. Perhaps most importantly, the ESTJ
loses the ability to connect with their own Self. They become out of touch with
their own personal needs, and dissociated from their core Self. The net effect
of these happenings is an ESTJ leader who expects absolute adherence to his
or her demands; who lacks the ability to see long-range implications
associated with these demands; who is unwilling to consider alternate solutions
or plans; and who is dissociated from any personal priorities or value system.
Such a leader is unlikely to be effective and successful in their job or
personal life, although are likely unaware of the reasons for their problems.
It is quite common for people to allow their dominant function to overrule
their personality. In the case of the Extraverted Thinker, allowing Thinking
to dominate without counter-balance can have great impact on the social interactions
of the ESTJ. Female ESTJs may be viewed as overbearing, controlling, or masculine,
and may not be as readily accepted by social standards. This may cause low self-
esteem in the female ESTJ. Male ESTJs are somewhat worse off, because social
stereotypes may encourage them that they are entitled to be domineering. They may
have no interest in growing beyond their limited outlook.
Extraverted Thinking is a personality function that creates structure by
identifying and adhering to logical principles. It is a social form of
judgement, in that it is defined by the external world, rather than by an
inner sense of right and wrong. The true strength of Extraverted Thinking is
its highly ethical nature. It is not swayed by individual appeals -- it
believes wholeheartedly in the merit of the Principle. If the Principle exists,
then it should be followed. Once the Extraverted Thinking type has identified
the principle, it is their business to enforce that principle. The
Extraverted Thinker does not expect anything back for living by that principle.
It expects that the principle should be respected without condition. In other
words, the ESTJ believes that you should do what's right because it is what's
right, rather than doing what's right because you want something in return.
In this ideal sense, Extraverted Thinking judgement is the cornerstone of laws and legal
systems. Extraverted Thinking has much to offer our society, in its purety of
intention.
Introverted Sensing, the auxiliary function of the ESTJ, is the means of
observing data and storing it for future reference. Introverted Sensing is
capable of considering and storing huge amounts of data. When this data is
fed into the dominant Thinking function, the personality uses real data to form
principles and enforce structure upon the world. In the case where the ESTJ
has an overly-dominant Thinking function, the importance of the auxilliary
Sensing function is reduced. Data cannot be seen outside of its context within
a principle. The ESTJ will not be able to see beyond the fact that a principle
has been violated. They will be unable to see the data objectively.
Solutions
An ESTJ who is interested in coming into his or her own potential should
consciously try to suspend judgement until all of the facts are known. An
effective ESTJ is not afraid to redefine principles when information cannot
be understood or dealt with effectively within their known systems. Practicing
this sort of behavior will help auxilary Introverted Sensation to flourish,
and thereby allow the entire personality to become a more effective and
positive force.
For example, an ESTJ friend recently told me that he was convinced that his
mother's cleaning lady was a con-artist. I asked him why he thought so,
and he said
"because she takes money and does absolutely nothing." Apparently the
house was not being cleaned to his standards. He believed that the cleaning
lady was paid to do a certain job, and he expected that it would be completed
to a certain standard for a certain fee. This was his principle. She violated
that principle by not doing the job well enough. The fact that she took money
for a job that she didn't do was nothing less than criminal behavior to him.
When I asked him if the cleaning lady had been given directions on what
specifically to clean, he said he didn't know, but that she was a cleaning
lady so she should know what to do (another principle.)
We soon discovered that the cleaning lady
was paid about half the going rate for her job.
When I explored this situation
a bit futher (out of concern for my friend's mother) I discovered that the
cleaning lady had almost no guidance on what to clean, but that she was busy
the entire time that she hired, and that she was perhaps not the cleanest of
cleaning ladies. When she was given more direction, she performed to a better
standard. My assertion that the cleaning lady kept busy the whole time that
she was hired was flatly rejected by my ESTJ friend. He would not consider
that piece of information, nor would he consider the fact that she was paid
much less than the standard rate for cleaning ladies. Within his principle
system, she was a con-artist, and he did not consider data that might offer an
alternate explanation.
Rather than simply rejecting the new information that became available, my
ESTJ friend could have altered his principles slightly to allow for differences
in personal capabilities and results amongst individuals, and
to allow for the fact that the cleaning lady getting a lower rate of pay did
offset the lower quality of service at some level. Using the new data
(made available by Introverted Sensing)
to tweak and redefine his principles would allow him to create a more effective
system of principles that would be better able to handle similar future challenges.
In general, developing Introverted Sensing is the ESTJ's key to optimizing the
effectiveness and resiliency of their principles. It will also improve their
general balance of character, and therefore open the door to growth within
other aspects of their psyche.
Living Happily in our World as an ESTJ
Some ESTJs have difficulty fitting into our society. Their problems are
often associated with being controlling of others, having unreasonable
expectations for others' behaviors, failing to consider others' needs and
ideas, and generally coming across too strongly. These issues stem primarily
from the common ESTJ habit of using Extraverted Thinking in a mode in which it
quickly and automatically applies existing principles against the external world,
rather than taking the time to weigh their inner data against their principles
for behavior. ESTJs need to be able to use their rich store of internal data
to feed their principles. Insisting on adherence to steadfast principles
while ignoring factual information is a recipe for trouble, such as
we have seen with various dictatorships throughout history. In order
to flourish in a healthy way, the ESTJ has to recognize the importance of their
inner data stores, and needs to use all available data to form good principles. In
order to accomplish this, the ESTJ needs to recognize the importance of Introversion,
and develop the use of their highest introverted function, Introverted Sensing.
Specific suggestions:
Ten Rules to Live By to Achieve ESTJ Success
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