ENFJ Personality Type: Characteristics and Careers

An ENFJ is one of the sixteen personality types in the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator system. The ENFJ acronym stands for “extroverted, intuitive, feeling, judging.” Colloquially, ENFJ is known as “the protagonist,” “the giver,” or “the teacher” type. Famous ENFJs include Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou, Bono, Barack Obama, and Oprah Winfrey.

Like all MBTI types, the ENFJ has a recognizable assortment of personality traits and cognitive functions:

• Dominant: The dominant cognitive function of the ENFJ personality type is Extroverted Feeling, meaning these personality types are friendly, empathetic, and people-pleasing.
• Auxiliary: The auxiliary cognitive function is Introverted Intuition. ENFJs are big-picture thinkers and use patterns to gather information about the world. ENFJs often overlook minute details.
• Tertiary: Extraverted Sensing is the tertiary cognitive function of ENFJs. These personality types are present and highly aware of their surroundings.
• Inferior: The inferior cognitive function of ENFJs is Introverted Thinking, meaning ENFJs likely consider personal values and the feelings and needs of others when making decisions. It can be challenging for ENFJs to use logic in decision-making.

Common traits of ENFJ personalities include:

• Altruistic
• Affectionate
• Charismatic
• Goal-oriented
• Industrious
• Loyal
• Manipulative
• Outgoing
• Socially-intelligent

ENFJs excel in jobs where they can give free rein to their extroverted people skills and exercise their ability to organize tasks with lists and plans. ENFJs are natural leaders and make good teachers and managers. These personality types thrive on motivating others and excel at minimizing conflicts. Good ENFJ careers are counselors, managers, teachers, and salespeople.

The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI for short) is a self-reported personality assessment. Developed by Isabel Myers and Catherine Briggs, who drew heavily on the work of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, it seeks to promote self-understanding by helping people clarify their abilities and preferences in life, work, and relationships.

The sixteen MBTI types include ISTJ, ISFJ, INTJ, INFJ, ISTP, INTP, INFP, ISFP, ESTJ, ENTJ, ENTP, ENFJ, ENFP, ESFP, ESTP, and ESFJ.

The MBTI personality test organizes people into sixteen categories. The letters refer to four psychological functions or scales in human personalities:

1. 1. Introversion - Extroversion (I-E): Introversion to extroversion describes how people interact with themselves and others. Extroverted people thrive on socializing and find relationships relatively energizing, while introverts need to spend more time with themselves and often find socializing draining.
2. 2. Sensing - Intuition (S-N): This refers to how people gather information about the exterior world. Some tend to be more attentive to sensory information, while others are more intuitive about the world around them.
3. 3. Thinking - Feeling (T-F): This measures how people make decisions about the world and events. Those who favor thinking tend to be rational and deliberative and prefer logical conclusions. People who lean toward feeling tend to emphasize their emotions when making decisions.
4. 4. Judging - Perceiving (J-P): This scale measures people’s overall orientation toward people and events. Those who judge tend to favor organizational structure and precise decisions, whereas people who perceive are often more accepting, nuanced, and reserved in their opinions and ideas.

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