EXCEPT IN AMAZINGLY objective readers, the foregoing type descriptions will have aroused more sympathy and approval for some types than for others. Each reader’s type and those close to it can be expected to seem desirable and comfortable because they look at or value things in the ways that seem natural. Types that are quite different, reflecting different strengths and values, may not seem as desirable.
When good will is in short supply, the conflict of the opposites can be serious. Type theory is informally confirmed by the difficulty that opposite types have in getting along with each other, and the saving of friction that often results when they understand the basis of their opposition.
Disagreement suddenly becomes less irritating when Smith recognizes that it would hardly be normal for Jones to agree. Jones starts from a different point of view and proceeds in a different direction. So when Jones arrives at a conclusion far removed from Smith’s own, it is not from being willfully contrary, but from simply being a different type.
In making such allowances, Smith needs to keep one hard fact in mind. Jones is not merely weak where Smith is strong: Jones is also strong where Smith is weak. Thinkers, for instance, notice the lack of logic in a feeling type, and they tend to underrate the other’s judgment because it is not logical. They have reason to distrust feeling. Knowing their own feeling is erratic and not very serviceable, thinkers try to keep it out of their decisions and assume that other people’s feeling is no more trustworthy than their own. Actually, the feeling of the feeling types is a more skilled kind of judge even than the thinker’s thinking, for example, in judging which things people value most.
Similarly, intuitives notice that a sensing person does not handle ideas intuitively and are, therefore, likely to underrate the other’s perception. They do not realize that the sensing person’s awareness of realities is much keener than their own. Sensing people make an analogous mistake; relying on their superior grasp of realities, they are inclined to distrust all intuitive inspirations, because their own undeveloped intuition does not bring them much of value.
Ideally, such opposites should supplement each other in any joint undertaking, whether in business or marriage. An opposite approach to a problem is very likely to expose what has been overlooked. Too much oppositeness, however, can make working together difficult, even when people understand their difference of type. The best co-workers probably are people who differ on perception or judgment (but not both) and are alike on at least one other preference. This much difference is useful, and the two or three preferences they have in common help them to understand each other and communicate.
When two people reach a deadlock over the handling of a given situation, the trouble may be a result of their difference in type, which has interfered with their communication. When two people have not known the same facts, or not considered the same possibilities, or not foreseen the same consequences, each has only an incomplete knowledge of the problem. They must put it all together. Each needs to use all four processes, however well or ill developed: sensing to gather the relevant facts, intuition to see all measures that might usefully be taken, thinking to determine the consequences, and feeling to consider the impact of these consequences on the people involved. The pooling of their respective perceptions and judgments offers the best chance of finding a solution valid for them both.
The difficulties for any type are likely to lie in the fields belonging to that type’s leastskilled processes. For example, the types differ in their capacity for the analysis required to formulate a long-term policy in a complicated matter. Analyzing demands recognition of the basic principles involved, so that all the consequences of a proposed action may be foreseen, including those not intended or desired. Thus, analysis comes more easily to a thinking type than to a feeling type, and most easily when the thinking is the dominant and most-developed process. Thinking dissects a proposal with emphasis upon cause and effect, including all the foreseeable effects, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Feeling tends to concentrate on the value of one effect and to resist considering the drawbacks.
Analysis also comes more easily to introverts than to extraverts. Introverts can best deal with a situation by considering it an example of a reliable general principle; they are skilled in recognizing underlying principles. Extraverts deal with more situations, faster and somewhat more casually, and with less time out for reflection. They are faster, in part because they already know more of the circumstances. Information has a pleasant, useful way of rubbing off on them as they go about their daily business. Introverts can broaden the base for their analysis by finding out what extraverts can tell them about any situation.
For people who are neither thinkers nor introverts, the next best tool for analysis is intuition, a powerful instrument for discovering possibilities and relationships. It is quick and may yield brilliant results. However, strong NF types are likely to be short on realism; they should check their projects with a good ST to discover what facts and consequences they have overlooked.
Extraverts with neither thinking nor intuition, the ESF types, are likely to find analysis difficult. They deal much better with concrete and familiar problems, which can be handled face to face and on the basis of firsthand knowledge and personal experience. They should recognize their tendency to decide matters with an eye to the immediate situation and other people’s wishes. By submitting a new proposal to a thinker, they can find out what is wrong with it in the long run—what principles or policies it violates; what precedents it establishes; what unexpected consequences may ensue; in short, what will be the cost of choosing the course that looks most pleasant at the moment. They will probably not like what the thinker tells them, but they should take it seriously.
Deciding on policy, however, is only part of the task. Often people need to sell their ideas to superiors, associates, and subordinates. Persuasion, a part of communication, comes most easily to the extraverts and the feeling types. Extraverts tend to express themselves freely, so their associates will be informed just by listening. The introverts’ associates, who are much more in the dark on these points than the introverts realize, cannot be persuaded until ideas are communicated.
The feeling types tend to express themselves tactfully. Because they want harmony, they consider in advance what the impact on the other person will be and design their presentation for the specific listener. Accordingly, their proposals tend to get a more favorable hearing than do those of the thinkers. Unless thinkers carry their respect for cause and effect into the field of human relations, they may not have much awareness of people. As they set forth their own views, calmly and dispassionately but without reference to anyone else’s, they often encounter surprising opposition.
No one, of course, can appreciate another’s viewpoint unless it is understood. Perceptive types are more likely to understand it than judging types because they are more inclined to stop and listen.
No type has everything. The introverts and thinkers, though likely to arrive at the most profound decisions, may have the most difficulty in getting their conclusions accepted. The opposite types are best at communicating, but not as adept at determining the truths to be communicated.
For maximum effectiveness, all types must add to their natural endowment the appropriate use of the opposites, either by using them in other people or by developing a controlled use of them within themselves. Examples of the former are highlighted in Figure 32. The latter is the crowning stage in type development. By the time individuals have full control of their dominant and auxiliary processes, they know their strengths and use them expertly. If they can then learn to use an opposite when it is more appropriate than the best-developed processes, they can become adequately skilled in its use and, when needed, can cross over from the natural to the appropriate. Crossing over is difficult but more easily achieved with an understanding of why the natural and automatic response is not necessarily the best.
For example, the thinker’s natural process is inappropriate when used in personal relations with feeling types, because it includes a readiness to criticize. Criticism is of great value when thinkers apply it to their own conduct or conclusions, but it has a destructive effect upon feeling types, who need a harmonious climate.
The feeling types have a great need for sympathy and appreciation. They want others to realize how they feel and either share the feeling or at least acknowledge its value. They want others to approve of them and what they prize. They draw warmth and life from friendliness and get a painful and often crippling chill from antagonism. They hate to feel divided, even temporarily, from people whom they value.
Uninhibited criticism makes life stressful for feeling types. Ironically, every defense againstit makes it worse. Justification, argument, and counterattack only lead to further antagonism. Because peace and amity are their objectives, the feeling types have lost from the start. Some are defensive only occasionally and usually tolerate criticism in silence. Others try to defend themselves or to argue against the thinker. Either way, the damage is done.
People who are conscious of such damage and want to avoid it can improve matters. Feeling types can try to avoid taking criticism so personally; often it is not intended as an attack but is merely a form of self-expression.
Intuitive Types |
Sensing Types |
To bring up pertinent facts |
To bring up new possibilities |
To apply experience to problems |
To supply ingenuity on problems |
To read the fine print in a contract |
To read the signs of coming change |
To notice what needs attention now |
To see how to prepare for the future |
To have patience |
To have enthusiasm |
To keep track of essential details |
To watch for new essentials |
To face difficulties with realism |
To tackle difficulties with zest |
To remind them that the joys of the present are important |
To show that the joys of the future are worth looking for |
Feeling Types |
Thinking Types |
To analyze |
To persuade |
To organize |
To conciliate |
To find the flaws in advance |
To forecast how others will feel |
To reform what needs reforming |
To arouse enthusiasm |
To hold consistently to a policy |
To teach |
To weigh “the law and the evidence” |
To sell |
To fire people when necessary |
To advertise |
To stand firm against opposition |
To appreciate the thinker |
Figure 32 Mutual Usefulness of Opposite Types
Thinkers can do three things to limit the damage their criticism may cause. First, they can refrain from critical comment when they know it will do no good. Second, they can be careful not to exaggerate the faults they want changed. This is more important than it may seem. Extraverted thinkers tend to exaggerate for the sake of emphasis, and the victim will be too outraged by the unfair overstatement to pay attention to the part that is true. Third, they can remember how feeling types respond to sympathy and appreciation; a little of either will greatly tone down a necessary criticism, but the thinker must express the sympathy or appreciation first.
The third technique is effective both at home and at work. There is a crucial difference between “I think you’re all wrong about Jones” and “I see why you feel that way, but I think you’re probably wrong about Jones”; or between “Of course Bates lost the position. He should never have…” and “Tough on Bates to lose the position. He should never have…”
Usually a thinker does, to some extent, understand another’s feelings and does think it is tough on Bates to lose the position, even though Bates brought it on himself. Those mitigating circumstances could just as well be mentioned if the thinker thought it worth the trouble. From the standpoint of human relations it is worth vastly more than the trouble it takes. The little sympathy or appreciation, coming first, puts the thinkers in the same camp with the feeling types, and the feeling types’ desire to stay in the same camp will keep them agreeing with the thinkers as far as possible.
This technique improves with practice. In time it becomes automatic. The thinkers need only make an effort to mention the points on which they honestly agree or approve before proceeding to the points of difference. They will be astonished at how infrequently people will fight them on the points of difference, and their own neglected feeling side will be satisfied too.
An appropriate and brief crossover by the thinker to the use of the opposite process, feeling, can be tolerated by thinking because the feeling process is being used in the service of thinking; feeling helps win acceptance of the thinker’s ideas and purposes. There is no abdication of authority, only a slight delegation.
The corresponding achievement for a feeling type is a brief crossover to the use of thinking in the service of feeling, for example, to outline in logical form the ideas and purposes determined by feeling judgment, to buttress them by logical arguments for a thinker’s approval, or to foresee criticism that would be leveled at some cherished piece of work and correct the faults. When criticism is incurred despite efforts to disarm it, the feeling type might even use thinking to analyze and learn from the criticism.
However logical they may try to be, feeling types are never logical enough to estimate the full cost of something that appeals to them. They will benefit from consulting a genuine thinker and hearing the worst. The thinker should genuinely consider the merits of the proposal, and both can proceed with mutual profit.
The feeling type should be brief, however. The characteristic that probably annoys the thinkers most is the tendency of the feeling types to talk too much, with too many irrelevancies, and with too much detail and repetition. When there is something to be said, thinkers want it said concisely. The extraverted feeling types, as the father of one of them said, tend to have no “terminal facilities.”
Sensing types and intuitives are another example of mutually useful opposites. The sensing person has faith in the actual, the intuitive in the possible. As each concentrates accordingly, they seldom look at anything from the same angle. The difference in viewpoint becomes acute, often exasperating, when the person with sensing has authority over the intuitive and the intuitive comes up with a blazing idea. The intuitive tends to present the idea in rough form—suitable for another intuitive—and expects the sensing listener to concentrate on the main point and ignore the sketchy details. The sensing person’s natural reaction is to concentrate on what is missing, decide that the idea cannot work (and of course it cannot in that form), and flatly turn it down. One idea is wasted, one intuitive is frustrated, and one sensing executive has to deal with a resentful subordinate.
The collision could be avoided if either showed respect for the opposite process. The intuitive should be realistic enough to know what the executive’s reaction will be and prepare for it, work out the details of the proposal, and organize the necessary facts in irrefutable form. Then, acknowledging the sensing types’ appreciation of logical order, the intuitive should begin by emphasizing what problems the new idea will solve. (When dealing with an intuitive executive, a worker should avoid encouraging the executive to think about the problem lest the proposed solution be forestalled by new offhand suggestions.)
The sensing type should give the intuitive’s idea a fighting chance, although not necessarily agree that it might work. The sensing executive can say, “It might work if…” and then bring up all the objections that experience suggests and ask, “What would you do about these?” The intuitive, happily concentrating on the obstacles (instead of unhappily concentrating on the executive), often creates a valuable solution, although in so doing the intuitive may revise the original idea beyond recognition.
Not only can the clash of personalities be averted, but a positive gain results from requiring the intuitive’s project to be evaluated by the realism of the sensing type. If intuitives learn to acquire some of that realism for themselves, they can use their own sensing to examine the facts and increase their own effectiveness. Intuitives can tolerate crossovers that serve the intuitive’s projects.
The corresponding achievement for sensing types is a crossover to the use of intuition for a look at future objectives and possibilities. They can justify this uncharacteristic daydreaming on the grounds that someday a wild-eyed intuitive will try to change everything, and they, as practical people, should be prepared to steer events in a sensible direction.
Although crossovers are very useful, the clearest vision of the future comes only from an intuitive, the most realistic practicality only from a sensing type, the most incisive analysis only from a thinker, and the most skillful handling of people only from a feeling type.