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ENTP Career Interview #1

Interview by Ryan Smith

Hi Douglas - I'm glad to have you doing the interview. Before we begin, what is your background for identifying as ENTP?

I don't know that I do. I have taken the official MBTI instrument at work and got ENTJ, with all 'E' answers and the J somewhat weakly expressed. But the consultant knew of me, since she had seen me in the media, and was fairly convinced that I was ENTJ. On the other hand, the two of us are friends and you've always maintained that I am ENTP. So which is it? I relate to parts of both descriptions. I like the system, and I've had fun figuring out people's types. But it's annoying that there's no sure-fire way to verify your type.

Let's have the interview run its course and then the readers can decide for themselves whether ENTP or ENTJ is the better fit. First, what is your education and what do you currently do?

I have an MA in Anthropology and I currently work as a business consultant where I give workshops and talks on cultural intelligence.

Cultural intelligence? Can you say a few words about what that is?

As you may know, there's this thing called globalization going on. Because of outsourcing and the like, people all over the globe are finding themselves in situations where they have to cooperate with people from completely different parts of the world - people who may have different cultural backgrounds as well. When I coach people on cultural intelligence, I help them understand each other and the cultural preconceptions that each of them brings to the table in the professional setting. So when firms need their international teams to run more smoothly, they call me.

So you have your daily doings in the harrowed halls of 'soft' business consulting as opposed to the 'harder' consulting branches like programming and economics. The consulting market for 'soft' services is widely regarded as overcrowded, since there are lots of people with 'soft' credentials offering those kinds of services on the market - far more than there is a demand for. So how did you get your foot in the door, so to speak?

To answer that, we have to go back to the beginning. After I finished my MA, I taught for a year as a university instructor, teaching anthropology. An instructor is kind of the lowest of the low among academic faculty; there's no job security and the salary is terrible.

Still, more people seem interested in becoming university instructors in the humanities than there are positions. So we're none the wiser, I'm afraid - how did you get your foot in the door with regards to becoming an instructor?

That's a good question. I grabbed my diploma and contacted the faculty leaders. I told them, "Well, I know that you have lots of applicants. But I love teaching. I know it will be hard for the first couple of years where I have to familiarize myself with the curriculum, but after that, you'll have an employee on your hands who can just churn out teaching hours. Most of the other applicants you are going to get for this position are going to see teaching as a chore; as a distraction from their research. But not me: I'm going to be a teacher first and foremost, and that will give you guys more time to pursue your research." They must have liked my message, because I got the job.

So what was it like actually teaching at the university?

It was pretty fun, I must say. It had just the right balance of work and freedom, and well, I had a blast challenging the vocational dogma that was inherent in anthropology at the time. For example, I introduced biological and evolutionary considerations into anthropology, which was a big no-no in those days (and in some ways it still is). I also introduced my students to neurological and cognitive models which was likewise a bit of a taboo back then. At first, the professors were very reluctant to my doing these things - they would rather I just stick to the classics. But after a time, my approach came to be seen as unique in the field, and having me on as an instructor was regarded as an edgy choice that helped set the department apart from rival anthropology departments at other universities.

The bad thing about being an instructor was that the faculty leaders kept pressuring me to pursue a Ph.D. They wanted me to become a full-time researcher who didn't live for teaching, just like they didn't live for teaching. Somehow I always knew that I was not cut out to be a researcher. So I handed in some bogus Ph.D. applications where I had purposefully made sure that they sucked. And lo and behold, I didn't get the Ph.D.!

Interesting. A lot of my academic friends are inclined to do a Ph.D. simply because it seems like the 'logical' progression upon receiving their MAs. They might know, like you did, that they are not really cut out to be researchers, but somehow they end doing the Ph.D. anyway, because it seems like the path of least resistance. What do you think made your outlook different?

Well for one thing, I could see what was waiting at the end of the line. In my field there's this 67-year-old INTJ anthropologist, who's not just a Ph.D., but a Doctor in the German style (i.e. a 1,000-page dissertation). She writes exceedingly well, expresses original opinions, and regularly risks her popularity by going against the grain of what her "allies" and supporters think. I so look up to her - I want to be her! I've looked up to her for a number of years, really, but recently I got to share a cab with her, and she told me that the professors who had advised her on her dissertation had issued a statement appraising her suitability for a professorship wherein it said: "So-and-so has an exceedingly suitable talent to fill the professorship in spite of the fact that she has also published a number of books meant for the general public." - Can you believe that? In spite of the fact - in spite! That's what it said. Somehow, I think I've always known that that was what university life was going to be like, and hence I steered clear of it.

So what did you do instead?

I started giving public talks about evolution and gender differences in the mode of Steven Pinker. The insights I disseminated were new in those days, so they drew a lot of interest and of course also controversy. I gave talks everywhere I could speak; if it was a weeknight at the local library that earned me 25 bucks, I took the job and kept at it. At the same time, I kept teaching at the university to make ends meet. After a year and a half, a consultancy firm called me out of the blue and offered me a job as a business consultant. And that's where I work now.

So again, I think a lot of people with a personality that is similar to yours might possess some esoteric knowledge that would make for a good talk. But they don't know how to get started giving talks, or if they do, they don't seem to be taking off.

I know what you are talking about. I've seen these nerdy young types trying to do the same things that I do. The number one thing they do wrong is that they are not showmen. You have to be a showman if you want to go anywhere in the talks business or the consultancy business - at least if you want to work along the same lines that I do.

That's assuming that you have the intellectual side of your presentation down, of course. That part has to be there as well. It's not enough to be a showman without knowing your stuff. But nor can you just stand there espousing academic knowledge and expect people to care if you can't relate it to the situation they're in.

For my presentations, I spend more time preparing the showmanship part of the presentation than I spend on the message itself. I'm almost like a crossbreed of an actor and a stand-up comedian when I'm up on stage. For some of my talks, I have choreographed everything down to the tiniest detail - every move, every gesture, speed of delivery and tone of voice, when to artfully pause for effect, and so on. I take it very seriously because I want the audience not just to learn, but to laugh and have a good time. They need to laugh if they are going to walk away from a presentation feeling that they had a good time. But I need them to laugh too, because otherwise my mood will be affected. If they don't have a good time, I'll be disappointed with myself and beat myself up over it. I'll think to myself, 'It went wrong and there's no way to fix it now - there's no way you can undo what transpired,' and I will feel bad about it for some time.

Christopher Hitchens once said that as a speaker, a captive audience that's really enjoying a talk is in many ways better than sex…

That's it! That's exactly it! You have to have that bond with the audience. Otherwise you can give the best presentation in the world and no one will care.

So how did you get from speaking at the local library for 25 bucks a night and into the world of business consulting?

As I said, the firm that I am now working for called me up. They had seen me talk and they wanted to offer me a job, just like that. They wanted me to do what I am doing now, namely to explain cultural differences to people of different nationalities and different cultural backgrounds. For my first job, they sent me to explain Chinese and Russian culture to these American dock workers who welded huge steel reels together at docks overseas. Not the most academic people in the world, mind you, and at that point I was used to working with nothing but academics. Boy, was I nervous. But when I saw them, I thought to myself, 'These are just guys like my dad' (since I come from a working class family). So I explained cultural anthropology to them the way I would explain it to my dad. Afterwards, one of them came up to me, while the guys from the consulting firm were listening, and said that he and his buddies were really pleased with my presentation. He said that they'd had several consultants present stuff to them in the past, but that none of them had ever met them where they were; no one had ever looked them in the eye and related every insight from their talk to the specific situation they were in. The people from the consulting firm soon offered me a promotion and a sizeable raise.

Well, it sounds like you've got everything set then.

You'd think that. But actually I just handed in my resignation.

Whoa, it seems we've missed a few beats here!

Well, I'm tired of the work. I'm tired of it! After two years of doing this, I've gotten to a point where I feel that I'm just doing it for the money. I can't really move people. As in, truly move them with my presentations. Their idea of a consultancy process is some 'HR froth and a nice afternoon' - that's all they want. But I want to take them further - to truly transform them and their organizations. And I'm tired of the fact that I can't. Tired of engineers and pharmacists who only read the business section of the paper and who never pick up a book. I love being a showman, but I feel that now, I'm nothing but a showman. I feel like I'm selling out. Okay, 'some HR froth and a nice afternoon' for $5000 and then everything will be the same again afterwards. It felt like I was back at the university, being pressured to do the Ph.D. when I knew my heart wasn't in it. So I handed in my resignation. Freedom, here I come!

Are you sure that's a prudent career move? Some might say that it seems a bit rash.

Maybe it is, but that's the way it has to be. Everything had become too standardized. And the management of the consulting firm had started relying on me as their chief asset to balance the books. So they started booking me jobs even when I had expressly asked them to tone it down a notch. That was when I knew that they had dug their own grave with regards to squeezing money out of my presentations. I've always been what you might call 'management-resistant.' Managers need to get out of my way and let me do my thing. I guess I have a bit of a problem with authority - I've always felt that I had to push against authorities to see what they're made of and what would happen.

I wasn't going to tell you this, but actually the management tried to cheat me. They could feel my growing discontentment with the work too, of course, and so they casually flung a new contract at me, which they presented as a "routine update" of my terms. So I signed it without further ado. It wasn't until my ISFJ girlfriend actually read the thing that we discovered that something was amiss. "You know that in the event of the firm's bankruptcy, the contract specifies that you will be prohibited from pursuing similar lines of work for the next 18 months, right?" she said. And well, no I didn't know that, since I hadn't read the contact. So of course, the owners of the firm knew that in the event that I left them, they'd be facing a possible bankruptcy, which is why they 'updated' my contract so that in the event that they had to file for bankruptcy, I wouldn't be able to work for any of their competitors, but would practically be forced to work for their restarted firm once they were clear of the bankruptcy process.

Of course, I understand what the owners are going through - they've taken mortgages on their houses and invested their children's college funds in the firm. But at the end of the day, you just have to say, 'Well it wasn't me who was so incompetent as to run the firm into the ground the way you did - it's your responsibility, not mine.' And besides, those turds tried to cheat me! I'd say they have it coming.

So at this point we usually ask the interviewees what the worst job they ever had was, but that seems superfluous in light of what you just told me.

Hah, actually the job hasn't been half-bad. In the course of filling this position, I've gone from a poverty-stricken humanities MA with few prospects ahead of me to living in a large apartment in the center of town and being quite wealthy. I have also learned a lot about how the business world works, and by now I know the field of cultural intelligence through and through. Those things aren't magically lost because I change my job: I'm taking all of that knowledge with me when I leave, and it will be quite the exquisite asset in my further doings.

In a way, I'm sad it didn't work out with the firm. The CEO was an INFP whom I quite liked. A bit unbalanced and unrealistic at times, but still, I liked her. We had something in common, namely that we both worked on the basis of possibilities; we navigated on the basis of what we had thought up, without the need for a whole lot of details and practical considerations. For both of us, it was all about the vision and where we wanted to take the firm. So in some ways we clicked, but overall, I found her to be too unrealistic and self-centered. I also think she was kidding herself about our relative worth. Since she was the CEO, she reasoned that she was worth at least as much as me, since she was the one managing the firms' employees, while I was merely their star speaker, doing my own thing and raking in the applause. But while she pretended, and at times seemed to seriously believe, that the two of us were equally important to the business, the books spoke their clear language: She needed my performances to close the deficits and turn red numbers into black ones. However much she kidded herself, she couldn't escape that salient fact and on some level she knew it - why else would she have tried to fiddle with my contract?1

So what's next for your career?

I don't know, really. Of course, I'm going to send a lawyer after the firm to have the contract voided. If I succeed with that, I might take a similar job with a competing consulting firm. My competencies are pretty unique and I'm well-known in the field by now. Hopefully, my new employer will also be a bit more competent at running their business than the old one.

Wait - didn't you just say that you were tired of this whole line of work?

[Douglas flashes a smile.] Well, one should never say never. Right now I have a lot of money saved up and some provocative things that I want to write for the papers. But who knows what the future will bring?

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. - Douglas, it's been quite the rollercoaster ride hearing about your trajectory from fledgling MA to irreverent star consultant - as I'm sure it has been to live it. Are there any final thoughts you'd like to add?

There are - whatever I end up doing from here, my priorities will be to keep surprising people and trying to change the world. I want to keep provoking people, keep giving presentations, and keep altering people's views. Above all, I want to keep letting them in on knowledge that they didn't know they needed or was even relevant to them. It's when somebody comes up to you after a talk and says, "You know, I never knew how important that piece of knowledge could be to my situation," that you feel that it's all worth it and that it has been all along.

Notes

  1. Though Douglas did not say anything of the sort, we might conjecture that the CEO's actions here constitute a particularly sinister example of inferior Te in IFPs: Under stress, inferior Te might lead the IFP to believe that other people who are engaging in benign Te-style activities are really out to benefit at the expense of the IFP. In Jung's words, their inferior Te might perceive even mundane acts of planning as "scheming [and] evil, contriving plots, secret intrigues," and the like. In their stressed-out state, the IFP believes that they must act rapidly to forestall the sinister machinations that others are undertaking against them and unconsciously resorts to countermeasures conceived by their own inferior Te, which is to say that they are frantic efforts to assert one's dominance. In their contrived attempt to manifest Te, the IFP might easily go too far (as in this case, where the CEO has possibly broken the law) and even the much-valued inner hierarchy of Feeling may be violated by these frantic attempts to navigate by way of inferior Te. (Psychological Types §643)

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ENTP Career Interview #1 © Ryan Smith and IDR Labs International 2015.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and MBTI are trademarks of the MBTI Trust, Inc.

IDRLabs.com is an independent research venture, which has no affiliation with the MBTI Trust, Inc.

Cover image in the article commissioned for this publication from artist Georgios Magkakis.

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