ESFJ Career Interview #1

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

Interview by Ryan Smith

Hey Sophie. Thanks for doing the interview.

It's my pleasure. I'm bemused (and I guess slightly skeptical) that you'll be able to turn what I say into something useful.

Well, that's for me (and ultimately the readers) to decide. So let's get started – what is your background for identifying as ESFJ?

I've taken the official MBTI test (or as they like to call it: "instrument") several times at work. The first time I took the MBTI, I came out ENFJ. I read the descriptions and felt very flattered. It was just how I'd like to see myself (well, at least at the time). I read the description and thought, "Yes, that's so me!" So we went through the whole ordeal of MBTI-related exercises in my department with me being ENFJ (with my boss and the MBTI consultant approving of that). It was only with later iterations that I started coming out as ESFJ. And well, at that time I was past my first flush of infatuation with the MBTI, so I didn't much mind being a "less glamorous" type. I could see that the ESFJ portrait was more of a genuine fit.

So if someone had pointed out that you were ESFJ the first time around, you probably would not have accepted their verdict, because you were high on the ENFJ assessment?

Right. I don't think that I would have.

Well, right from the beginning, you've seized upon a widespread bias in the world of Jungian typology; one that other interview subjects in this series have also commented on, namely that N types are supposedly zazzier and more interesting than the S variants of their types. I must say that that's not our opinion though.

Well, I'd say that there's some truth to that. But there are also a lot of things that don't go into MBTI portraits. For example, with all the S types, the thing that gets stressed about them is their practicality and concreteness. It's sort of implied that they lack curiosity when compared to N types. Well, yes, compared to N types, maybe that's true. But really, most people are quite curious about the things that interest them, and they don't perceive their personality in terms of all the dreary and routine-laden things they have to do. They think of themselves in terms of the things they find exciting. And for most people, that tends to be something that has to do with ideas and possibilities; something they are dreaming about, but haven't realized yet. So of course a lot of S types are going to see themselves in the corresponding N type descriptions of their own types, just like I did.

I think that's very perceptive. In our opinion, it's not until you get to the study of the functions that you see how S types are not just feebler version of the N types.

I don't know anything about that, because I never understood much about the functions.

Well, they're not really relevant to this interview anyway. Do you have any other impressions of the MBTI to share before we move on to your career?

I do. As I said, I think there are a lot of things that don't go into MBTI profiles. For example, I once found myself in a staff developmental interview with an HR psychologist who had seen my MBTI profile in advance, but never met me in real life. In the course of our conversation, she kept heaping praise on me. Compliments like: "But you're so open – not boring and rigid at all!" It was almost as if I was mentally impaired, being complimented for being able to form coherent sentences. A cute little dog doing tricks or something. You'd never treat someone like that in a normal conversation. I felt like she was comparing me to some pre-conceived negative stereotype in her mind and then praising me for not being as bad as that. I think it detracted from her efforts to actually get to know me as a person. Apparently, the MBTI had blinded her to how arrogantly she was treating me.

Yes, Jungian typology has the potential to do a lot of damage if not handled with sensitivity. It sounds like you've experienced that first-hand.

Yeah. I knew she meant it as a compliment, but it kind of turned me off MBTI. Not necessarily because I think it's not valid, but because I think it fosters prejudice against certain types.

Yes, I think you're right about that too. So put these experiences into some perspective for us – what is your education, and what do you currently do?

[Laughs.] I have MA degrees in French and German language and literature, but that's not what I ended up doing at all. [Laughs.] I've always been good with languages, so an education focusing on languages seemed like the obvious choice. It wasn't until I graduated that I realized how few jobs there are pertaining to those degrees. So I enrolled in a Business School program to learn all the proper commercial, legal, and technical terms that have to be observed in business correspondence so that I could work for firms, handling their foreign correspondence.

My first real job was in a pharmaceutical company, managing their orders and policies and coordinating communications between Great Britain, Germany, and France. A lot of those communications had to do with budgets and numbers, and since it turned out that I was pretty good with numbers, I was gradually trusted with more and more responsibility for the financial side of things as well. Over the years, I worked in several positions for different firms. I climbed the corporate ladder until I ended up in my current position as group CFO (Chief Financial Officer) in a patent and trademark consultancy firm.

A patent and trademark consultancy firm? What's that? And what does your job there entail?

A patent consultancy is a big corporation full of trademark and patent lawyers. Because there's no internationally coordinated system of patents, we have to have departments and lawyers all over the world to enforce these kinds of things. Global representation is quite costly, so even other international corporations – well-known, big corporations – come to us and pay us to enforce their trademarks and patents all over the world. We renew patents and trademarks, draw up new patents and trademarks, and of course sue people who violate the established trademarks and patents of our customers.

As I said, for that kind of thing to work you have to have global representation, so we have lawyers and offices all over the world. My job is to design the different financial policies and budgets that the departments in every country must adhere to.

That sounds a bit like one of the ESTJs we interviewed for this series. Her job consisted in travelling around the world, making sure that each regional department complied with the policies set by HQ.

Yes, the jobs are related, but also different: The way you describe her, she sounds like more of an internal auditor – a high-level enforcer – whereas I'm the one at HQ designing the policies to be enforced. I don't enforce or audit things personally, unless something has gone wrong somewhere further down the system – typically because the auditor from HQ and the regional director (who's the head of the national department) can't reach agreement. Then I have to step in and mediate, and of course it's almost always the auditor who's right and the regional director who thinks he's a big shot and somehow entitled to overspend or follow different policies than the ones that are mandated of every other department, because his department (and it really is almost always a 'he') is different and special. Then you have to step in and kindly let him know that it's not. [Laughs.]

It sounds like it's quite the high-ranking position. How do you feel about your current job?

I like the job, but it's not the best job I ever had. The challenges and workload are alright even if I do clock in 55 hours in the course of an average week. You can forget about unplugging on weekends if you want a job like mine. There's always something or someone that requires your attention.

I don't mind setting policies, negotiating budgets, and being the leader of the financial team. Overall, I'd say I'm a pretty good match for the job in terms of interests, competencies, and motivations. It's just that... [Sophie holds back.]

That what?

That many of the lawyers who work there are ass-hats. I'm sorry – there's just no other way to say it.

I don't mind corporate culture, and I can stomach the workload and the parts of the job that are not very exciting without complaint. But some of the lawyers there, my God! I'm usually pretty good with people, but these people are just impossible to work with.

How does that come out?

They're mistrusting and not team players. Always belittling others and badmouthing one another behind each other's backs. Their attitudes are generally negative and snobbish, and they construe everything that doesn't go their way as a personal affront.

I'm sorry – I'm not really negative with people. In fact I quite like and get along with almost everyone. It's just that these particular lawyers are terrible colleagues.

Can you give a concrete example of how these tendencies play out in practice?

Yes. Just the other day, two of them had a client coming to the HQ for a meeting, and they were standing there in the hallway, arguing over which one of them should go greet the client in the lobby. Arguments like "I didn't go to law school in order to fetch people from the lobby," were flung unironically. I thought it was really embarrassing. I stopped what I was doing and told them that if they couldn't decide, then I would go to the lobby and greet their client for them (even though he wasn't my guest and I am their superior). That made them run off and greet their client, but it's just one example of a generally troublesome attitude that I have to deal with every day. When you're a people person like me, and you actually want things to flow smoothly, it ends up getting to you in the long run.

So are they the reason that this job is not the best job you've ever had? What was the best job?

Prior to my current job, I was the Administration Manager of a regional branch of another corporation, a pharmaceutical corporation. I was the administrator of a big office building; a house of some 130 people, all working for the same company. I set policies and procedures for anything practical that went on in the house: The procedures and contracts for the firm's cars (and the auto shops to which they had to be taken when they broke down); the receptionists and their procedures; the cafeteria (and which suppliers the cafeteria staff would be allowed to procure from); wage and insurance packages for the employees; satisfaction surveys among the staff – anything, really! Anything that had to do with the practical administration of this house of 130 people, I was the boss of that.

It's a funny thing, really. In that job, I was much more of a "boss" and had a bigger personal staff to help me sort through it all than I have in my current position. But my current job is fancier and I make more money, even if it's actually less challenging in some ways.

So why did you leave?

My current job is more high-ranking, and as I said, I make more money too. If it were only a question of job satisfaction, I might have chosen to stay at my former job. When I say that I was more of a "boss" there, I mean that everyone knew me and treated me with respect and deference for the way I was running things. In my current position, I'm mostly surrounded by other high-ranking executives (who have their own matters to tend to) or seeing numbers in spreadsheets and reading reports on how the various national departments that have to comply with my policies are faring.

A standard point derived from Jungian typology would be to say that as an ESFJ type you enjoyed being the administrator of the house more because in that role you could see the effects of your policies play out and benefit the lives of actual people, whereas someone like an INTJ type might be more content just seeing the numbers in those reports and spreadsheets get better every year. What do you think of such an interpretation?

I feel that's right, but then, I've found my own workaround with that: I don't try to conceptualize my way through each and every possibility or challenge that's facing each national department. Instead, I use the policies that already exist here at HQ as a template for how the national departments should be run. I extrapolate from what I know and what I've seen first-hand because I know how it works (and more importantly, I know that it works).

No; the reason I liked my former job better really is because of the difference in mood, where the lack of camaraderie and esprit de corps in my present workplace is really getting me down. I know pharmaceutical companies get a lot of flak, but having worked in several of the "big pharma" companies, I can only say that everyone I've worked with in that business has been really personable and truly looked out for each other – not at all like my present world of lawyers.

The reason pharmaceutical companies get flak isn't because people aren't nice to each other, but because they're accused of bribing doctors and psychiatrists with vacations, gifts, and the like.

Right. In my experience that's all true enough. It does happen, but I probably shouldn't get too much into that. I will say, however, that I've always found the debate about it to be oddly one-sided. Why do people think that corporations pour so much money into sweetening the pot for doctors and psychiatrists if not because it works? But of course it's easier to hate the faceless corporations while kidding yourself that your doctor only has your best interests at heart.

Right. Before moving on to the final section of the interview, we also have to touch upon the question of the worst job you ever had.

Some jobs are better than others, but I don't think I ever had a bad job. Or if I did, I did my best to quickly move on. I guess one of my first jobs, though, when I was straight out of the business school training that I mentioned earlier, was pretty bad. That was as a full-time translator. Instead of letting me interact with executives who talked to me to give me an impression of what they wanted written down, this job basically sat me down at a desk for eight hours a day with the purpose of translating business documents where precision and the accurate reproduction of the meaning that was already fixed in those documents was the only aim. That didn't work so well for me – I prefer to have more human contact in my job than that. Maybe it would work for someone more introverted, you know? At any rate, though, I prefer to interact with people for at least half of my workday.

You're too much of a people person to be chained to a desk all day. Do you have any final thoughts to add? What advice would you give a younger version of yourself?

Phew. Where to start? I've definitely realized that I'm not an "idea person" as such. I work with N types who just blurt things out without a plan for how to follow through. I've never been like that (nor could I be, even if I wanted to). When I was younger, I was often teased by friends and loved ones that I was a control freak and I sometimes felt bad about myself because of that. But the lessons of my adult life have mostly shown me that it's completely okay to be a control freak. As long as you ensure an outcome that's good for everyone and you deliver on your promises, most people actually appreciate someone who takes charge and fixes things (even if they sometimes tease you about it). In my experience, the control freaks that people can't stand are either tyrants (who don't ensure good outcomes for everyone involved) or the kind of people who want to be leaders, but who don't deliver and don't understand the responsibilities they're taking on as a leader: The kind of person who's quick to assume a position of superiority and tell others what to do, but who is not inclined to follow through and who is quick to abandon ship or shift blame when the instructions they gave didn't work out.

I believe that N stands for "intuition" in Myers-Briggs. Well, I have intuitions too, I just don't have a lot of ideas – I'm not the kind of person who, if you lock them in a room, they come out with 20 ideas for a new business.¹ I'm at my worst when I have to think completely 'from scratch' or 'out of the box.' When I was younger, I would sometimes feel bad about that (and I imagine it's even harder for today's youth, what with the 'cult of innovation' and 'ideas are everything' craze that's going on now). All I can say is that, from my perspective, being able to follow through and make the most of an existing venture has been much more valuable to the corporations that I've worked for than being able to come up with a lot of exciting new ideas. That's the kind of person I am – I follow through and make the most of what we've got before moving on to something else. I'm proactive and I think through the steps of how something is going to play out in practice, so that we don't suddenly find ourselves in hot water or falling behind schedule. If you do those kinds of things, I don't see any reason why you couldn't make CEO. The world isn't always as complex as young people think.

Sometimes, though, I still think about what life would have been like if I had eschewed all sensible considerations and just pursued the 'exciting idea side' of myself. Then I would have liked to become an anthropologist, living among primitive tribes, learning their languages, trying to understand their customs, and writing books about their way of life for the general public. If I had somehow been heir to a lot of money, I probably would have done that. As the matter stands, however, I look at some of my anthropologist friends: They're in their mid-40s, have lived a life of comparative poverty and have never had a decent job. One of my friends who's an MA in anthropology (and also in her mid-40s) recently landed a job sorting through research notes and putting papers in order for a professor, and she had to fight to get that job. I feel that kind of thing is a hard life too and that sometimes it must be terrifying to live with those kinds of financial insecurities. I feel bad for her and certainly don't think that I have any right to complain if my job is a little boring from time to time.

Two more things: One is that if you're a very conscientious and dutiful individual (like I am), you sometimes have to remind yourself that less-than-perfect is sometimes good enough. I'm still struggling with that one myself, actually. Sometimes, 'good enough' is all that's needed and it's stupid to be a perfectionist or set exceedingly high standards for yourself instead of just moving on to the next thing on your list. I am a bit of a perfectionist, really, but oddly, that perfectionism only pertains to myself. Just about every day at the office I see others cutting corners, or not giving a task their all, but for some reason, I don't compare them to myself or judge them. If anything, I am too kind towards them – too quick to empathize with their difficulties and why they haven't delivered.

The other thing is that I find that many young people nowadays can sometimes be a bit too trusting of authority. They have a tendency to just sit there in the workplace, waiting for others to instruct or entrust them with something. In my experience, that's not a very good way to go about shaping one's career. Had I done that, I might still be on the ground floor, translating business correspondence, exerting little influence over anything but grammar and the proper forms of address. You have to be proactive and carve out your own territory. Create your own job by noticing the things in your workplace that need to be done. It's especially when new projects come in or someone goes on vacation that young people have a golden opportunity to get ahold of tasks and responsibilities that they would otherwise not have been entrusted with. So keep your wits about you, and when an opportunity arises, try to seize it and use it to demonstrate what you've got. If you do well, they'll soon be coming to you for more.

Haha, that's quite the slew of advice. Thanks, Sophie, for sharing your experience with us. Hopefully the readers will find your perspectives as interesting as I did.

It's my pleasure and I hope so too.

Notes

1. Sophie is here touching on the same point about Intuition as a misnomer as voiced by Sigurd Arild in the article 'Intuition and Sensation as Names and Misnomers' (OJJT 2015).

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ESFJ Career Interview #1 © Ryan Smith and IDR Labs International 2016.

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.