You are extraverted, sensing, feeling and judging.

Your dominant
process is extraverted feeling. Your auxiliary function is introverted sensing.
Introverted thinking and extraverted intuition are your least developed
functions. In the short-hand for this test, you are called an extraverted feelingtype, ESFJ.
Let's take a look at what this combination of character. sties means in
the day-to-day reality of being you.
ESFJ
YOU ARE AN EXTRAVERTED FEELING TYPE
Of all the general personality types, yours is the most outgoing and
friendly. Your chief concern in life is other people, and fostering harmony and
cooperation, between yourself and others and among others. Warm personal
interactions strokes of approval and appreciation keep you going in life.
Indifference and rejection absolutely crush you.
You are more than willing to do your share in relationships. You try,
always, to be friendly, sympathetic, cooperative and tactful. You make a
consistent effort to say and do the right thing so much so that conforming
to others' expectations (or your notion of what others expect) is
occasionally a problem for you.
You are a judging-type person, but your judging characteristic is not
manifested in the usual way of enjoying decision making. Instead, feelingjudging shows itself as enjoyment of clear-cut situations, in which things have
already been decided whether by others, by tradition, or by you.
You deal in values, beliefs, and sentiments, and from your point of
view they are absolute, settled, and that's that! Having life at loose ends is
very uncomfortable for you, especially if competing factions are vying
for your support.
The combination of feeling and judgment is the fertile soil upon which
righteous indignation flowers. You may find it helpful to temper your strong
feeling with a less emotional thinking approach to judgment, and to balance
your judgment with more open-minded perception.

Without some attention to those underdeveloped perceptive abilities, you

may find yourself fighting a never-ending battle against jumping to
conclusions or acting always with the very best intentions upon poorly
founded assumptions.
Your particular personality characteristics can combine lethally in your
interpersonal relationships to create a destructive cycle. First, you may look
upon your mate, children, and closest friends as a reflection on you: an
extension of yourself your report card to the world.
Just as you have high expectations for your own behavior, you expect a
great deal from them, too. When they fall short of your standards, you
may give them a rough time.
Needless to say, for one who values harmony so intensely, your reaction
conflicts with the ideal you, so you get down on yourself.
Next, you feel guilty, and you want to make it up to them. You let them
impose on you. You make them impose on you. You give them no other
choice. You wait on them hand and foot, forgive all sins, "go the second mile."
That's the only way you can redeem yourself in your own eyes.
Wow! They need you. You feel useful. You feel great, at least for the
moment.
Whoops! Next, they get helpless. They really need you. You get
depressed. You feel taken for granted. You feel imposed upon. You look at
their behavior as inadequate. You react, then feel inadequate for reacting.
Guilt. And so it goes.
Maybe this isn't you. Maybe not all of it is you. But if you see a bit of
yourself, you may wish to think about the pattern.
You are kind, unselfish, and charitable, naturally attracted to underdogs
and to others in need of a champion. You give a lot and enjoy being able to
give.
That may be the reason that people with your personality often find
themselves with mates who have some conspicuous problem, some
weakness. You may notice a tendency to parent those closest to you:
taking care of them, scolding them, forgiving them, keeping them from

having to take responsibility for their lives. Even a strong, well-adjusted

person may become childlike in that kind of relationship.
Burdened with such dependent family members, you may feel quite
afflicted and discouraged, but the $64,000 question is: Are you sure you
aren't doing this to yourself?"
Are you sure you are making a life for yourself that meets the greatest
number of your needs? Is it possible that you might be happier satisfying your
"rescuer" drive in your choice of work or in some charitable activity, rather
than by perpetuating unhealthy dependencies at home?
Many people with your personality enter service professions as a
creative solution to their need to give. If you are among those, congratulations
for finding an intelligent outlet for your giving nature.
In many life situations, you probably tend to be a bit hard on yourself.
When there's a discrepancy between your own performance and your ideal
behavior, you may struggle against guilt feelings and depression which other
personality types can't fathom. As hard as you may try to use your feelings in
positive, up-beat ways, you may find yourself using them self-destructively,
slipping into private moments of brooding and emotional pain.
You can liberate yourself from this darker side of your personality by
showing yourself the compassion you show the other people who casually
stroll through your life-space on a daily basis, the people who receive your
smiles, attention, empathy, chatter, kindness, loyalty, and affection. You are
offering the world what you need most, what you want. You deserve to get it.
Learn to love yourself. You can do it. You're a highly lovable, generous,
giving soul, and you deserve the inner harmony you seek to create in the
world around you.
Your desire to please others is so strong that you may occasionally
gallop off on some noble mission you think you're undertaking on someone
else's behalf, only to discover that your gesture isnt needed, and may, in fact,
be quite unappreciated. Then, look out! Your feelings get hurt easily, and you
have been known to pout or act out angrily in such situations.

Try to remember to ask people what they want before you undertake
projects or make sacrifices for them. Then your good deeds will hit their
proper target.
Otherwise, it may be important for you to remind yourself constantly to
take full responsibility for your own behavior especially when you take
action with the objective of pleasing other people.
Pleasing others matters to you so much that you may have a hard time
taking criticism as anything but personal. When faced with an appraisal of
your work or ability that frankly hurts, you may try to avoid the issue, ignore
the comment, or rationalize away the criticism as invalid. It's nearly impossible
for you to look at any criticism objectively, and that shortcoming limits your
ability to learn from mistakes and to avoid making the same error next time
around.
Again, it's that fateful pairing of feeling and judgment causing problems.
Use your thinking ability to analyze criticism, weigh its value, and apply it to
your future behavior. Use your perceptive ability to acknowledge that you
might, in fact, improve your performance with help.
YOUR AUXIILIARY PROCESS
As a judging person, it is your feeling capacity which forms your
dominant process. That's the extraverted side of your personality the world
sees, day in and day out. That's the basis upon which most of your judgments
and decisions are made.
Your perceptive side gains its knowledge of the world primarily through
your sensory ability. Sensing, then, is your non-dominant, or auxiliary,
process. It guides your introverted side, your moments of contemplation. It
rules your unconscious mind.
The combined effects of feeling and sensing in the extravert create an
individual whose perceptions of the world are firmly rooted in reality. You live
strictly in the here and now and you are interested in real-life:
experience, things and people.

You are a keen observer of life, and you supplement your data-gathering
by conversation. You are an entertaining conversationalist, a sympathetic and
attentive listener.
You take note of everything you hear and hold an amazing number and
variety of facts in your memory.
You impress your friends as being a no-nonsense person; practical and
conventional, sentimental and caring, all in the best sense of the terms.
As a sensing type, you're not impressed by abstractions and theory.
Sensing plus feeling translates to curiosity about people first, followed by an
interest in material things and day-to-day occurrences. Chances are good you
know a remarkable amount of trivia and that you enjoy collecting personal
tidbits to fuel your conversations.
If asked to consider an idea, you prefer to see it translated into firm
plans. Idle speculation and playing with theories do not interest you in the
least, unless people are, somehow, at the heart of the matter. Then you may
turn that sensing-feeling capacity into high-energy effort to accomplish your
goals.
It is a natural consequence of your personality for tangibles to be of
great importance to you. You are unabashedly interested in material
possessions; houses and cars and clothing and such.
Adding judging to this cauldron of personality features carries you a step
farther than simply valuing possessions. You are willing to work hard to get
them, and you believe that you need possessions to be OK.
You see your physical surroundings as an extension of yourself, and you
may slip into judging yourself harshly (again!) if your possessions don't "speak
well for you." In your closest relationships, you may need to be on guard to
keep from nagging your mate to produce more or to provide a better, cleaner,
or more luxurious home environment. That impulse will make you unhappy in
the long run, since you value harmony in your nest.
The combinations of sensing and feeling, feeling and judging, account
for a significant part of your personality, but the combination of sensing plus
judging probably accounts for more.

The combination of sensing plus judging is the cornerstone of your

personality, your core temperament. Yours is the outlook of the
traditionalist: an individual who believes in structure, responsibility, and
rules for living. Thats why we call this temperament the LEGALIST.
Let's see what happens when the LEGALIST is an extraverted feeling
type.
You are armed with a strong sense of justice, a feeling of right and
wrong which other types rarely share. In fact, our legal system is largely
created, enforced and maintained by the sensing-judging temperament.
"Shoulds" and "oughts are important words in your inner vocabulary of
motivation.
You mind your p's and q's, and it seems reasonable to you that the rest
of the world should do likewise. You don't mind letting others know what your
feelings and values are, and given the authority you may insist that others
follow your code and your standards.
You are happiest when living a simple, well-spelled out life, both at
home and at work. You appreciate a predictable environment, and you
are both patient and comfortable with routine.
You probably prefer conventional roles within the family. Wife-mother,
husband-father, older and younger children, all have particular functions in
your mind. You like a harmonious, orderly home.
You emphasize traditional values, and you feel it is important to
transmit these values to your children.
You expect reasonable behavior from your children, but as a feeling
type, you try always to temper your discipline with affection. When your
needs are not met in the home when your children are disobedient or refuse
to share in household responsibilities you are likely to take their behavior as
a personal affront. How could they do this to you? You take disharmony as a
personal injury.
Your home is your castle. You want to know where things are and
when things will happen. You'd just as soon not have any more change
than absolutely necessary, especially rapid change, change that you

don't see as necessary, change which isn't an obvious improvement

over familiar patterns. You want your feelings and needs taken into
account, in any case.
You value tradition and history, and you see the family as your
connection with both the past and the future.
Even if your ties with the extended family aren't particularly nurturing or
loving ones, the rituals of clan gatherings and family celebrations probably
receive your devoted attention.
You value your possessions. Given a choice, you'll spend your
money on useful or home-related things: major pieces which will see
many years of service. You tend to take care of things (furniture, cars,
tools, and such), and you like to see others do likewise. You are
unsettled by waste and conspicuous consumption.
Most people with your temperament are conservative financially and
protective of your and your family's future security. You keep an eye on future
comfort, at times to the compromise of present pleasure. You believe in
saving, and a credit-card existence is an unsettling thought to you. You
believe in planning for financial catastrophe.
You may notice a sense of pessimism pervading your view of reality. I
know. I know. You call it realism. Nonetheless, you'll probably concede that
Murphy, the famous author of Murphy's Law(s) (i.e., "Whatever can go wrong,
will, and in the most expensive and disastrous way possible!) was probably a
sensing-judging person, not too unlike yourself.
As a general trend throughout all parts of your life, you have a need to
feel useful, important to other people. Your sense of obligation and
responsibility may be a driving force, pushing you to take on more and
more tasks for the benefit of others.
You use your action to prove to others and to yourself that you are a
worthy and capable human being. The only problem is that you may not
really believe it yourself. You may be afflicted by a kind of chronic
underestimation of your abilities and talents that often troubles sensingjudging types. You may take yourself for granted.

You're patient and conscientious. You make a concerted effort to

stick to a job until it's finished, and you believe it's important to pay
attention to detail.
Perhaps more significantly, you base your work habits on a feeling of
personal obligation to the people who want to the task accomplished, on a
sense of loyalty to your boss or supervisor, or on a spirit of camaraderie for
your fellow workers. When you're happy in your work, you may idolize your
boss.
You perform your services with a conscious dedication to those who will
enjoy the fruits of your labor. You're less motivated to accomplish things for
the sake of institutions, causes, or ideas. That's your feeling nature shining
through!
You prefer structured situations, and you don't insist on setting all the
rules yourself. You believe the natural cascade of authority, in the orderly,
timely accomplishment of whatever tasks life offers, whichever ones you take
on yourself.
Whatever tendency you may have to be a bit childlike and flighty to let
a job sit unfinished or imperfectly done clashes painfully with your sense of
personal responsibility.
You are far more comfortable lending than borrowing, giving than
receiving.
Being independent as in not depending on others is of
paramount importance to you. But, ironically, being independent as a free
spirit, unfettered by responsibility is virtually impossible for one with your
personality characteristics. You have a strong need to be counted on, to feel
useful to others. You are almost driven to accept obligation.
Your view of life is so strongly liked to the work ethic that you feel
play must be earned by work. Then, ironically, when you recreate or
socialize, you may often find yourself working in that setting, too!
If you're like many sensing-judging people, you probably spend your
leisure time doing projects, fixing things, making things. When you put
together a party you may spend so much time working on it that you don't

ever relax. Or worse yet if you get invited to someone else's house for a
party, you may insist on helping clean up!
When those with your personality type join organizations, it is only partly
to satisfy your drive to fraternize and socialize. You have probably found that
you quickly accept responsibility in any group you join. People rely on you,
and you seek out that reliance.
Look at the bedrock of any organization: the officers, the founders, the
chairs of the working committees, and you'll be in the company of others with
your super-dependable personality. Yours is the personality that establishes,
nurtures, and maintains organizations.
You expect a great deal from yourself, and you are always judging
your own behavior by tough standards. Since you set your goals so high,
it's rare that you satisfy your own scrutiny of how you should perform. It's
hard for you to be entirely satisfied with your own accomplishments, no matter
how much you achieve.
Ironically, you probably don't think as much of your character and
accomplishments as those around you do.
You expect performance from others too, but not nearly so much as you
demand from yourself. When others don't achieve what you think they should,
or when they don't even try, you are disappointed.
As a judging person, one pitfall you will always have to consciously avoid
is becoming judgmental of others. It may be to your advantage to apply your
capability as a judge only to things, not people. Use that well-honed ability to
decide and act to guide your behavior in other realms of endeavor.
Many with your personality structure have a hard time asserting their
own personal needs. In the process of taking on more and more responsibility,
taking care of more and more people, you may get yourself into a situation in
which you feel frankly overwhelmed by your obligations.
Then you may feel resentful. After all, if others just behaved as you do,
then you wouldn't have to take on all of these tasks and chores. Guess what
happens next in this scenario. In walks someone who asks you to take on
another responsibility, and you jump at the chance!

Whoa, slow down! You have a right to say No. You have a need to say
it, too. Learning to be assertive may be the key to freedom for you, liberating
some time for rest and relaxation. You deserve it. Take a break and don't feel
guilty about it!
ESFJ
THE EXTRAVERTED FEELING-TYPE IN THE WORLD OF WORK
In the world of work, you'll find that your extraversion will arm you well to
deal with both variety and action
All other things being equal, you'll tend to work faster than your
introverted coworkers. Depending on the job circumstances, that's a mixed
blessing. In tasks that require quick decisions and quick action, you're
supreme, but you must constantly be on guard not to act too quickly,
particularly without thinking things through completely before you move. If the
nature of the work itself is slow, or if it involves long-term projects, you may
need to devise a few tricks to ward off boredom; otherwise, your efficiency
may suffer.
You are interested in the results of your job, in getting it finished, and in
comparing how other people tackle the same chore. While few people enjoy
being a small cog in the great wheel, passively performing some minor
function that is swallowed up by a large complex operation, your personality
type is especially distressed by losing touch with the over-all impact of your
work.
Your outgoing personality prefers working with human companionship,
so you may wish to think long and hard before accepting a job or work
assignment which forces you to work in isolation.
Communication comes more easily to you than to your introverted
associates. You're comfortable with words, and you communicate well. You
may wish to consider ways to capitalize on this asset to further your career.
You'll find that your combination of sensing and judging with extraversion
will put a lid on a good bit of your extraverted nature. You'll be more capable
than most extraverts of sticking to a task, paying attention to details, and
taking your time in business matters.

10

Patience, too, will be an endowment of your sensing-judging side.

And if your unbridled extraversion periodically causes you difficulty in the
workplace, take advantage of the knowledge that your own personality has
within it the check-and-balance mechanisms necessary to help you achieve
whatever moderation you might wish.
You value sentiment over logic, in the workplace, as in all other aspects
of your life. You are very sensitive to other people's feelings and needs. You
praise others' accomplishments, lend a sympathetic ear to their problems, and
you try to avoid being the bearer of bad news or criticism.
Your feeling side can make it difficult to be a supervisor. You care too
much about being well liked and respected to be objective and impersonal in
appraising others' performance on the job. Reprimanding an employee you
like is painful, and the prospect of firing someone, without respect for the
personal consequences to the employee's family, would be extremely difficult
for you.
Even in situations which threaten your sentimental nature less directly,
you may often have to battle your tendency to be tactful when the
unvarnished truth is needed. Your need for acceptance may nudge you into
acquiescence when your independent judgment is called for.
In the misguided effort to set along with others, you may let your
decisions be swayed by the group spirit, or by personal considerations which
might better be ignored in the interests of impartiality.
You are so keenly aware of others' feelings that the ordinary politics of
most business endeavors causes you anguish and concern. Your working
ability attitude as well as efficiency can be crippled by an obvious office
feud. You need harmony to work happily and well.
Ta-ta! To the rescue, once again, comes your sensing and judging
personality duo: a powerful down-to-earth mechanism within yourself which
can give you the qualities you need to override your sentimentality when it
frankly gets in your way, whether in friendships or careers.

11

Now that you understand how your personality parts combine their
effects, you can use this knowledge to become a more effective person in all
you do!
Your judging tendency will have a major impact on your behavior in the
workplace. Be aware that your personality type tends to set up psychological
blinders, and that they can function both to your advantage and disadvantage.
On the one hand, you are good at filtering out extraneous information, so
that you can focus on the critical issues to formulate plans, settle conflicts and
wrap up deals with a minimum of delay.
On the other hand, you may restrict the flow of information too closely to
what you consider to be "the essentials, and, by so doing, commit yourself
too early to a solution. Worse yet, your tendency to be satisfied with yourself
once you have decided on any course of action may make it impossible for
you to recognize at an early stage when a mistake in judgment has occurred.
It's not unusual for judging people to find it difficult to interfere with their
own plans: to shift gears, to interrupt one project for a more urgent one which
emerges. From time to time, this tendency may rear its head, as you fail to
notice new things that need to be done, after you've already set your sights on
some other objective.
Take one part of judging, one of sensing, and an equal measure of
feeling, and you may occasionally come up with a good observer who takes
careful note of every trivial event in the office or store, takes all business
interactions personally, and then reacts judgmentally, blaming others for what
doesn't suit.
Whoa! Are you sure you want to clutter up your workplace with that kind
of destructive chemistry? Be aware that such behavior can cause problems
and disrupt the harmony you value so dearly.
You trust your senses. You're rooted in the real world, not fantasy, and
in the world of work that translates to patience with familiar tasks, familiar
skills, familiar routine.

12

You work steadily toward your goal, and with much greater accuracy
than the intuitive sorts you have a good idea of how long it will take to reach
the conclusion of the task at hand.
You are good at precise work, and you seldom make errors of fact.
Those with less attention to detail, schedules, and precision strike you as
unreliable.
While others may thrive on novelty, you are frankly uneasy with new
problems until you settle on a sure way to solve them. You may become
impatient if work becomes too complicated. Change not only makes you
uneasy, but sometimes disagreeable, as well.
You have to admit that you sometimes drag your feet when someone
turns the tables on you (new task, new technique, new schedule, new rules)
after you were comfortably targeted on your original goal!
When you have to deal with intuitive sorts, you may find it difficult to trust
their inspirations and adopt them as a basis for trying out changes.
You may want to look at that resistance. On the one hand, your wellexpressed objections to their flights of fancy may help keep them from taking
off and taking you off on joy rides that lead to nowhere. But, on the other
hand, with their ideas and your ability to get things done, you may be able to
accomplish great things as a team if both of you give a little.

Professionally, you're happiest in work that puts you in daily contact with
people. You're well suited to sales or service occupations, as well as to some
kinds of supervisory work.
Teaching, nursing, school or office administration, law enforcement,
counseling, and the ministry are among the diverse occupations which attract
many with your personality type.
In a working environment, you adapt well to routine. You are less
concerned with the specifics of what you may be doing than with the
environment in which youre doing it. That translates to a workplace where

13

human factors receive considerate attention, where you can socialize at

least to some degree while you do your work.
In the most general sense, any work activity that combines face-to-face
contact and human cooperation is attractive to you, especially if talking is part
of the job. From time to time, you may find it necessary to curb that gift of gab
and socializing in order to get your work done. Brief, businesslike
communication just isn't your style!
You appreciate small gestures of humanity at work: the birthday card,
the going-away party, and you join in the small festivities that punctuate the
work year with a genuine spirit of friendship and camaraderie.
You accept the necessity for a business hierarchy, and you are unlikely
to bridle at reasonable supervision. You are capable of being an excellent
organization person, disciplined and loyal, so long as your personal needs for
human attention are recognized and met by your managers.
Your sensing-based concern for the physical, when coupled with your
feeling and judging characteristics, prepare you well for careers in the health
professions. You enjoy providing physical comfort and aid to others, and you
like to see the results of your labor translated into the improvement of life.
The most important thing to keep in mind in choosing or developing a
career suited to your personality is your personal strong point: service within a
well-defined structure. Any job that doesn't suit that short-hand description
isn't made for someone like yourself, and you'll never achieve the happiness
you deserve in your life.

14