Victoria, British Columbia, Phone: 250-744-1731

Finding the Motivation to Grow Your Career INFP

Finding the Motivation to Grow Your Career INFP

By Donna DunningEnhancer

Donna Dunning

Insightful Enhancer

People who have preferences for INFP tend to focus their attention in the inner world by reflecting on their values and deciding on the right thing to do, using Introverted Feeling (Fi) as their dominant function. They are most engaged when their actions align to what is most important to them and to the people close to them. In their outer world, they tend to enjoy playing with ideas and possibilities, using Extraverted Intuition (Ne).

For more general information on type dynamics and motivation, please refer to the introductory post for this series, Find Your Motivation and Grow Your Career.

When Insightful Enhancers find opportunities to use this core approach at work, the result is usually a satisfying, meaningful career.

Building Your Skills

When learning and developing their competencies, INFPs need to hone their core approach as well as develop skills and knowledge outside of their preferences.

Some of the skills that may come naturally for INFPs include adapting, innovating, creating, nurturing, supporting, listening, and advocating. Careers that use these skills are often appealing to people with INFP preferences.

However, there are times when INFPs need to use and develop skills in their non-preferred functions. For the INFP, this might include being impartial, evaluating pros and cons objectively, giving and receiving feedback dispassionately, structuring tasks in sequence, and following routines.

I’m sure the INFPs out there can add to this list of non-preferred skills and activities.

Finding Your Motivation

INFPs will be most motivated to learn skills in their non-preferred functions “in service of the dominant function”. In other words, they need to see how the new learning aligns to and supports their values and personal beliefs.

My husband, who has INFP preferences, told me about one of his jobs as a construction manager. He spent quite a bit of time picking and getting to know his work teams. He carefully listened to their needs and, together, they accomplished projects well and on time.

To complete the work, he learned and used many non-preferred skills to structure projects. He carefully balanced his concern for people with the project realities and logical considerations. His workers saw him as compassionate, yet task-oriented.

When a new owner took over the company my husband lost the flexibility to manage the work with the needs of his teams in mind. The boss’s expectations were unreasonable and he was not focused on the people involved in doing the work.

My husband chose to quit, rather than work for someone who seemed to not respect how people should be treated.

I have seen more than one example of someone with a dominant function of Fi or Ti just quitting a job rather than working in a situation that did not align with his or her values or principles.

If you want to read more about INFPs on the website, here are a few posts to look at.

Developing Your Type – INFP

INFPs at Work

Occupations that Attract Enhancers

Resources

Want to learn more about personality type and how to use it to understand yourself and others?

Introduction to Type and Communication describes in detail how personality preferences influence communications.

If you live in the USA, Introduction to Type and Communication is now available on Kindle.

Introduction to Type and Learning can help you find your motivation for learning and help you learn more effectively.

If you live in the USA, Introduction to Type and Learning is also available on Kindle.

Looking for a practical resource to help you plan your ideal career? Check out my book, What’s Your Type of Career?: Find Your Perfect Career By Using Your Personality Type

Want to use your personality type to excel at your career? Check out 10 Career Essentials: Excel at Your Career by Using Your Personality Type

Share
This entry was posted on Monday, April 22nd, 2013 at 10:36 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Finding the Motivation to Grow Your Career INFP”

  1. Nanuq Aimée says:

    This blog post inspires me!

Leave a Reply


MBTI, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and Introduction to Type are registered trademarks of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Trust in the United States and other countries.