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

Finding the Motivation to Grow Your Career ISFJ

Finding the Motivation to Grow Your Career ISFJ

By Donna Dunning

Donna Dunning

Compassionate AssimilatorAssimilator

People who have preferences for ISFJ tend to focus their attention in the inner world by paying attention to, and remembering, relevant facts and details using Introverted Sensing (Si) as their dominant function. They tend to trust what they know to be true from their experiences. In their outer world, they tend to enjoy cooperating and building rapport with others, using Extraverted Feeling (Fe).

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 they 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, ISFJs 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 ISFJs include administrating, paying attention to detail, organizing, listening, managing time and tasks, coordinating, and cooperating. Careers that use these skills are often appealing to people with ISFJ preferences.

However, there are times when ISFJs need to use and develop skills in their non-preferred functions. For the ISFJ, this might include imagining new ways of doing things, dealing with uncertainty, making long-term strategic plans, analyzing situations impartially, and providing and receiving corrective feedback.

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

Finding Your Motivation

ISFJs 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 fits with and supports what they already have experienced and understand in detail. As well, they want to approach the world in a harmonious, organized manner, so they will be more comfortable to learn new skills when they have support and encouragement.

I have talked to more than one ISFJ who struggled adapting to situations outside of their natural, sequential, detailed approach. Teachers with ISFJ preferences have told me that they tend to want to follow a well-organized teaching plan and can be thrown off during a class if a student asks a question and takes the class in a direction the teacher did not anticipate.

One ISFJ teacher described to me how she learned to add flexibility, variety, and new content into her structure to make her classroom more helpful to her students.

Why did she choose to move outside her preferences? She determined that her teaching was being negatively affected when she remained focused on and committed to the status quo. Learning to adapt and flex in the classroom would, ultimately, build her overall knowledge and expertise and help more students to succeed.

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

Developing Your Type – ISFJ

ISFJs at Work

Occupations that Attract Assimilators

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, June 10th, 2013 at 7:39 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.

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.