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Articles > The ENFJ Personality Type

The ENFJ Personality Type

ENFJs' idealism, reliability, and warmth make them compassionate friends, partners, and leaders.

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This series of short articles touches on several aspects of the ENFJ personality type.

You can jump straight to any section by clicking the links below, or keep reading to learn about the definition of the ENFJ personality type.

What does ENFJ stand for?

ENFJ stands for Extraverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Judging.

In the popular Myers-Briggs or 16-personalities tradition, all personalities belong to one of 16 types. Each type is defined by preferences across these four dimensions:

  • Introverted vs. Extraverted
  • Sensing vs. Intuitive
  • Thinking vs. Feeling
  • Perceiving vs. Judging

Here’s how to understand the ENFJ’s place on all four dimensions:

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Extraverted

ENFJs have an extraverted attitude or orientation.

ENFJs tend to focus more on the objective world of people and their external environment, while an introverted attitude leads to a greater focus on the inner, subjective world of concepts and ideas.

Intuitive

ENFJs prefer to use the cognitive function of intuition over sensing when taking in information about the world.

This dimension, intuition vs. sensing, is known as the perceiving function in MBTI theory.

Intuition refers to perception from sources other than the sensory system. ENFJs prefer to use their perception of abstract patterns, connections, “gut feeling” about a situation, rather than relying more heavily on perception directly through the sensory system (sensing).

Feeling

ENFJs prefer using their feeling function when judging information and assessing values and needs among people.

This dimension, thinking vs. feeling, is known as the judging function in MBTI theory.

By prefering feeling over thinking as their judging function, ENFJs lean on their acute understanding of others’ emotions, desires, and perceptions.

Judging

As a judging type, ENFJs tend to present their judging function of feeling to the external world.

Because they present their feeling function externally, other people see ENFJs as sensitive and empathetic.

ENFJ cognitive functions

The four-letter types from MBTI theory encode each type’s attitudes and preferred cognitive functions.

  1. The first letter indicates an introverted vs. extraverted attitude
  2. The second letter indicates the preferred sensing function
  3. The third letter indicates the preferred judging function
  4. The fourth letter indicates a judging vs. perceiving attitude

For the ENFJ,

  • E: This type has an extraverted attitude
  • N: This type prefers perceiving through intuition over sensing
  • F: This type prefers judging through feeling over thinking
  • J: This type has a judging attitude or orientation and will present their favored judging function (feeling) to the outer world

From this, we can determine how the ENFJ prefers the four cognitive functions of intuition, sensing, thinking, and feeling:

  • ENFJs’ primary function is feeling (F)
  • ENFJs’ secondary (auxiliary) function is intuition (N)
  • ENFJs’ tertiary function is sensing (S)
  • ENFJs’ inferior function is thinking (T)

Why? ENFJs have an extraverted attitude (E) and a judging attitude (J), so they present their judging function (F) to the external world.

Like all extraverted types, ENFJs prefer an orientation to the outer world, so they present their strongest cognitive function (F) to the outer world and other people.

ENFJs’ secondary function, intuition, is the one they rely on more heavily in their inner, subjective world. This counterbalances their extraverted primary function.

In MBTI theory, the tertiary function is the opposite of the secondary function, which for ENFJs is sensing.

Lastly, the inferior function is the opposite of the primary function, which for ENFJs is thinking. The inferior function in all personality types is the least developed function.

How rare is the ENFJ personality type?

According to the MBTI, somewhere between 1% and 7% of all people will be classified as an ENFJ.

ENFJ compatibility with other types

For comparisons between ENFJs and other types from the 16 Personality typology, visit any of the type pairings below:

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