Describe your level of introvertedness or extrovertedness

According to the Myers-Briggs Personality Test I am an introvert (52%).

I would agree with that assessment. There is a big department meeting/social tonight at work and I am dreading it!!

I am an extrovert and an ESTP! I took two of the mini tests (the yes/no and the sliding scale one). I took the second one because I don’t necessarily like how I have seen the ESTP described (unscrupulous, flakey, pleasure seekers, and jack-mormons), but the results were the same.

I feel a need to “put a positive spin on this” maybe that is my internal Artisan/Promoter.

I am good at speaking and interacting with others. I remember in HS, I would always work with this girl that would do much of the paper portion of the project as long as she didn’t have to do hardly any of the presentation.

I feel that I am very good at resumes, interviews, etc. I am good at “selling myself” and presenting. I have written several published business articles and sometimes imagine what it would be like to write a book or direct a movie. This weekend I will be competing in a district wide toastmaster’s speech competition.

When writing a paper or article, I prefer to collect, summarize, and/or expound the work of others rather than create something from scratch. In my management style, I see myself as a facilitator tying the labors of others together and making it cohesive.

In academics, I tend to stay a little after class to overhear the teacher/student discussions or to talk to the teacher myself. In classes where our assignments where only identified by ID numbers and not by name I felt that my grading was lower than I was accustomed to. The implication being that the development of the teacher/student relationship might influence the teacher to grade in my favor if they knew which assignment was mine. Perhaps an extension of this is that I usually do much better on essay questions than I think and worse on multiple choice (this might have to do with my communication ability coupled with the subjectivity of grading). “True Colors International” categorizes me as blue or heavily relationship based.

I am rather social and derive much of my fulfillment at church from the social/communal element. I make a point to go to as many church events as I can, bear my testimony, participate, as a form of integration with the community. I see conference as an interruption to this as I don’t get to interact with others. I dislike feeding the missionaries or going on splits with them because I would rather dedicate limited resources to interacting with less transient elements of the ward (i.e. the missionaries always leave so even if we become great friends, they will soon be gone- investment wasted). I recognize that there are community standards that I must adhere to (or at least appear to adhere to) in order to be accepted into the group.

When serving as the ward mission leader for a far flung ward, I proposed a series of smaller get togethers to be held at member homes and to invite those members that live in the same town or nearby (the ward encompassed many towns). Perhaps this was derived from my personal preference and fulfillment in those environments.

At a party, I am very outgoing if there is an objective behind it. But for its own sake, I only get engaged when someone wants to talk about something I find truly interesting — something philosophical, how to solve difficult leadership problems, or — to pick people’s brains about what they know about topics in which I want to expand my ability.

I find intelligent people fascinating, and I end up trying figure out how they think. Some of my greatest ideas have been modifications of the ideas intelligent people have shared with me…like when I spoke to a bank manager who said she reduced tellers’ turnover significantly by advertising for sales people, not people who have cash management experience.

I then used that principle to staff my bands with people who were salespeople first, and competent musicians second. That generated so many gigs that I’m not sure how I’m going to get through the holiday season we’re so busy now.

More later when I’ve had more time to process and compose a coherent post.

I’m way over on the introvert side on the MBTI.

I think being an introvert is one reason I struggle with our extremely social church.

I think it’s not just the social aspect but also the focus on happiness and how that is defined so uniformly so often. Introverts tend to find happiness differently than extroverts, but extroverts tend to define things more than introverts – so introverts face basic definition challenges on top of the foundational sociality.

I think being an introvert is one reason I struggle with our extremely social church.

I think it’s not just the social aspect but also the focus on happiness and how that is defined so uniformly so often. Introverts tend to find happiness differently than extroverts, but extroverts tend to define things more than introverts – so introverts face basic definition challenges on top of the foundational sociality.

That’s a good explanation of it. I remember being kind of put out when the Plan of Salvation was renamed. More pressure to “be” a certain way, it seemed to me.

I have always been introverted, I would give talks and teach lessons mostly because I thought I was supposed to do what I was asked to by local Church leaders but I never really liked it. It basically stressed me out and I felt drained by it like I could only fully relax after it was over. I would much rather just sit in the background and let others that like being the center of attention do most of the talking. At this point it seems like the Church is mostly geared around people that are much more outgoing and emotional than I am and I think the one-size-fits-all formula where everyone is expected to be more or less the same is a major weakness of the Church because many people are just not going to find happiness and fulfillment with what the Church is currently asking for no matter how hard they try to make it work.