ENTJ Function Breakdown

Extroverted Intuitive Thinking Judging

DRIVER Te Extroverted Thinking Effectiveness

Asks: What is the most efficient way to get this done? What are my goals? What do I want to accomplish and how do I do it efficiently?

ENTJs believe that what matters most is that their goals are accomplished and that they are making efficient progress towards them in an organized and logical manner. Te is a very action-oriented function. It is focused on logically planning and organizing the world around them. They set goals and get results; they are concerned with progress and objective logical information that shows progress. Te is the most honest function it says exactly what it needs to say to get the environment around it to be the way that it wants. For this reason, they often take a leadership role in organizing businesses or social groups. They are also very motivated busy and active. The ENTJ takes their goal driven personality for granted, they don’t put much thought into the actions required to accomplish something, they just do them. Because Te is a logical function it is mostly concerned with goals that can be measured so they are often attracted to business fields, but this is not every ENTJ.

PASSENGER Ni introverted intuition Prophetic

Asks: What could be? What future are our actions predicting?

The goal of Ni is to support Te by providing it with its purpose and a focus. Te by itself just organizes the external world logically and is actually a very selfless function as it organizes people the external world, but Ni gives the ENTJ a selfish reason as it realizes the effectiveness of the group directly affects their own future and ability to achieve what they want. This provides ENTJs with a motivation to stay organized and efficient to work towards a personal goal, as they realize that they often need people to accomplish what they want. ENTJs are often very good at reading the potential of colleagues and helps them move their goals forward in conjunction with the ENTJ. Because Ni is their helping function, ENTJs love explaining and teaching things that they understand because they feel like by explaining things they understand things better too. Since their understanding function is the helping function, they like to help others understand complex theories in a logical and useful way. The combination of these two functions also makes them very strategic, moving the world around them in a way that matches their plans and is efficient, almost always thinking at least a few steps ahead of everyone else. However, if Ni takes over too much, it might inhibit the ENTJ’s ability to make quick decisions. Instead they will become too focused on understanding the meaning behind everything and grow selfish with their own future. But in general, ENTJs want the lives of others to progress alongside them. The combination of Te and Ni can make and ENTJ seem very arrogant but in fact, they are actually very openminded as long as an idea is presented to them logically.

10 YEAR OLD Se extroverted sensing REALITY

Asks: What is happening? What is everyone doing and does progress goals? Am I giving everyone the best possible experience?

ENTJs exist in the physical world in a very childlike way. Riding the way of experiences and using the present moment to provide information to Ni understandings of their future and to Te judgments of whether this action has progressive purpose or not. Se teaches them to not put pressure on people so much that they create a potential that isn’t actually there. Because of this they will observe the environment and reality every second as if it’s a completely new experience, reevaluating how it fits into their plan for their own future. If the dominant function ignores Ni and focuses on Se too much, their ability to organize and plan becomes short sighted and they will spread themselves too thin. They may stomp down experiences that don’t make logical sense to them and turn down other people’s ideas insisting that people just do as they say. If the ENTJ ignores Se, only focusing on Te and Ni, they will forget to check with the current experience to make sure that reality is on track with the future that they see. This can cause them to become removed from reality, thinking that everyone is doing what they are supposed to be doing and they are on track to complete their goals when the evidence is right in front of them that people aren’t doing anything. A pure experience in reality is what re-centers the ENTJ and gives them a sense of relief. And like children, any experience can feel beautiful and transcendent. If people attack the ENTJs sense of reality and how they are currently experiencing the world, they can become defensive and paralyzed unable to take the actions needed to fix the present situation. They will also doubt the future they see if they are accused of not seeing the present accurately. The devil side of the ENTJ Se devalues the experiences of others in the name of a good future for themselves. They will ruin the present so that people will follow them to a more organized future. The angelic side of ENTJ Se reminds us to experience everything as a child would, in the purest form of enjoyment and what this experience of reality means will give us a positive future.

3 YEAR OLD Fi Introverted Feeling Morals

Ask: How does this make me feel? Is it right tor wrong? 

The ENTJ has a love hate relationship with the Fi function. Consciously, they often deny that they have emotions or that they have a sense of right and wrong and that those actions are an expression of their morals. In their mind, Fi is associated with weakness as being emotional and sensitive acting out of a moral code can prevent them from doing the actions that need to be done to create a better future. This is why they are one of the most productive types, because they are able to shove aside feelings of discomfort, or sadness and do what they need to do. But it is actually this internal recognition of how they feel and deciding whether to pay it any attention is what actually makes them so effective. Essentially, they unconsciously use Fi as a path or a guideline that they are headed in the right direction or that they might need to change directions to be efficient in the real world.

This conscious rejection but unconscious use of Fi as a guide can cause them to become obsessed with it. They may constantly judge the people that they are putting work into, asking themselves frequently if they are acting in a ‘right’ way and they may constantly question how they feel, only to stuff it away once it is recognized. The basic needs of Fi, which is accepting that their emotional state and desire to be a good person is what drives their actions, need to be recognized and accepted. If Fi is ignore, the ENTJ could act in ways that are decidedly wrong, ruining the future and present that they so passionately seek. It is the job of Ni, to remind Te to use Fi as the compass for why they are doing what they are doing.     

DETOUR Ti Introverted Thinking Accuracy

Asks: Does this make sense to me?

The problem with Te Ni is that it can be so eager to come to a logical solution that leads to a future, that ENTJs might make quick assumptions and skip over biases. To the ENTJ, something doesn’t make logical sense until it has been tested in the real world. A logical system is useless inside of their minds. They would rather use Ni to come up with ideas and a future, and then use Te to organize the real world and see if they get the outcome that they predicted. If it works, they move forward and don’t test it again for logical consistencies. Ti is similar in its concerns to Te, in that it wants ideas and things to make sense logically, however, Ti is slower and more in depth. It will test something logically, poking at it from all sides, trying to find logical fallacies and assumptions being made. For this reason, Ti challenges the ENTJ to slow down and make sure that they make logical sense before acting. While this can frustrate the extremely action-orientated ENTJ, it also fascinates them because Ti users become a logical testing machine that can test something for logic without having to make it happen in the real world. This means that Ti, can be a great source of growth for ENTJs, and they learn that slowing down can actually make them more efficient and productive before they ever lift a finger.

But if the ENTJ can not let go of seeing everything tested in the real world for usefulness, they might get stubborn distrusting a logical system that seems based on objectivity without proof. Even though they constantly worry that something doesn’t make logical sense in their heads.

COP Ne Extroverted Intuition Creativity

Asks: How do I know this? What if?

ENTJs are the most critical of their inability to explain their internal understanding for why things work. And they often criticize other people’s ability to understand complex theoretical concepts and how everything is connected. They often wish that their strategies could apply to the world on a bigger scale. They wish that they could organize everyone and everything so that everyone could understand how things connect. They often think that if people could understand better then they would be able to do what they need to do to reach their goals. They also often have to force themselves to listen to other people’s ideas, which they always wish they did better. For this reason, ENTJs love answering questions about why an action is the best action, not only does it let them explain things, it opens the door for someone else to maybe come up with a new and more creative idea that will get the job done in a more efficient way.

But while ENTJs often criticize their ability to explain ideas and their complex understandings, the truth is they are actually quite good at it, so good at it that they are known for organizing and motivating large groups of productive individuals. This is why ENTJs are so closely associated with CEOs and large business owners.

SPEEDOMETER Si introverted sensing MEMORY

Asks: What has happened? What has been done before?

The ENTJ is so concerned with planning to arrive at a specific future that they disregard information on the past and they disregard details and sentiment. This is why they have no room for excuses and complaints for why you didn’t do something. They decided that their past and the challenges associated with it were irrelevant to their ability to get done what needs to get done. The past is the only thing that they can’t change so it is the thing to be forgotten. What matters is what are you doing right now to get you closer to your goals? As ENTJs age, they might see some sentiment as important, but anything with regards to the past as an excuse for why you can’t achieve now is disregarded completely. The believe that the past is subjective and people create a narrative that prevents them from achieving what they are capable. They also tend to disregard methods of the past as well because if the methods were beneficial then they would not be able to analyze and come up with a better strategy so they tend to just figure out what is the best method themselves.

SPEED LIMIT Fe extroverted feeling harmony

Asks: What gets everyone’s needs met? What are the social norms?

ENTJs look at the external world in a logical way, they suppress their emotions internally and wish that they could be more logical internally, for this reason they can not pay attention to what everyone’s needs are, what their emotional states are and what social norms are expected of them. It isn’t that they don’t care how everyone is feeling, they know that it matters because the emotional states of others affects their output. Of course that might sound cold but they know that if people accomplish the goals then they will be happier. Hence, they believe what everyone needs is to just do something and go after what they want. ENTJs are excellent at figuring out the potential of others and what they will need to do to achieve their goals and how those people can help them achieve their own goals but other people’s emotional needs is something that ENTJs unconsciously ignore. But if they are told explicitly what someone needs emotionally, they are happy to help if they can.

How do ENTJS go bad or become unhealthy?

ENTJs go bad when they disregard the emotional needs of others and dismiss their own sense of right and wrong. They will start a slippery slope of doing whatever they need to do to achieve their goals. Stealing the ideas of others and using them for their own gain, and seeing the hardships of their own pasts as a reason for why they deserve to be successful ahead of everyone else. Valuing their own future above everyone else they will hoard their wealth and claim that people who are not successful, are not successful because they let their pasts and emotions get in the way.  They equate deserving with will and action and since they have the most willpower and action of anyone, they are most deserving of using everything that comes their way.