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Personality types are a powerful way to better understand yourself and others. They provide an insight into a person’s thoughts, preferences, and behaviors, showing how they function in the world.
The ENFP is known as “The Campaigner,” with an infectious energy that motivates those around them. Let’s learn more about ENFP strengths and weaknesses.
What is the ENFP Personality Type?
The 16 fundamental personality types were invented by Americans Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Meyers, based on the work of Carl Jung. Their theory came to be called the “Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator” or MBTI.
The fundamental MBTI personality types are also used in other theories of personality, including Socionics and the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. Therefore, acronyms like ENFP are used in several different personality tests and systems. But what does the acronym mean?
Extroversion
The E in ENFP stands for extroversion, which indicates your preferred mental attention and energy source.
Extroverts are energized by active involvement, events, and festivities and having many people around them. They like energy and excitement and enjoy motivating people into action. In addition, they often understand problems better when they talk them through with others.
Intuition
The N in ENFP stands for iNtuition, which indicates what kind of information is most impactful for you.
Intuitive people pay attention to impressions and patterns and work well with theories, symbols, and abstractions. Intuitive people learn by thinking things through. Their focus is on the future and various possibilities rather than the concrete details of the here and now.
Feeling
The F in ENFP stands for feeling, which describes how you prefer to make decisions (not to be confused with emotions). A feeling personality type makes decisions based on the individual situation, feelings, and people involved.
They weigh different perspectives and try to make decisions that create harmony and positive feelings between everyone involved. They are usually warm, caring, and tactful.
Perceiving
The P in ENFP stands for perceiving, which describes your external behaviors and how you prefer to appear to others.
A perceiving person strives to understand and adapt to the world around them flexibly and well-naturedly. They are spontaneous, open to new experiences, and eager to learn new information.
Cumulatively, an ENFP personality is an imaginative motivator. They are friendly, expressive, and energetic. They embrace big ideas and have a vibrant energy that helps inspire and motivate others.
ENFPs are known as “Campaigners” because their positive energy is infectious and inspires others toward a shared vision.
The Campaigner is one of the most loved personality types, with a natural warmth and openness that wins friends everywhere they go. Some of our most beloved celebrities have had ENFP personalities, as have many of the most inspiring fictional characters in history.
An estimated 8.1% of the general population is an ENFP, but the personality type is more frequent in women, with 9.7% being an ENFP.
5 Strengths of the ENFP Personality
The ENFP personality is magnetic, easily attracting friends and building relationships, and has an energy that inspires and motivates. The key strengths of the ENFP are:
1. Curiosity
The ENFP is open-minded and interested in nearly everything. They are eager to seek new information, experiences, and ideas. This natural curiosity helps them connect with others, as they are genuinely interested in different experiences and perspectives.
2. Empathy
The intuition and perception of an ENFP make them very sensitive to the feelings and experiences of others, allowing them to understand and react to small changes in energy and emotion. In addition, their caring, considerate personality enables them to empathize and relate deeply to the feelings of others.
3. Enthusiasm
An ENFP gets excited about plans and ideas, wants to share them with everyone, and help people get caught up in their excitement. They are equally enthusiastic supporters of other people’s ideas, projects, and activities and can cheer and lead.
4. Communication
Arguably the greatest strength of an ENFP is their incredible ability to communicate. The combination of their sensitivity and empathy, along with their curiosity and genuine interest in other people, make them excellent communicators.
They can find common ground with many people, express themselves effectively, and build strong relationships through open communication.
5. Congeniality
ENFPs are naturally agreeable and good-natured. They prefer harmony and enjoyment and will easily go along with others and not create unnecessary conflict.
In addition, their ability to find something interesting and enjoyable, even in people or activities they don’t like, makes them easy for everyone to get along with.
5 Weaknesses of the ENFP Personality
With the personality profile and strengths of the ENFP, you may already be able to anticipate some of their weaknesses. Here are some of the drawbacks of being an ENFP:
1. Disorganization
Because ENFPs prefer to keep their plans casual and open-ended and tend to be more interested in the next big thing, their daily lives can be disorganized and lack follow-through.
As a result, they tend to procrastinate chores or not execute their long-term plans and goals, which can be a source of stress or disappointment in their lives.
2. Oversensitivity
The incredible sensitivity of an ENFP can lead to oversensitivity and overthinking. They may end up dwelling for hours on a slight change of facial expression, the wording of a text message, or other minor interaction that isn’t very significant.
3. Distractibility
ENFPs love the feeling of excitement and enthusiasm that comes with new projects, new activities, and new people.
But unfortunately, they may quickly lose focus on existing projects or activities and get caught up in new things.
4. Not Always Realistic
An ENFP always wants to see the best in people and invest their energy in fun and positive activities.
This can make them too trusting of others or too optimistic about the results of their actions without a dose of healthy realism. They may not want to accept unpleasant truths and try to avoid facing reality.
5. People-Pleaser
These factors often combine to make the ENFP too much of a people-pleaser. They like others and want to be liked, so they often give too much of themselves or work too hard to make others happy without getting anything in return.
In addition, their natural good nature, generosity, and optimism make it hard for them to see when others are taking advantage of them and make them reluctant, to be honest when it may create conflict.
ENFPs are often drawn to work in humanitarian causes, personal growth, and artistic expression. But, generally speaking, ENFPs are unhappy in professions that require a lot of solitary thinking and concentration, such as many jobs in analysis, engineering, and science.
Instead, ENFPs should look for work that takes advantage of their exceptional communication skills, involves people and collaboration, with various tasks and challenges, and the opportunity for creativity and originality. Some of the best career choices that use the ENFP strengths include:
If you are an ENFP, it’s essential to find work, relationships, and a lifestyle that supports your many strengths, so you can shine.
The biggest area for personal growth for most ENFPs is learning how to understand, accept, and express their negative emotions.
The impulse to suppress negative emotions to promote harmony and get along with everyone can make the ENFP prone to bad situations or negative people, allow them to nurse resentment or grudges against others, or seek to suppress their feelings with drugs and alcohol.
Talk therapy may be helpful and takes advantage of an ENFP’s natural gregariousness. Still, ENFPs should try to balance all their extroverted, intuitive energy with a bit of introverted analysis.
Taking 5 minutes a day to keep a journal can give the ENFP a positive way to express and explore their feelings, giving them more insight into their negative emotions without risking the interpersonal conflict they fear.
Final Thoughts on the ENFP Personality
The Campaigner wins friends and admirers wherever they go with their warmth, compassion, and enthusiasm. ENFP strengths and weaknesses make a dynamic, outgoing, and engaging personality type.
If you are new to the MBTI and personality types, it can be helpful to start with an overview of the different personality types and characteristics. You may also want to take an online personality test to determine your personality type.
Finally, if you want to identify YOUR personality type, then take one of these 11 personality tests to better understand what makes you tick.
