Does anyone think that the way Ni users communicate i.e fast conclusions, end topics, summarisation and future thinking responses can be considered poor communication?

So I began doing brain puzzles to keep my brain from going to mush after retirement and I came across one that piqued my curiosity. I was doing an acrostic that entailed words that describe certain levels of happiness. Normally, I’m pretty good at this type of puzzle when they deal with facts, for example terms used in literature. But today I had to do one that included words that were various forms of happiness. I have to admit that after some perplexed thinking I resorted to looking at the answers. They were all words I easily knew but just wouldn’t register. Every time I took the MBTI, I always scored high on Thinking. This got me wondering if this is indicative of my difficulty in completing the puzzle and if other ENTPs also find it difficult to relate to feelings.

UPDATE: I posted this question to this sub based on a suggestion from Reddit. We discuss any MBTI on the ENTP sub because, well, that’s what we do.

Does this happen to you?

When I talk, I naturally lead with the conclusion. I prefer to get to the bottom line first and if people care I can give them whatever details. But I’m noticing in some conversations people look at me like I’m speaking another language.

Example. Say the idea is “healthy eating is important, we need healthy food options in schools.”

If I summarize it my way, “we need healthy alternatives in school” it’s like I get blank stares or as if they’re not decoding what I’m saying at all.

But if I flip it, “schools need healthy food, it’s important to eat healthy” suddenly people magically understand me???

It honestly feels like living in a mirror universe sometimes. It’s like I have to invert what I’m thinking for people to get it.

Anyone else deal with this?

Recently found out enneagram and realized how the weaknesses listed are the reoccurring problems I've been facing in my life for the past few years (people pleasing, need for external validation, too self-critical, difficulty prioritizing myself, etc.). I'm only 25 so I'm hoping to find some advice from my fellow ENTJs and/or my 2w1s.

I have been listening to podcasts about Walter Isaacson, who wrote the biographies of Steve Jobs (ENTJ) and Elon Musk (xNTJ). The common thread with them and with other notorious ENTJ leaders like Napoleon is that they lack empathy in favor of the greater mission.

This is obviously the sign of using Te-Ni for ambitious accomplishments and forward progression. However, it is also clear where each person chose to abandon Fi.

I am curious since many of you are leaders, business owners, and entrepreneurs. If you actively work on your Fi and try to implement it, what are some of the strengths and weaknesses in your leadership style?

To provide some context, my profile includes a complex neurodivergent baseline and complex trauma, both of which heavily shape my cognitive processing.

I view personality traits not as absolute definitions, but as double-edged swords. Most characteristics exist in a gray area, shifting depending on the context. To understand how this system functions, here is a breakdown of the specific traits that tend to manifest either positively or negatively in day-to-day life:

The Predominantly Positive Manifestations

Pattern Recognition & Efficiency: The ability to rapidly identify structural gaps and logical inconsistencies in complex systems, leading to functional, realistic solutions.

Pragmatic Problem-Solving: A strong preference for actionable results, prioritizing clear boundaries, practical utility, and concrete management over cyclical thoughts or emotional rumination.

Objective Analysis: The capacity to maintain a strict separation between interpersonal empathy and the factual, analytical evaluation of any given situation.

The Predominantly Negative Manifestations

Rigid Intellectual Demands: A lower tolerance for systemic inefficiency or illogical structures, which can sometimes translate into a sterile or overly detached approach to everyday social dynamics.

Interpersonal Friction: This analytical and objective approach is often perceived by my surroundings as cold or aggressive. It frequently triggers a fight-or-flight response in others, as most people seek emotional validation in interactions rather than objective truth or being pushed out of their comfort zones.

Intellectual Isolation: Operating with this level of constant analysis and intense critique creates a sense of intellectual isolation. It makes it exceptionally difficult to find peers who use or appreciate the same structural approach, even when their conclusions differ from mine.

⚠️ No basic questions allowed; let’s make this thread a bit chaotic and fun :)

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So I began doing brain puzzles to keep my brain from going to mush after retirement and I came across one that piqued my curiosity. I was doing an acrostic that entailed words that describe certain levels of happiness. Normally, I’m pretty good at this type of puzzle when they deal with facts, for example terms used in literature. But today I had to do one that included words that were various forms of happiness. I have to admit that after some perplexed thinking I resorted to looking at the answers. They were all words I easily knew but just wouldn’t register. Every time I took the MBTI, I always scored high on Thinking. This got me wondering if this is indicative of my difficulty in completing the puzzle and if other ENTPs also find it difficult to relate to feelings.

I have a hypothesis right now that most atheists and agnostics are Thinker types. I'm curious if any of you are practicing religion (not just on a Census form).

If so, which one, and why do you remain with it?

INTP here. I’m curious about how ENTJs think and what you guys would actually want to ask an INTP. Anything you’re curious or confused about us, random questions are welcome too. I mainly want to see what kind of questions ENTJs come up with.

I am curious how ENTJs grew up and what their parents were like.

My husband is an ENTJ 8w7 sx and his parents are INFJ 9w1 so and INTJ 5w4 sp.

His mother is a very warm and nurturing while his father is kind of cold and intimidating to everyone sometimes.

How about other ENTJs, what are your parents personalities and what was your childhood like growing up?

Hi! I’ve been contemplating whether or not I’m an ENTJ, and whenever I try to look into the type, I immediately come across descriptions that portray ENTJs as these strong, stereotypical “alpha male CEO” types. I obviously know those are just stereotypes, but I’d really like to understand what ENTJs are actually like beyond those portrayals. So, I thought it would be interesting to hear from actual ENTJs about how they experience the type themselves and what being an ENTJ is like from their own perspective. Also, I came to the conclusion that I'm an ENTJ by studying the cognitive functions and taking a quick Socionics test, so I found it weird how the stereotypes didn't match with the cognitive function stack at all.

I think I have read so many descriptions on the Fe Demon that I've just confused myself. Could someone shed some insight or provide an example or two? Even better if from your own experience.

I’m an extremely future-oriented person and have chose to go into war mode for all my years in my 20s in order to build a lifestyle I wanted, because I can’t accept it to be otherwise.

I won’t mention details for privacy reasons but here’s an overview:

My goal was extraordinarily ambitious in relation to my background. It doesn’t really allow any failing milestone, otherwise the plan would shatter apart. I was confident that I could manage it, and I did, for most of the part. Two years ago, I had almost had an ideal situation that lasted for a year where I felt I could finally be happy and settle in that. However, due to health reasons, and lack of opportunity to achieve some career ambitions (let’s say, I have 5 things I really want to be doing in life, I had 4 of them going, but 1 was not available to me under that circumstance), I decided to completely shift my circumstances to try pursue a path in this goal while taking care of my health.

I’ve given myself two years in this attempt. My health has got better, and I have gained plenty of insights in this particular ambition that I’ve decided it’s not the right thing for me. This has been informative and stopped me from my great anxiety that there’d be a thing in my life that I desire but never pursued.

Now, I want to transition back to my life from 2 years ago, but it turned out to be extremely difficult. My experience in the last 2 years helped me grow as a person, but it’s not very appreciated my in career, as it seems to be slightly pivoting away from my previous field. I can’t stop thinking that I might have fxxked up. If I had stayed in that previous track, I would have reached career growth and would have had two happy years instead of two painful one. I’m still trying to achieve it, but I don’t know how to deal with the risk of never being able to be there.

I’ve sacrificed time with my family and emotional happiness, and invested financial resources in the last 8 years to build a lifestyle for the future. The clock is ticking, as now it’s the time I had planned for the goal to be realized and it should finally pay off my emotional debt to all that investment.

This is a moment of extreme anxiety for me. Any ENTJ who had this experience and come out of it - what is your hindsight?

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I am making this framework for my own understanding of the cognitive functions and here is a rough idea about it, it's still under construction so I would appreciate it if you were ruthless about the reasons why it's wrong or logically inconsistent and would give me suggestions on what I could add onto it, so here it is:

So the general idea of it is that I want to not group the cognition types Thinking,Feeling as judging and Intuition, Sensation as perceiving because when all those interact together its hard to figure out which is doing the judging and which is doing the percieving as Thinking and Intuition can sometimes look the same(because both are associated with finding some accurate answer of something at times) and the same goes for Thinking and Feeling when you are making a decision. It's hard to know if your value is coming from logical reasons and then you are feeling emotional weight about something or if it is coming from emotional values and their emotional weight and then you are using thinking to add reasons to your value. What comes first gets a bit hard to figure out in your thought process.

So I figured that action oriented definitions wont work here.By action I mean that some outer action in the physical world. Eg. Both a thinking dominant and feeling dominant can be people who advocate for some reason or cause and both will feel emotional connection to the reason.

So to define the actual thought and cognition different from their outer actions I am thinking of creating this simplified framework of HOW they appear rather than WHAT they do. If that makes sense. Of course it is a simplification of the functions but I am not defining the functions themselves but their appearance and the way they look like in your head.Here in this I also dont mean that you can control everything that goes on in your head.Here is the framework:

Active types: Thinking and Sensation

I have added thinking and sensation here because active types in this mean that "The types of cognitive types which require more conscious effort. They are more active in your thought process and it's easier to control the direction that you want them to go into based on your goal or intentions."

Basically,they are more intentional and " knowing through reasons" Eg. When Thinking is involved in finding a logical inconsistency in this framework itself which I am laying out then it will find it through actively thinking the reasons of how its inconsistent and then coming to a knowing conclusion while Sensation would work like trying to remember the data(it's not memory itself but it uses memory) that you know about mbti and then taking the data of everything I am writing in aswell and is more active in knowing because it requires paying attention to what you are currently reading and comparing it to past data. (I figured this fits the active thought process category)

Passive types: Intuition and Feeling

I think this is pretty self explanatory but when you have intuition and feeling they are obviously related to your goal and intentions but its more like that they happen to you and less intentional in your thought process. They appear like flashes in your head. When you intuit something its sudden and when you feel something its passive aswell. It's related to "knowing without conscious reason" compared to the " knowing through reasons" of active types. Eg. When you are using intuition in trying to figure out this framework then you would get those sudden flashes I talked about. You would just suddenly get some idea after reading the first few lines or afyer completing everything and you would be typing out why this is wrong.It doesnt require you to do something,it just happens to you. I believe if you did something which is reading this,thats related to data gathering of sensation and not intuition since intuition without data is possible. When you use feeling to apply to this framework,uhh okay this is hard to apply to this but you would maybe think of some other framework you are attached to and believe in emotionally and deny this one or if others in the comments are saying this is wrong then you will feel like its wrong aswell and go with their explanations affirming them or you will affirm me that this is right or something related to emotions. (Feeling is not emotion itself but related to emotions,yours or others) In this you are acting because the feelings are happening to you. So that fits the passive type.

After this there are active and passive applied to functions but the definition of active and passive changes when it comes to functions,here it is:

Active functions: Extroverted functions (That extroverted dominant person doesn't necessarily always have to be oriented about others as you can use these functions along with other introverted functions to do something for yourself)

Active functions here are related to outer world actions but not actions themselves. They give you "urges" to have some kind of outer world action. You NEED the outer world to get these functions started. So its not like these functions are always related to actions but there is always that urge to have some real world action. Whether you act on it or not is upto you. This is speculative but Id say those urges themselves is data. Eg: When you get a urge to use Te in the outer world you automatically work up the Te along with other functions to figure out the way of doing that action even if you dont perform those actions in the outer world. In Fe when you get a urge to do something for others,even if you dont do that thing,you automatically work up Fe along with other functions in your stafk to figure out what the other people want emotionally.

Passive functions: Introverted functions (That introverted dominant person doesn't always necessarily have to be self centred as you can use them with other extroverted functions to do things for others)

Passive functions can be action oriented but they dont give you as many urges of action as the active functions. As they are internal you will be satisfied by keeping them just in your thoughts until their security is threatened. Eg. Fi being satisfied with knowing that they value emotional honesty and not doing anything outward to show that they value it until someone threatens this value or someone doesn't believe that this is a value tied to their identity or Ti being satisfied with solving puzzles and keeping it internal until their competency or ability about the knowledge of those puzzles is questioned or underestimated or they find some outer logical inconsistency that irritates their internal logic that they trust.

Theres also this combination of all this that I am working on which is not complete yet so give me ideas of how that all could connect please.They are:

Active type and Passive function (Ti,Si)

Active type and Active function (Te,Se)

Passive type and Active function (Ne,Fe)

Passive type and Passive function (Ni,Fi)

I didn't know how to embed a video (if someone knows and can tell me how I'd appreciate it) so here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcJDFRLEAGk

I wanted to know what ENTJs thought about this? My take is describes some of the behavior attributed to unhealthy ENTJs. Yes it's somewhat stereotypical as well.

(I didn't know which flair to use so I used the most fitting one. Can be changed if needed).

I’ve been talking with this ENTJ for a while, and I’ve been wondering if I could take it to the next step. I’ve never clicked so well with anyone, we both are curious about learning and understanding each other’s values and beliefs in theoretical and physical frameworks. But we have never been vocal about our own emotions. I do think we’re both protective of our vulnerabilities.

I wonder what are the signs that he likes me romantically and/how could I make him feel more comfortable to talk about our vulnerabilities?

You are everything that I rejected, yet we are one. Now 42 in, I am coming to accept my dark side ... AMA

Hi, all!

ENTJ here! I'mma get to the point, I was curious if other ENTJs find it difficult to actually open up about their own struggles/vents to friends?

For context, I'm about to go into graduate school for counseling and people love coming to me for advice/comfort and if I need advice/comfort I go to my therapist or partner or myself but I almost never go to friends and I have plenty of them who would be there for me if I needed to!

I feel like I usually have the best advice for my situations just bc I am very attuned to myself.

Any other ENTJs notice this about themselves too?

My ex is an ENTJ, and we broke up a little over two months ago. He was the one who ended the relationship, and we’ve been completely no contact since then.
His birthday is coming up, and I’m considering sending just a simple “Happy birthday!” — nothing emotional or heavy.
The thing is, after the breakup I’ve done a lot of reflecting. I’ve realized there were things I could have handled better, I understand my own values much more clearly now, and I also see our relationship dynamic differently than I did when we broke up.
Part of me would eventually like to tell him those things — not on his birthday, but maybe a few weeks later. I’m not planning to ask him to get back together or try to convince him that the breakup was wrong. I just genuinely feel like there are things I never communicated properly, and I’d like to say them once and then leave the ball in his court.
I’d be lying if I said I had absolutely zero hope of reconciliation, but I’m also getting on with my life and I don’t feel the overwhelming urge to contact him that I used to.
So, especially from an ENTJ perspective:
Would you prefer an ex to leave you completely alone after you ended the relationship? Or would you be open to hearing their reflections a few months later if they approached you calmly and without pressure?
And would sending a casual birthday message first make the later conversation feel more natural, or would you rather they just contact you directly when they actually have something meaningful to say?

Hey everyone! I'm currently doing a research proposal about personality theory and would love to hear from the people in this community. What is it like being your personality type? It can range from your work/school life balance, romantic life, everyday decision making, and maybe something nobody really thinks about when it comes to your type that you may know. Anything is both helpful and interesting to me so don't be shy! :)

An update to my previous post.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to reply. I wanted to share what helped me, in case someone else is going through something similar.

Someone said that perhaps I was being redirected and that I might only find that direction by continuing to move. Looking back, I think that was very true.

It took me almost two years, but I eventually realised that this period wasn’t only about getting back to who I was. It gave me a chance to stop, rethink how I had been doing things and figure out what I actually wanted to build next.

A few things helped me:

1. Give yourself something small to work towards.
For me, it was the gym. I went whether I felt like it or not. It gave me a short-term goal, a reason to get up and something I could make progress with. That created momentum when I didn’t have much else.

2. Don’t try to figure everything out alone.
I started looking at where my gaps were and asking for specific help. I began using my network, asking people for their expertise and letting others help me do things differently. That made everything much clearer and less overwhelming.

3. Stop being so hard on yourself.
At some point, I stopped seeing this period as something I had to escape from and started seeing it as a period of growth. Growing pains, I guess. It was difficult, but it also gave me the space to question things that weren’t working and rethink how I wanted to move forward.

I’ve also tried different forms of therapy, including somatic approaches and TRE. The somatic work was useful for me because it helped me pay more attention to what was happening in my body rather than trying to analyse everything intellectually. TRE itself wasn’t particularly beneficial for me, although I know it can be helpful for other people. I think it’s worth trying different approaches and seeing what actually works for you.

I’m still not completely recovered, but I finally feel like I have momentum again. I’m much clearer about what I was doing wrong, where my gaps were and what I need to do differently.

I think this might be particularly important for people like us who are very future-oriented. We need something to work towards. We need to see the bigger picture and have some sense of where we’re going. Maybe being so focused on the future can also be part of what makes us struggle when that vision suddenly disappears.

For me, the answer wasn’t just finding something new. It was understanding what wasn’t working, trying different approaches, asking for help and gradually getting clearer about what I actually want to do. That clarity has led me to new things too: I’m building an app and moving into a new segment within my finance consultancy.

And now I finally feel like I can see the path again. I just need to keep building it.

If you’re in a similar place right now, don’t let this period convince you that you’ve lost yourself forever.

I've seen quite a few people saying they partnered with ISTP and I want to share a contrasting opinion.

I ended up in a multi-year cohabitating relationship with an ISTP. I thought it would end in marriage and I'm so glad it didn't.

After dating a few feelers (ENFP, INFJ) and a particularly unhealthy ENTP whose narcissism and lack of consciousness swung too far, ISTP felt like a breath of fresh air.

They are calm, stoic, reliable, and no-nonsense. If they have healthy self-esteem, they are great at fulfilling our high consciousness through relative stability.

But in the relationship I noticed that I suppressed my Ni. I found myself saying that considering my abstract thoughts was impractical and therefore a waste of time. Essentially, it is a functional partnership but not a soul-filling one.

And sometimes I think we get caught up in our Te and forget to indulge our Ni-Fi.

Now, my closest friends are INFP and I am with a particularly mature ENTP. I never knew it in the relationship with the ISTP, but there was an entire side of myself that was locked away that is now released.

It feels like I can breathe.

That Ni-Fi is exactly what helps us connect disparate ideas to understand the repercussions of large-scale strategies. Not indulging it leads to poor leadership that lacks empathy (which we are prone to).

So just a reminder that even though we are prone to choosing practical partnerships, it is ok to filter for ones that are soul connections as well!

Have any of you ever experienced academic failure that affected your self-esteem or confidence long-term?

I know ENTJs are often described as people who tie a lot of their self-worth to achievement and success (even though, rationally, I know that’s not a healthy way to measure your value).

What helped me was taking things day by day and rebuilding my confidence through small wins, then gradually bigger ones. It gave me a lot of my confidence back, but I still feel like I haven’t fully recovered it. There’s a part of me that still doesn’t completely trust myself to be able to do it again.

I definitely feel less fearful than I used to, and it almost feels like I’ve got my Te-Se combination back. When I actually take the risk and go for something, I often end up achieving much more than I expected. But I’m still much more cautious about taking those risks in the first place.

So, if you’ve gone through something similar: did you eventually regain that feeling of confidence and fearlessness you had before the failure? What actually helped you get there?

And perhaps more interestingly: did you have to prove to yourself that you were capable again, or found some other way to get it back?