There’s for a long time been a saying that “80% of the work is done by 20% of the people.” In Quaker circles, it seems the ratio tends more towards 95% of the work being done by 5% of the people, and for the longest time this inequality had puzzled me. Then just this week I heard (at a meeting of the 5%) that Quakers have a disproportionately large number of INFP’s represented. That explains a lot! The ESTJ’s should just tell them to do stuff. But how do you convince an INFP that they should take action on anything?
It reminded me of what an ESTJ leader had said to me almost a decade ago. A simple statement “The greatest leader is the greatest servant.”
The trouble with making statements like that is you’d have to be talking cross-eyed badger spit. It’s like saying “War is Peace”, “Freedom is Slavery”, and “Ignorance is Strength”. In real life, servanthood is nothing to do with leadership, and any ESTJ could tell you what the bigger diametrically-opposed virtue is. The thing is, if you make that statement to any NFP type, and they believe you, they’ll do whatever you say next; thinking that they’re showing leadership skills by serving others. Of course if you’re STJ enough it doesn’t matter what the NF thinks, so long as they do the job.
So perhaps in Quakers we have so much work done by so few people because the ones who appreciate action being taken for the purpose of achievement somehow draw the line at manipulating the others of our group who are more concerned with ensuring that the actions we do take are sensible and in line with our testimony.
Now I have a feeling that I should probably know what you are saying here (given that I probably fall into that 5%!) but as those acronyms aren’t part of my everyday alphabet soup I’m afraid you’ve lost me!
hi pete
i agree with anna’s comment. but as i have a masters in information management i have no excuse for not searching on google to find out what the acronyms mean.
ESTJ – extraverted, sensing, thinking and judging
INFP intraverted, iNtuitive, feeling and perceiving.
there are lots of other types described at http://www.typelogic.com/infp.html
Cheers Richard, my excuse is lack of time… oh alright then I admit it, I thought it’d be less hassle to just ask and hope that I’d then get an answer in plain english rather than pages of jargon!
It worked – don’t knock it! =)
Yes. The acronyms refer to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which is basically a way of generalising all the individuality of six billion human personalities into sixteen tidy little boxes that go a long way towards explaining how different people behave in different ways. It has some pretty complex interplay, and is quite useful in conflict resolution. It’s not something you can pick up quickly, but suffice it to say that the type indicator can explain how two people can look at the exact same situation, draw completely opposite conclusions (or no conclustions at all) and both believe they’re objectively and absolutely right.
[...] Pete’s post has really got me thinking. Firstly this 95/5% of the work business. I agree completely that it seems like its a few people who do most of the work. I wonder though if what we perceive the ‘work’ to be might be influenced by who we are. [...]
There’s so much here to respond to I’m not sure where to start, or if it’ll fit in this box, so I’m going to blog about it instead. Incidentally, I’m an INTJ too.