INFP

If you're familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality types, I'm an INFP-T. 16Personalities has a great write-up on the INFP, or Mediator, personality.

The personality type fits me perfectly.

I'm having to come to terms with some of the things there, though. Not that I'm identifying to what's written - I feel what's written - it's just that I need to be able to handle it.

Desperate to Please – Conflict tends to be stressful for Mediators, who yearn for harmony and acceptance. When someone dislikes or disapproves of them, these personalities may become fixated on trying to clear the air and change that person’s mind. Unfortunately, Mediators’ desire to please others can drain their energy, eclipsing their inner wisdom and their awareness of their own needs.

I immediately felt this upon reading it for the first time. I'm guilty of trying to make sure that I'm on everyone's good side, that I haven't unintentionally wronged anyone... and I've got to come to terms with the fact that I'm bound to piss people off at some point in my life.

I'm pretty sure I did that today.

There's a lot of upstream changes coming to work, and I'm spearheading a few of them - implementing a privileged access manager, or PAM; auditing and repairing broken permissions in Active Directory; rolling out a new support platform to replace our current one as we've outgrown it; dealing with phishing that's coming in heavy this holiday season - and I'm very sure I've pissed off members of my team because of all the changes that have occurred or are occurring.

I've got to tell myself, at the end of the day, this is a job, and I'm there to perform that job. If I'm told we need a solution, then I'll implement that solution. If I'm told we need everyone to answer help desk calls, then I'll pick up the phone. It all pays the same. I can help influence what we use and implement, but at the end of the day I'm not the person who makes the final call - and I'm alright with that sometimes.

Unrealistic – Nothing in this world is perfect – and that can be a difficult truth for Mediators to accept. People with this personality type can be hopeless romantics, with rose-colored visions of what their lives should be like. This can set Mediators up for disappointment when reality inevitably falls short of their dreams.

This is the other thing I'm guilty of - that in a perfect world, everyone who works in every department would stay on top of things. Everything works like a well-oiled machine. Everyone wants to work together to get the job done, to see the bigger picture, to help everyone they can, to be happy.

We don't live in that world.

You would think that people in the IT world would be able to adapt to change quicker than most… I mean, IT changes every day. There’s new updates, new software, vulnerabilities discovered, new websites… it’s ever changing.

I guess I need to tell myself that’s not true. I’ll put in the extra work to get my side done.

Someone has to make IT look competent. After all, we suck at it.