In the workplace Idealists have one very special talent: they are drawn to and can do wonders in recruiting, training, deploying, advancing, and counseling personnel. With their insight into people, their interest in human potential, and their glow of enthusiasms, NFs shine when they take on the job of finding quality employees, of guiding them into the right positions, and of helping them develop over the course of their careers.

Not only in business, but at school as well, individual development is the Idealist's domain, which is to say they are naturally good at influencing the growth and maturation of others. Teaching, counseling, interviewing, and tutoring come easily to Idealists, and are highly intuitive pursuits for them. Even without much formal training, NFs seem able, in Faber and Mazlish's phrase, to "talk so others will listen and listen so others will talk" and this with young and old and with male and female.

Excerpted from Please Understand Me II, by David Keirsey
Copyrighted 1998, all rights reserved