A few weeks ago I took my staff on a retreat. The first thing I did was have everyone sit around and take this personality test. My personality is ENFJ, which makes up only about 5% of the poplulation. I remember taking this test for the first time while I was an intern of a large missions organization. Of the 80 or so inters, only two of us were ENFJs. Interestingly, 4 of my 6 staff members were exactly the same personality. The other two were only off by one letter. Hmmm, I’m not exactly sure if this is a good thing or not. Even several months ago I gave this same test to the children’s pastor at another campus as she too was an ENFJ.

From a leadership point of view, I think it would always be wise to pepper your team with people who are different. I’ve been told that you should always hire your weakness. Personally I love my personality, but I don’t consider other personalities weaknesses. But, I think everyone could agree that difference is better.

 What does this mean for me? We’ll, I’m not going to let anyone go becausse of this. However, as I look for new hires, I will probably pay more attention to this metric. I don’t think the fact that most of my team are ENFJs is pure chance though. After reading the description of the ENFJ, it seems to describe someone who would be passionate about ministering to kids. It’s actually a very popular personality for teachers. So, my hypothesis is this. If a bunch of children’s ministers took this test, I think we would find that there would be a significant collection of ENFJ’s or similar personalities. If you take the test, post your results as a comment. Check out these two books that go well with this test.