Running head: COUNSELING AS AN EXTROVERT 1

Counseling As An Extrovert: An ENFP’s Draw to a Helping Profession

Wilson R. Harvey

West Virginia University

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Introduction/Personal Work Experience

Although it has been over a relatively short period of time, my experience in the world of

work has been reasonably diverse. Many of the jobs I have held have a direct and clear

connection to the work I intend to make my career, school counseling and teaching, and in some

way all of these positions have involved a need for strong people skills. My first job – working

as a reporter for a regional newspaper on holiday and summer breaks during my undergraduate

studies - would appear on the surface to have the most distant connection to my stated career

goal. However, the job offered me an opportunity to both investigate intriguing issues and work

with people in a way that could potentially be helpful both to individuals and society as a whole.

During this time, I wrote stories on topics ranging from local sports features to in-depth features

on such topics as the coal industry, education, domestic violence, and health care, amongst many

others. Through the entire process, I learned to tactfully interview anyone from ordinary local

citizens to U.S. Senators, a skill that I have thus far put to good use in my experiences in the

counseling field.

Other jobs I have held have been closely related to education. I spent portions of two

undergraduate summers supplementing my work at the newspaper by working for non-profit

summer youth programs focused on educating and caring for children of low socioeconomic

status. Though I was not paid for the experience, I also completed my forty-hour-a-week

internship as a student teacher at a rural middle school and high school in West Virginia.

Currently, I am employed as a graduate teaching assistant at West Virginia University, where

over a year and a half I have taught First Year Seminar courses, written lesson plans for those

courses to be used by instructors throughout our department and even across campus, served as a
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success coach for students on an individual basis, and supervised one of our campus tutoring

centers.

Myers-Briggs Type Theory and My Work Experience

Though it may be a cliché interpretation, when I consider my work experience to date in

conjunction with my personality type – ENFP – I am inclined to first address the role my

extroversion has played. As I mentioned, each of the jobs I have held has in some way involved

frequent interaction with individuals. The desire to work directly with people, of which I have

long been aware in myself, is one of the key features of extroversion (Sharf, 2018). This is not to

say that I operate entirely in this mode. In fact, with the passage of time I have seen my

assessment scores move from strong to moderate extroversion, a reflection of my growing regard

for introspection. The resulting balance between the two poles figures to be an asset both in

general education as well as school counseling careers, as I quickly but carefully weigh the

weight of my words and interactions.

An interpretation of my Myers-Briggs results also reveals that my dominant process

(Sharf, 2018) is intuition, or “N,” while my auxiliary process is feeling, or “F.” This too lends

itself well to the fields in which I have and will work, because it indicates a certain level of

comfortability with thinking “on my feet,” so to speak. In counseling sessions – especially in

schools, where time is limited – intuition is of utmost importance. Crucial decisions have to be

made off of the constantly flowing information being relayed verbally and non-verbally by our

clients/students. The presentation nature of education means that it also is a field in which

intuition is vital. Even the best-laid plans of a teacher can be rendered ineffective by any number

of variables, and so I consistently tweaked my approach as I progressed in the moment as an

adaptation to the applied effectiveness of the lesson with students. Even as I worked in
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journalism, I found that my wit was needed as I conducted interviews on controversial subjects

or tried to complete an article on deadline. It was little surprise, then, to find counseling and

journalism clustered amongst the most common careers for ENFP individuals (Sharf, 2018).

Conclusion

Based on the findings of the Myers-Briggs, my impending post-graduation move into the

field of school counseling is a wise one. My extroversion is the foundation for my work in the

field, of course; if I did not prefer to work primarily with people, school counseling would likely

be the least compatible field for me, and instead it is my passion. Like I stated previously,

though, I believe that intuition and feeling – particularly in the form of empathy – will be the

driving features of my success in this career. If as my career progresses I do in fact pursue my

doctorate and shift into higher education as a teacher educator, I believe that a very similar skill

set will apply. As I attempt to blend what I have learned as both a teacher and a counselor to help

mold effective, mental health-informed educators, I will need to constantly be in tune with my

intuition to model the skills necessary for success in the field and make coursework engaging.

No matter what point I am at in my career, though, I see the value that the Myers Briggs can

have for the students with whom I work, potentially helping open them to career opportunities of

which they had not yet been aware.

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References

Sharf, R.S. (2013). Applying career development theory to counseling. Cengage Learning.