Reader Question:

I’m confident, you’re confident, he’s confident, she’s confident but he’s arrogant. INTJs are always on their high horse. They speak in dull voices, calm and relaxed – as if what you say/do never interests them. You’ve even included in your INTJ blog, “Viewpoints or people aren’t granted respect just because of title, position or status. INTJ respect must be earnt.” – absolute rubbish. You call yourself an alpha-male, I call you normal. Interesting excerpt, “As future thinkers, we have, at times, the uncanny ability to know what will happen in the future before most of the people around us.” – crazy. You’re disconnected paragraph – also crazy. Explain why INTJs are so confident to the point of being arrogant. What creates this?

Answer:

If you consider that arrogance is not presence of confidence, but a presence of unfounded confidence, then it’s possible to deconstruct this behavior and understand that the confidence which INTJs project is of a very specific kind. It’s not universal, and is based on INTJs ability to quickly reduce a complex problem in to a relatively simple abstract system. From experience INTJs learn that they can do this quicker and more accurately than many others. It is this ability to reduce a problem to its essentials and then derive a readily apparent solution is what gives INTJs their “unshakeable” confidence.

There is one basic assumption that all INTJs I know (including myself) hold as The Universal Truth™. This assumption is: Every problem has an elegant solution.

INTJs by nature are problem-solvers, and after years and decades of “solving problems” naturally (I’m using the term problems loosely – grilling a perfect steak can be a problem, too) general patterns make themselves evident. It’s a short-cut, and although not always correct (hence to tendency for INTJs to either succeed or fail, equally spectacularly) provides a very quick path to the solution. It would make for an interesting study to see exactly how often, statistically, INTJs are correct.

Hence when someone says they are working on X, an INTJ’s response might be: You do this, then this, and then it just works – I know it works, no need to spend more time figuring this out. What they don’t say is: I know this because I’ve done it for 6 years at my previous job.

This can be construed as arrogant – because the knowledge base of an INTJ and his or her specialty isn’t readily apparent. I work in a technical field, and at the same time have an extensive knowledge of inter-personal communication and employee motivation. To someone unaware of this (like a new acquaintance)  my conclusion that company Z’s strategy to motivate middle managers wouldn’t work might seem arrogant. And it is – if only I’ve not spent time reading a dozen or so white papers and books on the subject.

These “systems” are also what allows INTJs to “predict the future.” Of course no one can predict the future, but once an understanding is internalized that humans are not very rational, but are very, very consistent (and there fore very predictable), it’s not more a divination to expect a project to succeed or fail than to expect a hot meal at a restaurant. You go in, you place an order, and most of the time a delicious meal is served.

I’ll tackle the “respect must be earned” last, because it’s rather straight-forward. INTJs don’t assume by default that someone with a higher title has more, better or even correct information of experience. This is usually completely unintended and mostly a nuisance, just like when a technical middle-manager designs a UI for a business application which his subordinates will have to use… cringing and with 1993 calling wanting their animated flashing buttons back. Never mind that being a good manager and good interaction/user-experience designer are completely unrelated and expertise in one doesn’t translate in to competence in another. INTJs might play politics as well as anyone when something is at stake (like a raise or a promotion) but the manager is toast. Why? He professed authority in an area he has no expertise in.

This is something no INTJ I know would do. INTJs don’t know a lot of things – no one can know everything – and when they don’t know they either learn or shut up and then learn. Every successful tech company is practically built on the shoulders of INTJs – and look at them: they’re booming! Once the “I’ve got an MBA, I know better, always” take over it’s at best a mediocre self-sustaining-but-bleeding-talent operation.