I’ve previously covered the topic “What If I Don’t Want to Be a Leader,” but there’s more I’ve been thinking about around leadership as it relates to career and financial success. Watching Mark Zuckerberg ring in the trading bell with Facebook’s IPO, I wonder why I didn’t drop out of college and start a social network in my late teens. Why Zuck and not me? Well, I didn’t go to Harvard, I didn’t come from a wealthy family, I didn’t know how to program beyond getting a Geocities page live and looking somewhat decent, and, oh, I was… and still am… an INFP.

INFP’s aren’t known for their leadership abilities. Apparently most leaders are ESTJs. What are all the acronyms about? They’re Myers Briggs Personality Type indicators. You can take a test online to find out your type here: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp, if you don’t already know (post your type and what you think it reveals about you and your leadership style in a comment.)

Reading Wall Street Journal’s latest article on comments from female CEOs in the Fortune 500 (there are 18 of them, a whopping 3.6%) should have inspired me — instead, it disheartend in my quest to discover a realistic professional path. Beyond results, the successful women all touted the importance of networking, mentorship, and all-in-all being a people person. This is something that I am not and never will be.

I – Introverted (vs Extroverted)

N – Intuitive (vs Sensing)

F – Feeling (vs Thinking)

P – Perceiving (vs Judging)

“INFPs have very high standards and are perfectionists.” (Yes.) Consequently, they are usually hard on themselves (uh huh), and don’t give themselves enough credit. INTPs may have problems working on a project in a group, because their standards are likely to be hihger than other members’ of the group. In group situations, they may have a “control” problem. The INFP needs to work on balancing their high ideals with the requeirements of daily living. Without resolving this conflict, they will never be happy with themselves, and they may become confused and paralyzed about what to do with their lives.” (Did Someone just summarize the last 7 years of this blog in a Myers-Briggs type description?)

Results still count for a lot in terms of professional potential. But results are defined not only in how you complete your projects, but how you brag about them, and how you manage a team and con the team into letting you take all or most of the credit for the work (after all, as a manager, if things under your watch are done well, you must have had a huge part in that, right?) As the CEOs discuss in their WSJ commentary, it’s especially important for women to speak up for themselves because men tend to expect less from women.

“‘Men selectively listen,’ said Maggie Wilderotter, CEO of Frontier. She recalls making points in boardrooms, then watching the group take note of a male later saying the same thing. ‘When that happened, I’d stop the conversation and say, Do you realize I said that 10 minutes ago?” She says that women have to take responsibility for the dynamic around them, not just say woe is me.

But how can you do that when, if you’re an INFP, you “do not like conflict and go to all lengths to avoid it. If they must face it, they will always approach it from the perspective of their feelings.”

The reality is, business leaders tend to be ENTJs or ESTJs — Extroverted, (Intuitive or Sensing), Thinking and Judging. Literally the EXACT OPPOSITE of my personality type. This site  lists leadership styles for all the 16 personality types, but really, most leaders (especially in highly competitive industries such as technology) must be able to handle the cut-throat, conflict-filled lifestyle. They literally call the ENTJ “The Executive” as a type, vs “the Idealist” INFP.

ENTJs are natural born leaders. They live in a world of possibilities where they see all sorts challenges to be surmounted, and they want to be the ones responsible for surmounting them. They have a drive for leadership, which is well-served by their quickness to grasp complexities, their ability to absorb a large amount of impersonal information, and their quick and decisive judgments. They are “take charge” people.

In a very interesting chart http://www.theanconas.com/MBTI/mfstats.htm found here, there is a breakdown of Myers Briggs type by gender and total percentage of population. While gender proves to play little role in most of the breakdown, there was a significant difference in the T vs F role, where 75% of all female responders were “feelers” whereas 43% of all men were (the rest were “thinkers”). Given the titles for each of the 16 types below (with a statistic on the total percentage of the population surveyed that fell into that category), one would see that the types that sound like they’d make good business leaders fall into the T camp (ENTP, ENTJ, ESTJ, ESTP.)

ISTJ (The Duty Fulfiller) — 11.6%

ISFJ (The Nuturer) — 13.8%

ISTP (The Mechanic) — 5.4%

ISFP (The Artist) — 8.8%

INFJ (The Protector) — 1.46%

INTJ (The Scientist) — 2.1%

INFP (The Idealist) — 4.4%

INTP (The Thinker) — 3.3%

ESTP (The Doer) — 4.3%

ESFP (The Performer) — 8.5%

ESTJ (The Guardian) — 8.7%

ESFJ (The Caregiver) — 12.3%

ENFP (The Inspirer) — 8.1%

ENTP (The Visionary) — 3.2%

ENFJ (The Giver) — 2.5%

ENTJ (The Executive) — 1.8%

This is not to say that “F” types couldn’t be good leaders, but generally speaking if you are an F type you are going to struggle with holding your own in conflict situations.

Another breakdown (which says the above math adds up to more than 100%) shows the population breakdown as follows:

ESTJ – 12%

ESFJ – 12%

ESTP – 10%

ESFP – 10%

ISTJ – 9%

ISFJ – 9%

ISTP – 7%

ISFP – 7%

ENFJ – 6%

ENFP – 6%

ENTJ – 3%

ENTP – 3%

INTP – 2%

INFP – 2%

INTJ – 1%

INFJ – 1%

ENTJ is relatively rare, which explains why there are so few executives. Even rarer is INFP’s, which are far from leaders. We are supposed to be good councilers because when we are good at seeing other people’s sides (when we are not involved in the conflict) and understanding their feelings. This is not something that is valuable for a CEO, however, when they have to fire staff in order to maximize the bottom line. This isn’t just for CEOs — it’s for all business executives across the board. As a marketing professional, I struggle with the necessity to move into management in order to move up in my career, while not being able to accomplish all I think up on my own. I doubt I’ll be able to succeed over the long term in marketing or business at all due to this.

Smart women (or men) who are non-leaders might seek out a partner who fall into the leadership side of the spectrum, so someone in the partnership can succeed in business, but alas, I’ve found myself another INFP, so we can be idealists together looking out at the sad state of the world while attempting to find happiness outside of wealth.

Recommended Careers for INFPs include writers, counselors, teachers, psychologists, musicians, and religious workers. Since I’m an atheist, the last one is out, and since I have no talent, musician is out, so writer, teacher or counselor it is. Except I’m a marketer, and I still want to be a successful one. And I want to prove (to myself) than an INFP can be a leader too.

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With nearly a decade of professional experience under my belt, I’ve learned that professional success is, beyond sheer ability, is largely a reflection of one’s political accumen.  I’m not talking Obama vs. Romney politics. Instead, this is the game that one must play when relating to colleagues, from the new intern to your direct report to your CEO.

This is something I think as a whole women are not good at, and when they are, they can come off as fake or backstabbers. Women who do really well in business are very attuned to how they present themselves, physically and verbally, at every instance. They know how to make allies in the right places. They still stand up for their own ideas and what they believe are the right decisions, but they are always one step ahead, carefully crafting their next move.

This is likely true of all business professionals, beyond those who are scientists and the like who are allowed to sit out the game in order to focus on generating innovation and new products. Even then, anyone who wants to manage that process needs to get into politics.

I wish they taught this in school. The biggest challenge is regaining your position and momentum once you’ve slipped. You have to view your entire professional career as a long, ongoing political campaign. You show what you can accomplish, who you can win over, what leadership power you have, even if you do not have direct reports. You must “make friends and influence people,” according to that popular book.

It’s the make friends part I’m personally terrible at. This is extremely challenging as it requires not only the ability to deliver collected, concise speech in the board room, it also requires just as much ability to talk over drinks about topics not related to work at all. This is difficult, especially as a woman, because more often than not you are not invited out to these events. You may be invited to larger — the whole team is going out for happy hour type events (usually I find I’m one of the few women who goes to these events) — but when it comes to the VP or CEO going out for a 1on1 dinner to celebrate success, chances are that’s happening between two men, not a man and a woman. There are exceptions to this, and I’m sure the women who get ahead know how to play their cards right. I imagine having children is actually a benefit here, as you can, on a non-professional level, discuss kids, parenting, and even have your kids hang out with the children of your colleagues while you spend time with the adults and watch a football game.

In any case, point is, if you really want to get ahead, you need to think like your own campaign advisor and plan every thing you say, wear, and do, in order to improve how your colleagues view you and admire you. Just like a presidential nominee would struggle from a failure in his race, so would any professional seeking to prove that one or two mistakes does not diminish their abilities to lead, gain collective trust, and make good things happen.

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