Advocate Personality (INFJ) – Best Jobs for Advocates

Advocate Personality

The Advocate personality type, also known as the Idealist, is believed to be the population’s rarest personality type. The INFJ (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Judging) is another name for the Advocate from the 16 personality types based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Advocates are reserved, highly creative, calm, and easy-going folks who are naturally sensitive to other people’s feelings. Because of their unique ability to easily empathize with others, people with this personality type are always seeking ways to help others and make the world a better place to live in. However, their ability to feel things deeply makes them sensitive to criticism, especially when it comes to things they hold dear, such as their values and principles.

The Fascination About Personality Type

The concept of personality type is a subject that has always held a special fascination for us, humans. The very thought of why each of us is different in mannerism from the next person – including siblings from the same parents and even identical twins who are not so identical in character – sparks some curiosity in us that makes us want to know why we are all different and unique in our way. With that said, let us delve deeper into those traits that make people with the Advocate personality type unique and different from the others. 

Key Characteristics of the Advocate

People with the Advocate personality type, just like the others, possess some strengths and weaknesses that are unique to them. Keep reading to know what these strengths and weaknesses are – you just might find some relatable.

Advocate Strengths:

  • Altruistic: Advocates are self-sacrificing – they practically live to help and see others succeed. Helping others achieve their goals, dreams, and aspirations, sometimes, at the expense of their well-being and comfort, gives them a sense of purpose and gives life a deeper meaning. Advocates are always concerned about how their actions affect others, and they dread the very idea of conflict with others because they are peace-loving people who would try to stay out of trouble at all cost. Their goal is to make the world a better place to live in through selflessness.

  • Exceptionally Creative: People with the Advocate personality type are highly creative individuals whose creative juices never seem to stop flowing. These folks hardly ever run out of ideas to create new things that add value to society in remarkable ways. Among Advocates, you would find great philosophers like Plato and Plotinus, gifted writers, outstanding musicians and entertainers, counselors with the unique ability to connect with people while helping them navigate ways to solve their problems. The list goes on.  Many exceptional individuals thought to be Advocates are extremely creative.

  • Highly Principled: Advocates are moralists and highly principled individuals with deeply rooted beliefs that they hold dear.  They are passionate about their strong convictions and cannot be easily swayed by their values and opinions. Their ability to advocate for what they believe in with so much passion is a factor that makes them persuasive to a large extent, so much so that they tend to find it easy to sell their ideas to the worst of skeptics. 

  • Intuitive: Advocates have a rare ability to see beyond the façade and understand other people’s true motives due to their intuitive nature. Their decision-making is usually influenced by their deep insight into situations and the lives of the people around them. Advocates’ ability to connect events, people, and feelings help them get to the root of issues and solve complex problems. They may not always be right about their hunch, but often than not, their gut feelings turn out to be right even though they sometimes cannot place a finger on why they feel certain ways about a situation or someone. This may explain why these rare species of humans trust their instincts to guide them. 

  • Introverted: Advocates are among the most misunderstood set of people due to their introverted nature. Some people tend to judge them because of their desire for solitude, but they fail to realize that Advocates alone-time is their way of recharging themselves to unleash their creativity. When Advocates are well recharged in their solitary moments, it avails them the opportunity to draw from their creative reserves to create masterpieces of works in their chosen career fields.

Advocate Weaknesses:

  • Sensitive:  The downside to the Advocates ability to feel things deeply is that it makes them extremely sensitive to criticism. For instance, they may react strongly and get defensive when someone challenges their values or beliefs. Tolerance in the face of criticism is something Advocates need to work on because it is something they struggle with, especially when it concerns an issue that is dear to their hearts.

  • Perfectionist: Because Advocates are idealistic, with very high standards, they always want to see things done the ideal way – as a result, they sometimes have overly high expectations that may seem unachievable. Having high standards is not a bad thing in itself; it is seen as a strength. However, the problem lies in the fact that Advocates find it challenging to accept that their ideas are not always achievable because ideal situations are sometimes impractical.

  • Predisposed to Burnout: Due to their empathetic nature, people with the Advocate personality type are prone to emotional exhaustion because they have an insatiable desire to save the world, i.e., service to others even if it comes at a cost to them. Advocates cannot do without helping others because they derive purpose and pleasure in doing so. They tend to put others first and put themselves last on their priority list – selflessness is important to them, a commendable trait indeed. However, if they fail to slow down and apply some self-care, the very thing they derive pleasure from will end up draining them of any little energy they have left, and for that period, they may end up not being able to help themselves and others as they would love to. This is where a healthy balance between self-care and service to others comes in.

  • Hardly Open-up to Others: Individuals with the Advocate personality type are very private and reserved about their personal lives. They would instead open up to an intimate group of friends or family members then speak up in a large group of random individuals who they hardly know. Their quiet and reserved nature makes it difficult for others to get to know them on a deeper level; hence, they may lose out from forming meaningful relationships if they fail to make an effort to come out from their comfort zone and socialize a little bit more.

  • Avoid Confrontation: Because Advocates are tender-hearted and do not like to see others get hurt, they tend to avoid conflict at all costs. They are excellent mediators between conflicting parties because they can get to the root of a problem and restore peace to the warring factions. Still, when it comes to a conflict that involves them directly, they would rather avoid confrontation. While it may be necessary to prevent conflicts in certain scenarios, some situations require that you confront the issue head-on; if not, the problem would be left unsolved. Hence, Advocates need to understand that not all conflicts are terrible in themselves. 

Why You Need to Understand Your Personality Type as an Advocate

As an Advocate, knowing your personality type and understanding your strengths and weaknesses are of great advantage to you because this knowledge keeps you in tune with your essence; it also helps you in choosing the right career path, tackling complex issues, navigating relationships with loved ones and colleagues; and relating better with the larger world around you among other things. Let us now take a look at the career paths that Advocates are best suited for.

Best Career Paths for Advocates:

Having discovered that you possess all or most of the Advocate’s personality traits, you might find yourself wondering what career fields suit you the most based on your strengths and weaknesses. Not to worry, we’ve got that covered.

Advocates can work in any field they desire, but certain career paths shine the brightest. Understanding what makes you tick as an Advocate is a sure pointer to the career path that best suits you. Because Advocates are selfless folks who are inclined towards helping others succeed in life and making the world a better place to live in, they often find themselves in the following career paths:

  1. Non-Profit/Advocacy

When it comes to championing a worthy cause for the advancement of humanity, nature, animal rights, etc., you can trust an Advocate to be at the forefront of such movements because it comes naturally to them. These people are passionate about improving others’ lives – that is why they thrive in not-for-profit organizations, sometimes as volunteers adding value to society through humanitarian services. 

  1. Counseling

Advocates make great counselors because they are empathetic folks, patient listeners, and insightful thinkers with a natural ability to easily identify the root cause of a problem and proffer workable solutions to it. Helping others to solve their problems has always been their passion.

  1. Human Resources

People with the Advocate personality type are very organized and meticulous; hence, they make great human resources specialists because it is a job role that involves hiring, planning, and administrative duties and responsibilities that align well with their inborn traits. Their empathetic nature also helps them in guiding new employees through their company’s processes with patience.

  1. Health Care

The empathetic and caring nature of Advocates makes careers in health care a great fit for these people. Health care specialists are trained to care for the sick in the best way possible to help them recover from their malady – and because caring for others comes naturally to Advocates, they find great satisfaction in the health care profession.

  1. Education

Advocates find fulfillment in education careers because it allows them to contribute meaningfully to their students’ growth and development as teachers, counselors, etc. These people relish the very idea of imparting knowledge to others to help them advance in life.

  1. Writing 

Advocates are incredibly creative people who have a way with words. They are excellent communicators who thrive well in the creative industry – these people are witty; they can do magic with words and draw you in with their ability to create compelling stories. 

They do well as journalists, editors, bloggers, novelists, screenwriters, etc. Their mastery of language and words, in addition to their endless flow of creativity, keep them churning out mind-blowing masterpieces of write-ups that you can’t get enough of. C.S. Lewis, Stephen Hawking, Jane Austen, and Emily Brontë belong in this category.

  1. Psychology

Individuals with the Advocate personality type naturally fit into the field of psychology. In addition to their professional training as psychologists, their ability to empathize with others, their intuitive nature, and their natural curiosity about the world around them contribute to demystifying human behavior. Advocates love to learn new things about people and the world around them. The more they open their minds to new knowledge, the better their understanding of human behavior and their ability to use it to solve problems in their chosen career path. 

The above is a non-exhaustive list of some of the best career paths for people with the Advocate personality type.

So, are you an Advocate?

Do you find yourself in all or almost all of the descriptions above? If you answered “yes” to that question, then you might be an Advocate and one of the exceptional few species among the human race.

Being an Advocate also means that you belong to the rare 1% to 3% of the human population with exceptional qualities and skills that add meaning to life.

Also read Commander Personality

Advocate Personality (INFJ) – Best Jobs for Advocates

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