INTJ's as Project Managers

You will nod your head if you are an INTJ and you manage projects.  If you are neither, just nod your head, too, in sympathy for the unique pathology that is INTJ project management.  Welcome to the insanity that is my brain.

1. A project consists of a big overarching theme, broken down into tasks and sub-tasks down to the minutest detail.

2. There is no peace until there is an outline (for a project) or an agenda (for a meeting within a project).

3. It can take a while for new information to sink in and even longer for it to cause a change in the outline or agenda.

4. Importantly, any such changes are done alone, after deep contemplation, and then sent out to the whole group.  God forbid we should adjust on the fly and amongst team members.

5. Once those changes are in place, they are held as dearly as the previous perspectives were; and those previous perspectives are forever abandoned and never revisited.

6. On another level, though, new information is welcomed and delighted in, when something is unknown and the new information helps make something clear. 

7. Details are, paradoxically, both really important (enough to obsess over them) and easily dismissed (to the point of being completely forgotten or tuned out).

8. Impossible tasks on impossible timelines are just another challenge to overcome by deft planning, rigid adherence to the goal in mind, and a punishing commitment to staying on task. 

9. Though everything lives inside the leader's head, there is a significant amount of communications to team members, not only of their individual assignments but also of how they fit together.  Although such communications are often labored and stiff.

10. Even though it is understood that levity is good for a team, chit chat can seem forced (if tried by the leader) or maddening (if coming from team members).

11. Even on nice days, cries for mercy (due to illness, workload, or other impairments) are begrudgingly received. 

12. You'll work so hard you may even sweat at your desk.

I share these traits not to suggest that they are necessarily "best practices."  Indeed, in many cases, they are documented here to remind me to make the effort to break free of them when needed.  After all, if there's anything, among the many ways in which we are hard-wired, that defines INTJs it is the relentless striving towards self-improvement.