How Your MBTI Helps With Incompatibility in Everyday Relationships

Communication Styles

Before we get into the MBTI, let’s first look at Communication Styles and how we interact with one another. To discover your communication style, simply answer two questions: Are you more passive or assertive? Do you make decisions more with feelings or reasoning?

• Driver: assertive, rational, direct, controlling
• Expressive: assertive, emotional, open, talkative
• Analytical: passive, rational, somewhat direct, methodical
• Amiable: passive, emotional, mellow, easy-going

We each have a primary and secondary communication style. Once you find your primary style, you can use the chart to try to find your secondary style. For example, you can be a Driving Expressive, or Analytical Driver.

Your primary style is how you communicate with most people, and your secondary style is often how you interact with those closer to you.

MBTI

If you don’t know your MBTI, I highly suggest you first check out My Quick and Easy Way to Discover Anyone’s MBTI!

If you don’t know it, or don’t have time, you can easily plot your communication style from the first graph onto this one, or vice versa. For example a Driving Analytical is an ENTP. An Amiable Amiable is an ISFJ.

If you know your MBTI and are unsure about your communication style, you can simply reverse the process. An ISTP is an Analytical Expressive, and so on.

I created this chart by putting all the assertive types (E – Extroverts) on the right side, with passive types (I – Introverts) on the left. All the more reason-based types (T – Thinking) were on the top, and emotion-based (F – Feeling) on the bottom. And then I filled in the rest from there and found a strong correlation between communication styles and MBTI.

Compatibilities & Incompatibilities

So why are these charts useful? For communication styles, the styles that are the most opposite (Driver vs Amiable; Expressive vs Analytical) have the most difficulty communicating with one another. By knowing how your MBTI correlates to your communication style, you can better understand what types you naturally struggle interacting with.

You can also start to see who you naturally gravitate towards and most easily get along with. Your circle will most likely include people who share at least one of your communication styles.

For example, I am an INFP, which makes me an Amiable Analytical. I naturally get along with other Amiables (INFP, INFJ, ISFJ, ISFP), and other Analyticals (INTP, INTJ, ISTJ, ISTP). But I also can get along with ESFJs (Amiable), ENFPs (Analytical), ESTJs (Amiable), and ENTP (Analytical).

That also means there are types that are more difficult for me to get along with. I have very little in common with Expressives and Drivers. I struggle to work alongside Drivers because they are too direct and controlling for me. I can often find common ground with Drivers who share an Amiable or Analytical secondary style. The same struggle occurs with Expressives, who are too stimulating and resort to attacking under pressure.

By knowing your MBTI, you can see which communication styles you struggle to work with. However, you can also learn how to work with those who are different from you after you better understand them and yourself.

It is believed that personality is fixed, but flexible. This means you naturally default to certain qualities, but many aspects can be worked on or adjusted. It’s just about meeting in the middle. Wherever you land on the chart, if you know where someone else may land, then you can adjust to communicate with them. You can either learn to speak more emotionally or more rationally. You can learn to be more assertive, or less assertive.

Digging Deeper

These charts can be a great way to better understand the friendships in your life, and the ones that are harder to make.

If you’re a Driver:

You most easily get along with people who are direct and to the point. You don’t like wasting time, and you don’t appreciate when someone is wasting your time. Your priority is the task at hand. You value control and want to shape your environment. You struggle with emotional people, because you think of emotions as a nuisance. They get in the way of communication, and you simply don’t value their place in relationships very highly.

If you’re an Expressive:

You most easily get along with other open high energy people. You’re drawn to excitement and new experiences. You love socializing, and simply being in community with others. You live in your emotions, and find people who are too rational kind of stale. It’s hard for you to connect with someone who can’t empathize with your values and way of life. You’re assertive, and fun, and also struggle with people who can’t keep up with your pace.

If you’re an Analytical:

Reasoning and logical thinking are everything to you. You struggle getting in touch with your emotions, and struggle more dealing with people who are led by their emotions. It doesn’t make sense to you. You also don’t appreciate how unpredictable emotions can be. You are most comfortable associating with calm and reasonable people. Those who are too dictating make you feel withdrawn.

If you’re an Amiable:

Relationships and connection are most important to you. You like taking your time to connect with others. Socializing is fine, but deeper connections are what make life meaningful. You go at your own pace, and can find it intimidating when others are at higher energies or even pushing you to do more than you’re comfortable with. You also find emotions as the best way to connect with others, so if someone is too rational it seems as though they are closed off to you.

Once you understand your primary and secondary communication styles, the friendships in your life will start to make sense. What may not make sense are your romantic relationships, because we can often be attracted to our opposites. For the most part, it is easiest to get along with someone who is most like you. Someone who sees the world the way you do and values what you value.

However, your most satisfying relationships can sprout from those you have learned to meet halfway. Those relationships that are unlike you, so they challenge you and you challenge them. If this is accomplished in a healthy way that leads to growth, you can have profound relationships with others.

Every relationship takes work, and there are some that are more natural to others. Even if you’re not trying to form a close friendship with someone, I think that learning to find common ground can help you no matter what situation you find yourself in.