Extraverted Thinking (A Comprehensive Guide)

One of the functions of the cognitive abilities is Extraverted Thinking (Te).

How useful it is for you and how you can experience it depends on the development of your skills, which also mostly depends on the personality type you have and what age you are at.

Extraverted Thinking is also one of the basis of the four judging functions that are used by the brain to process and make decisions.

Rest of the judging functions that are used by the brain are known as Extraverted Feeling, Introverted Thinking and Introverted Feeling.

In this article we will discuss Extraverted Thinking. 

What is Extraverted Thinking?

Extraverted thinking is basically the judging thought process of the brain which helps the brain in making decisions at the spot using logical, rational and objective criteria and keeping the emotions of the person aside or in check.

People having extraverted thinking are usually the ones who trust empirical evidence more, will look at the cause effect and also the cons and pros of a situation before making a final decision.

They are usually the one that do not go with their gut feeling but like to evaluate, organize and compare the situation based on logical binary judgements.

The judging that is done based on extraverted thinking is mostly based on logic and facts rather than making the decisions based on values and emotions.

Extraverted Thinkers are usually able to keep their feelings about something aside so that they can refrain their emotions from affecting their objective facts.

Usually when a person is making decisions, they are mostly affected by emotions and can learn from that experience.

In short, if you look and observe your thought process while you are processing information to make a decision you will notice sometimes that you have a gut feeling for what should be done and these feelings that you came across are basically based on emotions.

Extraverted Thinkers, do feel these emotional gut feelings but they are able to keep these emotions aside while making their decisions based on facts and logic. 

Extraverted Thinkers tend to be objective, logical and fair.

For example, when put in a management role during the recruitment of new employees or when they are reviewing the employee work during the previous period, the manager will not go for gut feelings but will look at facts and measurable data to make a decision.

Even if they have some problem with the employee, they will still not have those emotions come into the review and will give them a fair review and will make judgement based on logic and facts rather than emotions.

As Extraverted Thinkers are usually fact based and drive their decisions based on logic and rational thinking that is why they usually look unfriendly and cold.

Sometimes, they can also look bossy in a work environment, even though they might be warm from inside and not much unfriendly, cold and bossy.

Usually people who are dominated by the extraverted thinking are well organized and most of their thought process is mainly focused on the real and external world rather than the introverted thinkers as their focus is on the inner world.

Thus, extraverted thinkers tend to arrange the real world around them according to their needs and focus mainly on the impact on the real world as they are driven by their objectives and goals.

People with Extraverted thinking are usually much driven towards their goals and achieving results and are so well organized that they are usually promoted towards the management posts in their workplace.

Once they are set and organized in their workplace, they try to reorganize everyone else around them.

They are usually the ones who define procedures and protocols which further help the team to achieve goals and results.

Extraverted Thinkers can easily implement such protocols and write instructions for other people so they can be easily followed.

If you want someone to organize a project and help you with some plan or if you want to schedule a project for yourself, the best person for the job is someone who has either auxiliary or dominant Extraverted Thinking which can help you easily.

It is because Extraverted Thinkers are the ones whose brain is wired to process this information and are best to finish these tasks.

The personality types where Extraverted Thinking is dominant in a personality type are mostly ESTJ and ENTJ while the personality types where the Extraverted Thinking is usually auxiliary are ISTJ and INTJ.

Some of the example of famous, well known Extraverted Thinking types are:

• Nancy Pelosi (ENTJ) US Speaker of the House (Democrat)
• Napoleon Bonaparte (ENTJ) Emperor of France
• Martha Stewart (ESTJ) Business magnate
• Julius Caesar (ENTJ) Dictator of Rome
• Judge Judy (ESTJ) Television judge and author
• Dr. Phil (ESTJ) Psychologist and talk show host
• Jack Welch (ENTJ) CEO of General Electric
• Uma Thurman (ESTJ) Actress

Every person has his own ability to think using reason and logic but our personality type shapes our preferences and thinking styles.

According to Briggs-Myers personality types, thinking process is further divided into two types: extroverted and introverted thinking, some of the differences for these two types are thinking are given as follows : 

• Extroverted thinking is more focused on external things where Introverted thinking is focused on internal things.
• Extroverted thinkers seek consistency and logic in the outside world while solving problems whereas the Introverted thinkers are looking for consistency and logic in their internal framework to solve problems.
• Extroverted thinkers mainly focus on categorizing different things so they can make things easier for people or effectively lead them whereas introverted thinkers are mainly focused on categorizing based on theories and concepts. 
• Extraverted usually keep the people moving whereas the Introverted ones keep the system moving.

How Introverted Thinkers Communicate

Introverted thinkers are usually considered as skilled communicators and they do not need any notes or points to keep things in their mind when meeting for a meeting at work or organizing stuff at home as they have a very good memory and are able to memorize everything they need while talking about something or keeping their point in a discussion.

The things that the introverted thinkers can use based on their organized thinking process can be :

• They can find the right words which can be used to express their point and views clearly.
• They are able to make definite distinctions for different ideas and objects.
• They are able to organize these distinctions into logical and rational framework of principles and subcategories.

In short, these people are able to store the information and main points of their speech in their head and later are able to give or execute the speech to perfection based on that outline that they have in their head.

These are most of the advantages that introverted thinkers have over extroverted thinkers in terms of their skills and their thinking process.

The personality types that are mostly extroverted are usually the ones with TJ types like ISTJ, INTJ, ESTJ, ENTJ.

These personality types have a dominant extroverted thinking or an auxiliary extroverted thinking process because of their personality type whereas the ones that have a dominant introverted thinking or an auxiliary introverted thinking are mostly the TP types like ESTP, INTP, ENTP, ISTP.

Whereas the personality types which have FP in them like ESFP, ISFP, ENFP, ENFP are usually the ones that go towards extroverted thinking when they are in an inferior or tertiary position.

10 Signs That You Might Be an Extraverted Thinker

#1 – Naturally Organize and Delegate People to Get a Job Done

People with extraverted thinking are able to see the efficient course of action and are able to organize and manage bigger groups and delegate tasks in a proper way so everything is completed and finished right on schedule without any delay.

Some people might take them as bossy at times but that attitude is only to keep the things running efficiently and smoothly without any break or hiccup in between.

#2 –  Hate Procrastination

If you are impatient when mulling over a decision for a long time and are usually driven to reach the end result and hate to hang up over it for longer periods than you are one of the Extraverted Thinking types.

When you get an idea or something new pops into your mind, you know the steps through which you can move rapidly towards the goal and push towards it with purpose.

#3 – Fairness Is Extremely Important to Me

People with extraverted thinking are usually rational and fair in their decisions and keep their emotions in check while making those decisions.

Which make those decisions unbiased or unfair to any party as they mostly follow procedures and rules while making them. 

#4 – Think Out Loud

Extraverted thinkers also have the tendency to think out loud about the decisions they have made so they are able to process it more smoothly and talking out loudly can also clear up the underlying assumption and logic that was involved in making the decision and let the person know if that decision makes sense or not.

#5 – Like an Organized Outer World

Extraverted Thinkers are more organized in their daily life, they are able to organize and tidy their surroundings.

They like to place everything in their space and do not like it to be too messy.

#6 – Being Prepared is Essential

Extraverted thinking also helps them to be prepared in case of any emergency or disruption and there is always a contingency plan in place.

#7 – Decisive

Extraverted thinking helps the person to be more decisive and extraverted thinkers make the decisions based on minimal information that is needed to finalize it.

If they feel like they can finalized the decisions on the current information they have for a project they are pretty quick to make a decision and move on. 

#8 – Enjoy Planning

Extroverted Thinkers love to work with charts, sheets, to do lists and are most into planning things.

They like to organize and arrange stuff so the work process of the whole project or their daily life go forward efficiently and smoothly.

#9 – Competence Is Extremely Important 

Extraverted Thinkers hate whining, laziness and distracted behaviors and are at their best when they know that they can trust others and themselves to get the job done well.

#10 – Find Comfort in Structure, Rules, Laws, and Order

Extraverted Thinking helps the person to find comfort in the rules and law that is placed even though they might disagree with some of them.

FAQ about Extraverted Thinking 

References

Extraverted Thinking (Te) By Michael T. Robinson

Introverted Thinking vs Extroverted Thinking by Julie Moore  (2018)