What Is Your Type – Part IV

We continue our look at the ISTJ personality type by examining Friendships

Logistician friends are not spontaneous. They are not talkative, or particularly playful in their affection. What Logistician friends are is loyal, trustworthy, honorable and dependable. Others may come and go with the ups and downs of life. Logisticians stay by their friends’ sides no matter what. They have a deepness of commitment that other types may not even believe is possible.

True Friendship Is a Plant of Slow Growth

Logisticians are a very methodical personality type. This loyalty isn’t given away lightly. Logisticians are often slow to make friends. They usually end up with a smaller circle. But they consider that circle to represent a promise to be there for the people they care about. Logisticians’ do not break promises easily.

Expressing emotional affection isn’t one of the Logisticians’ stronger skills. Nevertheless, they find ways to show it. Socrates said, “To be is to do.” Logisticians’ use their words as follow-through, with their willingness to take action as a show of support.

These actions convey a sensitivity that many fail to see. It is a quality that Logisticians’ friends come to admire and depend on in many years of friendship.

All of this sounds terribly serious. Indeed, it only shows one side of Logisticians and their approach to their friendships. The other side knows how to stop being quite so staid. In the company of joyful and talkative Extraverts (E), Logisticians enjoy relaxing and having fun. They do so with a good discussion about work, life, and current events.

People with the Logistician personality type don’t like conflict. This applies to how they select their friends as well. They seek out friends with similar principles and opinions. Logisticians most often befriend other Sentinels personalities. Those people are likely to share their perspectives and world vision. They are unlikely to become friends with substantially different types. It simply takes too much energy to bridge the communication gap. However, Logistician personalities still recognize and appreciate others’ strengths and qualities.

Knowledge Is the Surest Basis of Happiness

In fact, as if to prove the point, Logisticians almost always have at least one Intuitive (N) friend in their inner circle, despite the disconnect the two perspectives bring. They build these relationships out of respect for their mutual differences rather than mutual understanding. Logisticians marvel at Intuitives’ breadth of thought, being very much in tune with their own intelligence. At the same time, Intuitives admire Logisticians’ realism and dependability, something they are often hard-pressed to find in themselves. Knowledge, as always, is the great equalizer.

In the next post, we will look at what kind of parents ISTJ personality types are.