Some employees are monitoring your mood. Some are avoiding you. Some are quietly disagreeing. We surveyed 7,700+ people of all personality types to find out who’s doing what – and why.
What’s Coming Up
- Key Takeaways
- How Personality Type Shapes the Boss-Employee Relationship
- The Personality Divide That Explains Everything
- How Your Team Reads You Before You’ve Said a Word
- Why Some Personality Types Avoid Their Boss
- When Your Team’s Silence Doesn’t Mean Agreement
- What Kind of Boss Does Your Team Think You Are?
- What Your Team Is Really Thinking About You
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Further Reading
Key Takeaways
- Feeling employees are significantly more likely to monitor their boss’s mood. They also feel the emotional weight of feedback and are more likely to admire the people they work for.
- Some employees are very intentionally avoiding you, but that isn’t necessarily a problem. For certain personality types, minimal contact with a boss is just how they work best.
- People on your team may not feel comfortable openly challenging your direction, even when they disagree with it. The personalities most likely to push back are usually already doing it.
- Your feedback as a boss carries weight that a peer’s feedback doesn’t. For a significant portion of your team, words from you land differently.
How Personality Type Shapes the Boss-Employee Relationship
Picture a typical Tuesday morning. You open your messages and start your day. You’re probably thinking about the work that needs to be done – not about how you’re coming across to the different people on your team.
But for some of your employees, that same Tuesday morning (and likely, every day) includes a quiet assessment of you. They’re thinking about your tone in that last message, noticing that something feels different today, or wondering if it might be a good time to raise that issue that’s been on their mind.
This daily appraisal of you isn’t necessarily because something is wrong, or because they’re trying to manage up.
It’s because – for some of the people you lead – keeping track of how their boss is doing is a running habit they can’t quite turn off. And it shapes their whole day.
This kind of interior experience is exactly what our “Bosses” survey was designed to capture. Over 7,700 people across all personality types responded to a series of questions about how they actually relate to their bosses. We’re not talking about what they report in a performance review, but rather what they genuinely think, feel, and do, including:
- Whether they try to avoid their boss or befriend them
- Whether they’d stay in touch after leaving
- Whether they’d speak up if they disagreed with a direction
Their answers tell a more complicated story than most leaders expect. And personality type, it turns out, is a surprisingly consistent predictor of nearly all of it.
The Personality Divide That Explains Everything
If there’s one thing the “Bosses” data keeps returning to, it’s this – the way someone relates to their boss has to do with the emotional experience of work itself.
And those tendencies track closely with two core dimensions of personality.
The Thinking and Feeling Divide
The Thinking and Feeling personality divide is the most consistent predictive factor in the survey.
Across question after question, Feeling and Thinking types respond very differently.
Feeling types are more likely to actively monitor their boss’s mood, feel the emotional weight of feedback, and find real meaning in personal connection.
Thinking types, on the other hand, tend to evaluate their relationship with their boss on more functional terms. They’re asking, “Does this person do their job well?” or “Do I respect their judgment?”
The Introverted and Extraverted Dimension
The Introverted and Extraverted personality traits add a secondary layer of influence to someone’s relationship with their boss.
Introverted personality types are significantly more likely to keep distance from their boss – physically, socially, and professionally.
Extraverted personality types are more likely to connect, reach out, and actively invest in the relationship as a real relationship, regardless of professional rank.
Interestingly, neither of these personality-related patterns reflects how well the work is actually going. The types you might assume to be the least engaged – the ones who seem to keep their distance – they’re still likely to report functional working relationships with their bosses.
Distance and disengagement aren’t the same thing.
How Your Team Reads You Before You’ve Said a Word
The data from this survey tells a consistent story. For the Feeling personality types on your team, your emotional state is worth monitoring.
Do you worry about your boss’s mood?
Source: Bosses
When we asked respondents whether they worry about their boss’s mood, the split was obvious.
Just take a look at the personality types most likely to worry and those least likely to worry. Feeling types, led by INFP personalities (Mediators) with 69% agreement, stand out on the chart above their Thinking counterparts. There is a 37-point gap between them and ESTP personalities (Entrepreneurs) – the ones least likely to agree.
This data reflects a striking gap in how much mental energy people spend tracking their bosses. If you assume that your emotions or internal state is your own private business, you’re technically right.
But you’re broadcasting emotional signals whether you intend to or not, and for your teammates with the Feeling personality trait, it’s next to impossible not to notice.
The Weight of Boss Feedback
For Feeling types, emotional attunement toward a boss doesn’t stop at mood-reading. It extends to what the boss says directly – and your feedback carries a weight that it doesn’t when coming from a peer. You are an authority figure – and that changes everything.
Does feedback from your boss have a different emotional impact on you than feedback from others? (e.g., Coworkers, peers, etc.)
Source: Bosses
ISFP personalities (Adventurers) led – with 74% agreement – on the question of whether feedback from their boss has a different emotional impact than feedback from their peers. INFP personalities and INFJ personalities (Advocates) came in close behind at 73% and 72%. At the other end, ENTP personalities (Debaters) came in at 47%, and ESTP personalities at 43%.
So what does your team really think when you offer a correction or a quick note after a meeting? For some of them, it’s information. For others, it’s judgment (positive or negative) – and it lingers well past the conversation.
Why Some Personality Types Avoid Their Boss
Here is the finding most likely to change how you read the room – some of your quietest, most independent employees are actively avoiding you. That might sound harsh, but try not to take it personally.
This has more to do with their personality type than what they think of you as a boss.
Do you try to avoid interacting with your boss as much as possible?
Source: Bosses
When we asked whether respondents try to avoid interacting with their boss as much as possible, ISTP personalities (Virtuosos) came in at 61% and INTP personalities (Logicians) at 60%. Compare that to ESTJ personalities (Executives) at 14% and ENTJs (Commanders) at 18%.
Interestingly, the types most likely to say that they avoid their boss still report generally decent working relationships with them.
For Introverted Thinking types, minimal contact with a boss isn’t a distress signal – it’s an environmental preference. Think of it as the equivalent of closing an office door. It doesn’t mean they’re unhappy. It just means they’re working.
So what do these employees really think about you? If you’re regularly checking in with them, they’re probably thinking something along the lines of “I wish my boss would just let me do my job.”
Leaders who read this distance as something to close – who schedule extra check-ins, who add meetings, who interpret low responsiveness as disengagement – often create friction where there wasn’t any. The best thing you can do for these employees is leave the door open and trust that they’ll walk through it when they have something to say.
When Your Team’s Silence Doesn’t Mean Agreement
Some members of your team may avoid interacting with you in a practical sense. But avoidance can also look like withholding opinions – especially if they’re contrary to yours.
You’ve probably had meetings where you laid out a plan or gave direction and no one pushed back. For you, it probably felt like agreement or alignment.
The data suggests that, at least for some people on your team, that isn’t always the case.
Are you comfortable challenging your boss on their direction if necessary?
Source: Bosses
When asked whether they feel comfortable challenging their boss’s direction when necessary, ENTJs led at 93%, with ENTPs and ESTJs close behind. These types tend to see pushback as a normal, healthy part of how good decisions get made.
For other personality types, however, it goes against their nature to speak up. Only 49% of INFPs and 57% of ISFPs say that they feel comfortable challenging their boss’s direction. These same personality types are among the most likely to say they behave differently around their boss than they do with other people.
This kind of avoidance has practical consequences. The lack of feedback you’re receiving from them isn’t evidence of agreement. It’s a sign that there may be something happening below the surface of what you can see.
What Kind of Boss Does Your Team Think You Are?
Not everyone on your team is relating to you the same way. Some employees are quietly building something – an authentic connection they’ll still feel grateful for years after they’ve moved on. Others are heads-down, doing good work, and keeping their relationship with you strictly professional and functional.
Personality type shapes more of that dynamic than most leaders realize – starting with something as basic as whether your employees admire you at all.
Do They Admire You?
Do you usually admire your bosses?
Source: Bosses
When we asked whether respondents usually admire their bosses, ENFJs (Protagonists) and ESFJs (Consuls) came in highest at 68 and 69%, respectively. INTP personalities, however, only agreed at 28%. That’s a 41-point gap.
But gauging how your team feels about you based solely on whether you feel admired would be a mistake. INTPs, for example, are significantly more likely to like or respect their boss than to admire them. This represents a distinction between a boss they’d trust with a hard problem and one they’d go out of their way for.
What Your Team Is Really Thinking About You
The “Bosses” survey can’t tell you what your specific employees think of you. But it does reveal something just as useful – certain emotional and behavioral patterns that different personality types bring to their relationship with you.
So what does your team really think about you? That depends on who they are.
The watchers. Some of your employees are spending real cognitive energy on you every day – reading your tone and adjusting their behavior. For most of them, that’s not a complaint. It’s just how they work with an authority figure. “Watchers” are often Feeling personality types. They think about you more than you realize – and they’re hoping that you think about how you come across, too.
The independents. Some of your employees are barely thinking about you at all. That is also fine. They prefer a work environment that requires minimal contact with their manager, and they’re probably doing their best work in it. What they think about you is simple – you’re their boss – nothing more, nothing less. And the less they need from you, the better things are going. Yes, they may seem detached, but it would be a mistake to treat that detachment as a problem.
The silent dissenters. Some of your employees have opinions they haven’t raised and probably won’t. What they think about you and your decision-making might surprise you – but they’re not going to offer their honest opinion unless the conditions feel right. That means it’s worth thinking about what “right” actually looks like for them.
Our survey data cannot directly help you know which personality types you have on your team – our Team Assessments are for that. But it can help you recognize what your team members might be thinking. Your team has been reading you all along. And now, hopefully, you can read them a little better, too.
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