Bedlam Dram

DEBATER PERSONALITY (ENTP, -A/-T)

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ’crack-pot’ than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost. - Thomas J. Watson

The Debater personality type is the ultimate devil’s advocate, thriving on the process of shredding arguments and beliefs and letting the ribbons drift in the wind for all to see. Debaters don’t do this because they are trying to achieve some deeper purpose or strategic goal, but for the simple reason that it’s fun. No one loves the process of mental sparring more than Debaters, as it gives them a chance to exercise their effortlessly quick wit, broad accumulated knowledge base, and capacity for connecting disparate ideas to prove their points.

An odd juxtaposition arises with Debaters, as they are uncompromisingly honest, but will argue tirelessly for something they don’t actually believe in, stepping into another’s shoes to argue a truth from another perspective.

Playing the devil’s advocate helps people with the Debater personality type to not only develop a better sense of others’ reasoning, but a better understanding of opposing ideas – since Debaters are the ones arguing them.

This tactic shouldn’t be confused with the sort of mutual understanding Diplomat personalities seek – Debaters, like all Analyst personality types, are on a constant quest for knowledge, and what better way to gain it than to attack and defend an idea, from every angle, from every side?

There Are no Rules Here – We’re Trying to Accomplish Something!

Taking a certain pleasure in being the underdog, Debaters enjoy the mental exercise found in questioning the prevailing mode of thought, making them irreplaceable in reworking existing systems or shaking things up and pushing them in clever new directions. However, they’ll be miserable managing the day-to-day mechanics of actually implementing their suggestions. Debater personalities love to brainstorm and think big, but they will avoid getting caught doing the “grunt work” at all costs. Debaters only make up about three percent of the population, which is just right, as it lets them create original ideas, then step back to let more numerous and fastidious personalities handle the logistics of implementation and maintenance.

Debaters’ capacity for debate can be a vexing one – while often appreciated when it’s called for, it can fall painfully flat when they step on others’ toes by say, openly questioning their boss in a meeting, or picking apart everything their significant other says. This is further complicated by Debaters’ unyielding honesty, as this type doesn’t mince words and cares little about being seen as sensitive or compassionate. Likeminded types get along well enough with people with the Debater personality type, but more sensitive types, and society in general, are often conflict-averse, preferring feelings, comfort, and even white lies over unpleasant truths and hard rationality.

This frustrates Debaters, and they find that their quarrelsome fun burns many bridges, oftentimes inadvertently, as they plow through others’ thresholds for having their beliefs questioned and their feelings brushed aside. Treating others as they’d be treated, Debaters have little tolerance for being coddled, and dislike when people beat around the bush, especially when asking a favor. Debater personalities find themselves respected for their vision, confidence, knowledge, and keen sense of humor, but often struggle to utilize these qualities as the basis for deeper friendships and romantic relationships.

Opportunity Is Missed Because It Looks Like Hard Work

Debaters have a longer road than most in harnessing their natural abilities – their intellectual independence and free-form vision are tremendously valuable when they’re in charge, or at least have the ear of someone who is, but getting there can take a level of follow-through that Debaters struggle with.

Once they’ve secured such a position, Debaters need to remember that for their ideas to come to fruition, they will always depend on others to assemble the pieces – if they’ve spent more time “winning” arguments than they have building consensus, many Debaters will find they simply don’t have the support necessary to be successful. Playing devil’s advocate so well, people with this personality type may find that the most complex and rewarding intellectual challenge is to understand a more sentimental perspective, and to argue consideration and compromise alongside logic and progress.

Strengths

Knowledgeable – Debaters rarely pass up a good opportunity to learn something new, especially abstract concepts. This information isn’t usually absorbed for any planned purpose as with dedicated studying, people with the Debater personality type just find it fascinating.

Quick Thinkers – Debaters have tremendously flexible minds, and are able to shift from idea to idea without effort, drawing on their accumulated knowledge to prove their points, or their opponents’, as they see fit.

Original – Having little attachment to tradition, Debater personalities are able to discard existing systems and methods and pull together disparate ideas from their extensive knowledge base, with a little raw creativity to hold them together, to formulate bold new ideas. If presented with chronic, systemic problems and given rein to solve them, Debaters respond with unabashed glee.

Excellent Brainstormers – Nothing is quite as enjoyable to Debaters as analyzing problems from every angle to find the best solutions. Combining their knowledge and originality to splay out every aspect of the subject at hand, rejecting without remorse options that don’t work and presenting ever more possibilities, Debaters are irreplaceable in brainstorming sessions.

Charismatic – People with the Debater personality type have a way with words and wit that others find intriguing. Their confidence, quick thought and ability to connect disparate ideas in novel ways create a style of communication that is charming, even entertaining, and informative at the same time.

Energetic – When given a chance to combine these traits to examine an interesting problem, Debaters can be truly impressive in their enthusiasm and energy, having no qualms with putting in long days and nights to find a solution.

Weaknesses

Very Argumentative – If there’s anything Debaters enjoy, it’s the mental exercise of debating an idea, and nothing is sacred. More consensus-oriented personality types rarely appreciate the vigor with which Debater personalities tear down their beliefs and methods, leading to a great deal of tension.

Insensitive – Being so rational, Debaters often misjudge others feelings and push their debates well past others’ tolerance levels. People with this personality type don’t really consider emotional points to be valid in such debates either, which magnifies the issue tremendously.

Intolerant – Unless people are able to back up their ideas in a round of mental sparring, Debaters are likely to dismiss not just the ideas but the people themselves. Either a suggestion can stand up to rational scrutiny or it’s not worth bothering with.

Can Find It Difficult to Focus – The same flexibility that allows Debaters to come up with such original plans and ideas makes them readapt perfectly good ones far too often, or to even drop them entirely as the initial excitement wanes and newer thoughts come along. Boredom comes too easily for Debaters, and fresh thoughts are the solution, though not always a helpful one.

Dislike Practical Matters – Debaters are interested in what could be – malleable concepts like ideas and plans that can be adapted and debated. When it comes to hard details and day-to-day execution where creative flair isn’t just unnecessary but actually counter-productive, Debater personalities lose interest, often with the consequence of their plans never seeing the light of day.

Romantic Relationships

If there’s one thing Debaters are good at, it’s coming up with a never-ending stream of innovations and ideas to keep things moving forward, and this is evident in their romantic relationships as well. For people with the Debater personality type growth is key, and even before they’ve found a dating partner, they imagine all the ways that they can experience new things together, to grow in tandem. This can be an overwhelming process if their partner doesn’t match up, but when Debaters find someone who shares their love of intellectual exploration, watch out.

Show Me a Satisfied Man, and I’ll Show You a Failure

From the earliest dates, Debaters test their partners’ limits for this kind of potential, pushing boundaries and traditions, looking for open-mindedness and spontaneity. Dating Debater personalities is hardly a boring experience, and they make use of their enthusiasm and creativity by delighting and surprising their partners with new ideas and experiences.

Debaters’ idea of fun is often rooted in self-improvement, and people with this personality type bring their partners along the way, as much in a spirit of sharing as in a spirit of expectation. Debaters see either growth or stagnation and don’t buy into the idea of a happy status quo, making them demanding as much as they are exciting.

Some may tire in the face of this constant improvement – while Debaters’ vigor can be attractive, it can also wear down even the most patient partners. A little time to breathe and a chance to rest on one’s laurels for a moment is necessary for many people, but not something Debaters are likely to appreciate. However, if their unwavering enthusiasm is met in kind, it can lead to a magnificent relationship characterized by its strength, depth, and spark.

Genius Is One Percent Inspiration and Ninety-Nine Percent Perspiration

This is perhaps most evident as Debaters’ relationships progress into more intimate situations. All that exploratory curiosity and enthusiasm has a chance to be expressed in new ways when Debaters and their partners come together, and they readily encourage their partners to try new things, to enjoy their intimacy without preconceived limitations.

For people with the Debater personality type, this phase of their relationships is a chance to improve and develop in areas that are outside the realm of academia, though they approach it in much the same way – as a physical and intellectual process of striving towards excellence, rather than a spiritual or emotional expression of affection.

Debaters’ desire to improve in this department makes them fantastic partners when the relationship reaches that point, but their attitude towards this process is also evidence of their most glaring shortcoming – their emotional obliviousness. While Debaters are more open-minded than other Analyst personality types about others’ perspectives, they are also more likely to express their disdain for such things as emotional sensitivity in cuttingly well-phrased and clear terms, easily hurting their partners’ feelings without realizing it. Debater personalities may even ignore their partners’ feelings altogether, instead immersing themselves entirely in some distant idea or opportunity, inaccessible.

Where Debaters’ unwavering desire for self-improvement comes in most handy is in their emotional development, as they may actually be willing to work on areas such as sensitivity and emotional communication with their partners.

Debaters’ best compatibility rests with other Intuitive (N) types, with one or two opposing traits which help to create both balance and opportunities for growth. If they are with a more sensitive partner, this can be an excellent way for them to find another quality that they can work on together, making this weakness yet another opportunity to be creative, challenge themselves, and to deepen the attractiveness that this sense of progression brings to their relationships.

Friendships

Loyalty, support, emotional feedback – these are not what Debaters look for in their friendships. The last thing people with the Debater personality type want to hear is “you’re right”, not unless they have absolutely earned the distinction in a heated round of intellectual debate. If they’re wrong, Debaters want to be told so, and they want every detail of the faults in their logic to be laid bare, partly in their quest for oftentimes arbitrary truth, and partly just so they have to work to defend that logic with counterpoint and parry.

It’s often easy for Debaters to test compatibility with a potential friend – they just need to test combatability. Debater personalities are quick-witted, and their primary means of expressing this is in the form of arguments and discussions, where they will easily spend an entire evening debating an idea they may not even believe in.

The epitome of Debaters’ friendships is when someone can hold their ground in these arbitrary debates with valid, rational arguments.

These debates are never taken personally, no matter how heated they become or how striking the disagreement. Much as an athlete competes for the physical exertion and the spirit of competition itself, Debaters debate for the sake intellectual stimulation and for the debate itself, and even in overwhelming victory or crushing defeat, it’s never about dominance, only inspiration to try harder next time.

When You Play, Play Hard

They know how to relax and have fun too, it’s just that “fun” to Debaters – a bottle of wine and a discussion about the causes of and solutions to the European migrant crisis – could be described as “an evening from hell” by many other personalities. But Debaters are a genial and enthusiastic personality type for the most part, and pretty much any situation that allows for conversation and a little wordplay is an enjoyable outing.

Debaters are actually remarkably good at communicating with friends and acquaintances of other personality types. Their natural tendency to argue as effectively as possible means that Debaters are accustomed to communicating in other people’s language and frame of reference, and this translates well into normal conversation. Where people with the Debater personality type do have difficulty relating to others is in emotional expression, the Achilles’ heel of all Analyst types.

The Worst Thinking Has Been Done in Turmoil

Being inclined to suppress their emotions and feelings, when Debaters are faced with a friend who, figuratively or literally, needs a shoulder to cry on, they have no clue how to handle the situation. They are perfectly willing and happy to offer a series of rational, reasonable solutions to the problem at hand, as Debaters do for any situation where a problem needs to be fixed, but they are certainly not known for their sensitivity or outward affection, no matter how intuitively they may understand another’s position.

Worse is when Debater personalities try to turn these emotional situations into something they find more comfortable: a debate. Given how remarkably good Debaters are at arguing both sides of a point, they are remarkably bad at putting themselves in someone else’s shoes from an emotional standpoint. Debaters should avoid at all costs the temptation to turn a discussion about the causes of a friend’s recent breakup into competitive intellectual fodder.

So long as everyone understands not to take their words too personally, anyone who isn’t afraid to discuss new ideas – and have them converted into so much confetti – is likely to find stimulating and thought-provoking friends in Debaters. It’s not a compatibility that clicks with everyone, but Debaters don’t really care about being liked by everyone anyways. As long as they get to alternate between being the sounding board and the megaphone, Debaters and their friends are bound to enjoy each other’s company for a long, long time.

Parenting

One might think that the blustery and flighty nature of Debaters would make parenting a particular challenge for them, and in many ways, they’d be right. However, one thing people with the Debater personality type love more than just about anything is a good challenge, a problem to fix, even if it comes to addressing their own weaknesses. Debaters take their roles as parents seriously, and they are bound to be affected profoundly by this development in their lives – if anyone is able to take an outside influence, like their children, and use that influence to address their own faults, it is Debaters.

Be Brave, Have Faith, Go Forward!

From the beginning Debaters’ distaste for rules and regulations is evident, and they are likely to give their young children the freedom necessary to explore on their own. Independence is one of Debaters’ greatest needs, and they feel that no person is complete without an independent mind.

Debater personalities create relaxed, unorthodox environments for their children, founded on enthusiasm and the joy of discovery through the development of reason, not heavily structured settings designed merely to be safe.

As their children grow and develop, Debaters encourage them to think independently and voice objections, opinions and alternatives. But unlike Diplomat parents, who encourage their children to express their thoughts in terms of feelings and needs, Debaters teach their children to approach these options from a position of impartiality and logic, to state what is more effective rather than what would make them feel good. As in other relationships, this quality of emotional inaccessibility is where Debaters struggle.

As their children grow into adolescence and learn to find a balance in healthy emotional expression, people with the Debater personality type may find themselves exasperated. While always up for a good debate on just about any subject, Debaters often need their partners’ help in managing more emotional outbursts and arguments. Debaters are more able than most, but even they have their limits and rules when it comes to vocal conflict.

There’s a Way to Do It Better – Find It.