Type His Behaviour

[unefille]

1. He lies, a lot - not to self-aggrandize (lol, he's not a 3) - but to make excuses for himself. He makes excuses for things that DO NOT NEED excuses, where the truth would work much better. He has an excuse for everything - 'my brother is in hospitable', 'my grandmother had a heart attack', 'there was a fire where I lived'. I always know he's lying - I suspect immediately. I've never been very good at taking people at face value in the first place - and he just sets my meter off. The thing is, his excuses don't anger me so much as they make me amused and disappointed. I'm not even sure if I'm disappointed because he lies a lot, or because he's so bad at it.

What I mean by bad is -- he's a very convincing liar -- most of the time it's impossible to tell that he's lying at all -- even that's what so terrifying about him -- his pathological ease with lying. But he's bad (to me) at lying in the sense that he does it indiscriminately -- which means he's easy to catch out/set off alarm bells in people's heads. He doesn't seem to realise that people can track his behaviour and connect the dots and work out what's going on.

2. The reason for his lying is because he commits to things that he then doesn't bother to carry through on. He's agreeable to a fault. He not only never says no to a request, but he always agrees in a way that is aimed to reassure the other person of his commitment.

The difference between my overcommitment and his is that I will walk through coals to deliver what I've promised because I feel this sense of responsibility to other people that he doesn't seem concerned with. I think that he thinks everyone is just like him -- and they're using him to get things done as much as he is using them to get positions on particular boards and committees. Which is why...(next point)

3. He's the ultimate 'self-interested man' - if homo economicus were real, he would embody it. He agrees to get involved in everything, but he often has no intention of actually doing anything -- he just wants the credit for it most of the time.

An LIE who was on the same board as this guy and I for a while commented that this guy was 'very good at reading people'. He is. He is a very perceptive person. But it's not something I particularly value because hey - also my strength. Additionally, I think this guy shoots himself in the foot too often because he has a narrow conception of human nature - based on himself, probably.

Just a few weeks ago, he tried to manipulate an LSE into giving a position on an executive board by outright lying about other people in order to bolster his own bargaining position. He did two things wrong: a) you can push the boundaries of what is ethical and what is not when negotiating, but you do not outright lie. That's just amatuer-ish and b) he completely misread the situation. He would have gotten much further with the LSE had he proven that he was competent and fit for the position and expressed an open and firm commitment. Stooping to manipulation was always going to backfire on him - he should have known that even without socionics - in my opinion, he should have been able to read her better than that.

The only way to get him to work on something is to make sure it serves his interests. Otherwise, you're pretty much subject to his whims.

4. I see him as somewhat 'lazy' -- for someone as overcommitted as he is -- he does remarkably little work. He needs someone literally standing behind him with a whip in order to get him to deliver on deadlines work that he's promised to carry out. His energy levels generally seem quite low and he comes across as very 'calm' and 'relaxed'. He doesn't expend energy for no 'good' reason and he seems to enjoy spending time alone, in a comfy couch, watching TV. Whilst I appreciate relaxation myself...(ok, Si PoLR, so that's actually a bit of a lie -- I don't really, but I do 'veg' out because I am human), he seems to seek to be relaxed and comfortable all the time. He's actually too lazy to catch public transport for instance and hasn't learnt to drive, depending on taxis instead. When he sits - he really 'sits'. He 'sinks in'.

5. My personal opinion of him (which probably reveals a lot about me as a person) is that he's too short-sighted -- his behaviour is aimed at further his own 'goals' and to that end, he's very oriented to his own political 'career', but the way he behaves will eventually piss off most people -- Fi PoLRs seem to gel well with him though - his best friends are mostly ILEs -- and harm him, politically. He also isn't strategic and whilst he's aware of keeping people pleased and happy with him when he's in contact with them, he seems unaware of the long-term effect of his behaviour, nor the effect his way of behaving has on what people think of him when he's not around.

I used to think he was IEI-Fe, but now I think he's SEI-Si, particularly because his weaknesses (to me) result from his present-orientation. He focuses so much on keeping people pleased 'right now' that he doesn't realise the consequences of his own appeasement -- which is why he can never deliver on his promises and then has to lie his way out of things.

Thoughts?