Quote Originally Posted by consentingadult View Post
In the Dutch business there are two concepts that describe an attitude towards carrying out commitments: "inspanningsverplichting" and "resultaatsverplichting". Literally translated "obligation to effort" and "obligation to result", but in English "commitment to effort" and "commitment to result" are probably better.

With a commitment to effort you promise to work to to best to your ability, but you guarantee no results. With commitment to result, you guarantee the result, not so much the amount of effort you put into it. These may seem simple concepts, but they have lots of implications psychologically and socially. The commitment to effort works best in situations where a specific result cannot easily be expected, it also works best in situations that require a bureaucratic approach, e.g. to secure equal treatment of people. A commitment to result works best in those cases where a specific result can be defined, while at the same time allowing variation as to how that result is accomplished, e.g. it doesn't require a set procedure because all kinds of other effects should be accomplished or avoided.

Now here is the deal: SEEs and IEEs are totally unaware of what it means to work under conditions of commitment to effort, and will often screw up in situations that demand such an attitude. Sometimes because they ignore and thus violate constraints set by circumstances or procedures, sometimes because a definition of a clear result is missing, and they will make assumptions about what the result should be, and improvise their way towards the imagined result. This is also why their dealings with LIIs and LSIs go wrong: SEEs and IEEs do not understand that in the world of Introverted Thinkers, the procedure is the result (i.e. logic dictates that a procedure always has a specific result).
This is very very interesting.

I had a boss recently in a scientific lab (whom i left because of a huge personality clash), who would tell me (at the beginning of a project, at the time the idea was formulated) to sit down and write a draft of the paper I would write on that project. I'm like how the hell would i do that? I dont know what the results are gonna be!!!

Apparently he does this, and he finds it helpful. He said it helps him have something to aim for. I get that, but when i tried to sit down and write something like that, it felt like all kinds of wrong -- constraining, a total waste of time and effort, and felt like i was conjuring up results... I really could NOT do it, and i didn't.

He must have been result-oriented, idk. My work style is more of a commitment to effort kind of style myself, I think, at least in that setting it was.