INTJ 1w2 Characters

Introverted Intuition

Tobey excels at coming up with speech content on-demand, but he doesn’t enjoy doing last-minute rewrites, since he wants things settled ahead of time. He locks onto what he believes is the right narrative and pushes toward it relentlessly. He conflicts with Sam, because Sam as a Ne-dom wants to keep changing perspectives and innovating on the spot, and Toby wants to commit to a particular singular point of view and present it to the public.

Beneath his gruff bluntness and tendency to criticize people and their opinions as stupid, Toby is an idealist who wants to change the world for the better. He operates from an internal sense of how things are supposed to unfold: politically, morally, historically.

He’s constantly framing issues in terms of long-term meaning and legacy, not just immediate outcomes. In speeches (his strongest domain), he wants to boil down his message into one central point, and he gets upset when Josh Lyman or someone else treats politics as a place to tactically maneuver rather than as a larger moral arc.

Extraverted Thinking

He complains that the president “wastes Sam’s time” in “frivolous” activities, inferring that the president’s flights of fancy are detracting from the greater responsibilities and commitments Sam should be attending to at the present hour. Toby is angry that they as a team have not implemented as many changes as he wanted for their administration, and pushes them in the second half of their first term to “do” things. He doesn’t like things how they are, and isn’t content to wait for them to change.

Toby has no problem working inside the system he is in, and trying to use it for his advantage. He rattles off the facts to prove he did his homework. As Communications Director, he is obsessed with message discipline, structure, and effectiveness. He challenges others’ ideas on “Will it work? Is it practical? Is it efficient?” His communication style is direct, blunt, and sometimes abrasive.

He rewrites speeches ruthlessly until they meet his internal standard, shuts down weak arguments quickly rather than entertaining them, and expects competence and efficiency from others, and gets irritated when they fall short.

Introverted Feeling

Toby has extremely strong morals and a strong sense of right and wrong. He wants to improve the moral welfare of society, which he channels into all of his pet humanitarian projects. Toby can become emotional if he feels angry enough about an injustice to lose his temper. Since he doesn’t care if people like or agree with him that much, he will aggressively moralize at them for not supporting social causes. While it is awkward for him to show others empathy, he will feel things intensely and privately (loss, guilt, and shame about not accomplishing what he wants to in the outer world).

When something violates his values, he becomes rigid, even self-righteous. Toby often acts like he’s arguing policy, but he’s actually defending what he personally believes is right.

Extraverted Sensing

Toby is notably uncomfortable in the present moment unless it’s structured. He hates having to do things at the last minute, and can become overwhelmed or reactive under pressure, especially when things deviate from his expectations. Toby also struggles with reading the situation in real time, which makes him socially awkward.

Enneagram: 1w2

Toby is angry most of the time. He’s angry that society has not fixed its problems yet, even though the solutions are as plain as the nose on his face. He’s angry that they cannot do more to change the world. And he’s often simply angry with his coworkers for being less adequate than they could be. His idealism and drive to change things for the better makes him good at what he does, and also principled, driven, and focused on moral causes. He will sacrifice a holiday to do what he thinks is right and honor a fallen solider with a rosette on his grave. He will lose his temper and berate others for being closed-minded. Toby wants to do good, to help other people, and will even go out of his way to do so, if he feels strongly enough about their problem.