Video Transcript: Dana White: Se or Te (ENTJ)

What follows is the text-only transcript from our video on Dana White.

[QUOTING FROM EMAIL:]

“Hi there, CelebrityTypes. Can you please explain why you think Dana White is Se and not Te dominant?”

[CELEBRITYTYPES REPLY:]

OK.

Se is an extroverted perception function. It is about taking in as much of the external world as possible and doing it all at the same time. Thus a common outcome of having the extroverted sensation function as your dominant function is to touch upon a multitude of facts in order to intensify the external situation and feel it out to the fullest.

Out of all the eight functions, Se abhors having to conceptualize the most.

Now let’s look at Te.

Te is an extroverted judging function. As Jung says, Te likes to put everything on a formula, and then follow that formula. Te likes structure, fixed standards, and set procedures. And it doesn’t sound like this:

[VIDEO CLIP: DANA WHITE SAYS HE PREFERS TO “DEAL WITH STUFF AS IT COMES.”]

Te likes to follow a definite plan of action. Once Te has found an approach that it likes, it usually becomes the approach. The term “standard operating procedure” was probably coined by a Te type.

Now Se, on the other hand – Se types abhor having to stick to an operating procedure. It leaves them no room to improvise. Se is all about freedom and flexibility, about constantly reinventing oneself. Nobody can tell Se what to do; Se wants to be free to shift gears whenever it pleases and to follow its fancy wherever it leads.

What does Dana White like to do?

[VIDEO CLIP: DANA WHITE SAYS HE PREFERS TO “DEAL WITH STUFF AS IT COMES.”]

The claim that you want us to address is probably the widespread claim that Dana White is an ENTJ. Now ENTJs also have Se. So ENTJs can also appreciate the facts of the immediate situation, but it’s not their bread and butter – they don’t see individual facts as an end in itself, but rather as parameters to be synthesized into concepts, procedures and – you guessed it – standards.

So which fits Dana White better? Does he feel out and flaunt the individual fact, or does he collapse multiple facts into regimens and procedures?

[VIDEO CLIP: DANA WHITE EXPLAINS HIS TRAVEL PLANS IN IMPRESSIVE DETAIL.]

So Dana White doesn’t seem Te at all.

But then of course there’s the argument that he took a marginalized sport and made it popular. Is that not an ENTJ seeing a business opening?

To this we would say that while Te users are generally very good in business, we don’t understand why anyone would think that Se types would be bad in business. They’re realistic and flexible, they frequently know what’s cool, and they’re not afraid to take risks. That sounds like a pretty good set of business skills to us.

But actually, if you research the UFC, you’ll find that while Dana White is the front man who promotes the sport and does the interviews, there’s another guy behind the scenes who’s in charge of the organization of the UFC and who owns as much of the UFC as Dana does. Let’s have a look at this guy:

[VIDEO CLIP: DANA WHITE’S CO-OWNER TALKS ABOUT FIXED PROCEDURES AND REGULATIONS.]

Well now. This guy sounds more like a Te type. Could it be that some of the people who think Dana White is an ENTJ are simply typing him on the basis of the way the UFC is organized without knowing about this co-owner in the background? Certainly, of all the people who wrote to us to say that Dana White is an ENTJ, nobody ever mentioned Lorenzo Fertitta. So maybe these people are really typing Lorenzo Fertitta when they think they’re typing Dana White.

Of course, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that they’re both Te types. The UFC could be an organization run by two Te dominants. So how do we probe if they’re the same type?

Well, as we know from Marie-Louise von Franz, a person is unlikely to just sit idly by as a subject pertaining to his or her dominant function comes up. It’s like a cat seeing a big chunk of red meat just lying around. One’s imagination is stimulated and one is moved to participate – to dig in and grab a chunk of meat for oneself.

So let’s look at how Dana White reacts when Fertitta talks Te:

[VIDEO CLIP: DANA WHITE’S CO-OWNER TALKS ABOUT FIXED PROCEDURES AND REGULATIONS.]

Hmm. All this Te talk doesn’t seem like a chunk of red meat to Dana White. Maybe he’s a vegetarian. Or maybe his imagination is Just. Not. Stimulated.

So in a nutshell, that is why we think Dana White is an Se type and not a Te type as we so often hear.