ESTP Friendships

Mavericks collect people effortlessly. This type is easy company, funny without working at it, uninterested in status, and genuinely curious about what other people do — which means they end up with friends across an unusually wide range of lives, jobs and ages.

The circle is large and the warmth is real. What separates the outer band from the actual friendships is narrower and worth knowing.

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

— Oprah Winfrey

Made by doing

This type does not become friends with somebody across a table. They do something alongside a person — a job, a sport, a project, a night that went unexpectedly — and the friendship is a by-product.

That is why Maverick circles are so varied and why they cross the usual lines. This type will be genuinely close to somebody twenty years older, with nothing in common, because they worked together on something difficult once.

The criterion, largely unconscious, is straightforward: does this person hold up when it matters. Charm is irrelevant here — this type has plenty of their own and is not impressed by it. What counts is whether somebody was solid when things went wrong.

What they give

Turning up in an actual crisis, at short notice, without needing to be asked twice.

A Maverick friend is the one who drives four hours, handles the situation nobody wants to handle, makes the difficult call on your behalf, and is entirely unbothered by the awkwardness of it. In any trouble that needs somebody practical, calm and unembarrassed, this type is worth more than every sympathetic message you will receive.

They are also unshockable and non-judgemental. You can tell this type the stupid thing you did and get no lecture, no visible reaction and no sense of having gone down in their estimation. That is why people tell them things.

And they are straight with you. This type will say the plan is bad or the person is wrong for you — once, plainly, without campaigning — and then help you do it anyway.

Where it goes wrong

Depth optional. Many of this type’s friendships stay permanently at the level of good company. That is fine and it is a choice, but it becomes a problem in a bad year: a Maverick with forty friends can find that very few of them are people they could actually say something difficult to, and this is usually discovered at exactly the wrong moment.

Deflection. When a friend brings something real, this type’s instinct is to lighten it or solve it. Both are sometimes right. Neither is what was wanted about half the time, and a friend who has twice had something serious turned into a joke stops bringing serious things.

Sharpness that landed. This type says accurate things quickly and moves on, and does not always register that a remark which cost them nothing was carried for a fortnight by somebody else.

Drift. Friendships built on a shared activity end when the activity does, and this type will not generate contact to replace it. A close ten-year relationship can simply stop, with real affection on both sides and no decision anywhere.

The thing worth knowing about them

A Maverick is usually the person others call when something has gone wrong, and almost never the person who calls.

This type will handle their own crisis alone — not from pride exactly, but because handling things is what they do and the alternative does not occur to them. Friends find out afterwards and are frequently hurt to have been kept out of it, which genuinely surprises this type.

Being the one everybody relies on in a crisis is not the same as having somebody to call in yours, and most Mavericks discover the difference in their forties, in a bad year, and interpret it as a comment on their friendships when it is a comment on how they set them up.

What actually works

Three things.

Pick three and go deeper. Not the whole circle. Three people you tell something real to, deliberately, before there is a crisis — so that the channel exists when there is one.

Answer before you joke. When a friend brings something serious, respond to it first. The joke still works afterwards and lands better.

Replace the activity. When the shared thing ends, arrange a new one on purpose rather than assuming the friendship survives on its own. Put it in a calendar — this type will honour a standing arrangement and will not honour an intention.

One thing to watch for this week: tell one friend about something you are actually finding difficult. No plan attached, no joke at the end. Notice how unfamiliar that is, and notice how quickly they lean in.