What is the purpose of the johari window?

Have you ever been asked in a job interview, “What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?” It’s a difficult question to answer, not only because you don’t want to give the wrong impression, but also because it’s hard to know what the honest answer is.

Understanding oneself is hard. Unless you have very honest friends and family members, it can be hard to know what others think about you. Reflection and introspection can help, but you still are relying on your own personal views.

So if you want to gain a greater understanding of who you are and how others see you in a professional capacity, consider the Johari Window Model.

The model is a useful psychological tool designed to help you gain a greater understanding of yourself, and those you work with. Furthermore, it can help build trust and stronger bonds.

So let’s take a look at how it works.

What is a Johari window?

Although it’s over 65 years old, the Johari Window Model is still used widely today by managers looking for a group learning tool. Divided into four panes, the window looks at four areas of human interaction: open, blind, hidden and unknown. This approach delivers a 360-degree feedback evaluation enabling the individual and the wider group to understand their strengths, weaknesses, blind spots and difference in perception.

The Johari model can help build understanding around the soft skills that modern managers desire such as:

• self-awareness
• personal development
• improving communications
• interpersonal relationships
• group dynamics
• teamwork

The Johari Window model panes explained

Let’s take a closer look at the four panes of the Johari Window:

Open: Known to you – Known to others

The first pane in the window is referred to as the ‘open‘ area. This quadrant represents information or behavior that you already know about yourself and those know about you. This could be facts, skills, talents, communication style or attitude. Ideally the things you add in this quadrant should not be surprising for the individual or the group, which makes it the ideal place to start the exercise.

Blind: Unknown to yourself – Known to others

The second pane is referred to as ‘blind’, indicating blind spots. This quadrant is for listing actions, behaviors, traits and skills that others see, but the individual doesn’t. These can be positive or negative, such as hidden strengths or unknown character flaws. These blind spots may be hard to hear, but they should be used for personal development.

The third pane is the ‘hidden’ quadrant. It should contain things that the individual knows about themselves, but others don’t. This may be things like prior expertise, ambitions or dreams, or personal opinions and views. By sharing this private information, it can help develop trust between members of the group, who may, in turn, reveal things they previously kept hidden.

Unknown: Unknown to yourself – Unknown to others

The fourth window pane contains information that simply ‘unknown’. This means information, character traits or skills that are unknown to both the individual and others. It’s hard to find this information, so you can may want to think back

The Johari window template

We’ve created a simple template for the Johari Window worksheet that you can use to conduct an analysis with your team. Load it on Conceptboard’s shared online whiteboard so you can complete it in real-time with colleagues regardless of where you are located. Alternatively, ask colleagues to share their thoughts asynchronously by sending them a link to the shared document.

Follow these four steps to complete your model.

1. In the Open pane, start by adding 10-12 things you are aware of about yourself such as adjectives, skills, descriptors.  Then ask colleagues to circle things they agree with.
2. Anything that is left encircled can be moved into the Hidden pane.
3. Then ask colleagues to write things about you in the Blind pane. If there is anything in there you already know, move it to the open pane. Anything that is new to you, should be left there.
4. In the Unknown pane, you should use the space to reflect on underlying issues or things you are unaware of about yourself. This might be something like “I would like to discover why I am impatient” or “I wonder why I really struggle with deadlines?”

How to take the Johari Window test

If you prefer to conduct the exercise as an interactive test, check out this online version. It may look a bit outdated, but it still works well as a group exercise.

To start, select five or six words that you feel best describe you, from the list of adjectives. Then you can send your link to colleagues, who will contribute the words they associate with you.  In the end, you should have a completed window that you can use as the basis of self-improvement.

Best of all, everyone can create their own window and receive anonymous input from everyone else.

When to use the Johari window

The Johari window exercise is best used when you need to build trust or bring clarity to a situation. Coaches may want to use the exercise with clients, or managers may want to use it within teams to improve communication or develop personal development goals.

The important thing to remember is you can’t complete it alone. You will need input from others to help you gain understanding.

Johari window personal example

We’ve included an example of what a completed Johari Window model looks like.

The Johari Window is a great tool for improving communication and relationships within teams. On an individual level, it helps people understand what others see in them. They might have blind spots, hidden fears or insecurities that they can now address. By exploring, sharing, and talking about those things they can look for ways to overcome them.

If you want to explore more team-building techniques, our blog is full of helpful resources such as the Virtual Water Cooler, how to foster innovation in virtual teams and the Team Charter template.

As always, let us know how you used the template with your team in the comments below.

Johari Window definition

Johari Window is a technique that aims to help people understand their emotional and physical relationship with self and other people. It is used in both a self-help context, group setting and in the corporate environment to improve individual and team performance.

The Johari Window concept was created by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in 1955 – some consider it derived from the psychological theories of Carl Jung.

Participants are given a list of 56 adjectives and told to select five or six they feel best describe their personality. Colleagues, peers, family members or friends (depending on the context) are then asked to do the same for the participant.

These answers are then mapped onto a grid of four different boxes:

• Arena: Adjectives selected by both participant and others, representing personality traits that are known to both groups
• Façade: Adjectives selected only by the participant, representing personality traits that outsiders are not aware of
• Blind spot: Adjectives chosen by others that the subject doesn’t select, representing personality traits the subject is not aware of
• Unknown: Adjectives that were selected by neither party, either representing personality traits that don’t apply to the participant or hidden traits that neither group are aware of

Once the grid has been mapped, both the participant and the other contributors are given the opportunity to inform each other of the adjectives that only they selected.

History

It is necessary to improve self-awareness and personal development among individuals when they are in a group. The ‘Johari’ window model is a convenient method used to achieve this task of understanding and enhancing communication between the members in a group. American psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham developed this model in 1955. The idea was derived as the upshot of the group dynamics in University of California and was later improved by Joseph Luft. The name ‘Johari’ came from joining their first two names. This model is also denoted as feedback/disclosure model of self-awareness.

Introduction

The Johari window model is used to enhance the individual’s perception on others. This model is based on two ideas- trust can be acquired by revealing information about you to others and learning yourselves from their feedbacks. Each person is represented by the Johari model through four quadrants or window pane. Each four window panes signifies personal information, feelings, motivation and whether that information is known or unknown to oneself or others in four viewpoints.

The Johari Window Model

The method of conveying and accepting feedback is interpreted in this model. A Johari is represented as a common window with four panes. Two of these panes represent self and the other two represent the part unknown to self but to others. The information transfers from one pane to the other as the result of mutual trust which can be achieved through socializing and the feedback got from other members of the group.

1. Open/self-area or arena – Here the information about the person his attitudes, behaviour, emotions, feelings, skills and views will be known by the person as well as by others. This is mainly the area where all the communications occur and the larger the arena becomes the more effectual and dynamic the relationship will be. ‘Feedback solicitation’ is a process which occurs by understanding and listening to the feedback from another person. Through this way the open area can be increased horizontally decreasing the blind spot. The size of the arena can also be increased downwards and thus by reducing the hidden and unknown areas through revealing one’s feelings to other person.

2. Blind self or blind spot – Information about yourselves that others know in a group but you will be unaware of it. Others may interpret yourselves differently than you expect. The blind spot is reduced for an efficient communication through seeking feedback from others.

3. Hidden area or façade – Information that is known to you but will be kept unknown from others. This can be any personal information which you feel reluctant to reveal. This includes feelings, past experiences, fears, secrets etc. we keep some of our feelings and information as private as it affects the relationships and thus the hidden area must be reduced by moving the information to the open areas.

4. Unknown area – The Information which are unaware to yourselves as well as others. This includes the information, feelings, capabilities, talents etc. This can be due to traumatic past experiences or events which can be unknown for a lifetime. The person will be unaware till he discovers his hidden qualities and capabilities or through observation of others. Open communication is also an effective way to decrease the unknown area and thus to communicate effectively.

Example

Linda got a job in an organization. Her co-workers knew a little about her and in this context the unknown and hidden areas will be larger and the open area will be small. As the others don’t know much about her the blind spot also will be smaller and the model will be as shown in Figure 1.

Linda spent most of her free time sketching in the office which was her preferred pastime and her co-workers found her very shy and elusive. With that evaluation she got the idea how she was and tried to be more talkative and interacted more with other co-workers. This helped her to increase her open area and thus making the hidden and unknown areas smaller. (Figure 2)

Through the feedback Linda got from her co-workers she could perform well in the office and her real capacity could be obtained as a result of an effective interaction among the colleagues.