Johari Window Locked wiki

The Johari Window

by Joan Rostad

"I hate as I hate Hell’s own gate that man who hides one thought within him while he speaks another."                                                                               

--spoken by Achilles in The Iliad, IX, 312

Though scholars say Homer wrote this sometime before 700 B.C., he could have written it yesterday.  Achilles' complaint relates to what moderns call the Johari Window, a two-dimensional model of interpersonal communication developed by University of California researchers J. Luft and H. Ingham in 1955.  The Johari Window provides a framework for understanding why people "hide one thought within them while speaking another."

Simply speaking, we present and receive information about ourselves through the panes of the Johari Window.  Four categories of "stuff" inhabit the four panes of the Johari Window.

The first pane, the public self, has two-way glass.  I can see out and others can see in.  In this area of the window there is an open exchange of information about me.  Here is where I share and receive relevant information that lets others know what I want them to know about me.  

On the one hand, the public self may be a façade that is based on what we think we should be.  It may be our idea of what others want to see, e.g., "a nice person."  It may be an image of a "tough guy," like Tony Soprano suffers to maintain on the HBO series.  In any case, it's extremely wearing on the spirit to "keep up a good front." 

On the other hand, the public self may be a completely transparent window into the whole person, and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).  People like this are exceedingly rare, for the following reasons.

The second pane houses the private self.  Here is stored information that I deliberately keep concealed.  For one reason or another, I feel it is in my best interest to keep certain information hidden from others.  Possibly fearing exposure or criticism, I feel the need to hide my innermost motivations, impulses, and gut feelings.  To reveal would be to give "the other" an advantage.  The private self often nurses deep resentments and hurt feelings over past perceived slights, assumptions about what derogatory thoughts others may be thinking, and all the myriad forms of self-doubt. The private pane is a storehouse of fear, judgment, and doubt.

It would be fair to call the private self the source of our dysfunction, as individuals and a society.  All that is unsaid speaks louder than words.  Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist philosopher, wrote about authenticity, which is, to simplify a couple million French words into nine English ones, the alignment between who I am and how I act.  The closer that alignment, the more effective I can be in my life, choosing to lead the kind of life that I want.  Sartre described human potential as project, which reads as a verb in French.  You are an arrow flung from the bow of God.  What is your target? 

The third pane is called the blind spot, because like Achilles’ heel it represents the area of greatest vulnerability.  This area comprises what others know about me that I do not know about myself.  The dynamic works something like this.  Certain "facts" about my private, innermost self have a tendency to "leak out" in my public behavior.  Although I am unaware of the leakage, it may be apprehended by others.  This leaves me open to manipulation, embarrassment, and even humiliation, should others choose to use this information against me.  Additionally, feedback about my blind spot can be devastating to my self-esteem.  "Blind-siding" is to confront someone with a truth that he or she has kept so well concealed that he or she doesn’t even know it exists.  Reactions to such confrontations can be extreme.

Teachers and parents, managers and administrators, of all people, should be aware of what exposure can do to an unsteady ego.  Ski teachers often use video to objectify a person's skiing, in order to analyze it and chart a path for improvement.  I no longer use video much in my work, because it can create a poor learning environment.  It almost certainly brings fear, judgment, and doubt into the picture.  I've seen people get extremely depressed when confronted by "reality" by way of video.  I do not doubt that many of them no longer ski.  I don't recall ever hearing anyone express pleasure at seeing themselves ski on camera for the first time.  Most report that it doesn't look near as good as the memory of how good it felt.  In fact, I question if what we see on videotape really qualifies as "reality," because on video many of us stiffen up and become more tentative, even a bit doubtful, in our movements.  When that happens, we ski much worse than normally.  In my opinion, what really skews the picture is that the confidence and freedom that might ordinarily be expressed in our skiing can disappear entirely once the camera appears.

Fear or exposure is why performance may suffer during the time a person is closely observed while in the performance of a task.  I know it's silly and no one else does this, but if I have a new passenger in my car, my driving becomes much different (worse) than when I am driving by myself.  I grant this important passenger the status of an expert driver who is weighing every aspect of my performance against a standard.  The passenger is the driver's license examiner, so to speak.  As I drive I am second-guessing how they would do it and putting on a performance with the objective of gaining a good report on my driving when we reach our destination.  With all this craziness going on in my head, is it any wonder that I hesitate on the accelerator and jerk on the wheel like a rookie?  

All this is simply an expression of the Heisenberg Principle, which states that the act of observation alters the event.  The influence may be miniscule or it may be major, but it is undeniably there.  

The fourth pane is the unknown self, which is also obscured.  It encompasses the potential in each of us that is yet to be realized.  The potential may or may not come to be, depending on our life circumstances.  For example, a person must first be exposed to a field or endeavor in which he or she has potential.  Then a period of development, education, and experience in the field or endeavor would be necessary before there would be any degree of "reaching a potential."  We should also recognize that good and bad possibilities lie behind this window.  Circumstances can create monsters as well as geniuses.  Behind this window is all that is mysterious about you: the influences from earliest childhood, the family history into which you were born, your unrecognized talents, and untapped abilities.  As we realize the separate facets of our potential, they are re-routed to the panes of the public or private selves, depending on whether we want the new attribute to be public knowledge or kept concealed.

Whether a person allows hidden information to come out in public is very much a matter of trust.  The more openly we receive feedback from others and the less secretive we are about what motivates us, the more accessible we are to others and the more integrated we are within ourselves.  The teacher can affect an atmosphere of trust with students, the manager with workers, and the parent with a child by modeling openness and honesty in all relations with that person.  Sooner or later, in most cases, the other will correspond.  

However, openness is not without risks.  There are, as Achilles reminds us, any number of lying, double-crossing, manipulative people out there who would love to take advantage of your heartfelt desire to be open and forthcoming with others.  Be careful of strangers and anyone who you sense as having much stored away behind the window of their private self.  With such people it would be foolhardy not to throw up your own barricade and return much of the information that might otherwise be public to the private sector of your Johari Window.  

The blind side becomes less and less a factor as personal insight increases.  Insight about a particular blind spot transfers this information to the arena of the public or private self, depending upon whether or not we feel it's worth disclosing.  An example of the difference would be one alcoholic who chooses to become an active AA member and another who chooses to travel to another state to receive treatment.  Either way, there is awareness of the disease, so it can no longer be in the blind spot. 

The private self requires less protection as we learn to appreciate the importance of the stories we tell ourselves about "the way things are."  Our stories have much to do with the way things turn out.  We can tell ourselves a story about failure and loss, or we can tell ourselves a story about triumph and fulfillment.  Either way, we're making a prediction. 

Once recognized as the instruments of self-torture that they are, emotions like guilt, shame, and feelings of inadequacy begin to lose their potency.  As the panes of our Johari Window become more transparent through conscious awareness, we learn to leave behind such self-destructive or self-indulgent impulses.  Once you see it as a spiritual wallowing-hole, it's hard to return to those behaviors.

The more personal information you share with another, especially if it's information that the other person finds relevant, is an indication of the quality of your relationship.  Again, the windows of the public self are two-paned, so that each party to the relationship should be able to see into each other’s windows as well as out of his or her own.  If such clarity is lacking, the relationship will suffer. 

To improve your interpersonal communication, you might consider how you present information and feedback to others.

"People wittingly or unwittingly hurt others by giving critical feedback about blind spots.  The feedback can be fired as a bullet intended to hurt or it can be leaked.  The transmitter may indeed be exhibiting their blind self also—using their narrative of your blind spot behavior to service their own needs (revenge, humiliation, misguided intolerance).  The pot frequently trades insults with the kettle."

"The Johari Window: A Window into Interpersonal Communication"

The Johari Window invites us to look anew at how we interact with one another and understand why problems with communication might arise.