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By Fiona Robertson

Designed by Joseph (Jo) Luft and Harrington (Hari) Ingham in 1955 as a graphic model of interpersonal awareness, the Johari Window is a powerful tool which can be adapted to assess the effectiveness of internal communication by individuals, working teams or whole companies and their strategies. 

Personality Assessment

In essence, the Johari Window asks a group to rate their perceptions of a subject; it then compares their notes with that of the subject itself.  The information given by all the respondents is then mapped according to the Window to show whether the stated perceptions are shared, unknown, or known only by the subject or the rest of the group.  Taken together, this feedback represents a 360-degree view of the subject, detailing which perceptions are held and by whom.

In any assessment of feedback, there will always be information known by everyone concerned and some unknown to them all; but what is of particular interest are the perceptions held only by the subject, or shared by everyone except the subject.  Luft and Ingham gave names to these four information scenarios : 

• Open Arena

• Hidden Area or Façade

• Blind Spot

• The Unknown.

fig. A Johari Window

The Open Arena refers to information that the subject has given about itself; it is therefore common knowledge among the group, known and shared by all.

The Façade covers any information held by the subject alone.  Here, the subject has chosen not to disclose information to other people, making itself the sole keeper of these details.

The Blind Spot refers to the reverse situation, where everyone in the group shares information that the subject is either unaware of or blind to.

The Unknown area covers any information that is unknown to everyone in the group.

Effective communication is said to occur when there is a good balance between disclosure (the information we give to others) and feedback (what we learn from colleagues).  Clearly, communication lies at the heart of this model because it evaluates:

• the disclosure of information by the subject (exposure)

• the absorbing of this information by another person (listening) &

• that person’s response to the subject (feedback).

As the Johari Window demonstrates the balance of information exchanged in any given situation, it can be used to develop more effective communication by prompting a modification of either disclosure or feedback until the right balance is achieved - ‘the right  balance’ depending upon the circumstances you are assessing. 

Employee Assessments

The Johari Window was originally designed to give people a greater awareness of their personalities by seeing themselves as others see them.

Interpersonal assessments are made by giving a set list of 55 positive attributes to both the subject of the assessment and their co-workers, who are all asked to pick the five or six qualities that best apply to that person.  (Examples of the attributes are : mature, happy, capable, organised, modest, powerful and so on.)  By mapping the overlap or difference between the responses, a grid of personality awareness can be developed. 

However, such a profile only focuses on the positive attributes; it doesn’t cover the flaws that also make up our characters.  Therefore, the Nohari Window does just that : it is a challenging inversion of the original model, in which a set of 55 failings are listed.  Using antonyms of the positive attributes employed in the Johari Window (eg incompetent, weak, chaotic, smug, blasé, insensitive, etc), the resulting grid highlights perceived weaknesses for the subject to address.

Applying the Johari Window to managers

To give an example of how the Johari Window might be used to assess management style, let’s assume a manager has withheld information from their staff unnecessarily, (they have assigned it to the Façade pane); and that everyone in the department knows this manager isn’t a good communicator – except the manager himself; (this information resides in the manager’s Blind Spot).

If the manager can be made aware of his blind spot (that he’s perceived as a poor communicator) by getting feedback from his team, then he can learn to share some of the information he keeps back.  If this happens, the Façade and Blind areas will shrink while the Open Arena expands, leading to a better, more direct flow of communication throughout the team.

With newly-promoted managers, however, the opposite case can apply : if a team member has been promoted to become a team leader, they will have to start keeping some knowledge private.  For instance, if one of their reports tells them something personal in confidence, or if the new manager is working on commercially-sensitive information, like an acquisition.  In such cases, the manager might have to censor themselves more than if they had stayed in their original job.

Applying the Johari Window abstractly

The value of using the Johari Window in employee assessments is pretty clear.  Interestingly, though, this tool can be modified to apply to teams, business streams or even communication strategies.  It’s simply a question of modifying the parameters that you set …

For example, if you wanted to test the effectiveness of an internal message or campaign, you could create a series of statements that describe your message or, indeed, the company’s strategy.  These comments could then be hidden within a longer list of inaccurate remarks to see whether colleagues were able to select the correct statements.  The feedback received from such an exercise would then tell you :

• Firstly, how effective your message or strategy has been; and

• Secondly, what employees think their company is actually trying to achieve.

By manipulating both the subject of the exercise (eg corporate strategy, customer policy, team effectiveness, management style, etc) and the sample list of adjectives or statements from which employees are asked to choose, it is possible to apply the Johari Window to many aspects of business, to powerful and revealing effect.

Conclusion

They say knowledge is power; the beauty of this model is that it enables us to see those areas that are often hidden, blind or unknown.  Armed with these insights, we can then take whatever steps are appropriate to become better, faster, stronger or more transparent and, ultimately, to communicate more effectively.  However, the true power of the Johari model is that the more a manager operates in the Open Arena, the more their colleagues will respond to their honesty and openness.  As a result, this virtuous circle leads to an even larger Open Arena - and increasingly better results - over time.

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