Back in the 1950s, at the University of California, a guy named Joseph met a guy named Harrington. They were both psychologists and both interested in self-awareness and interpersonal relationships. Together, combining their knowledge and experiences, they came up with a simple way to integrate their ideas about self-awareness and social awareness. Being cool and creative types (I’m guessing about this, because I never met them), to name their concept they fused or integrated their two first names.

You may have studied the Johari Window in Introductory Psychology. Just in case you didn’t, or just in case you’ve forgotten whatever you learned about it, here are a few facts.

1. The Johari window is pronounced the Joe-Harry Window. . . because Joe Luft and Harry Ingham named it after themselves.
2. The Johari window is designed as a tool for helping people (like us!) to expand our self-awareness.
3. The Johari Window has four quadrants or “rooms” (see the Figure below) 

   The Open Area. The top-left room represents the part of the self that that’s wide open. It includes parts of you that are known to you (self-awareness) and those same parts that are known to others.

   The Hidden Area. The bottom left room is the part of ourselves that we know, but that we hide from others. People who are transparent generally have a small private or “hidden area.”  People who consider themselves “private people” probably have bigger hidden areas.

   The Blind Spot. The top right area represents the part of ourselves that others see, but that we don’t see (or hear). Maybe you’ve glimpsed some of your blind spot by watching yourself on video, or listening to your recorded voice, or from getting feedback from other people about how they experience you.

   The Unknown. The unknown is that mysterious part of ourselves that remains hidden to us and hidden to others.

Mostly, the Johari Window is useful as a tool for enhancing self-awareness and shrinking the Blind Spot and Unknown areas. You can think of it as getting to know the parts of ourselves that are unconscious or outside our awareness. As noted in the figure below (which I copied from this internet site: https://www.communicationtheory.org/the-johari-window-model/), there are methods for expanding self-awareness. The main method for expanding self-awareness is to ask others for feedback. Asking others, “What do you think of me?” is a powerful and straightforward self-awareness tool, but it requires social risk-taking and courage. Asking for feedback is a good, but not perfect method for expanding self-awareness because asking others for feedback may NOT expand your self-awareness if that other person doesn’t know you well or sees you inaccurately. Feedback from others is often, but not always, helpful for expanding self-awareness.

Another method for expanding self-awareness involves, ironically, being more open and transparent to others. If we want accurate feedback from others, it’s best to let others get to know us, otherwise the feedback and information they provide will be necessarily limited. To get good feedback from others, we need to provide others with good data about ourselves. Without good data, others can’t give us good feedback. See below for the Figure illustrating the Johari Window.

I’m writing about the Johari Window for educational reasons, but also because it’s a great way to introduce your Spring Break happiness assignment. This is an assignment that I made up about six years ago while teaching a career development class. I call it the Natural Talent Interview. Not surprisingly, because I made it up, I think it’s an awesome assignment that everyone will love. On the other hand, you should be the judge of that, AND, you should give me feedback on this assignment so I can expand my self-awareness!

Here’s the assignment:

Conduct Two Natural Talent Interviews: To do this assignment, identify two people whom you respect and trust. Let them know that you have an assignment to get more in touch with your personal strengths and talents. Then, get a note pad (or commit yourself to making mental notes) and ask them the following question:

What do you think are my three greatest strengths or talents?

As you’re listening, be sure to ask the person for specific examples of each talent or strength. You can take notes if you’re comfortable, or just listen and then soon afterwards document what the person said about you—both your natural talents and examples to support them.

The purpose of this assignment is to get to know your personal strengths and talents from the perspective of others. Maybe you’ve done this sort of thing before. But because things change with time, it’s worth updating the feedback you get from others or worth asking new people for feedback.

At the end, write a summary of what you learned about your natural talents and upload it to Moodle for Dan and me to read.

Thanks and happy Friday.

John S-F