A model for mapping personality awareness

February 15, 2006 6:17 PM

The Johari Window was invented by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingram in the 1950s as a model for mapping personality awareness. By describing yourself from a fixed list of adjectives, then asking your friends and colleagues to describe you from the same list, a grid of overlap and difference can be built up. To start, pick the five or six words that you feel best describe you. Your results will be saved, under a name of your choosing, so that you can send your friends and colleagues directly to your Window.
posted by airguitar (17 comments total)

very cool- it was nice to see that my 'facade' immediately emptied out into my 'arena'. And my 'blind spots' were mostly pleasant surprises. Thanks for the post!
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:00 PM on February 15, 2006

Very cool indeed. I like the idea a lot, but I'm not really comfortable asking people to compliment me. I feel it could put them in an awkward position. Even harder would be to get responses for the Nohari Window (tiny link from the bottom of the Johari page - basically same but with weaknesses instead of strengths). As much as I'd love to know what people think of me, I don't think it's fair to ask them, even my close friends. I asked my SO, but that's it for now.
posted by whatnotever at 7:15 PM on February 15, 2006

I think it's instructive that I want to highlight around 6 to 7 traints in the Johari, But more than a dozen in the Nohari. If i could mark insecure more than once I would :-/ .
posted by fFish at 7:42 PM on February 15, 2006

Oh no, now the memes are jumping from LJ to MF. It's just like the global flu pandemic.
posted by smackfu at 7:58 PM on February 15, 2006

yes that's quite interesting. Pity most of my friends are behind fun killing firewalls.
posted by wilful at 8:07 PM on February 15, 2006

Hey Wilful, I do have a home connection if you really want to know how much you're kidding yourself.
posted by pompomtom at 8:58 PM on February 15, 2006

complex
introverted
proud
searching
self-conscious
tense

I picked mainly negatives so my shared windows would tend to be full of positive attributes.
posted by troutfishing at 9:30 PM on February 15, 2006

I did the Johari Window years ago with a group of cow-workers at one of those touchy-feely team building weekends, and was pleased to see that my blind spot - what others see about me that I don't see about myself - was relatively small. I wonder how far down one can shrink that window.
posted by ereshkigal45 at 10:36 PM on February 15, 2006

My partner has something similar at work, called "360 degree feedback". Coworkers and superiors both respond, anonymously. Quite useful.
posted by Goofyy at 11:37 PM on February 15, 2006

yeah, this has been all over my LJ friends list since about a week ago...still, it's pretty cool, although the Nohari window is brutal...
posted by nile_red at 6:14 AM on February 16, 2006

We had these in junior high, only they were called slam books.
posted by Spatch at 7:11 AM on February 16, 2006

AUGH!!!! LJ-MEME'S!!!! HELP!!! WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!!
posted by daq at 8:09 AM on February 16, 2006

AUGH!!!! MYSPACE MEME'S!!!! HELP!!! WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!!!!
posted by daq at 8:10 AM on February 16, 2006

AUGH!!! *pant* *pant* *pant* *wheeze*

I'm getting to old for this comedic over-reacting.
posted by daq at 8:10 AM on February 16, 2006

I first encountered this during an interpersonal communication class: and ereshkigal45's right, it's commonly used in those sorts of team-building training classes. You can discover just how little your coworkers actually feel about you.
posted by Electric Elf at 11:32 AM on February 16, 2006

So far, "kind," "caring," and "wise" have shown up in my blind spots, and it really is my blind spot. I consider myself to be none of those things.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:50 AM on February 16, 2006

Yay! Harrington Ingham's son is a very good friend of mine, and Harrington the Elder was a marvellous man. Makes me a little misty to see his name in the blue, actually.

BTW, from what I understand, the Johari Window was kind of a joke to its developers. I hear that they were much amused by the following it developed.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 2:57 AM on February 18, 2006