Let’s take a moment to look at the Johari Window, as created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham. The Johari Window is a cognitive psychological tool most often used in communication or team-building exercises where helping participants understand their own inclinations as well as the inclinations of others leads to increased understanding or cooperation. The model of the Johari Window used below is based on the version available at www.mindtools.com.
- Area 1: Things about you that are known to you AND to others.
- Area 2: Things about you NOT known to you but known to others; these are your blind spots.
- Area 3: Things about you that you know but others do NOT; this is hidden or private information. It is often referred to as a facade.
- Area 4: Things about you NOT known to you and NOT known to others.
Some points worthy of note:
Self-knowledge expands based upon feedback, shared discovery, and self-discovery (the vertical dashed line moves to the right). Self-disclosure increases the knowledge others have of the individual (the horizontal dashed line moves down).
We’d like to consider the idea that the Johari Window may also be a useful model for exploring and recasting the idea of SII-assessment (Strengths, Improvements, Insights), especially where aspects of self-efficacy and personal development are concerned. Here’s a reworked version of the model:
This model allows us to capture or illustrate several important ideas:
- SII-Assessment-based feedback provides information that allows the vertical line separating what is known by self and what is not known by self to potentially move to the right. In other words, what OTHERS see about you and communicate to you, if understood and accepted, becomes what you understand about yourself. Thus, your self-awareness and understanding grows, decreasing your blind spot(s). Isn’t that interesting? You come to know yourself through the feedback of others!
- This graphic shows why feedback can be taken so personally and why there must be a relationship of trust between assessor and assessee for an SII-Assessment to be effective. An assessor has knowledge about the individual that the individual does not have – the blind spot – and hearing that information can feel like a violation of self-concept and identity. This is something assessors must keep in mind; it is very easy to cross mentoring boundaries by offering unsolicited assessment feedback, and thereby ruining the relationship.
- Self-assessment can lead to increased self-awareness, even if it isn’t shared publicly and remains private.
- ‘Insights’ as a core component of SII-Assessment is so powerful because not only does it expand an individual’s self-knowledge but it is a shared discovery in the fact that it was unknown to both the assessor and assessee until the assessment was conducted.
This is just us scratching the surface and seeing what we can learn from looking at SII-Assessment from a different perspective and window. We’d love to hear any thoughts you might have!
