Johari Window

What the Johari window is

The Johari window (نافذة جوهاري) is a model that pictures what a person knows about themselves, and what others know about that person, as a window divided into four panes. One pane holds what the person and others both know. Another holds what others know and the person does not. A third holds what the person knows and keeps from others. The fourth holds what nobody yet knows.

The model is attributed to the American psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham, who presented it in 1955 in the proceedings of the Western Training Laboratory in Group Development at the University of California, Los Angeles. Secondary sources say that the name “Johari” is compounded from their first names, Joe and Harry.

The model is a tool for reflecting on relationships between individuals in a team. What follows is an explanation of the tool and of its limits. It does not claim that using it improves communication or performance, or that it measures anything in a person.

Where the model comes from

The reference given in the literature is: Luft and Ingham, “The Johari window, a graphic model of interpersonal awareness”, in the proceedings of the Western Training Laboratory in Group Development, 1955. The details of the reference come from secondary summaries online. We did not verify the text of the original proceedings, so we quote nothing from them. Our description of the panes is a summary in our own wording of what writers circulate, and the names of the panes vary between sources.

Secondary sources place the origin of the model in group training on awareness in relationships, and not in management research. That matters for how the model is used today: it began as a teaching tool for participants in training workshops, and its use later moved into management and professional training.

The four panes

The model divides awareness along two dimensions: whether the person knows something about themselves, and whether others know it. That gives four panes:

• The open area. What the person knows about themselves and colleagues also know, such as a visible skill or a stated position.
• The blind area. What others notice and the person does not, such as a habit of interrupting or a manner of replying that repeats without the person feeling it.
• The hidden area. What the person knows and does not announce, such as an interest, an expertise or a worry that the team does not share.
• The unknown area. What neither the person nor colleagues know, such as an ability that has not been tried because no task has arisen that would show it.

The window is drawn with the size of each pane varying with the relationship. The open area widens as the two parties exchange more and notice more.

How the panes change

The picture rests on two movements. The first is self disclosure: the person shares with colleagues what the person knows and has not announced, so the hidden area shrinks and the open area grows. The second is feedback: colleagues tell the person what they notice, so the blind area shrinks and the open area grows too. The unknown area does not change through disclosure or observation alone. It changes through a new experience that lets everyone discover something that none of them had found out.

A wider open area is not better in every case. Some of what a person knows about themselves is private and need not be announced at work, and an establishment should not ask the person to announce it. The model does not say how large the open area should be. It offers a language for talking about the direction of change.

How the model shows in work

Managers and team coaches use the window in particular situations:

• Workshops. Each participant chooses adjectives that describe themselves, colleagues choose adjectives that describe that participant, and the lists are compared.
• Feedback sessions. The window gives a shared language for discussing what others notice, and it points to continuous feedback as a route to shrinking the blind area.
• Observation from several sources. Observations about the same person come together in a 360 degree appraisal, an instrument that bears on the blind area.
• Comparing views. Comparing what the employee sees in the employee, as recorded in a self assessment, with the manager’s estimate shows differences between panes.
• Team formation. In the Tuckman model, team relationships mature through stages, and the open area between members can be narrow in the early ones.

What is needed before using the model

Exchanging observations between colleagues does not help if one of them fears that what the person says will be used against the person. Using the model depends on psychological safety, which is an employee’s ability to speak without fear of punishment.

The second condition is that disclosure is voluntary. An employee who is pushed to reveal what belongs to the employee does not take part honestly, and chooses what to say in order to avoid embarrassment. The third condition is that the exercise does not become a judgement by the manager on the employee’s traits. The window is a tool for dialogue between two parties, and not a classification tool that one party keeps.

A hypothetical example: a table of adjectives in a team workshop

Suppose a hypothetical manager takes part in a workshop with a team of four colleagues. The manager chooses five adjectives from a short list to describe the manager: A, B, C, D and E. Each colleague chooses five adjectives, so the colleagues’ selections total 4 × 5 = 20. They are distributed as follows: A has three selections, B two, F four, G three, H two, C one, I two, J one, K one and L one. The total is 3 + 2 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 20, which matches the number of selections.

The workshop agreed a hypothetical rule: an adjective counts as “seen by others” if at least two colleagues chose it. The adjectives that reach this threshold are A, B, F, G, H and I, which makes six. Two of them were also chosen by the manager, A and B, so they fall in the open area. Four were not chosen by the manager, F, G, H and I, so they fall in the blind area.

The manager’s adjectives that did not reach the threshold are C, D and E, which makes three. Colleagues chose C only once, and nobody chose D or E, so all three fall in the hidden area. The count is consistent: the manager’s five adjectives are two in the open area plus three in the hidden area, and the six adjectives accepted from colleagues are two in the open area plus four in the blind area.

The figures are illustrative only and do not represent a real workshop or a psychological measurement. The threshold of two out of four is a hypothetical choice and not a rule of the model, and changing it changes the panes. The example does not show the unknown area, because by definition it does not appear in lists that the participants make. Its value is to show that the window is built from selections that can be counted, and that these selections are affected by the size of the group and by the way the question is put.

Where the model is limited

• A teaching tool and not a measure. The window is a drawing that helps conversation, and it has no unit of measurement. What is said about the size of the panes is a picture and not a measurement.
• No study of its effect that we rely on. The model began as a training tool, and no study of its effect on team performance underlies what we say about it.
• Dependence on honest observers. What colleagues see in the blind area may be a biased impression and not a fact about the person.
• No account of imbalance of power. A manager’s observation of an employee is not equal to an employee’s observation of a manager, and the model says nothing about that difference.
• A particular setting. The model arose in a Western training context, and what counts as suitable self disclosure differs between workplaces.

How the model is misunderstood

• Thinking that everything must be disclosed. The model does not require full disclosure, and an employee may keep what is private.
• Using it to classify people. It attributes no fixed trait to a person, and it describes the state of a relationship at one moment.
• Presenting the blind area as fact. The blind area is what colleagues see, and they can be wrong. The person is asked for the person’s view before any judgement.
• Using it only once. The panes change with the team and the tasks, and what was drawn at the start of a project does not describe its end.

The role of human resources

Human resources can prepare the conditions for use and cannot impose it. Human resources can also offer the window in voluntary workshops for new teams, train managers to give an observation that describes behaviour and does not judge the person, and keep these sessions separate from formal appraisal so that an employee does not fear that remarks will enter the file.

Awareness of one’s own emotions and of one’s effect on others, which is close to what the window does in the blind area, is a theme of emotional intelligence. A manager can also use a one on one meeting to ask an employee what the employee would like others to know about the employee, and what the employee wants to hear from them.

What the evidence allows

We do not state that the Johari window raises trust in a team or improves communication. The model is in origin a training tool presented at a workshop in 1955, and we did not verify studies that test its effect under controlled conditions.

It is treated as a means of opening a dialogue, and it is judged by what changes in the team. Did colleagues become more frank in their observations? Did surprises in appraisal fall? Did abilities appear that had not been recognised? If none of this appears, the session was entertainment and no more.

The Johari window remains a simple way to ask about something that managers can overlook: how much of the team’s observations about the manager has not reached the manager, and how much of what an employee knows about the work has not reached colleagues. What is decided after the answer depends on the nature of the work and on the trust in the team.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.