Johari's Window
Johari Window sorts what is known about you into four panes - open, blind, hidden and unknown - and grows the open pane through feedback from others and disclosure from you.
Each pane sorts what's known about you by whether you know it and whether others do, giving four boxes in all.
Reach for this when…
- A team wants a structured, low-risk way to give each other feedback for the first time.
- Someone keeps hitting the same blind spot in different jobs.
- You want to build trust in a new team fast through structured disclosure.
How to run it
- Draw the four panes: open, blind, hidden, unknown.
- Each participant picks adjectives describing themselves; each other participant picks adjectives describing that person.
- Reveal one adjective at a time - if the individual had it too, it moves to Open; if not, to Blind.
- Continue until enough adjectives are surfaced.
- Debrief: what did the Blind pane reveal, and what are you willing to move from Hidden to Open.
A worked example
Situation. Ramon Ortiz ran a small ad agency in Asuncion, Paraguay, and sensed friction with his creative director but could not name it.
Applied. In a Johari exercise, three colleagues independently picked the adjective 'controlling' for him, a word not on his own list.
Result. The Blind pane gave him language for feedback he had been getting indirectly for months. He agreed one specific change - reviewing drafts once, not three times - with his creative director watching for it.
The catch
The exercise depends entirely on people being willing to name real adjectives rather than safe ones, and a group with low trust will produce a bland, useless Open pane. It also cannot touch the Unknown pane by definition, so it only ever expands what feedback and disclosure can reach, not the whole picture.
If every adjective chosen for you matches one you chose for yourself, either you know yourself very well or the group played it safe.
Origin: Joseph Luft & Harrington Ingham