Blog, Pitang.
Alexandre Mendonça
How can the Johari Window help in the mentoring process?
Management 3.0
How the Johari Window method works
The Johari Window was developed by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in the 1950s and is a tool used to analyze and seek to understand how behavioral relationships among people and groups are established, both in organizations and in other settings.
The 4 perspectives of the Johari Window
The Johari Window divides the way we know ourselves into four main quadrants or perspectives.
1. Open or Public
In this quadrant, people find aspects about themselves that they know and others also know. For example: whether a person wears glasses or the city where they currently live. The person knows the truth of the situation, and others who interact with them know it too.
2. Hidden or Secret
These are aspects that people know about themselves, but they are not public. For example, a credit card PIN and bank balance. The individual knows the truth of the situation, but others who interact with them do not.
This brings us to the issue of privacy. Privacy is managing which aspects of our lives we allow to become public and to which groups. In other words: what we allow to shift from secret to public. For example, your bank account balance may be public to your spouse, but it is usually secret to most people in your life.
3. Blind
These are aspects that the individual does not know about themselves, but others do.
For example: search your name on Google and be surprised by what they know about you.
As another example, have you ever been in a situation where you received feedback that you were rude, but you are sure that wasn't the case? That you were, at most, honest? In that moment, you are in the Blind quadrant of the Johari Window.
4. Unknown
These are aspects about the individual that are unknown both to themselves and to others.
For example: I have never been scuba diving. Therefore, I don't know if I will hate it, like it, or love it, and others don't know either. In other words, we can say it is an aspect related to experience or the lack thereof.
How to use the Johari Window during mentorship?
The scope that a mentor should address is related to their mentee's public and blind perspectives.
Speaking specifically about the blind quadrant, the mentor will work with feedback to make visible to the mentee aspects and capabilities that they have not yet realized themselves. When the mentor shares stories that contextualize situations, they are most likely operating in the public quadrant to connect their mentee with their experience.
The care that the mentor must take is to avoid operating in the secret and unknown perspectives. You can leave it to psychologists or better-trained professionals to explore those areas!
