The Hidden Secret to Excelling at Professional Relationships Part II: A Model for Discovering your Unknown Unknowns
Last week we established that it is not enough to simply learn new skills when you want to excel at interpersonal communication. The reason is quite simple – you have blind spots that you are absolutely unaware exist. You don’t even know the questions to ask to get to the information you need to know. If you are interested in the details click here.
This week we are going to introduce a model that will help you understand the two different types of blind spots you have.
Johari’s Window is a model for understanding interpersonal communication. It was developed out of the tremendous scientific focus on experiential and experimental engagement with interpersonal dynamics that happened on university campuses in the 60’s and 70’s.
The fundamental premise is that there are aspects of ourselves that are outside our awareness.
These aspects of ourselves that we are not aware of, often cause the very interpersonal problems we seek to remedy. But because they are outside of our awareness we do not have the very data we need to solve the problem. Take a look at the diagram below.
In this model there are parts of ourselves that are known to us (Arena & Façade) , parts of ourselves that are known to others (Arena & Blind Spot) and parts of ourselves that are unknown to ourselves or others (Mystery). Some of these areas overlap. For example, there is part of ourselves that we are aware of and that others are aware of (Arena). But there is also …