Johari Window

It was feedback week with the HITScotland programme, and it sent me down quite the existential rabbit hole. We talked about the benefits of asking for feedback and the importance of self-awareness as a leadership skill. So how do you develop self-awareness? How do you know if you're self-aware?

I landed on a video discussing the Johari Window, an exercise developed by a pair of psychologists to train self-awareness especially in teams. From a list of attributes (which I stole from wikipedia), I picked 10 I most closely identified with. Then I asked three people from my personal life and 3 from my work to pick 10 they thought described me. Then I drew it all out on a diagram (it's in the shape of a window. You see what they did there?). 

The words which appear larger were mentioned by more people. I didn't really know what to expect going into it, but I hoped there'd be some revelation of how I'm perceived by the people in my life and what they've come to expect from me.

My impressions

• I didn't choose any words like patient, warm and empathetic - which ranked quite highly for everyone else. This surprised me. I've always felt behind the curve on understanding other people, but maybe this should give me a bit more confidence in that area. 
• Independent, mature and intelligent were very popular. It's validating to feel that these qualities which I feel are important to who I am are coming across to other people.
• I chose bold because I sometimes feel like I can be confronting. Other people either don't notice, don't define me by it or see it another way.
• There's a pleasing amount of overlap between my answers and the ones people chose. I take it to suggest that I'm fairly aware of myself and how I come across. 

Limitations

There are a few obvious limits to this exercise which get to the heart of my problem with self-awareness. 

1. How biased were these people by the words available to them? I purposefully didn't choose words myself for fear of skewing the results, but would any list of words give an unbiased response? 
2. Even if each of these people was completely unbiased in their response, what does this exercise actually tell me? They all see me in a specific context, with a specific history and set of experiences. It isn't a surprise that my colleagues chose words like calm and confident, but my partner chose patient and loving. Would they even choose the same words if I asked again?
3. I'm a special snowflake just like everyone else. I'm not just one thing all the time, and I have the capacity to be everything on the list. Do I have a different 'self' in different situations?
4. Would it be the same in a week? A year? Five years? This is a snapshot at best, and I could develop from here in any number of directions.
5. What's the truth anyway? There's no way to objectively measure my level of 'sensible'. Who even am I? (this is where I spiralled down the existential rabbit hole).

What I'm taking forward

I think the benefit of this exercise for me was the knowledge that I do seem to come across the way I intend to. I'm empathetic and independent and intelligent, and in my next interview I can have the confidence and the data to back it up. I'd be interested to do it again in a year and see how much has changed. I imagine these qualities would bias me to appreciate the same things in other people, so hopefully I can be mindful of that in the future. Some surprising consequences for me are the fact that two people called me witty - I suddenly feel under pressure to live up to expectations. 

An interesting final thought - five out of six people picked trustworthy to describe me. But I didn't. What's that about?