The Johari Window: What You Don’t See in Yourself Shapes How You Lead

You know how you respond under pressure, how you communicate, the signals you send to the people around you, and how you function as a leader. The problem is that much of this picture is based on your own perception of yourself. The people around you may experience you very differently.

That is precisely why the Johari Window remains a useful model more than 70 years after it was developed.

Not because four boxes can explain a human being, but because the model forces us to confront something both simple and uncomfortable: there are things about you that other people can see, but you cannot see yourself. And there are also aspects of you that neither you nor anyone else has discovered yet.

For a leader, this is more than interesting psychology. It is about the actual impact of your leadership. You may have read all the right books, attended leadership programmes, learned the models and decided what a good leader is supposed to look like. Yet you can still end up playing the role of the leader you believe you should be, without knowing how your leadership is actually experienced by the people around you.

Without sufficient self-awareness, you risk evaluating yourself based on your intentions, while your people have to live with the consequences of what you actually do.

What is the Johari Window?

The Johari Window was developed by psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in 1955 as a model for understanding self-awareness and interpersonal relationships. The name Johari is derived from their first names, Joseph and Harrington, or Joe and Harry.

The model divides what can be known about ourselves into four areas: The Open Area, the Blind Spot, the Hidden Area, and the Unknown Area.

The Open Area contains what both you and the people around you know about you. You may know, for example, that you prefer quick decisions, and your colleagues know the same.

The Hidden Area contains what you know about yourself but others do not. This might include experiences, concerns, ambitions, values or insecurities that you have chosen not to share.

The Blind Spot contains what other people see in you, but you are not aware of yourself. It could be the way your voice changes when you are stressed, that you interrupt people, that you appear less approachable than you believe, or that your need for control increases when uncertainty rises.

The Unknown Area contains what neither you nor others know yet. These may be capabilities, reactions, limitations or strengths that only become visible when you enter unfamiliar situations or are pushed beyond what you already know.

The Johari Window should therefore not be used as a test or as a definitive description of who you are. It is primarily a simple way of thinking about information, self-awareness, feedback and development. Its simplicity is precisely what makes it useful.

The blind spot may be the most important area for a leader

From a leadership perspective, the Blind Spot is often the most interesting part of the Johari Window.

The reason is simple: You cannot correct something you do not know you are doing. If I know that I become impatient in meetings, I can work on it. If I know that I tend to become overly controlling when risk increases, I can stop myself, adjust my behaviour or explain more clearly why I need to become more involved.

The situation becomes more difficult when I genuinely believe I give people considerable freedom, while they experience me as constantly interfering. Or when I believe I communicate clearly, while the rest of the organisation experiences me as abrupt and difficult to understand. This is also where good intentions can mislead us.

The leader usually knows why they did what they did. The employee only experiences the behaviour, the words, the facial expression, the decision, or the absence of a decision.

A leader might think: “I asked a lot of questions because I wanted to understand the situation before we made a decision.”

The employee may leave the conversation thinking: “She does not trust my judgement.”

Both experiences can exist at the same time. That does not mean the employee's interpretation is automatically the truth. But it is information the leader needs if the objective is to understand their own impact. I experienced this myself during my military leadership training. In stressful situations, I felt that I was in control. I was able to calm myself down, think and build an overview of the situation before acting. What I did not realise was how this looked from the outside.

I received feedback that I could appear too calm. To others, my calmness could be interpreted as a lack of decisiveness and, at its worst, almost as if I had frozen in the situation. That was very different from my own experience.

I thought I was signalling control. Others could interpret the same behaviour as passivity.

The answer was not to start running around faster or pretend to be more stressed than I actually was. But the feedback gave me information I had not previously had access to. If I wanted to retain my ability to remain calm, I also needed to ensure that the people around me could see that I was assessing the situation, making decisions and taking action.

Perhaps I needed to communicate more as the situation developed. Perhaps my decisions needed to be more visible. My blind spot became slightly smaller.

That is why self-awareness matters so much in leadership. Not because a leader should become overly focused on themselves, but because you need to understand the effect you have on other people.

You do not get honest feedback simply because you ask for it

Many leaders say they want honest feedback. Some also say that their door is always open. Neither statement necessarily means that employees genuinely feel safe telling their leader something the leader may not want to hear.

The power imbalance cannot simply be talked away. A leader influences an employee's responsibilities, development opportunities, working environment and, in many organisations, their salary and career opportunities. Employees therefore assess the risk of speaking openly, whether the leader likes it or not.

If an employee attempts to give critical feedback and the leader immediately starts arguing, explaining why the employee has misunderstood the situation, or subsequently behaves differently towards that person, the organisation quickly learns what “openness” actually means.

Trust has to be built over time. As a leader, you have to demonstrate, not merely say, that people can tell you how they experience your leadership without facing negative consequences.

When someone chooses to give you feedback, our recommendation is simple: Thank them for it. Do not immediately argue against their experience. The person giving the feedback should be allowed to own their experience.

You may have had a different intention. You may know facts they do not know. And after reflecting on the feedback, you may ultimately decide that you should not change anything.

But you cannot argue away the way your behaviour was experienced. The real work begins afterwards.

Ask questions. Try to understand what the person specifically observed. Explore whether others experience the same thing. Distinguish between a single incident and a recurring pattern. Consider what, if anything, you should do differently.

Sometimes you need to change your behaviour. At other times the action itself was correct, but you discover that you need to communicate more clearly why you are doing what you are doing.

The purpose of feedback is not to allow other people to control your personality. The purpose is to give you information that helps you evaluate your own leadership more accurately.

When the leader finally hears what everyone else already knows

A simplified and anonymised example, based on the types of situations we encounter in leadership and team development, illustrates the point. In one organisation, work is done systematically to improve people's ability to give each other meaningful feedback. Not vague praise or criticism, but descriptions of observable behaviour, the situation in which it occurred and the impact it had.

Just as much attention is given to receiving feedback, because a strong feedback culture requires people to be capable of both giving and receiving information they may not necessarily enjoy hearing. Over time, one leader receives several pieces of feedback pointing in the same direction.

The leader sees himself as accessible, engaged and eager to help. His employees describe something different.

When they bring him a problem, he moves very quickly into solution mode. He suggests what they should do, asks questions that steer them towards the solution he has already identified, and occasionally takes over the task himself.

From his perspective, he is being supportive. Several employees experience it as a signal that their own judgement is not good enough. The important moment comes when the leader manages not to defend himself.

Instead, he investigates the feedback and begins to recognise a pattern. His intention has been positive all along, but the effect has been different from what he believed.

Now he can change something specific. He can wait a little longer before offering a solution. He can ask the employee what they think should be done. He can clarify whether the person wants advice or simply needs someone to discuss the problem with. And he can be clearer about those situations where he genuinely does expect something to be done in a particular way.

That is leadership development in practice. Not because someone told him which leadership style was correct, but because he gained access to information about his own leadership that had previously existed in his Blind Spot.

But the Johari Window is not only about what other people can see

The Unknown Area is just as interesting, but for a different reason. This is where we find what we have not yet discovered. It is difficult to know how you will perform in situations you have never experienced. You may believe you are poor at giving presentations because you have always avoided them. You may believe you need a high degree of control simply because that is how you have always worked. You may be convinced that you perform badly under significant pressure without ever having tested yourself in a situation where you genuinely have to operate under pressure over time.

Some development only happens when we move beyond what is already comfortable and familiar. We accept responsibilities we are not certain we can handle. We work with people who are different from us. We allow others to challenge the way we think. We take on greater responsibility, or deliberately let go of responsibilities we have previously held onto tightly.

Sometimes we discover strengths we did not know we had. At other times we discover limitations. Both are valuable information.

A leader who consistently remains within their established comfort zone may know the leader they already are reasonably well, but know far less about the leader they could become. Resilience is not simply about tolerating pressure. It is also about the ability to learn, adapt and function when reality does not unfold according to plan.

The Unknown Area only becomes smaller when something causes the unknown to become visible.

Openness is valuable, but more openness is not always better

The Hidden Area creates a different leadership challenge. If the people around a leader know very little about what the leader is thinking, why decisions are being made or what matters to the person behind the role, they have to fill in the gaps themselves.

Greater openness can therefore make a leader easier to understand and strengthen relationships. But that does not mean leaders should share everything.

In discussions about modern leadership, openness and vulnerability can sometimes be treated as though more is always better. We believe that is too simplistic.

Leaders also have a responsibility for what they place on their employees. If a leader shares every insecurity, frustration, conflict, concern or personal burden, employees may end up carrying more than is reasonable. What feels liberating for the leader to share may create uncertainty for the person receiving it.

Some things should be shared elsewhere. There is no simple answer to where the line should be drawn. It depends on the situation, the relationship, what is being shared and why.

As a general principle, we would rather see leaders who are slightly too open than leaders who remain consistently closed. But it is a balancing act, and you will occasionally get it wrong.

That is another reason leaders need people around them who are willing to say: “That was useful for us to know.” Or, just as importantly: “I think you placed a little too much of that on us.”

Feedback is information, not necessarily the truth

There is also a risk in becoming overly concerned with how other people perceive you. You may begin adjusting yourself in response to every piece of feedback you receive.

That is not good leadership either. If one person thinks you are too direct, it does not automatically mean you should become less direct. Another employee may appreciate precisely the same clarity.

If someone experiences a decision as unfair, that does not necessarily mean the decision itself was wrong. The leader may have information and responsibilities the employee does not have.

Feedback should therefore be treated as information. Look for patterns. Consider the context. Examine what actually happened. Pay particular attention when several independent people describe the same effect.

The goal is not to eliminate the Blind Spot entirely. You never will. The goal is to reduce the risk that important aspects of your own behaviour remain invisible simply because nobody is willing to tell you about them.

Five questions that can make your blind spot a little smaller

The Johari Window only becomes interesting when it influences what you actually do. A simple place to start is to ask people you trust, preferably people who see you in different situations: 1. What do I do as a leader that I am probably not aware of myself? 2. When am I at my best as a leader, and what am I actually doing in those situations? 3. What do I do that makes work more difficult for the people around me? 4. How does my behaviour change when I am stressed, under pressure or uncertain? 5. If there were one thing you wanted me to do more or less of as a leader, what would it be?

Do not ask these questions if what you really want is confirmation.

And do not expect the most honest answers the first time you ask. If the people around you have learned that uncomfortable messages come at a cost, it may take time to demonstrate that you genuinely want to hear them.

It is not only about the leader

The Johari Window is equally relevant when working with teams. A team does not function simply because the people around the table have the right formal competencies on their CVs. They also need to understand each other.

They need to know how their colleagues react when pressure increases, how they prefer to communicate, where their strengths lie, where they need support and which signals indicate that something is not working. In teams with little openness and a weak feedback culture, much remains hidden or blind.

People begin guessing at each other's intentions. Irritation is left unaddressed. Behaviour that creates problems continues because nobody says anything. At the same time, people may be sitting on knowledge, concerns and ideas that never become available to the rest of the team.

A strong feedback culture is therefore about far more than individual leadership development. It is part of how resilient teams and organisations are built.

More people need to take responsibility for providing relevant information, and more people need to develop the ability to receive it.

Resilient leaders need people who can see what they cannot

Self-awareness does not mean knowing every aspect of yourself. Nobody does. A resilient leader is not a leader without blind spots. The difference lies in what the leader does with the knowledge that those blind spots exist.

You need people who are willing to challenge you. You need a culture where feedback is normal rather than dramatic. You need arenas where you can reflect on your own practice. And occasionally, you need to be placed in situations where you do not already know the answer. That can happen through trusted colleagues, employees, leadership teams, mentoring, structured feedback, observation, 360-degree assessments or other development processes.

The Johari Window is only one model among many, but it reminds us of something fundamental: What you know about yourself is only part of the information you need in order to understand how you function as a leader. Perhaps the most important question is not whether you have blind spots. You do. The question is whether you have people around you who are willing to tell you about them, and whether you actually listen when they do.

Developing your leadership

At TEAM NORSO, we use the Johari Window as one of several perspectives when working with leaders, teams and organisations. The objective is not to force people into a particular leadership style, but to increase awareness of their own behaviour, their impact on others and the dynamics between the people around them.

If your organisation wants to work more systematically with feedback culture, leadership development or team development, contact us for an initial conversation.