The Creation of Johari Window
Ever since the creation of life, humans have fought with one and other, bickering, and talking behind each other’s backs. This is especially true in the workplace, who has not had an argument with a coworker? It seems like no one has anything nice to say about each other. Maybe people do have nice things to say, but the problem is finding a way to say them. There must be a way to improve this everlasting problem, which two men set out to do in the 1950s. The men studied group dynamics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and got together to come up with a way of resolving differences in the workplace and to bring teams closer together. The concept the men came up with sounds complicated, but it is a simple tool to help people share information and complement each other. First presented at Western Training Laboratories in 1955, the Johari Window model went on to become the standard for (group) communicating and team building exercises.
Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham got together in the mid-1950s to develop a tool to help people communicate. Both men were studying group dynamics at the University of California, Los Angeles, when they began working together to create a model to improve communication in the workplace. What they came up with was a window with four panes; each windowpane represents ones feelings. Joseph and Harrington combined their nicknames Joe and Harry to name the model Johari Window. The model, first presented at Western Training Laboratories in 1955 received a surprising reaction. Joseph Luft admits even Harrington and himself found the reaction surprising, as he indicates in an excerpt from his book, The Johari Window: A Graphic Model of Awareness in Interpersonal Relations.
When Harry Ingham and I first presented the Johari Window to illustrate relationships in terms of awareness (at Western Training Laboratories, in 1955), we were surprised to find so