Johari Window Technique Can Improve Knowledge Sharing
How Johari Window helps employees exchange ideas and ask questions?
One of the most well-known challenges that faces the Knowledge Management community is Knowledge Sharing. Many retrace Knowledge Sharing obstacles to the lack of sharing culture, or being afraid of losing position or job, or fear of criticism. This article will discuss how to utilize Johari Window to improve Corporate Knowledge Sharing culture.
Johari window is a technique which helps individuals better understand their relationships with themselves and others. It was created by psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in 1955. “Johari” is the initials of the founders first names while “window” represents four windows describes self disclosure and others feedback.
As shown in the above photo, Johari window model is decomposed into four windows describing self disclosure:
Open Area: Represents things person knows about him/herself and is also known by others. Such as the color of person’s car, look, taste, job, education etc.
Blind Area: What is unknown by the person about him/herself but known by others. People get to know things about you at work and in your social life. You might have heard one of your friends giving you feedback about your interactions with the other gender, things you might not have been aware of. The information in the blind area can be positive or negative and include hidden strengths, weaknesses or areas for improvement.
Hidden Area: What the person knows about him/herself that are unknown by others. It is also called the ‘façade’. For instance you might hide your feelings towards peers, neighbors, or your manager. You might not disclose your political views, or you don’t disclose your disagreements with your boss, or your partner, etc. Those feelings, reactions, ambitions, dreams and opinions may be withheld from others by the individual out of fear of embarrassment, negative or harsh reaction. Once the individual trusts others they may choose to reveal some of their hidden information.
Unknown Area: Behaviors or motivations that are unknown by the individual about him/herself and are also unknown by others. However we can assume their existence as part of them become visible in the future.
Johari Window technique helps employees identify their knowledge gaps and blind spots
Digging into the Blind Area
Generally people feel more comfortable when asking questions privately rather than publishing them in public especially on a corporate Knowledge Management platform. As a professional my question could sound odd to other colleagues or out of scope; also, I might contribute something to the Knowledge Base that sounds basic or not integral. In other cases, people may face criticism from project management if they share lessons learned that refer to losses due to bad management or wrong decisions. To overcome those obstacles, we have to change the culture by providing incentives, getting top management endorsement and encouragement, having a strong communication plan, and so on. Most importantly culture change should focus on encouraging employees to ask questions to know others feedback. the more you ask and receive others input the greater the decrease in the Blind Area will be. This will eliminate the fear to ask for help or feedback from others.
The Hidden Area and Self Disclosure
Some employees believe that publishing knowledge they gained on a corporate knowledge platform could jeopardize their promotions, positions, or even their job in the future, as the unique knowledge they have is considered a key value for their career development and even their existence in the organization. In knowledge management there is a major difference between tacit and explicit knowledge. For example, your tennis coach will train you and give you tactics, but he can’t make you a super player like Serena Williams or Rafael Nadal! Organizations have to make it clear to their employees that sharing knowledge will not expose their experience to others nor put their jobs under threat. On the contrary, publishing your knowledge and sharing your experiences will get you known throughout the organization and will enhance your career. You will become a maven in your areas of expertise and you will have respect among your peers and management.
Self and Joint Conclusions
As a result of asking questions and sharing experiences and opinions, individuals will be able to reach self conclusions, i.e. an employee decides to change his/her career path as he/she can do better working in sales rather than working in business development, or enhancing his/her career by learning new things he/she did not know before when he/she started asking questions and receiving valuable insights. Joint conclusions is a joint of asking and telling, this is exactly what Knowledge Management Communities of Practice do. Where a group of experts in the same field but working in different tasks, projects or environment meet to discuss how to improve productivity or enhance work methods and procedures. Out of those discussions joint conclusions helps improve the individual reduce the Unknown Area and increase the Open Area.
Change
As we have seen the change in any of the quadrants will definitely affect the rest of the quadrants. You might risk losing part of your comfort zone, “the hidden area” in order to gain more knowledge in your unknown area. same applies for other quadrants. In Knowledge Management we have to work on Culture Change in order to get more collaborative and knowledge sharing culture by enlarging the Open Area.
