Reflective Report on Using the Johari Window Model & Psychometric Tests

Exploring Self-Awareness Using the Johari Window Model & Psychometric Tests for Personal and Professional Growth

Introduction

This report is prepared on the basis of reflection which will provide the details of the tool used for the development of self-awareness and its impact on using this tool for future employment. The Johari Window Model is the tool that is used by me for the purpose of increasing self-awareness. This model is a simple as well as a useful tool for the purpose of improving as well as illustrating self-awareness. It also helps in improving the mutual understanding between the people or the individuals within a group. The diagram of the Johari Window includes four quadrants Open/free area, blind area, hidden area as well and unknown area.

How I practice the Johari Window for a self-reflection essay?

It is important to show the people who you are, there is a requirement of self-awareness as well as self-disclosure. I have used the model of Johari Window as a tool to develop self-awareness. Before discussing how the Johari window model improves self-awareness, it is important to understand what actually Johari Window is. It is one of the most widely used psychological tools that was created in 1955 by Harry Ingham and Joseph Luft. It heavily stresses over “soft skills”, such as cooperation, empathy, behaviour, interpersonal development, and inter-group development. Due to its simplicity and ease of understanding, I applied it in order to test my self-awareness. The Johari Window is made of four quadrants in which the open self-refers about what the other people know about you and that you also know. Blind self is a quadrant according to which, it has been identified that what is such thing that the other people know about you but you yourself don’t know about it. The hidden self is the conception in which all your secrets are included. It means that there are certain things which you know about yourself but others do not know. At the last point, it is an unknown self in which the things are covered the others don’t know about you and neither have you known about yourself. Johari Window has helped me in several things such as understanding how I communicate with myself and other people. It has helped me gain an understanding of how I present myself in front of myself as well as in front of other people. The JohariWindow has proved to be useful for me in understanding how I recognize myself and how other people recognize me. It has helped me to know about the actions versus motivations. I learned that from the employability point of view, employers seek high self-awareness in the aspirants. This is important for them to develop themselves and work at their full potential. In addition to this, it helps in building confidence among employees. With the Johari Window model, people can explore their strengths and weaknesses. This helps in increasing their chances of getting hired as they can work on their weaknesses while preparing for the interview. They say “It is the hard skills that lead one to an interview and soft skills that get a person a job.”

Having self-awareness means that the person has a sharp realization of his personality. It further includes his weaknesses as well as his strengths, his emotions, his thoughts and beliefs along his motivation. I have analyzed that if a person is self-aware, it is easier for the person to understand other people as well as detect how the other people perceive him in return. I have analyzed that when I started developing self-awareness, my own personal thoughts, as well as the interpretations, also started to change.

Self-awareness is a conscious knowledge of own character, motives, feelings as well and desires. In such a state of self-awareness, I got to know that I started to identify the process as well as store the information about myself. The JohariWindow Model is utilized for the purpose of enhancing the perception of individuals of others. This model is based on two ideas. Trust can be acquired by revealing information about myself to other people learning myself from the feedback. I realized that every single person out of us acts as well as behaves within all four quadrants. We all are honest as well as open and aware of our abilities and skillsets, as well as we all, hold back information from other people as well. The JohariWindow Model is a psychological tool which was created by Joseph Luftas well as Harry Ingham in the year 1955. This model is used by me for the purpose of improvement in self-awareness, improving my communication with other people, maintaining interpersonal relationships, team development as well as my personal development. This tool was a great tool to be used as it was applicable in a variety of situations as well as the environments. One thing to note here is Johari Windows can help in providing a wealth of knowledge that can help in planning a job search. It can help a person understand what employers are seeking and how he can reflect his true potential and values. By self-awareness, I can bring up my self-esteem and build confidence. This way I can compel my CV and present myself effectively at interviews. In other words, I can develop some sellable talent within me. I can control my personal development as well.

The Johari Model has proved to be very potent as well as an elegant tool for me as it has simply helped me understand the most effective method to optimize the value to the people. The Johari Model has helped me understand myself and what I am. I have explored the qualities that have made me what I am today. In the very first step, there was a list of several adjectives and I was required to pick 5 9 or 6 adjectives that I feel that describe the traits of my personality. My friend was also given the same and they also pickup5 or 6 adjectives that they thought describe the real subject. After that, I arranged the adjectives on the Johari Window based on the awareness regarding them.

The 4 quadrants/windows of Johari!

My name, my age, as well as some of my interests, can be categorized into the open arena, the first quadrant of the Johari Window Model. This is why people know about all these things about me and I also know them. There is a great significance of the open self in the personal development of an individual as it helps in promoting one’s self-esteem. People who have high self-esteem, never feel afraid of being rejected in building new relationships or the team works (Saxena, 2015).

Sometimes in our lives, there are a few things that the other people realize about ourselves but we don’t realize about ourselves. This quadrant is called Blind Self under the model of JohariWindow. The things other people know about me but don’t know are I am calm, idealistic, observant, patient as well assertive which I got to know through the second quadrant of JohariWindow which helped me in increasing my self-awareness.

There are some hidden traits of mine which only I know about myself and the other people don’t have any idea about it. These traits of mine are covered in the third quadrant which is the Hidden Self where I got to know about my hidden self that I am reflective, bold as well and sentimental. The other people do not have an idea about it (Pearcy, et. al., 2016). There are many weaknesses a person can have. Not everyone is perfect. Johari Window model is helpful in exploring those areas where a person usually lacks confidence or is ineffective. Self-awareness is like a SWOT analysis where a person can target his strengths and explore the opportunities to transform his weaknesses into strengths.

Last but not least is the fourth quadrant regarding the unknown self. This quadrant represents the things that nobody knows about usincluding ourselves. There are certain traits as well as weaknesses of mine which represent my unconsciousness. This quadrant about me covers that I am accepting, ingenious, spontaneous, quiet as well as a tense person.

What is in a psychometric test?

The other tool used by me to improve my self-awareness was psychometric tests. In this test, we used the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which is an introspective self-report questionnaire for the purpose of indicating the several psychological preferences on how the people recognize the world around them as well as make the decisions. This is a widely used personality inventory or test, employed in the educational, vocational as well as psychotherapy settings for the evaluation of personality types. I have also completed a psychometric test to find the main elements of my hidden self.

These tools have been very useful to me for the purpose of my future employment. It is very important for a person while exploring future employment opportunities to know about themselves. Under this self-assessment, I have identified that what are the things that motivate me and what are my career aspirations. The JohariWindow model has proved to be very useful for me in exploring future employment opportunities for myself. I got to know about myself and what are my strengths as well as my weaknesses. What type of personality I am a result of the psychometric test I had (Marx, et. al., 2017).

After completing the psychometric test, I got to know several new things about myself. My self-awareness has been developed to a great extent. I got to know about myself that I have a campaigner personality (ENFP, -A/ -T). The campaigner personality is referred to as a personality which is a true and free spirit. I analyzed myself and that I have a life of the party. I am less interested in the sheer pleasure as well as the excitement of the moment that I enjoy while making the social as well as the emotional connections I make with the other people. I have analyzed myself and I am shaped by my intuitive quality. I am fiercely independent and I have creativity as well as freedom more than stability as well as security. I have a great sense of how to relax and I have a great capability of switching from the passionate, driven idealist to the enthusiastic as well as imaginative free spirit at the workplace. I spend a lot of time exploring my social relationships as well as my ideas and feelings. According to Vizcaya-Moreno, et. al., (2015), the Johari window can also be used in improving the organization’s performance as it builds confidence in the employees and builds trust in them by facilitating feedback from colleagues.

As I found myself a campaigner through the psychometric personality test and I have found several strengths as well as weaknesses of mine during this test. I found out that I am very curious. When it comes to any new idea, I don’t feel trouble coming out of my comfort zone to know about such a new idea. I found about myself that I am quite observant and I notice each and everything. I am energetic and enthusiastic, as well as possess excellent communication skills.

There have been identified weaknesses of mine through such psychometric tests that I overthink things and I have very practical skills. I easily understand the new ideas but when it comes to implementing them I find several difficulties. I get stressed easily over things and I am very emotional and sentimental at times (Liaw, et. al., 2017).

Through this test, I found several things regarding my career opportunities. I do not find any difficulty while choosing my career options because I lack talents as well as options or the drive but there are so many things out there which are just cool (Khatoon, 2018).

This development of self-awareness has helped me a lot in exploring my employment opportunities. These psychometric tests, as well as the Johari Window Model, have helped me a lot in finding my potential as well as weaknesses which will help me further in my future employment. These have impacted my future employment in a very positive way as it has helped me understand myself what things are there I can do better and what fields where I lack the skills as well as the opportunities. It helped me in making a shortlist of the preferred options that can be a very useful strategy for me. I have done deep research on the options related to my qualifications as well as the degrees I hold. These personality tests have helped me a lot in exploring that what are the fields where I can do better and it helped me in exploring my emerging career options (Bahadori, et. al., 2015).

These all tests and models have proved to be very useful for me as I have developed self-awareness and my communication and interaction skills. It was quite interesting to participate in these activities as they have also helped me a lot in finding career opportunities for me. The Johari Window was a great concept to understand as it helped me in discovering my four sides. Some of these sides were known to me and some of these were new for me to understand (Al Mutair, et. al., 2018).

Conclusion

It has been concluded from this above-presented reflection report that there are several tools that can be used for the improvement of self-development as well as communication with others. These tools are very important for a person to discover new things about himself. This report has helped me a lot in finding my career opportunities for future employment. The Johari Window, as well as Psychometric test tools, are very important for the development of self-awareness.

References

• Al Mutair, A., Al Mohaini, M., Fernandez, R., Moxham, L., Lapkin, S. and Ham‐Baloyi, W.T., 2018. Psychometric testing of the mental health inventory in an Arabian context: Cross‐cultural validation study.  Nursing Open.
• Bahadori, M., Shiri, A. and Mahdizade, H., 2015. Ranking Feedback and Disclosure Mechanisms based on Johari Window Model in order to Enhance Organizational Communications.
• Khatoon, S., 2018. Developing life skills approach in the teaching-learning process based on Johari window model: dealing with change.  research journal of social sciences,  9(6).Saxena, P., 2015. JOHARI WINDOW: An Effective Model for Improving Interpersonal Communication and Managerial Effectiveness.  SIT Journal of Management,  5(2), pp.134-146.
• Liaw, S.Y., Wu, L.T., Lopez, V., Chow, Y.L., Lim, S., Holroyd, E., Tan, K.K. and Wang, W., 2017. Development and psychometric testing of an instrument to compare career choice influences and perceptions of nursing among healthcare students.  BMC medical education,  17(1), p.72.
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• Pearcy, B.T., Roberts, L.D. and McEvoy, P.M., 2016. Psychometric testing of the personal Internet gaming disorder evaluation-9: a new measure designed to assess Internet gaming disorder.  Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking,  19(5), pp.335-341.
• Saxena, P., 2015. JOHARI WINDOW: An Effective Model for Improving Interpersonal Communication and Managerial Effectiveness.  SIT Journal of Management,  5(2), pp.134-146.
• Vizcaya-Moreno, M.F., Pérez-Cañaveras, R.M., De Juan, J. and Saarikoski, M., 2015. Development and psychometric testing of the Clinical Learning Environment, Supervision and Nurse Teacher evaluation scale (CLES+ T): the Spanish version.  International journal of nursing studies,  52(1), pp.361-367.