How can a 60-year-old cognitive psychology tool help you be happier at work?

Sometimes the oldies are still goodies. Here’s what we’ve learned from 6 months trialling an old new technique in our comedy training.

I’ve been working with groups for 10 years. If there’s one thing that’s shown me, it’s that the better the people know each other, the easier the work will be.

We’ve been figuring out what techniques we should bring into our Com4Com workshops. They need to be reliable enough to work every time but feel fresh enough to fit with the fruity vibe of our sessions (there’s swearing, we go barefoot, people are laughing a lot).

The Johari window is a technique that helps people better understand their relationship with themselves and others. It was created by psychologists Joseph Luft (JO) and Harrington Ingham (HARI)in 1955 and is used primarily in self-help groups and corporate settings as a heuristic (a mental shortcut that helps us to make decisions and solve problems more easily) exercise.

Why do we use it?

We generally only have 3–5 hours with a group and we want to make an impact. For us, that means bringing them together through jokes, storytelling, and play.

We often need to go deep, fast. So we use the Johari window exercise. It provides a safe structure for people to be open about how they see others, and for people to talk about how they see themselves. The really interesting conversations happen when those two views don’t match up.

If I see myself completely differently to how you see me, our working relationship is clearly going to suffer.

We’ve been trialling the Johari window exercise for the last 6 months and the results have been amazing. We’ve seen people hug and cry after getting amazing feedback from strangers. We’ve seen people gain really unexpected insights into their own behaviour.

When should you use it?

I think it’s useful at any time! But especially so with dysfunctional teams.

If things are feeling tough, people are snapping at each other, or the vibe in your team just doesn’t feel quite right, then it’s probably time for some open conversations.

If you’re curious to hear about how we use it, I’d love to share what we’ve learned. Give me a shout on terry@com4com.website (I know my name is actually ‘Jim’, but we’re silly through and through).