The other day someone asked me what coaching is all about. I thought about it for a while and said that, for me, coaching is about giving people choice. That is, helping people to see choice where they didn’t believe that they had any.
And of course I’ve spoken at length before about how who we are and what we do is defined by self-imposed barriers, or beliefs, that inhibit choices. Then, just to complicate matters, there are our actual, internal beliefs, and those that we say, or espouse, quite often they are different. I mean, how are we supposed to work efficiently when what we say isn’t even congruent with what we do or believe?? Complicated isn’t it?.
So coaching for me is about helping people to realise that they have way more choice than they thought that they had. And one way to further that is to understand how congruent your internal view of who you are is with the perception of those around you.
An interesting tool to use for this exercise is the Johari window. The idea is that the window is a metaphor for the four sides of who you are:
- Parts of your identity known to you and others - The Arena
- Parts of your identity known only to you - The Facade
- Parts of your identity known only to others - The Blind Spot
- Parts of your identity known to no-one - The Unknown
The idea of this tool is for you to map out words that describe you and see how aligned what you think about yourself is with what people think of you. It’s an interesting exercise to carry out and can yield some startling revelations to yourself. It also helps you to understand how other people perceive you and hence why they behave with you in certain ways, as well as help you to think about what signals you present to new people to cause them to react the way that they do. If people don’t react the way you would like, with some consistency, then it is likely that it is your first impression, rather than them.
So perhaps you could find it useful to learn how your perception of you differs from other people’s? Perhaps gaining an insight in to your own Blind Spots can help give you new choices on how to communicate with people. Remember - people do the best thing in any given instant based on their own personal values and the information that they have to hand. Do people around you know what you are really like?
Now it wouldn’t be fair for me to talk about the Johari window without showing you mine, would it? Fortunately the nice person over at http://kevan.org/johari provides a free Johari that you can invite people to contribute. If you read the rest of the article, you can take a butcher’s at mine, kindly filled in by some of my friends.
Now one thing about the Johari window is that it uses only positive words. There is one for you budding Darth Vaders out there, called the Nohari window, which again you can find interactively over at http://kevan.org/nohari.
Arena(known to self and others) able, confident, idealistic, knowledgeable, reflective, trustworthy |
Blind Spot(known only to others) calm, cheerful, dependable, friendly, happy, helpful, intelligent, kind, logical, loving, patient, proud, searching, self-assertive, silly, sympathetic, wise, witty |
Façade(known only to self) |
Unknown(known to nobody) accepting, adaptable, bold, brave, caring, clever, complex, dignified, energetic, extroverted, giving, independent, ingenious, introverted, mature, modest, nervous, observant, organised, powerful, quiet, relaxed, religious, responsive, self-conscious, sensible, sentimental, shy, spontaneous, tense, warm |
June 22nd, 2007 at 8:40 am
Very interesting Matt, I am brave enough to do mine, so I will ask a few people to fill it in.
June 22nd, 2007 at 9:35 am
Good stuff, Steve, I read an excellent quote from Sir John Whitmore, who said “That which I am aware of, I can control, that which I am unaware of controls me”. Personally I would rather be in control, life is too short to spend it following the direction of the wind and hope I get what I want, I’d rather get straight to the point, and that’s easier when in control!
Matt