Johari Windows

[Serpentine]

Anyone heard of these Johari Window things? I got linked to it yesterday. Apparently they're sort of a workplace icebreaking/self-improvement/feedback generating thing. What you do, see, is you pick out a bunch of words from a list that you think describe you. Then you get other people to do the same thing for you, and you can compare what you think about yourself to what other people think of you, see what overlaps and what doesn't.
There's the (more) positive Johari (http://kevan.org/johari) Window thing, and the (more) negative "Nohari" (http://kevan.org/nohari) version.
I desperately wish there was a customisable version where you could put in your own word choice. I find these two selections a bit on the dull side, and several of the words are kind of redundant (e.g. bold and brave, clever and intelligent, cowardly and panicky, vacuous and inane, etc - not completely redundant, but when there's so may other more interesting words that could be included it feels clogged). I'd love to be able to do my own version, and I feel like it surely couldn't be difficult to make...

Anyways... Thoughts, I suppose? Anyone had one turn up in workplace teambuilding exercises or anything? What sort of a list would you make if you could? I think I'd do either picking completely random adjectives from a dictionary, or a set of names/categories - stuff like "jerk", "princess", "dudebro", "martyr", etc.

And, of course, share your own if you want to: my Johari (http://kevan.org/johari?view=serpie) and Nohari (http://kevan.org/nohari?view=Serpie). Which I suppose raises another possible avenue of discussion: the person who linked this considered them quite a private thing, whereas I'm more than happy to have all and everyone see and contribute to mine. How do you feel about that? If you're not comfortable sharing your own in the open here, why not?

[Morgarion]

I desperately wish there was a customisable version where you could put in your own word choice.

You could always take a piece of paper and a pen and do it by hand.

[Serpentine]

I thought about doing it by hand, but my goodness that'd be a lot of work, and too much work for other people to do the selections. Feel like it shouldn't be hard to do a copy of those programs and make the words customizable, but I dunno.

[Morgarion]

It seems that the Johari window was designed to be used with 56 specific attributes. The link you provided has 55, so I would guess that they are all the same with one missing but I did not confirm.

It's a really simple model. You could just type up a list of attributes and send it to someone. Have them pick out the ones that describe you and send it back. Cross out the ones they picked that you also picked. Write all the ones you crossed out in one section, all the ones you didn't cross out from your list in the next, all the ones you didn't cross out from theirs in the third and then all the ones no one picked in the last. That's not much work at all.

[Serpentine]

It's a lot more work than just clicking boxes on a screen...

[OverdrivePrime]

At the company I used to work at, we used Johari Windows to describe the various opportunities and risks out in the competitive marketplace, and how to use market intelligence to do as much as we could to enlarge the top two windows and shrink the bottom two windows - or at least minimize the risk that they presented.

We also would jokingly refer to these as the "Rumsfeld Windows" for obvious reasons. (http://youtu.be/GiPe1OiKQuk?t=6s)

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w219/mwellenstein/Diagrams/Johari-Window-Model_JK-Web_Revised_zps69de1a5a.gif

[Morgarion]

It's a lot more work than just clicking boxes on a screen...

Yeah, it is. But that really shouldn't be anyone's standard for measuring effort. And besides, it's a lot quicker and more effective than just waiting for the right application to show up.

[Nadevoc]

Oh, I remember these. I have come across them once before. It's an interesting concept, but in my experience we were doing it with people we'd known for less than a week, and I feel like it doesn't work very well for someone you've just met. Not really a great icebreaker in my mind.

I think that having some 'overlap' in the words serves a purpose. First off, it lets you put more weight on certain traits. If you chose both 'clever' and 'intelligent', you're kind of underscoring how important that is in your mind when it comes to visualizing that person.

That said, the examples you gave of redundant phrases all seem pretty distinct to me. I might put too much emphasis on connotations, though.