Ambiguous Awareness
On seeing ourselves, being seen, and what lives in between
I first learned about the Johari Window while studying in a graduate program one summer in Switzerland, and I’ve returned to it many times since. It offers a simple reference for understanding the different dimensions of how we might think about self-awareness, and for noticing where those dimensions have (blurry) edges.
What’s stayed with me over the years is how much this applies not just to us as individual leaders, but to the organizations we’re part of. Teams and cultures have their own windows of awareness, their own blind spots, their own stories they can’t quite see from the inside. As leaders, we’re constantly navigating both our own and the collective’s.
What drew me to the framework in the first place was something I’d noticed but didn’t yet have language for: the space between how I understood myself and how others were actually experiencing me. I was being clear, only to learn later that I wasn’t. I showed up with openness and discovered that people felt differently.
That was humbling. And a little disorienting. I had studied diligently and prepared myself with all the necessary qualifications before transitioning into my first administrative role. I was paying attention. So what was I missing?
Johari's Window
The Johari Window was developed in the 1950s by psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, who were studying group dynamics at the University of California. What they found was striking but simple: there was a consistent gap between how people thought others perceived them and how others actually did. Not because people weren’t trying to be self-aware, but because self-awareness, from the inside, only gets us so far.
The tool they created works by having you select the characteristics you believe best describe you, while your peers do the same independently. Then you compare. Where your self-perception and others’ perceptions overlap is what Luft and Ingham called the Open area, the shared, visible ground. The rest falls into areas where either you see something others don’t, others see something you don’t, or neither of you has discovered it yet.
The part that stays with me most is this: there are things others can see about us that we can’t see from inside our own perspective. Not because we’re not trying. Not because we lack self-awareness. But because we’re inside the thing we’re trying to see. That’s not a failure. It’s just the nature of having a perspective. Every perspective has edges.
What Luft and Ingham found was that the more characteristics lived in that Open area, the better the group dynamics: more trust, more honest communication, more effective collaboration. And the only way to expand that space is not just by looking harder inward, but also by letting others’ observations in. It grows through relationship, not just reflection: self-awareness and the willingness to be seen.
Staying With Our Own View
When self-reflection is the only source of information we’re drawing from, something quietly narrows. We start to mistake intention for impact. Because we’ve examined our motivations, we assume we understand how we’re landing. Our self-concept starts to feel settled, not because it’s complete, but because we’ve stopped receiving new input.
This happens in organizations, too. When a leader’s self-understanding goes unchallenged, not because they’re defensive, but simply because no one has been invited to offer another view, people around them learn to work around the gap rather than name it. Over time, what could have been a growth point becomes a fixed feature of the culture. And the same thing can happen at the collective level. An organization can develop its own settled self-concept, its own stories about who it is and how it operates, that quietly go unexamined because no one is asking whether the picture is complete.
Here’s something I find particularly tender. The leaders I work with who experience self-doubt, the ones carrying that quiet voice that says maybe I don’t really belong here, are rarely lacking in self-awareness. They’re often deeply self-aware. Tuned in to what they don’t know. Holding themselves to high internal standards. Noticing complexity where others see simplicity.
That awareness is a genuine strength. But when it stays locked inside, when the only voice a leader is listening to is their own inner critic, it can quietly reinforce the very narratives that make them feel they’re not enough.
I wonder if the inner critic wields more power when it’s the only voice we can hear.
The Part That’s Not Easy
Here’s what I don’t want to skip over: inviting other people’s perspectives in is not easy. Even when we value it. Even when we believe in it intellectually.
Opening yourself to how others see you can feel exposing. It asks you to hold your own self-knowledge as both authentic and partial. That’s a vulnerable place to stand, especially for leaders who’ve built their confidence through self-reliance and careful inner work.
I still find it challenging sometimes. There’s a part of me that wants my self-understanding to be enough, to be the whole picture. Letting someone else’s perception in means accepting that it might not be. And that can feel, at least for a moment, like the ground shifting beneath you.
And here’s what is even more honest: the more perspectives you let in, the less certain things become. You start to realize that your interpretation, even your expanded, more informed interpretation, is still just that—an interpretation. The search for a single, accurate, settled understanding of yourself and your leadership starts to feel less like a destination and more like a living inquiry.
I wonder if that’s where some of the most meaningful growth happens. Not in arriving at the correct answer about who we are as leaders, but in staying open to the question. In learning to hold multiple truths at once without rushing to resolve them. In becoming more comfortable with the ambiguity of not knowing for certain whether what we’re seeing is the whole picture.
But I keep coming back to what happens when a leader is willing to stay in that space. When they say to a colleague, a team member, a coach, “I know how I intend to show up, and I’m curious about how that’s landing for you,” the self-awareness doesn’t shrink. It expands. It gets more dimension, more texture, more honesty.
And when leaders model that willingness to stay in the inquiry, to let their understanding of themselves be enriched rather than threatened by what others see, it can create conditions for everyone around them to do the same. Trust can deepen. Conversations can become more honest. The organization begins to develop a collective capacity that no single person could hold alone.
Some Questions I’m Sitting With
I don’t have a tidy conclusion for this. But I’ve been carrying a few questions around with me lately, and I’ll offer them here in case they’re helpful to you too:
Where am I relying solely on my own perspective, not because I’m unwilling to hear others, but because I haven’t actively invited them in?
What might the people around me see that I can’t see from where I stand?
What would it feel like to let go of needing a settled answer about who I am as a leader, and instead treat it as a living question?
And what might become possible if the organizations we’re part of started asking these same questions, together?
Living in the inquiry is the practice.
A Place to Start
I have noticed in my work with clients our tendency to experience imposter phenomenon in a new leadership role. What if you had a guided place to start exploring that?
I just launched my first digital download, You Belong Here: A Leader’s Handbook for Working with Imposter Phenomenon. If you’re stepping into a new leadership role, or in the midst of a leadership transition and wondering how to lead with confidence when everything still feels unfamiliar, or if you’ve been leading for years and that quiet voice of self-doubt is still showing up, this was written for you. It’s a practical guide with eight tools across reflection, reframing, and embodied practice to help you recognize the patterns, understand why they persist, and start shifting them from the inside out.
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What a fantastic read! I plan to share this one with many friends and colleagues. Thank you for the insight!