You know those mandatory training courses you have to do for work? Most people hate them, but I absolutely love them. An opportunity to learn something new? Sure! Group discussion? Sign me up! Free morning tea? I’m there, baby.
It was at one of these courses that I picked up the weirdly named ‘Johari Window’ technique (named after the two dudes that created it, Joseph and Harrington). It’s all about helping people better understand their relationship with themselves and others, but I immediately saw how it could apply to blogging.
Very basically, you’ve got a window with four panes. The Open Area is all the stuff that you and others know about yourself. The Blind Area is stuff that others know about you, but you don’t know about yourself. The Hidden Area is stuff you know, but others don’t. And the Unknown Area represents the things that no one knows.
The goal is to enlarge the ‘Open Area’, but make sure you don’t let people know everything. We all know there are some things that are better off between the sheets, right? But it might be worth taking something out of your ‘Hidden Area’ that help people understand the motivations behind decisions, and it’s also helpful to find out what people are thinking in your ‘Blind Area’.
The problem with bloggers is that it’s in our nature to throw those windows wide and share everything. We wouldn’t be bloggers if we weren’t interested in sharing, right? But there’s a good side and the bad side of the wide open window.
There are some things that your readers don’t need to know. I’m not a fan of telling people I was sick so I couldn’t blog on a particular day. I also won’t randomly post things that are out of ‘type’, things people aren’t expecting to see on my blog. They don’t follow me for that kind of thing, and I respect the relationship between us not to crap on about my dog’s knee problems.
We also need to be mindful about what our readers are saying to us. It’s surprising, but people don’t actually know how others see them. They have an idea of how they want to be seen, but their desire to be seen as capable might actually come across as bossy. This is the ‘Blind Area’ I was talking about.
It can be helpful to ask people how they see you. We had a quick share session on our own Blind Areas and I wasn’t surprised that people saw me as moody, although I would prefer they thought of it as passionate. Apparently I have a healthy ego.
It’s up to the individual to decide how wide their window is open, it can let in a nice sunny breeze, but it can also let in the rain and ruin your carpets.
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