Ginny Thomas was being considered for the head coaching job at one of the nation’s powerhouse schools for women’s basketball. This was a critical hire, and the university had employed a search firm to help them get the right candidate.
The search firm talked to former players, assistant coaches, administrators, and others Ginny had worked with. They also set in on the interviews that Ginny had on campus and with major donors to the program.
When the search firm reported their findings to the university, the contrasts between Ginny’s former players and others were quite striking with the impressions that Ginny had made in her campus interviews. It was like Ginny had two selves. One self was what Ginny portrayed in her interviews and was also commonly mentioned by others. For example, they all agreed that she was disciplined. The second self was one that Ginny wasn’t aware of but was often mentioned by others. She was viewed as being impatient by others, but Ginny didn’t see that in herself.
Ginny didn’t get the job. She was devastated and decided to change careers. She had a lifelong love of painting and decided to become an artist. She had enough money to not worry about her financial future. Few knew of this self that flourished with gratitude and self-reflection.
Ginny went on to have an artistic career that was highly admired by the art world. In reviews of her work, art critics were able to discover things about Ginny that she didn’t know about herself and were not apparent to those who knew her well. This fourth self was only revealed by her paintings.
All of us have four selves, as does Ginny. Psychologists JOSEPH Luft and HARRINTON Ingraham discovered these four selves and used the Johari Window to conceptualize them. (see below)
The Johari Window is a useful tool for building self-awareness. For Ginny, it was a life changer. What began with the disappointment of rejection, Ginny discovered a third self that led to a more fulfilling career and meaningful life. Ultimately, her fourth self became revealed through her works of art.
While Ginny discovered more about herself through rejection, we can use the Johari Window as a tool for developing self-awareness. This approach is described in Our Four Selves (Part 2)
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“Self-awareness is our capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions, and our habits and tendencies.”-Stephen R. Covey