Johari Window Template — Self-Awareness, Peer Feedback & Team Trust
Most people have a reasonably accurate picture of their strengths. Almost nobody has an accurate picture of their blind spots. The Johari Window is a structured exercise that uses peer feedback to close that gap — surfacing what colleagues see that you don't, and what you know about yourself that you haven't shared. Preview the template below or use the interactive version in FigJam.
What is the Johari Window?
The Johari Window is a self-awareness and mutual understanding framework developed by psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in 1955. The name is a combination of their first names — Joseph and Harrington. It uses a simple four-quadrant model to map the relationship between what a person knows about themselves and what others know about them.
Open — what is known to both you and others. The traits, behaviours, and working styles that are visible to everyone and acknowledged by the person themselves. The goal of the Johari Window exercise is to expand this quadrant.
Blind Spot — what others know about you that you don't know about yourself. This is the most valuable quadrant for personal development: it contains the feedback that, if heard and integrated, produces the most significant growth. Peer input reveals this quadrant.
Hidden — what you know about yourself that others don't. Skills, motivations, anxieties, or ways of working that you haven't disclosed to colleagues. Voluntary self-disclosure reduces this quadrant and builds trust.
Unknown — what neither you nor others currently know about you. Potential, capabilities, and behaviours that haven't yet had the conditions to emerge. This quadrant shrinks as people take on new challenges and receive more feedback.
The framework is used in team development, leadership coaching, onboarding, and any context where self-awareness and trust are being built deliberately rather than left to chance.
See the Template in Action
Explore the template below to see how it's structured. To use the fully editable version, open it in FigJam, where you can copy, customise, and collaborate with your team.
How to run a Johari Window exercise
Step 1 — Individual self-assessment
Each participant reviews the standard Johari Window adjective list and selects the words they feel most accurately describe themselves. The list typically includes 55–60 adjectives: able, accepting, adaptable, bold, brave, calm, caring, cheerful, clever, complex, confident, dependable, energetic, extroverted, friendly, giving, happy, helpful, idealistic, independent, ingenious, intelligent, introverted, kind, knowledgeable, logical, loving, mature, modest, nervous, observant, organised, patient, powerful, proud, quiet, reflective, relaxed, religious, responsive, searching, self-assertive, self-conscious, sensible, sentimental, shy, silly, smart, spontaneous, sympathetic, tense, trustworthy, warm, wise, witty. Participants typically select 5–6 adjectives that feel most true. The selection should be done independently, before seeing peer feedback.
Step 2 — Peer feedback
Each participant's colleagues go through the same list and select the adjectives they feel most accurately describe that person. In a team setting, this works best when peers submit their selections privately before the group session — removing the social pressure of real-time selection.
Step 3 — Build the window
Compare the self-selections and peer selections: adjectives selected by both self and peers go in the Open quadrant; adjectives selected by peers but not by self go in the Blind Spot quadrant; adjectives selected by self but not by peers go in the Hidden quadrant; adjectives selected by neither go in the Unknown quadrant. In a FigJam version, each participant can map their adjectives directly onto the four-quadrant visual in real time.
Step 4 — Structured conversation
The most important part of the exercise is what happens after the window is built. Each person gets space to share: what surprised them in their Blind Spot — the adjectives peers selected that they didn't see in themselves; what they want to share from their Hidden quadrant — something they know about themselves that would help colleagues work with them better; what they want to do with what they learned — one specific intention based on the exercise. The facilitator's job is to hold space for honest reflection without letting the conversation become evaluative or competitive.
Step 5 — Follow through
A Johari Window exercise that ends with the session produces temporary insight. One that's followed by deliberate action — asking for ongoing feedback on a specific blind spot, sharing something from the hidden quadrant at the next team meeting, making peer recognition more specific based on what you now know colleagues value — produces lasting development.
55 Johari Window adjectives — the standard list
The following adjectives are used in the standard Johari Window exercise. Participants select the ones they feel describe themselves; peers select the ones they feel describe the person.
Able · Accepting · Adaptable · Bold · Brave · Calm · Caring · Cheerful · Clever · Complex · Confident · Dependable · Dignified · Energetic · Extroverted · Friendly · Giving · Happy · Helpful · Idealistic · Independent · Ingenious · Intelligent · Introverted · Kind · Knowledgeable · Logical · Loving · Mature · Modest · Nervous · Observant · Organised · Patient · Powerful · Proud · Quiet · Reflective · Relaxed · Religious · Responsive · Searching · Self-assertive · Self-conscious · Sensible · Sentimental · Shy · Silly · Smart · Spontaneous · Sympathetic · Tense · Trustworthy · Warm · Wise · Witty
Practical note: In professional settings, remove adjectives that are likely to create discomfort (religious, silly) and add context-specific descriptors if needed — for example, strategic, collaborative, decisive, empathetic, direct, creative — to make the list more relevant to a work context.
10 questions to deepen the Johari Window conversation
These questions extend the exercise into genuine dialogue. Use them in the structured conversation phase after each person has mapped their window.
Conversation prompts
How the Johari Window connects to peer recognition and team culture
The Johari Window and peer recognition are, at their core, doing the same thing: making visible what one person sees in another that might otherwise go unseen.
When a colleague sends a specific kudos — "the way you stayed calm when the client escalated that call held the whole room together, and I don't think anyone said that at the time" — they're doing something structurally similar to what the Johari Window exercise does formally. They're moving a quality from the Blind Spot quadrant into the Open quadrant. They're saying: I see this in you that you may not see in yourself.
The difference is that the Johari Window happens once in a workshop. Peer recognition, when it's specific and consistent, happens continuously. Teams that practise regular, specific recognition are effectively running a continuous Johari Window process — one that doesn't require a session, a facilitator, or a formal exercise. It's built into the daily rhythm of how the team notices and names each other's contributions.
This is why the quality of recognition matters as much as the frequency. "Great job today" tells someone nothing they didn't already know. "You asked the question in that meeting that nobody else was willing to ask, and it changed the direction of the conversation" reveals something that lived in their blind spot — and that kind of recognition has a lasting effect on how someone understands their own value to the team.
Karma makes this concrete: peer kudos tied to specific behaviours, tagged to company values, visible to the whole team. The recognition feed over time becomes a record of what the team sees in each other — a living Johari Window that updates every time someone chooses to name what they noticed.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Johari Window?
The Johari Window is a self-awareness framework developed by psychologists Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham in 1955. It uses a four-quadrant model — Open, Hidden, Blind Spot, and Unknown — to map what a person knows about themselves against what others know about them. It's used in team and professional development settings to improve self-awareness, build trust, and open up more productive feedback conversations.
What are the four quadrants of the Johari Window?
The four quadrants are: Open (known to self and others — the traits and behaviours everyone can see), Blind Spot (known to others but not to self — feedback reveals this quadrant), Hidden (known to self but not others — things you haven't shared), and Unknown (unknown to both self and others — potential that hasn't yet emerged). The goal of a Johari Window exercise is to expand the Open quadrant by reducing the Blind Spot through peer feedback and reducing the Hidden quadrant through self-disclosure.
How do you run a Johari Window exercise?
Each participant selects adjectives from a standard list that they feel describe themselves, then asks colleagues to select adjectives that describe them from the same list. The overlap between self-selection and peer selection defines the Open quadrant. Adjectives selected by peers but not by the individual define the Blind Spot. Adjectives the individual selected but peers didn't define the Hidden quadrant. The exercise is most effective when followed by a structured conversation about what each person discovered and what they want to do with that information.
When should you use the Johari Window?
The Johari Window is most useful at moments of team formation, leadership development, or when a team is experiencing communication or trust issues that aren't fully visible. It works well as part of onboarding for new leaders, in team-building workshops, and as a complement to 360 feedback processes. It's less effective when used in low-trust environments or when participants don't feel safe being honest — the exercise requires psychological safety to produce useful output.
What is the difference between the Johari Window and a 360 review?
A 360 review is a structured performance feedback process that collects input from a person's manager, peers, and direct reports on specific competencies or behaviours — usually as part of a formal appraisal cycle. The Johari Window is a self-awareness exercise that uses peer input to help someone understand how they're perceived relative to how they see themselves. The 360 is primarily evaluative; the Johari Window is primarily developmental. They complement each other well — the Johari Window can be a useful warm-up before a 360 process.
How does the Johari Window connect to peer recognition?
The Johari Window reveals what peers see in someone that the person doesn't see in themselves — and peer recognition is one of the most natural mechanisms for making that visible on a regular basis. When a colleague sends a specific kudos naming a particular strength or behaviour, they're doing something structurally similar to the Johari Window exercise: sharing an observation that lives in the other person's blind spot. Teams that practise specific peer recognition regularly are, in effect, continuously expanding each other's Open quadrant — one acknowledgement at a time.
Other templates
One-on-one Meeting Template
Run productive one-on-one meetings with a structured agenda for feedback, goal tracking, and employee development.
Ready to get started?
If you're ready to get started with Karma, sign up now and explore the benefits of the recognition for your team. You can also reach out for a free demo.
Karma bot privacy policy
Effective date: 18 August 2026
This Privacy Policy explains how Sliday LTD ("Sliday", "we", "us", or "our") collects, uses, shares, and protects personal data. It covers both the Karma application (for Microsoft Teams, Slack, Telegram, and the web) and the https://karmabot.chat website.
Who we are and how to contact us
The data controller is Sliday LTD, a private limited company registered in Cyprus under company number HE450506, with its principal place of business at Pavlou Valdaseridi 2A, 1st floor, Larnaka, Cyprus, 6018.
For any privacy-related enquiry, or to exercise your data protection rights, contact us at hi@karmabot.chat.
Privacy matters are overseen by our Legal Advisor / Operational Security Manager, Stas Kulesh. A dedicated Data Protection Officer has not been appointed, as Sliday LTD is not required to appoint one under Article 37 of the GDPR; privacy responsibilities are held by the Legal Advisor.
Personal data we handle and where it comes from
From the Karma application
When your organisation installs and uses Karma, we process the following personal data, obtained from Microsoft Teams / Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) and from your use of the application:
- Display name — from Microsoft Teams / Microsoft Graph
- Email address — from Microsoft Teams / Microsoft Graph
- User Principal Name (UPN) — from Microsoft Graph (
/me) - Microsoft Entra (Azure AD) object ID and tenant ID — from Microsoft authentication
- Profile photo — from Microsoft Graph (
/me/photo) - Team and channel names — from Microsoft Teams
- Karma activity (karma given and received, associated messages) — from your use of the app
Where Karma is used with Slack or Telegram, the equivalent identity and workspace data is obtained from that platform instead.
From this website
- Contact details you give us — such as your email address and name when you subscribe to updates, request a demo, or contact support
- Usage and device data — IP address, browser type and version, pages visited, date, time and duration of visit, referring page, and similar diagnostic data
- Cookies and similar technologies — see "Cookies and website analytics" below
Why we process personal data
We process personal data to:
- Identify you and link you to your organisation's Karma workspace
- Operate the core recognition ("karma") features, leaderboards, and adaptive cards
- Display your name and profile photo within the app
- Deliver notifications and service communications
- Administer subscriptions and billing
- Provide customer support and respond to your enquiries
- Monitor, secure, maintain, and improve the service, and detect and address technical issues
- Send newsletters, marketing, or promotional material where you have chosen to receive it — you can opt out at any time via the unsubscribe link in any email, or by contacting us
Lawful basis for processing
We process personal data on the following lawful bases under the GDPR:
- Performance of a contract — to provide the Karma service to your organisation
- Legitimate interests — to operate, secure, and improve the service, where not overridden by your rights
- Consent — for marketing communications and for non-essential cookies and analytics, where consent is required
- Legal obligation — where we are required by law to retain or disclose data, including for tax and accounting purposes
Where your organisation is the controller and we act as processor, processing is carried out on your organisation's documented instructions.
Who we share personal data with
We share personal data only with the sub-processors listed below, each of which is necessary to deliver the service and is engaged under an appropriate data processing agreement. This is the complete list of sub-processors with access to personal data. We do not sell personal data.
Service sub-processors
- DigitalOcean — application hosting and managed database
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) — profile photo storage (S3)
- Cloudflare — edge delivery and web application firewall
- Microsoft — authentication, the Teams platform, and Microsoft Graph
- Stripe — subscription billing and payment processing
- Sentry — error monitoring
- MailerLite — notification and marketing email delivery
We do not store or collect your payment card details. That information is provided directly to Stripe, our payment processor, whose use of your personal information is governed by its own privacy policy (https://stripe.com/privacy). Stripe adheres to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council.
Website analytics and marketing providers
The https://karmabot.chat website additionally uses:
- Google — Google Analytics 4 and Google Tag Manager, for website traffic analytics (https://policies.google.com/privacy)
- Meta (Facebook) — Meta Pixel, for advertising measurement (https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy/)
- Ahrefs Web Analytics — privacy-focused website traffic analytics (https://ahrefs.com/legal/privacy-policy)
- ProfitWell (Paddle) — subscription and revenue analytics (https://www.paddle.com/legal/privacy)
- MailerLite — newsletter sign-up forms (https://www.mailerlite.com/legal/privacy-policy)
- Calendly — demo and meeting scheduling (https://calendly.com/legal/privacy-notice)
We may also disclose personal data where required to do so by law or in response to a valid request by a public authority, or where necessary to protect our legal rights, prevent or investigate wrongdoing, or protect the safety of users or the public.
Cookies and website analytics
Cookies are small pieces of data stored on your device. We use cookies and similar technologies (including beacons, tags, and scripts) to operate the website, remember your preferences, keep the service secure, and understand how the site is used.
The cookies we use fall into these categories:
- Essential cookies — required to operate the website and keep it secure
- Preference cookies — to remember your settings and choices
- Analytics and marketing cookies — set by the providers listed above to measure traffic and advertising performance
You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to notify you when a cookie is set. If you refuse cookies, some parts of the website may not function correctly.
We do not currently respond to browser "Do Not Track" (DNT) signals.
How long we keep personal data
We retain personal data for the duration of your organisation's active subscription and for six (6) months after subscription cancellation, after which it is deleted. This applies to customer account and identity data, profile photos, and karma transaction records.
- Database backups operate on a rolling 7-day point-in-time recovery window, so any backup containing erased data is automatically superseded within 7 days.
- Upon a verified data deletion request, we action it as promptly as reasonably possible and in any event within one month, as required by the GDPR.
- Billing and accounting records may be retained for longer where required by law.
- Operational data — error telemetry, security logs, and backups — is disposed of automatically as it ages out of the relevant service's retention window.
Full details are set out in our Data Retention and Disposal Policy.
Your data protection rights
Subject to applicable law, you have the right to:
- Be informed about how your personal data is used
- Access the personal data we hold about you
- Rectification — to have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected
- Erasure — to have your personal data deleted
- Restriction — to request that we restrict processing of your personal data
- Data portability — to receive your data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format
- Object to our processing of your personal data
- Rights relating to automated decision-making and profiling — Karma does not carry out automated decision-making producing legal or similarly significant effects
- Withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on your consent
To exercise any of these rights, contact us at hi@karmabot.chat. We may ask you to verify your identity before responding.
Making a Subject Access Request (SAR)
To submit a Subject Access Request, contact us at hi@karmabot.chat. We respond to all SARs within one month, as required by the GDPR, unless the request is complex or numerous, in which case we may extend the response time by a further two months and will tell you if we do. We maintain a data mapping process that lets us locate and retrieve all personal data held about a specific data subject across our systems — principally the production database and the profile photo object storage — so that a SAR can be fulfilled thoroughly.
International transfers and safeguards
Karma production data is hosted in the United States (DigitalOcean SFO region). As Sliday LTD is established in the EU (Cyprus), this involves a transfer of personal data to a third country.
Such transfers — and transfers to other sub-processors located outside the EU/EEA, including Microsoft, AWS, Cloudflare, Stripe, Sentry, and the analytics providers listed above — are protected by appropriate safeguards, principally the Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) incorporated into each sub-processor's Data Processing Agreement, supplemented by those providers' certification frameworks, including the EU–US Data Privacy Framework where the provider participates.
Sliday LTD takes all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Your right to complain to a supervisory authority
You have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority.
Our lead supervisory authority is the Office of the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection of the Republic of Cyprus:
- Commissioner for Personal Data Protection
- 1 Iasonos Street, 1082 Nicosia, Cyprus
- Email: commissioner@dataprotection.gov.cy
- Web: https://www.dataprotection.gov.cy
You may also lodge a complaint with the supervisory authority in your own country of residence.
Security of data
The security of your data is important to us. We apply technical and organisational measures appropriate to the risk, including encryption in transit, access controls, vulnerability scanning, and error monitoring. However, no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
Children's privacy
Our service is not directed at anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children. If you are a parent or guardian and believe your child has provided us with personal data, please contact us and we will take steps to remove it.
Links to other sites
Our service may contain links to sites we do not operate. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for, the content or privacy practices of any third-party site. We encourage you to review the privacy policy of every site you visit.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will post the updated policy on this page and update the effective date at the top. Where changes are significant, we will notify you by email and/or a prominent notice on our service before the change takes effect. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.
Contact us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, contact us:
- By email: hi@karmabot.chat
- By post: Sliday LTD, Pavlou Valdaseridi 2A, 1st floor, Larnaka, Cyprus, 6018