The primary strengths associated with people who tend to have a strong need for openness are: accommodating, interactive, and empathetic. They are able and willing to adjust their own style and needs to accommodate the styles and needs of other people. When there is an inappropriate or overwhelming need for openness then these strengths get overused or misuse. The person with high openness needs becomes self-sacrificing, insipid, and intrusive. He gives away too much in order to feel wanted and influential. These lead, in turn, to resentment about this sacrifice.
Looking Ahead
I believe that the New Johari Window can be helpful to those of us who have the fortune and misfortune of living and interacting with other people during the first years of the 21st Century. We are all faced with the daunting prospect of making sense of the complexity, uncertainty and turbulence of postmodern interactions—the emerging condition to which I turn in future essays in this series on the New Johari Window. We can benefit from these additions to the Original Johari Window: (1) internal and external locus of control, (3) three dimensions (Inclusion, Control and Openness) of interpersonal needs and (3) three perspectives (American, British and Continental) regarding interpersonal relationships.
