The thin line between private and public, personal and official

Back in my seminary days before I decided geting out (already on my penultimate formation year), one crux I had was choosing between a more public or more private life – knowing that once I’d be ordained as priest, “sacerdos in aeternum”, I’d be living a crystal-house life. Well, fate had it, I opted the more private path of marital life.

But, minus the glaring aberration between priestly and marital life, truth it is that we all have apportioned shares of both private and public life. Particularly, in understanding our relationship with ourselves and others, each of us has accorded spaces or windows of “private and public” awareness of ourselves and others.

In the past, whenever I give teambuilding workshops on the 3-level relationship of “Me and Myself; Me and Significant Others; Me and My Organization”, I always integrate the “structured learning exercise or experience” (SLE) with the classic “Johari window”.

The Johari window, named after psychologists Joseph Luft (1916-2014) and Harrington Ingham (1916-1995), is a heuristic exercise designed to help people better understand their relationship with themselves and others.

According to the Johari window model, each of us, our persona, has four quadrants, namely:

1. Upper left, Open area: KNOWN TO SELF and KNOWN TO OTHERS.
2. 
   Upper right, Blind area: UNKNOWN TO SELF but KNOWN TO OTHERS.
3. 
   Lower left, Hidden area: KNOWN TO SELF but UNKNOWN TO OTHERS.
4. 
   Lower right, Unknown area: UNKNOWN TO SELF and UNKOWN TO OTHERS.

As therapeutic, self-realization, and learning tool, there are two helping objectives:

1. Expand the Open area at the expense of the Unknown and Blind areas to achieve a greater understanding of oneself;
2. Expand the Hidden area through voluntary disclosure to bring about greater interpersonal intimacy and friendship.

Now, let me segue to our second query: What are the parameters between official work matters and personal concerns?

Again, in my experience of giving human resource development and/or employee competency enhancement training, I have come across two schools of thought involving the dialectical relationship between the worker and his/her work.

One school of thought, the traditional view, calls for the dichotomous isolation between official work matters and personal concerns – that, in the exigency of production or competency, work takes precedence over the worker’s personal state, and that “official” and “personal” simply don’t mix.

The other paradigm advocates for a pragmatic “balance” (neither abdication nor superimposition by either one) between work and the worker’s welfare or development.

As learning integration for my structured learning exercise or SLE on this subject, I usually use Robert Blake and Jane Mouton’s “Managerial Grid”.

The Managerial Grid, also called a leadership grid, identifies five leadership styles based on the behavioral dimensions of concern for people and concern for production, namely:

1. Impoverished Management. Minimal concern for both people and production.
2. 
   Task Management. Leader is more concerned with production than on the personal needs of employees.
3. 
   Middle of Road. A relative balance between organizational goals and employees, but people and production needs are not completely met; thus, an average performance only.
4. 
   Country Club. More emphasis on the workers’ personal needs and less attention to output.
5. 
   Team Management. Most effective leadership style wherein the leader takes both people and production hand in hand.

Ah, before I get lost in the hair-splitting ramifications between private and public life, between personal and official matters or concerns, let me end this piece with this witty Persian Apothegm, dubbed “Men Are Four”:

“He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, he is fool – shun him;

He who knows not and knows that he knows not, he is simple – teach him;

He who knows and knows not that he knows, he is asleep – wake him up;

He who knows and knows that he knows, he is wise – follow him.”

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