How can we discover our blind spots?

In one of my introduction exercises during my last workshop, I have asked the participants to represent themselves in a simple symbolic picture, showing what is the best thing they are known for. For example, a ‘+’ sign would represent a positive person, a smiley face would represent a happy person etc… and to my surprise, there was a high number of people who, actually didn’t know what to draw, or scratched a picture which wasn’t at all representative of their characteristics. People sometimes tend to think that they are fully aware of all their good behaviors, qualities and virtues. Few are the ones who actually acknowledge their little mistakes or what we call vices. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case in my last mentioned example, as the majority of the 40 attendees, couldn’t tell me that ‘one thing’ that differentiates them from their other colleagues. Over and above all, what intrigued me was how challenging to have all the team in agreement with the symbol each one chose. In fact, and as per the JOHARI window, a person is represented by four quadrants as follow:
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