The Value of Conscious Incompetence

Are you as good at things as you think you are?

Are you good at things like emotional intelligence, grammar and managing money? What about your job? Are you good at that? Are you above average when you compare yourself with others?

Knowing how competent we truly are and how our skills stack up when compared to those of our peers isn’t just a big boost to our self-esteem. It is fundamentally important as it helps us to work out when we are able to press on with our own decisions and instincts and when we need to stop and seek help or advice.

"...studies have shown that people display what has been called ‘illusory superiority’."

But psychological research suggests that humans are not that great at accurately evaluating ourselves and our abilities. In fact, we frequently overstate our own abilities – the name of the phenomenon behind this over-inflation is call the Dunning-Kruger effect.

There have been over 100 studies that have demonstrated the Dunning-Kruger effect strongly. These studies have shown that people display what has been called ‘illusory superiority’. We judge ourselves to be better than others in similar fields to, as one study showed, ‘a degree that violates mathematical laws’. That is a lot.

One example of this centres around two software development companies. Software engineers in these two US-based companies were asked to rate their knowledge, experience, ability, and performance. 32% of engineers in one company and 42% in the other rated themselves as being in the top 5%. Clearly, there is something wrong with at least some of their perceptions.

What is particularly interesting is that it has been found that those with the lowest actual ability are often the most likely to over-rate their abilities to the greatest extent. People who are demonstrably and measurably poor at things like maths, emotional intelligence and logic tend to rate their expertise almost as favourably as actual experts do. All those people in the early stages of the X Factor are testament to this phenomenon.

So, who is most at risk of suffering from this delusion? Well, sad to say, we all are. This is because we ALL have pockets of incompetence that we do not recognise within ourselves. But why is that?

"Poor performers lack the expertise to recognise just how badly they are doing."

When psychologists Dunning and Kruger first described the effect that now bears their name in 1999, they made the argument that people lacking skill in any area suffer a ‘double-whammy’ – first, they make mistakes which are in line with their actual level of competence in a task but secondly, those same knowledge gaps that cause their lack of competence also leaves them unprepared and unable to realise their errors. Poor performers, therefore, lack the expertise to recognise just how badly they are doing. Without a strong understanding of what good actually is, people simply cannot recognise when their performance is below the required standard.

Now, this is not a case of ego simply blinding us to our faults and weaknesses. People do, to be fair, tend to freely admit to their deficiencies once they are given the tools and the framework to spot them. At this stage, they are not only willing to declare their performance as ‘poor’, they become aware of how much they DON’T know, and this can affect their confidence in completing a task. They are suddenly conscious of their own incompetence – but this awareness is the first stage in being able to put it right.

"If you are arguing with a fool, make sure the other person isn't doing the same thing."

At the other end of the scale, it can be just as much of a problem for experts. Those with high levels of expertise and knowledge tend to be unaware of just how knowledgeable they are, and they often make a different mistake – they think that everyone around them is as knowledgeable as they are. They simply don’t recognise how unusual their level of skill is and how unusual they are. As a result, people, regardless of their level of skills, can be caught in a little ‘bubble’ of inaccurate self-perception.

What can you do, therefore, to find out how good you actually are (or otherwise)? First, ask for feedback from those around you – and make sure that you take the feedback on board no matter how difficult it is for you to hear. Secondly, and most importantly, KEEP LEARNING! From the first-day newbies right the way through to internationally renowned experts in your field, there is always something new to learn. The more knowledgeable we become, the less likely we are to have those invisible gaps in our competence.