A TED-Ed review of the Dunning Krieger effect of incompetence

Every night before I go to sleep I tend to watch a TED or TED X video. I learned this habit about two years ago when I felt that I stopped learning. The company I had regularly gave leadership seminars but I wanted to have a bigger control on what goes into my head.

Then I chanced upon Simon Sinek's the Golden Circle. His Leadership philosophy of Leaders eat fast blew my mind and completely changed my outlook on leadership. I am a full convert of his ideology. I was for the longest time an Objectivist, following Ayn Rand's philosophy. I will talk about that another time.

So going back to Dunning Krieger. We humans possess the ability to assess ourselves and make adjustments as needed. This has contributed to man's improvement of himself and then society. Yet when these two men measured our capacity to assess ourselves they found that most people have a bloated sense of their own self worth. More than 40 % believe that they are good at what they do. Some even think that they can do nothing wrong. Alexander Pope once said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Credits to TED Education

I have often wonder at times how a seemingly inept person reached a certain position. I have always attributed it to the Peter Principle but watching this video gave me a new perspective.

We often believe we are greater than we are. Somehow our psyche is led to believe that we possess a greater ability than we really possess. This leads us to being able to make certain risks because we are taught to try even if we would fail. Now comes the dangerous part. Because some leaders would have a bloated sense of self they think that they are highly capable of doing something or even everything. They are blinded to their faults and weaknesses and would forge ahead and ultimately dooming their project or worse their company. When it happens they start blaming people around them for not giving their all or the limited system or myriad of other excuses. They will never look to themselves. Often these people in power would surround themselves with sycophants who would only say good things about them so they are not given the right feedback.

As it seems the only way to avoid making this mistake is to constantly ask or seek for objective feedback, being humble enough to acknowledge that their is always room for improvement and a willingness to look into yourself and make a genuine assessment of your skills and capabilities.

I learned something new today