Transcript - Episode 006 - The Dunning-Kruger Effect

“One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.” Bertrand Russel said that. I don’t know the context which inspired such a quote, but yeah… I resonate with it. The irony?? I resonate with that whole heartedly today. 

You see, today I am talking about the Dunning-Kruger Effect. What’s that? It’s a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability… You’re a business leader, if you don’t know what I am talking about now, you’ll get it by the end of the episode. 

Hi, I’m Daava Mills, The Rebellious Recruiter. I’ve been in the trenches recruiting people for over 20 years. Being a recruiter has exposed me to everyone on the leadership team at each company I’ve worked for, which has caused some interesting observations about competence vs. confidence. This is going to be a largely philosophical episode. 

So, pull up a seat. Let’s chat. 

(Intro Music)

A couple years ago, one of my besties sent me a text message. She asked me “do you know what the Dunning-Kruger Effect is?” Google is my friend, and so is she… what has followed has been a casual exploration of how the Dunning-Kruger Effect has been me at times, people I’ve worked with, people I hang out with, and the population in general. My bestie and I have referred to the Dunning-Kruger Effect several times since then.

So… what is it? Well, let me take you back to April 19, 1995. A fella by the name of McArthur Wheeler robbed two banks. Mr. Wheeler thought that rubbing lemon juice all over his face would render his face invisible from the security cameras. Why? Because lemon juice is commonly used as invisible ink. He thought the chemical properties of a lemon extended to his face and what the camera saw, or supposedly didn’t see. 

Anyway in 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger created this field of study largely in part because of McArthur Wheeler. Now that we have 20 years of research on this subject, that leads me to where this episode came about.

One of the things about me is that I see connections. Just like a designer who can see nuances in color that the average person is blind to, I see connections in behavior that create patterns within business. I’m not perfect by any means, but play with me here. 

Last week we talked about “Fly By Leadership.” This week we’ll talk touch on how “Fly By Leadership” reinforces incompetence on your team, along with other key best practices being employed these days, that are really just excuses to not be an effective leader and blame others or systems. Included in this episode is two Wikipedia links. The second link is a graph I’ll be referring to. Also! Remember Wikipedia funded through grass roots efforts, if you feel it in your heart, donate them a five spot.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect graph shows the vertical to be confidence and the horizontal to be competence. It ascertains that at the beginning of a learning process a person’s confidence spikes, but they have gained very little in competence. It shows the person achieving the peak of “Mt. Stupid.” Then our student/trainee/mentee is dealt a crushing blow, and they fall down into the “Valley of Despair.” Notably, their confidence is zonked, BUT their competence has moved a bit over from the “know nothing” zone. As they learn a more desirable line shows up at a 45 degree angle, called the “Slope of Enlightenment.” Basically, their confidence starts building in a 1:1 ratio to the competence they gain. Topping out at the “Plateau of Sustainability” and “Guru” level competence. 

I know you have seen this play out in your business. I believe it’s happening at a greater rate for a few reasons…

We don’t train our staff anymore, instead we skip the training processes in favor of someone who can “hit the ground running” and then we often hire a person who can’t walk the talk. 

Most jobs take at least one year to really get the hang of. But people are way more mobile these days, and we reward mobile people for learning about a lot of things at a very shallow level. With the average worker staying two years or less at a job, you might get one year of a positive return on them. 

I also believe that automating employee training is adding to this issue, we have an entire generation of people who know how to research the heck out of anything! But they don’t know how to deduce that the information they are looking at is real. AND they don’t understand the value of just simply asking the person walking down the hall if they know.

We’ve created entire corporate communities around team building events, but not around getting the job done. We relegate team building to an HR event that happens on a schedule.

Then we create Fly by Leadership – “don’t bring me a problem, without a solution” means that problems aren’t being brought to your attention, because your workers don’t know how to solve them. And worse, they might be solving them with the wrong answer because they feel empowered by this methodology.

Basically in a world with information at our disposal, we as leaders (I’m part of it too) have routinely forgotten the value of just sitting down with our employees and helping them take the puzzle pieces that I just mentioned, and put it together in a way that reward you and your business. I want to be clear… Automation of training is not bad. It’s good. But sitting an employee in front of a computer is not training. You’re just giving them the puzzle pieces; you need to show them what the puzzle looks like for them to assemble it.

We’re currently in the middle of COVID19 Distance Learning with my 10-year-old. If you have kids and they are the COVID19 distance learning, you know what I am talking about, and the frustrations that surround it. Because pedagogy (how children learn) has 5 major approaches – Constructivist, Collaborative, Integrative, Reflective, and Inquiry Based Learning. I know, that was a mouthful. Don’t worry, we’ll review it in a minute. 

While Pedagogy is largely looked at as how children learn and Androgogy is how adults learn, I would submit that using these five approaches when bringing a person on board is only something you as a leader can do, or a leader on your team. 

Let’s go over the main difference between Pedagogy and Androgogy according to scholars since the 1960’s:

  1. Adults tend to be more self-directed (although I’d submit to you that they aren’t and a lot of this has to do with emotional development of the individual you have hired) 

  2. Adults bring their experiences to the table when they are learning and add their personal richness to it. 

  3. Adults tend to seek out learning that is relevant to their life (again, I’d submit that many of us get lost in astronomy learning on YouTube)

  4. Readiness to learn – this I agree with, we usually know why we need to learn something as a grown-up.

  5. Different motivation to learn, usually intrinsic factors which could include self-confidence, personal development, recognition… the list goes on. But again, we tie a lot of learning to perks in the workplace, which is straight out of the Pedagogy play-book. We use a lot of physical rewards, like beanies, coffee travelers, t-shirts.

Let’s review these 5 approaches, you figure out which you can automate, which you can support through automation, and which requires you or your leaders to walk through with your trainees and/or mentees.  

Constructivist – To create a condition to motivate your students to take responsibility for the problems they create, develop an environment of being able to retrieve prior knowledge, and create the process of learning NOT the product of learning. Can you see where in the Dunning-Kruger Grid this fits? I think this is the slope off the top of Mt. Stupid? How would Constructivist come into play there?

Collaborative Approach – It involves groups of learners working together to solve a problem, or complete a task, or create a product. Again, this is where team building falls short. I think Team Building is great when we focus on getting people to understand each other… But team building is not all rope courses and ice cream Fridays. True team building happens when people come together to solve a problem that helps your business succeed.

Integrative Approach – blended use of learning styles used across the teaching platform. Example, I’m an auditory learner. I like podcasts and audio books for that reason. When I used to read a lot, I heard the words in my head. I can’t subject my team or my coworkers to that. I need to meet people on their level. I once had a boss that was trying to explain how labels are printed on roles. He grabbed a roll of toilet paper to explain to his “visual learner.” I still giggle when I think about that. The Integrative Approach can be across practical and spiritual lessons too. Not just visual, auditory, kinesthetic and emotional.

Reflective – This approach is more for the teacher than the student. It’s how we look at what we did, how we communicated, and target what needs to be kept, changed, improved, or deleted.

And finally…

Inquiry Based – using the model of Ask then Investigate then Create then Discuss then Reflect then Ask… in a nice neat circle. Ideas are challenges, tested, redefined… and so on.

Again, I don’t think automation is bad. I think it’s a necessary part of business, and I am an advocate for technology to help streamline processes, build accuracy, and using it to keep from repeating yourself. But what parts of what I just explained fill in the gaps of the knowledge a person gets from a system?

How do we recognize the Dunning-Kruger Effect in our employees? Well, they’ll overestimate their skills during reviews, they don’t recognize incompetence in their own person or other people, they act like a big fish in a little pond, they might have a superiority complex… and my favorite, they display a high amount of ultracrepidarianism. What’s that 5 dollar word? Ultracrepidarianism - It means to give an opinion on a topic poorly understood.

Here’s the best part – how do you recognize it in yourself? This took a bit of research, then of course I was testing myself constantly after finding this little bit of information. Do you call yourself and expert? But you’ve never trained anyone to be an expert? That could be a sign. Do you try to inspire people? But it falls flat? That could be a sign too.

When it comes to figuring out if the Dunning-Kruger Effect is at play, this is my go-to question for a person or myself. “Do I know how much a wrong decision will cost this company?” If I don’t know, that should stop me in my tracks, or stop you in your tracks. If your employee can’t answer that question, pause… used an inquiry-based approach. Ask, Investigate, Create, Discuss, Reflect, and repeat until you have the cost.

So, here’s my challenge for you, as you start to disassemble “fly by leadership” in your organization pay attention to what new opportunities arise for you. How can you really train up your staff into the Plateau of Sustainability? Are you using an LMS? If so, don’t stop at multiple choice questions at the end of module. Build in one on one interaction with other staff members. Have your trainee or mentee report back what they learned when they went to lunch with a senior staff member. That will build your team building, and it will help them see the picture that they have the puzzle pieces for, and they can begin assembling it the right way.

And better yet? The Dunning-Kruger Effect? Accept it as a natural part of learning. Make it part of your culture that people learn and fall and sometimes are over confident and fall into the “Valley of Despair.” Your team and your culture will be better for it.

You know what Charles Darwin said? He said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” I think he knew about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, before it was called that.

So, that’s a wrap for today. 

As always, I’ll be bringing you new information weekly. Be sure to subscribe wherever you are listening to this. Feel free to comment, rate, and review what you hear. Share this podcast with other leaders that may be building “out of this world teams.” You can email me with your thoughts or questions. I may use your subject matter in upcoming shows. 

It’s great to meet you and thank you for listening. I know you only have so many hours in the week, and I am grateful to spend this time with you. Until then, make it a great day! See you on the flip side.