Why Stupid People Think They’re Smart!

In this series of posts Arnaud looks back to an active working life of the past 35 years or so and share his perspective on the corporate life. All is based on real experiences although any resemblence with real people is purely coincidental.

One of the most surprising paradoxes I witnessed in almost all the companies I worked for, is that there are senior individuals (sometimes even the CEO) with a very obvious level of incompetence in a specific are. Despite that obvious weekness, personally they are 100% convinced they are an expert in that domain. Even worse — they continuously manage to convince their superiors that they even are an authority in that specific domain.

The real experts in these domains obviously spot the incomptetence; as a result get demotivated because their behaviour continuously gets rewarded and even results in praise and recognition.

I realize this phenomenon is not limited to US presidents and meditereanian CEOs but is something we witness each and every day in our professional life.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

I recently found out this phenomenon has a name; it is the Dunning-Kruger effect, named after social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. The effect relates to the cognitive bias of illusory superiority and comes from the inability of people to recognize their lack of ability.

Like any study, a chart tells the right story. The Dunning-Kruger effect is supported by the following one:

The Lethal Combination and the destructive effect

Let me explain you what happens and how this take place

1. We humans obviously don’t know what we don’t know
2. A normal modest individual tends to understand what he/she does not know. To be on the safe side, anything else we would classify to not know
3. However stubborn individuals with an issue to admit their own shortcomings would only admit to not know something if they are 100% convinced they do not know. As this is impossible (See 1) this obviously is a challenge.
4. Their default position is that they know. unless it is proven they do not know. So they THINK they know what they do NOT KNOW.
5. It gets worse if these individuals 1) end up in Senior Roles 2) are TALKERS and 3) have a dominating personality. Now you have a lethal combination. People that THINK they know what they do not know, that are at Senior positions and have a dominating personality.
6. Because of their position and their communications skills, they will rarely get challenged by peers and others in their team.
7. Because they THINK they know and are good communicators they will talk like they are the biggest experts. Towards senior executives — who even know less about these domains — it sounds all very convincing and they end up gaining credibility among their superiors. This puts them in an even more untouchable position.
8. Subordinates see all of this happen with amazement and end up being demotivated and discouraged by the obvious lack of competence of their seniors.

Let me stress this tends to show up only in one or two specific domains of an individual. In general, these individuals are smart and do have expertise in other areas. However, this specific phenomenon is the amazing effect resuling from a chain effect of human treats with a extremely destructive effect on the organisation.

I have seen this happen over and over again.

What to do?

Once you have the Dunning Kruger effect in your organistaion it is like a weed in your garden. It keeps popping up unless it gets eliminated at its roots.

The only hope one can have is that his/her Superior has an active DK (Dunning Kruger) prevention radar, not just for spotting the deficiency but also has the guts to address the issue.

For this to happen the Superior should have 1) the competence in these specific domains, 2) does have the communicative skills, and 3) the courage does have to confront these individuals with their incompetence. Finally, he/she should be able to ensure the superiors understand the situation and provide coverage for any next required actions. As these DK-Victims do have value in other areas, you often see the confrontation is not happening, and the damaging effect continues in the rest of the organisation.

Factually confronting these individuals with the situation and document it. There are now three options. The best is if they decide to leave themselves (and the issue becomes someone else issue to resolve). Next-best is that they admit the issue; this will open the door for the Superior to offer executive coaching to fix the issue. As last resort, you will have to walk them to the door.

All tough options, but not doing something is even more destructive as this impacts the motivation of the rest of the organisation .

Do you know the DK-victims in your organisation?