Happy fools
Posted by Christophe on February 7, 2009
Dr David A. Dunning, professor of psychology at Cornell University studies accuracy and illusion in human judgment.
His findings are clear and to be considered seriously: incompetent people just don’t know how bad they are. Worse, they think very strong about themselves, more than people who are actually good . Why? Simply because people who are awful at something lack the judgment skill or knowledge to recognize their incompetence or evaluate someone else qualities.
This has a lot of implications for you:
- You do some things poorly and don’t know about it
- Your self evaluation is tinted
- You judgment of the performance of others is frequently wrong
Now think about the above in the context of yearly performance appraisals, interviews of candidates, promotion requests, and day to day when people disagree on how to fix a problem…
What can you do if you can’t judge? Simply don’t!
Don’t get angry at poor performers that just don’t see it. Train them if you can, replace them if you can’t. Don’t take it personally and more on.
There are many reasons not to do performance appraisals. Instead, engage them in personal introspection, and provide them with a clear vision and frequent feedback.
During interviews, don’t ask candidates how good they are at specific tasks (“what are your strengths / weaknesses?”). Instead, question them about how they specifically handled a given situation, what they would do different today about it.
I think this is a great blog post. So now I wonder…
abby, the hacker chick blog said
haha, “there’s no end to what you can’t do” – I have had days that feel just like that.
So, okay, we are either attending the same events or maybe the topics just come in waves, so I’m probably just posting what you already know – but Rick Brenner recently gave a talk where he spoke about the Dunning-Kruger effect, which I believe is the scientific name for what you’re referring to here (http://www.chacocanyon.com/pointlookout/090107.shtml)
(I liked the post, BTW. But then, I am not really sure what I know… I do know that I could use some serious help with giving clear feedback in these types of situations. Any pointers on that for non-management folks?)
christophe said
I didn’t know about the Dunning-Kruger effect. Tx for the pointer.
Here’s the wikipedia page.