“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 Russe

On this largely philosophical episode of The Rebellious Recruiter with Daava Mills, I am talking about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is a cognitive bias in which people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.

In 20 years of working in the trenches of recruiting, I have been exposed to everyone on the leadership teams at the different companies I have worked for, and, in that time, I have made some interesting observations about competence vs. confidence. If you don’t know what I am talking about now, you’ll get it by the end of the episode.

Daava's Rebellious Recruiting Notes:

• While lemon juice may be used to make invisible ink, it will not make your face invisible when trying to rob a bank.
• Fly By Leadership, along with other "Best Practices", are used as excuses to not be an effective leader and blame others or systems.
• At the beginning of a learning process, people climb to the peak of "Mt. Stupid" then crash down into the "Valley of Despair" before their competence and confidence level off and build toward a sustainable level. See the Competence vs. Confidence chart in the episode links below.
• With the average worker staying at a job for two years or less, we feel pressure to hire employees who can hit the ground running to maximize the ROI for that hire. As a result, employee training suffers.
• Too often, we relegate team building to an HR event that happens on a schedule, instead of taking time to sit with our employees.  
• When onboarding new employees, leaders can use the 5 approaches of Pedagogy (the study of how children learn): Constructivist, Collaborative, Integrative, Reflective & Inquiry Based.
• To recognize the Dunning-Krueger Effect, ask the question "Do you know how much a wrong decision will cost this company?"
• Leaders need to accept that the Dunning-Krueger Effect is a natural part of learning and must build in time to train employees until their competence matches their confidence.  

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

- Charles Darwin

Episode Links:

The Mills Group

The Dunning-Krueger Effect

Competence vs. Confidence Chart

Fly By Leadership and the Myth of "Bring Me a Solution"