Representative image.
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Johnson was working in one of the retail stores of a cell phone company as a sales executive. Passionate about interacting with the customers, he could influence customers’ decisions. The business of the outlet started improving due to this.
The senior management recognised this and promoted him to a manager, with 15 sales executives reporting to him. Jubilant about his promotion, Johnson started investing more time and effort towards business development.
During a review of sales in all outlets after a few months, the senior management was astonished to find that Johnson’s outlet was deteriorating every month. The senior management finally understood that Johnson continued the trait of a sales executive even after becoming the manager. He used to attend to each walk-in customer—a level of micromanagement a manager should not ideally get into.
What was wrong here? Was Johnson intoxicated with his past laurels? Was he unnecessarily suspicious of his team’s ability? Did he try to upskill himself when he was promoted to a manager role?
The inflated or deflated perceptions of employees about their workplace competencies hamper job productivity and may seriously threaten the organisation in the long run. Besides, fantasies about one’s competencies and trying to align them with reality will lead to dissonance in the workplace. Dissonance includes incompetent employees sitting in challenging roles and competent employees being relegated to lesser roles.
Dunning–Kruger effect
According to psychological studies, the Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein the person has the metacognitive (unconscious) ability to overestimate his/her competencies and may not accept reality due to the unconsciously conditioned intellectual senses that overvalue themselves.
A study published in Harvard Business Review in 2005 shows that the Dunning-Kruger effect works in a cascading direction in an organisation. A self-magnified leader certifies the inflated self-assessed scores of his/her team members, and the effect trickles down onto the junior levels.
This trend not only damages workplace productivity but also paralyses innovative thoughts. The traits of the Dunning-Kruger effect, like overconfidence, narcissism, unrealistic actions and cynicism, create an ecosystem of suspicion and void.
Imposter syndrome is a contradictory version of the Dunning-Kruger effect wherein the employee underestimates his/her competencies due to factors like humility, lack of opportunity, or consistent demotion (psychological) at work. This pulls down the employees’ morale, leading to sabotage of the psychological capital of an organisation.
The psychological capital includes efficiency, hope, perseverance, and positivism. Another study in Harvard Business Review from May 2020 shows that the toxic dynamics of the Dunning-Kruger Effect increase the incidents of imposter syndrome in employees. Consequently, they consciously disengage from active participation.
Workplace consequences
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive contagion that spreads across organisational landscapes by creating an imbalance between the job roles and the required competencies. Following could be the possible effects of both syndromes:
Employees live in a state of oblivion, and their jobs degenerate.
Unsophisticated employees rise to inappropriate positions and contaminate the organisational competency framework.
Germination of vicious and impractical workplace executions leads to losing trust in employees.
The logical, innovative thoughts are frozen, leading to redundancy and employee attrition.
Employee disengagement from workplace affairs and the dissolution of the psychological contract between employee and organisation.
The talent pipeline may be contaminated due to illogical or biased role elevations.
Nullifying the syndromes
Organisational psychologists and human resource experts opine that the above syndromes can cause potential harm to the organisational health index and hamper collective growth. The hierarchy of competence can be applied to nullify the effect of these syndromes.
Unconscious incompetence: It is a condition where the employees are not aware of their deficiencies, and there is a space for realisation. Unconscious incompetence may be high when a person is elevated to a higher position or a different role. The best way to deal with this incompetence is to identify a reliable colleague or a friend and explore the areas of improvement, including interpersonal skills, domain expertise, or psycho-social expertise.
Conscious incompetence: Conscious incompetence is more dangerous than any other inadequacy as employees consciously ignore it or try to portray it as a strength, while these ignored incompetencies continue to decelerate career progression. It is an intrinsic state. The only remedy is to initiate the process of unbiased introspection.
Conscious competence: It is a condition wherein the employees are aware of their competencies and apply the same at their workplace. One of the journals (Human Performance, 2010) used the Workplace Arrogance Scale (WAC) to interview the selected employees. The data inferred that the employees who were conscious of the competencies were likely to develop arrogance. This may restrict them from gaining new skills. Consciousness about one’s competencies is good, but remaining humble and striving to gain new skills helps.
Unconscious competence: This is where a particular competency has become a part of their workplace excellence. It may keep the employees under the impression that they lack specific skills. Unconscious competency manifests when employees start trying new things or innovative things.
The mindset of learning-unlearning-relearning is crucial. It helps employees keep pace with the fast-moving corporate world.