Had Smith seen the research of David Dunning, a psychology
professor at Cornell Universtiy in Ithaca, New York, she
wouldn't have had to learn the hard way that there's a
subset of people in the workplace who simply can't gauge their
own areas of incompetence. Dunning, who originally wanted to learn
how people know when they're performing poorly, has found that
people who do things spectacularly badly are often as confident in
their abilities as highly competent individuals.
In a series of studies, Dunning and his researchers found that
people who scored in the bottom 25 percent on humor, grammar and
logic tests consistently overestimated their performance and
ability. Although these people's test scores tended to put them
in the 12th percentile, they saw themselves ranking around the 62nd
percentile-even after they were confronted with the entire
group's test results.
Because these employees don't see their own incompetence,
it's up to you to tell them. But how do you break it to an
employee that she's incompetent, especially if it's in her
chosen profession?
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