How A Troubling Cognitive Bias Can Derail Your Project

We’ve all been there, working alongside a colleague as we begin to grasp just how incapable they are and wonder how on earth they ended up in their position. They come off as god’s gift to the company, but time and again, they fail to deliver or make stunningly poor decisions.

It’s so common there’s a name for it, as we learned in the psych class above. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect, or just Dunning-Kruger, after the social psychologists who first described the problem in 1999. Also referred to as “illusory superiority,” Dunning-Kruger is a cognitive bias in which weak performers vastly overestimate their abilities and impact.

In their study, Dunning and Kruger found that these low-ability workers “reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.” As a result, they tend to “hold inflated views of their performance and ability.”

One of the more intriguing and troubling elements of Dunning-Kruger is that because they’re swayed by aggressive confidence, the competent colleagues of those with illusory superiority tend to take a long time to grasp reality. Thus, it’s often a problem that festers, undermining productivity for an extended period.

Further, Dunning-Kruger is more problematic in remote work environments, as cognitive bias tends to be easier to identify in an office, where there are more sensory signals to help assertiveness and over-confidence stand out. Remotely, an overconfident colleague is less noticeable among the steady stream of texts, reminders, messages, emails and more.

A 2015 study in the Journal of Business and Psychology bore this out, finding an increase in overconfidence and a decrease in productivity among telecommuters. At Virtira, we’ve seen countless cases in which a remote team member volunteers for a key project deliverable and then submits a disaster, leaving us scrambling to meet our targets.

How To Identify Dunning-Kruger

To avoid this, we educate our staff on identifying Dunning-Kruger early and moving to address it. In risk training, we advise our employees to regularly ask themselves if they have encountered a colleague who acts like a productivity rock star but performs poorly.

Of course, it’s not always easy to identify DK types. The staffer could just be an overconfident middling performer. But there are some tell-tale signs. We advise our staff to keep an eye out for people who:

• Consistently overestimate their skills, ignoring evidence to the contrary.
• Dismiss feedback and constructive criticism, viewing it as a personal attack.
• Have difficulty stepping outside their wheelhouse or learning new skills.
• Often make errors and mistakes but fail to acknowledge them.
• Regularly blame others for failures and missteps.
• Consistently miss deadlines they set for themselves.

Whenever someone checks a couple of the above boxes, the employee should start asking themselves key questions. What happens when they’re on a team or given a key task? Has this affected team morale or productivity? Have other team members noticed a problem?

What To Do About It

Once it seems likely that the person suffers from Dunning-Kruger, the staffer relays their concerns to the team leader and their manager, who take appropriate action. This usually involves setting clear expectations, cutting their projects into smaller deliverables, providing regular feedback, offering opportunities for growth and learning, and possibly reassignment and long-term support.

Of course, an even better way to reduce the risk is never to hire anybody with Dunning-Kruger. There’s no foolproof way to do that, but it helps if your hiring manager closely reviews past performance, uses behavioral interviewing tools, thoroughly checks references, implements pre-employment tests, and looks for a good cultural fit.

It’s important to note that Dunning-Kruger can affect anyone, regardless of intelligence or education level. This is part of what makes it so common — because it tends to be harder to spot than one might think.

And when it’s allowed to fester, it tends to create an environment in which highly confident poor performers end up making major decisions, potentially derailing a massive project, or short-circuiting an entire team. That’s why it’s crucial to be vigilant, especially when it comes to remote work.