In the the second of two pieces about competency and self-awareness we build on your new insights into your competency to lay out the foundations of a development plan.
So you understand the Dunning Kruger effect, you can use phrases like 'incompetent and unaware' about those around you and you understand the the risks of confidence outpacing competence.
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What should you do if you know somebody that is on this path and you want to pull them back into the safe zone between the dashed lines on the graph? If you thought you were at risk of being incompetent and unaware of it, what should you do about it? Of course, if you didn’t think there was a risk you should consider reading the first section of this article again…
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The first thing to realize is that a development journey will never end. It does not matter how good you are, you can always be better; if you’re reading this article, then you should congratulate yourself on having already realized this! You may have already been looking at development plans and are expecting us to start showing motivational images such as ladders, stairways or mountain peaks. We’re not going to do that (…yet) but we will be adding some guides on how to develop a development plan, so there’s still time for that. While you’re waiting though, there are plenty of good examples available with a quick search, such as this one from mindtools
Why do you think the Dunning Kruger curve typically only drifts out of control when formal training has been completed? Generally, it is because formal training is a constant series of objective measures against a defined skills progression. To have the skills divided into a number of sub-skills with the ability to either pass or fail a test is effectively creating a series of smaller versions of the overall curve. The peaks and dips of the curve always staying in the safe zone as demonstrated in the graph below, this describes the principles for setting the sub level skills definition and the severity of the tests: they should be frequent enough that you do not risk finding that your confidence has exceeded your capability excessively. The tests should also not be too severe that they push your confidence too low and risk derailing your development.
You will need to take the skill that you are interested in and break it into a series of steps that can be described in a measurable way. Which sub-skills are the difference between a beginner and someone who is competent or between competent and expert levels. What does the pinnacle of the skill look like.
If you are trying help someone else, try asking them to create this progression of skills for you. They may start to realize at this point that they should start their own development journey.
Once you know what the skills look like, what is a good test of them – a test that will give a clear indication of both strengths and gaps in ability.
One challenge is in deciding how often to test and how big a step in ability to take between tests. There are some good tips in the book ‘Practice Perfect’ by Lemov, Woolway, Yezzi and Heath to help ensure that the skills under review are tested in an appropriate way. We would recommend following these guidelines to define your development curve and the tests that should be applied.
You can now pick the place on the curve that you think you are and you can take the test. You must be honest with yourself and remain objective – move your assessment forward or backward as appropriate. Don’t feel despondent if you have to downgrade your skill level, this is a vital part to achieving excellence.
The same will apply to someone else that you are helping; creating a structured series of assessments will take a lot of the opinion and subjectivity out of the assessment of a person’s skills, creating a more balance platform to help them create their own development plans.
To reference this approach back to the curve we used in the earlier section, it is important to think back to the first step of the development when in formal training the competence and confidence were rising together.
So to summarize, the overall shape of the development curve will always follow the Dunning Kruger curve, the key to managing the balance between confidence and capability is to ensure that the points at which your confidence diverges too far from your capability (either too high or too low) happen in a controlled, measurable way and always stay within safe limits of development.
