How would you rate yourself as a construction professional? Where do you think you are on a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 being the best? How do you compare to coworkers above, below and at the same level as you? Most of us think we are at least average, if not, quite a bit above average. The bottom line is that our self-assessments are often incorrect.
In the late 1990’s, Justin Kruger and David Dunning carried out research to better understand how well we are at self-assessing and ranking our abilities and performance. Essentially, their study found that ignorance is bliss. They concluded that less knowledgeable people perform worse and that their lower level of knowledge makes it hard for them to realize they are performing poorly (Kruger and Dunning, 1999). They also found that, in general, skilled and highly performing people were more accurate in their self-assessments but underestimated their skills or performance by a small amount (Kruger and Dunning 1999). These two findings are the general assessment that created the Dunning-Kruger Effect (DKE). The DKE generally finds that the dumb are too dumb to know it and that the intelligent and high performing know they are doing well but also know that they don’t know everything and that there is always someone better than them.
What does this mean for construction? Well, in my career, especially when I was young and less knowledgeable, I would accomplish something I thought was great only to drop the ball on another aspect of my job soon after. It might be tomorrow or a few weeks later but a little success combined with an incorrectly assessed skill, left me open for a humbling event which almost never let me off the hook.
This trap of accomplishment that frequently preceded some humbling (failure) event was discussed in another paper led by Dunning and Kruger. Poor performers focus on their preconceived (positive) beliefs in lieu of their actual performance (Dunning et al, 2003). They think they are good at something even though, if they analyzed the numbers, they would find their performance is not top notch. For example, an inexperienced engineer or foreman might think they can lead a large concrete pour because they have been on the team of several previous pours. The reality is that they might perform well but it will likely be a massive struggle on their early attempts. Without objective numbers to analyze, they run the risk or performing poorly, failing to fully realize it and failing to improve.
In my career, this early attempt at running a somewhat large and complicated task was the first time I led a team that set precast girders for a bridge. My super, who is on my Mount Rushmore of construction professionals, prepped me well and then let me take it from there. Coordination of the rental crane, the crew, new fall protection system installation and railroad scheduling (work was over an active rail line) had to go smoothly. Lots of people were watching. I was nervous but somewhat confident. As soon as the girders arrived and we started to dress them with the new fall protection system and rigging, it was quickly discovered that the fall protection system was all but crap. A phone call with the fall protection supplier where they swore it should work but offered no alternatives didn’t help anything. I just saw a wheel with $2,500/hour spinning in my head. With the help of another superintendent, we figured a solution out pretty quickly. Because there was quite a bit of stress from the situation, I’ll never forget it and will never use a new system without testing on my site or without success on another project within the company. The moral of this story is to prepare the most you can but also to know your numbers. The girders were placed that day as planned but the numbers told the story of struggle and near failure.
Knowing your numbers, or using some sort of quantitative scoring system, is backed up in further research led by Dunning. To perform well, we need to avoid developing a preconceived feeling about our skill so that we can then track down solid information and data that we can use to accurately assess and rank our skill and performance (Ehrlinger and Dunning, 2003).
Since the early DKE study and paper, there have been several studies that have tested for similar results or findings. One that is interesting found that social class can be an indicator of someone’s confidence level. The study found that lower-class individuals had lower confidence in general and that upper-class individuals who often were overconfident in their skills and abilities (Belmi et al, 2019). This overconfidence helped them pursue high level positions and roles that they weren’t necessarily prepared for. These findings somewhat contradict the findings of the DKE. One study in Belmi’s paper found that the appearance of competency (confidence) was more important than actual competence (2019). This is essentially “faking it until you make it.” Often in construction, humble high performers get rewarded and promoted but there all also many instances where someone is pretty good at faking it to get the next raise or advancement. People that come from easy success are often confident whether they actually earned that success or not. This applies to people born into upper class families who think they are top notch simply because of where they come from.
This can also be applied within construction to people who have had success early in their careers. Individuals might also experience great success because of the people that they worked for, worked with or led were actually the key to doing well. Think of sports teams. Certain players may excel on a team or with a certain player and might move to another team thinking they can keep the successful times rolling. They will often struggle mightily and may fail. Applying this to construction, a growing leader may attain early success and profitability due to a mix of intelligence, hard work and luck early in their careers. Because of this success, they will likely advance but may struggle mightily in future roles because previous success didn’t prepare them as well as lessons learned from small failures can. Past experience does not guarantee future success. Because they performed well, they may have a few blind spots in their new roles. Early struggles can break people but if they survive and learn, they are better prepared to prevent struggles in the future. Getting kicked around a bit can harden people’s desire to win and prove themselves. During a recent NFL game, one of the commentators said one of the few pieces of advice Tom Brady gives to young players is to prepare like you’re the underdog. You don’t have to be the underdog to prepare like you are, but it will help you succeed. Tom Brady was an underdog for the first part of his career and has kept preparing like an underdog even as he has experienced great and sustained success. Now, he's one of the best and prepares like he has a target on his chest.
Interestingly, the double whammy discussed throughout DKE literature was applied to politics in an intriguing study. Voters at the extremes of politics tend to find facts and occurrences that support their beliefs and then become rationally ignorant (Anson 2018). It’s a bit of a stretch but it is interesting to think this finding might apply to extremes within out industry, as well. For example, opinions and choices around technology tend to lean towards an all or nothing type perspective. Finding balance between the tried and true and the completely new and innovative is challenging. Too often we view innovation as an all or nothing option when taking a pseudo-scientific method of testing, analyzing, rejecting or repeating and then more testing is most likely the best plan of action to identify and adopt true value adding tools and game changers.
All this means is that we need to keep working, learning and growing. Work like we are lacking in knowledge and unskilled while also maintaining confidence in our ability to learn and succeed. If you think you’re at the top, you are likely wrong. If you are at the top, you need to hire or work with smarter and more knowledgeable people. We need to work like an underdog with humble confidence that we may not know it all but if we keep working we can be one of the best someday. We can seek out continuing education through:
· Employers and industry groups,
· Soaking up on the job training and education via the school of hard knocks,
· The pursuit of formal education through universities,
· Seeking mentors and seek mentees because experience can learn from new minds that aren’t boxed in by the status quo,
· Chasing new topics and terms down the proverbial rabbit hole of internet articles, blogs and videos,
· Honest self-assessments and quiet observations.
The moral of this article is that we need to focus on our numbers. Seek as much quantitative data as possible to rate and improve our performance. Don’t gloss over areas of poor performance – either get better or get better people around us.
References
Anson, I. (2018). Partisanship, Political Knowledge, and the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Journal of Political Psychology, Volume 39, Number 5, 1173-1192.
Belmi, P., Neale, M., Reiff, D., and Ulfe, R. (2019). The Social Advantage of Miscalibrated Individuals: The Relationship Between Social Class and Overconfidence and Its Implications for Class Inequality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes, 1-26.
Dunning, D., Johnson, K., Ehrlinger, J., and Kruger, J. (2003). Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence. Current Directions in Phycological Science, Volume 12, Number 3, 83-87.
Kruger, J. and Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 77, Number 6, 1121-1134.
Ehrlinger, J. and Dunning, K. (2003). How Chronic Self-Views Influence (and Potentially Mislead) Estimates of Performance. Journal of Personality and Psychology, Volume 84, Number 1, 5-17.
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