I’ve been really excited to hear this one. The room is very full (yup, everyone’s here after such an amazing Gala Dinner last night bright-eyed and bushy-tailed).
If people were self-aware there would be a strong relation between confidence and competence (but there’s really not).
Dr TCP kicks off the day confirming that this will not be a motivational talk… if anything it will be a de-motivational session (love it!).
Why do we all think we’re better, funnier, smarter, better lovers… than we really are? The Dunning-Kruger Effect represents this by a u-curve (i.e. idiots and geniuses estimate their intelligence in very similar ways). More men are overconfident in comparison with women (e.g. additions, stock companies that have more women will often do better).
Our desire to maintain positive self image is greater than our desire to understand reality.
Hogan measures positive traits, as well as the negative ones (bold, mischievous, colourful being the ones that corporate managers will often display those in excess).
The impact?
What else is going on?
- Link to disengagement or lack of engagement.
- Large market of passive job seekers (e.g. LinkedIn) in the industrialised world
- Self employed economy (estimated 2020 the USA will have 40% of the workforce being self-employed)
- Start-up activity rates have been increasing greatly over the past 10 years (but only 5% of start ups succeed)
“When selection fails there’s always training & development”
We should disentangle the issue of self-promotion from competence (i.e. men have more self belief – therefore that is why we have so many incompetent male managers).
We’re stopping using negative language i.e. ‘this candidate has a lot of potential development opporunitites’… (he’s getting a lot of laughs here!)
The criteria hasn’t changed to be seen as a leader/politician… successful women in this arena often out-do men in negative traits. (Comparison between Argentina’s HOS and Angela Merkel in competence vs. confidence.)
What can we expect for the future?
The narcisistic epidemic:
- millennials will soon comprise the majority of the workforce
- science says that generational (rather than age) differences reflect that narcisism is increasing drastically
- (The only thing that’s increasing that much is obesity rates!)
Guardian article coming up “the public masterbation of self-image’ – must keep an eye out for this. This guy is amazing, am absolutely going to follow his stuff in the future.
Dr TCP talks Kim Kardashian and the evolution of narcisissm in popular culture… (love that this is a topic of conversation at the HR conference) – Donald Trump is another example.
We end on Freud “Most of the things we say today are just footnotes to Freud… he saw narcissm and self-love as the psychological manifestations of our survival instincts” (ie. what’s the point of survival if you don’t love yourself)
He also had the hedgehog analogy… and the implication on teams and leaders in the workplace.
If people/society keep going down this path then it will become harder to create and maintain high performance teams and cultures.
Wow! Food for thought from this one!
Renée Robson 