I’m often asked in my workshops when we work on confidence and humility. What if I become too confident? We worry that by implementing strategies to offset Imposterism we’ll go too far the other way. It’s particularly prevalent in our humble, modest kiwi culture where the fear of being a tall poppy exists.
We often consider modesty and humility to be the same as self deprecation and that to own our strengths, know our worth and celebrate our successes all of a sudden renders us narcissists!
There is an opposite to Imposter Syndrome and it’s called Dunning Kruger Effect named the guys who coined the phrase. If Imposterism is someone who’s good at what they do but doesn’t think they are then Dunning Kruger is the opposite. Someone who thinks they’re really good at something but often isn’t.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias where people who perform poorly on a certain task tend to overestimate their own performance. The problem is twofold, since not only do people have a certain inability, they are also unable to acknowledge their inability, therefore overestimating their capabilities.
I frequently am told all about someone’s 3 week trip to New Zealand ten years ago when I tell them I live there or when I mention I’ve studied and taught meditation for a decade a man once volunteered his knowledge on the subject by saying “I’m not a meditator but what I understand about mindfulness is….”
Wouldn’t it be a good thing to have this kind of confidence people often ask me? I respond by asking them if they like working with people who fit this description? Do they think of them as good performers? Would they select them for a job? Invite them to a dinner party? – you get the idea! Having low self-awareness and an arrogance about your capability isn’t an attractive quality. Yes it may get you a promotion (how many incompetent people get over promoted because of their confidence?) but they get found out eventually because they don’t deliver, they’re unable to perform at the level they pitch themselves at.
So if the Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias where people who perform poorly on a certain task tend to overestimate their own performance. Imposter experience is a bias that is cognitively predisposed towards our failings and why we’re not good enough. We struggle to acknowledge our skills and successes therefore thinking that everyone else is over rating us and one day we’ll get found out. We perform well but we can’t see it! It’s illusionary superiority (Dunning Kruger) versus illusionary inadequacy (Imposter).
Both are illusionary and a mismatch of our confidence and capabilities in opposite directions. What we’re aiming for is the middle ground.
On this continuum we have debilitating self doubt at one end which is when Imposter Experience is left unchecked and worsens. At the opposite end, if arrogance, ego and overconfidence gets to its worst it’s probably narcissism right? Described as a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for attention and admiration!
Each of these terms Dunning Kruger and Imposter experience exist on the continuum and the sweet spot we’re all aiming for is an alignment of capability and confidence in the middle. For that, those with imposter syndrome need to gain more confidence to match their abilities and those with Dunning Kruger may need to be less confident in their abilities. Both need to be closer to reality than their confidence allows them to believe!
