Dunning-Kruger.

This #DunningKrueger stuff in light of my recent "Leadership" degree freaks me out. "Ignorance for…" @ThisAmerLife https://t.co/Xev4bFIpwU

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) May 25, 2016

I'd heard of the Dunning-Kruger Effect before, but this episode of This American Life hit a little too close to home a couple times.

Here's the episode:

To make this entry easier, I'm going to use the official transcript from the episode:

Here's the main section that hit me:

Sean Cole: That's because other people can see when we're doing the Dunning-Kruger dance, but we can't. Which makes you think, why doesn't anybody say anything? When it's little stuff--your fly is down, you have stuff on your face—​your real friends, and even some strangers, will tell you.

But somehow, when you're blowing a huge word balloon full of wrongness, that's when the rest of us decide to be polite, to go along. Because to correct that weirdly confident, know-nothing jerk in the office just seems mean, like it's not our place. But maybe it's meaner not to correct him.

David Dunning The real sadness, for me, is that often, people are going to suffer for their mistakes. But they're never going to know it because if a person is a jerk in the office, what happens is all the parties they aren't invited to, all the wonderful social interactions, they just don't get to experience. And it's likely that they don't notice the absence of this.
​
​So you don't know you're incompetent. You can't figure it out on your own. And the world is treating you by being silent. Well, how do you improve yourself under those conditions?

Now, I don't tend to think I've done well at anything. I think I'm a terribly incompetent guitarist and I hear faults in my singing voice practically every time I open my mouth; despite plenty of people's assurances, I didn't think I was going to finish my Master's project at all, let alone on time; as far as being a husband and father, I think I'm frighteningly negligent and unempathic; I don't market my blog, my photography, or any of my creative endeavours because I think they're worthless and nobody wants to hear me; I don't think I'm adapting to the newer models of teaching very well.

Simultaneously, I wouldn't've started the Master's program if I hadn't looked at different administrators in Smithers and thought "I can do that;" I had somebody send me a facebook message recently that basically suggested that he could understand the things I'd written here at this blog, which is a little bit of evidence that my writing is comparatively cogent to strangers; I know people enjoy my music when I show it to them; most people assure me that I'm an adequate father and husband. So no matter how much I beat myself up, most of the evidence reveals that I'm a comparatively well-adjusted person. This was what was so heartbreaking about October-December of this year: I was faced with accusations that simply didn't line up and I had no idea how to deal with them. But as I climb out of that mess, I see that I shouldn't've doubted myself in the first place, that I catered to those accusations and it ripped me apart because they just didn't make sense. 

​The Dunning-Kruger connection is this: I just got myself a degree in Leadership Studies and I'm totally frightened to do anything with it. I don't want to boldy go into leadership-like positions because I am afraid  not of failure, but of people not telling me when I fail. I don't want to be a leader who thinks everything is going OK, and nobody has the guts to tell me that I'm incompetent. I don't want to be a Dunning-Kruger victim, even though we all fall into that camp now and then.

But I need to step forward into something. I can't afford to keep putting these ideas off. I will need to start applying for more intensive teaching positions over the coming years, but I'm frightened to do it. I've never been a leader at anything. I've rarely volunteered and never stood at the end of a board in order to arrange something. I can't think of anything I've ever influenced anybody to do. I've got myself a degree in something in which I have no experience, so I will have no idea as to when I'm being incompetent. 

Now, since I don't really have a huge ego about anything, perhaps I'm less likely to fall into the Dunning-Kruger camp. Perhaps I will never delude myself into thinking I'm competent at anything. But it's still a little frightening, nonetheless. 

Because I can handle being incompetent, but I really want to know if I am.