How to Manage Workers Who Overestimate Their Competence

How accurately do people see their work? If you ranked workers in order of competence, are the employees in the bottom half of your list aware they’re in the bottom half? Do they truly understand your expectations and what outstanding performance looks like? 

Research suggests that a large number of American workers overestimate their competence or fail to recognize their own weaknesses. This Illusory superiority is a natural human tendency.

Through a series of manipulated studies, social psychologist David Dunning PhD, found that people consistently overestimate themselves. The least competent among his Cornell University test subjects inflated their abilities the most — leading him to conclude that ignorance, rather than arrogance is often the culprit for this over-inflation. “Poor performers lack the very expertise needed to recognize how badly they’re doing,” Dunning said. A lack of accurate feedback from others contributes.

Here’s where managers come in: Most bosses are pretty comfortable (although sometimes stingy) complimenting the work of employees. This recognition and positive feedback helps employees feel appreciated. It also builds employee confidence and keeps them engaged.

But if your employees don’t clearly understand how they’re doing — that they could be doing a few things better—how can they be expected to improve? When you give a raise to one employee and not another, likely you can justify this difference in your mind. But to the employee who’s received nothing but positive feedback (and no raise), it might reek of favoritism or worse—discrimination.

You owe it to your employees to be clear about where they stand. But, doing so without damaging morale can be tricky, especially when the odds are you’re dealing with at least a few people who think they’re way more competent than they really are.

Accurate, specific, well-delivered and timely feedback and communication is critical. Here are some suggestions to help keep it real, without deflating workers:

• Clearly communicate expected performance and encourage questions. 

  What does a successful outcome look like? It’s critical that your employees know what’s expected and that you clearly see (through their questions) whether they have the necessary experience or skills to accomplish it. 

• Increase the amount of positive feedback. 

  Use a 5-to-1 praise-to-criticism ratio.

• Increase the frequency of feedback. 

  Don’t save negative feedback for once a year. When someone is underperforming, he or she should know it as it happens.

• Give employees information that enables them to self-assess. 

  When objective, quantifiable measures of performance are available, give them to your employees.

• Frame performance concerns in a broad, non-restrictive way. 

  Without drawing conclusions, create open discussions that enable you to get to the root of a performance issue, suggests hbr.org. Asking questions worded in a non-threatening, fair way helps uncover hidden concerns or obstacles that may be contributing to substandard work.

Will a little straight talk from the boss help under-performing, over-inflated employees develop a more accurate self image—help them see room for improvement? Possibly. But, the bad news, according to an online survey by leadershipiq.com, it’s not a panacea. “Only 39% of employees handle constructive criticism by systematically dissecting every step leading up to the thing they just got criticized for … wanting to understand and correct the underlying issues. The rest (61%) don’t see their deficiencies even after they’re pointed out and therefore don’t work to improve."

As a young manager, I struggled to give honest assessments … get someone to see their flaws and try to improve. But, candid, timely performance conversations are a step in the right direction. And this ongoing dialog does help clarify expectations and uncover instances where an employee simply doesn’t understand. Because just possibly (tiny, tiny chance), I, myself, underestimated my own inadequacies as a new manager.

Register now for Taking Control of Tough Performance and Attitude Problems, a 1-hour webinar.