The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that is shown as the tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of this ability. In the case of working with teams, you may also consider the knowledge people have around a specific subject (i.e. Scrum).
If you are an Agile Leader working with a team fairly new to Scrum and Agile, you may encounter this cognitive bias and you should be ready to address it in the right way.
In the graph below, you can see an overview of the key elements of the model:
Competence here doesn’t imply a general competence or knowledge of individuals, but specific knowledge and skills. Confidence means self-assessment of that specific knowledge or skills.
Findings #
Based on this simplified graph, we can see several patterns that can also help us address this cognitive bias within our team.
| Condition | Explanation | Plan of action |
| Peak of “Mount Stupid” | People tend to hugely overestimate their knowledge and skill when they have just a little understanding of the topic in question. The reason for that is that they know just enough to have an impression they know everything, but they don’t know enough to see what they don’t know. | Don’t try to convince the person that they don’t know what they are talking about – this will only lead to a defensive stance. Instead, find a way to show the lack of knowledge or abilities by asking tough questions or giving tasks clearly above abilities to make the lack of skill stand out |
| Valley of Despair | Once people pass the previous condition, they usually realize that there is much more that they don’t know or can’t do, than what they originally thought. This leads to an impression that they don’t know anything. | Make training available and easy-to-follow to build the lack of knowledge and skill. Work on removing the knowledge gap. Inspire by showing what high-competence in the topic means and how it could benefit the person. |
| Slope of Enlightenment | At this stage, the confidence and competence levels are getting aligned as the person learns more and feels that they have enough knowledge and skill to do what they need to do. | It’s important to give regular feedback to the person so they can continuously improve. In addition, remember to recognize progress. |
| Plateau of Sustainability | This can be easily aligned with the Shu-Ha-Ri maturity model and presents the Ri level of maturity where the person is confident and competent enough to not only do the job, but also teach others. | Allow the person to self-organize. Remove impediments to their progress. |
