How to avoid the peak of Mt. Stupid
What is self-awareness?
Self-awareness is about how clearly you know yourself and how you behave. How clearly do you see:
Yourself?
How you behave?
The impact of your behaviour on others?
To answer all three will give you a rough grasp on your level of self-awareness. That is, how clearly you see yourself and your perception of how others see you. In her book, ‘Insight: how to succeed by seeing yourself clearly’, Tasha Eurich discusses how to improve both your internal and external self-awareness to ultimately lead a better life. For clarity, I will define the two:
Internal self-awareness – how well you understand yourself, including your values, principles and how you like to operate.
External self-awareness – how well you understand how others see you, including your actions and reactions.
In Insight, Tasha Eurich discusses that there are seven distinct insights that people with self-awareness truly understand about themselves. Unaware people do not have such clarity:
Values
Passions
Aspirations
Favoured environment
Patterns of behaviour
Reactions to situations
Impact on others.
It is common for somebody to have either internal, or external awareness but there are very few who have both. If we don’t have internal self-awareness we cannot know what we want in life, or understand our actions. Understanding your values allows you to pursue the right career, or to align everything you do with what you are about. Knowing how others see you is important for making and maintaining relationships, both in business and socially. Perception is reality.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
You will most likely have come across people who think they are better at something than they actually are. In other words, they have zero awareness. Immediately TV talent shows come to mind, where somebody believes they are the world’s greatest singer but to everybody else they are awful. People tend to overestimate their abilities, as shown in the research by David Dunning and Justin Kruger. In the Dunning-Kruger Effect, there is a bias where somebody with a low ability in something overestimates their ability; on the graph below, this is where they are at the peak of ‘Mt. Stupid’. Avoiding being at the peak, as well as spotting somebody else who is there, can be valuable in seeking the most informed opinions on an issue.
To avoid being at the peak, it is important to know your blind spots, both in terms of your knowledge and your behaviour. The more we think we know, the more harmful knowledge blindness can be. I strongly believe in not trying to be the smartest person in a room, but instead trying to be in a room where everyone is trying to get smarter. This way, I never assume I have all of the knowledge, but instead seek to learn from those around me. In terms of behaviour blindness, we are usually our own worst critics, and cannot see ourselves objectively. One way to improve this blind spot is to seek regular feedback from people you respect who will share the truth because they care about your development.
Gaining insights about yourself
There are two main ways in which I believe you can gain insight into yourself. One of them, you rely on others to tell you, or something showing you how you are coming across to the world. Tasha Eurich describes this as an ‘alarm-clock moment'. The TV series How I Met Your Mother, highlights this exact process in episode ‘Spoiler Alert’ (Season 3 Episode 8). Ted is dating somebody who talks constantly, not allowing anybody else to speak. Ted cannot see it but when his friends point out the flaw, he cannot unsee it. It is like the glass screen protecting you from noticing it shatters. It is a situation where your eyes are opened to the reality. Moments, when about you can shine a light on some important self-truths about your behaviour. Unlike Ted, you can however choose to go after these insights without relying on alarm clock moments.
The second method I would recommend is going over previous experiences, both positive and negative, to look at patterns in your behaviour. How do you behave in different situations? What are the commonalities? Not only will this improve your awareness of how you behave, it will assist you in finding out your purpose. This is a process recommended by Simon Sinek in ‘Find Your Why’ to figure out, and subsequently pursue the things that give you a sense of fulfilment. The book recommends finding a partner who you can share your stories with to help you identify consistent themes in your behaviour.
Another way you could do this, is categorise defining moments in your life, and speak to the people who were closest to you at the time of each moment about what they saw, getting a first-hand account of your behaviour. This will provide you with insights of how others truly see you and what they have observed about you.
Sharing insights about others with them
Informing others of habits they could change or even sharing an opinion you know isn’t going to be met with open arms can be daunting. Being aware of the different types of people, and identifying which category someone falls in can help in delivering them insights. Tasha Eurich calls this the ‘three categories of delusional people.’
Those that are so fixed they are in denial. People who see themselves as close to perfect and will shoot down any opinion that differs to theirs. They are unlikely to acknowledge they need to change their ways.
Those that are aware of their behaviour but will continue regardless of the negative impact. They have gotten this far without changing their behaviour so don’t see a need to do anything about it now.
Those that want to be better. They are unaware of their behaviour but will gladly listen to feedback where they need to change their approach.
The final category is where everybody would ideally sit, but that is far from the reality. Regardless of the category somebody falls in, I would suggest that the sense of how hard to push on the issue should mirror their willingness to engage in the feedback process. For those in the first two categories you may not get very far, but at the very least they may reflect, or come across an alarm clock moment when they perform the behaviour you are looking to change. Either way, the thing you can control is your approach to self-awareness.
Be willing to receive feedback, seek to understand how you could behave better, go on a process of understanding yourself, your values and principles in order to gain personal insights.