The Dunning-Kruger Effect: How to come down off the mountain

A ski instructor friend told me that men clients overestimate their abilities on the slopes, while women clients underestimate them. Are you one of them?

Physician entrepreneurs need the mindset, means and intrinsic motivation, to the point where it is an obsession, to succeed. Part of the entrepreneurial mindset, which is in some ways similar but mostly different from the clinical mindset, is having a growth mindset instead of a fixed one.

For most physicians and medical students and trainees, that means coming down off the mountain and accepting that you don't know what you don't know. There is even a name for that- the Dunning-Kruger effect.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because a lack of self-awareness prevents them from accurately assessing their own skills.

So how can you treat or avoid overestimating your entrepreneurial knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies?

1. Question what you know and pay attention to those who have different viewpoints. Seek feedback from people you can trust who you know are highly skilled in your area of interest. Be open to constructive criticism and resist the impulse to become defensive. Don’t pretend to know something you don’t. Make it a priority to continue learning and growing.
2. Create a failure resume and identify and learn from the mistakes you made
3. Build a personal and professional development plan to fill competency gaps
4. Practice being more empathetic
5. Accept the fact that there are experts who really do know more about something than you do
6. Listen more
7. Manage your egotistic and narcissistic tendencies
8. Find mentors, friends, coaches, and others who can blow the whistle on you
9. Include meeting process observers or neutral referees who throw the yellow flag when you have violated the psychologic safety rules or fact check your wrong statements
10. Change your mindset

The Dunning-Kroger effect is part of the reason we see the death of expertise in public discourse, education, medicine, and other social interactions.

The first step is to admit you have the problem and then do things to fix it. Just don't expect ChatGPT to tell you things that are always true.

Arlen Meyers, MD. MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs