One concept that helps you lead, is knowing this, Mount Stupid. As a community leader, you want to know how to behave with different people and know the truth behind people’s reactions.

This concept will help you to understand where someone’s confidence is coming from, it is a realistic one or not.

What is Mount Stupid?

To first understand it, you need to know the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This effect was first published in 1999 by David Dunning and Justin Kruger.

So regardless of your intelligence, everyone will unconsciously try to fake their confidence to be higher, know more and have more ideas, simply because it’s more prized in our society.

Have a look at this diagram:

As someone starts learning a new topic, they get this confidence that they are learning more and more every day, so you might hear from them:

• This was easy, I don’t know why that person is getting paid a lot for this
• This course was unnecessary, I could learn them all by reading 10 free articles.
• I don’t know why that expert is doing that, I could do it much better

seems familiar? have you heard the same? or have you on some occasions said the same?

It’s because naturally, we get more confidence, some people might stop learning here, staying in this state for a few years. the important point here is to don’t stop if you think you know enough.

And as the diagram shows, your confidence level will fall down, executing a real job or finding tons of new related subjects to learn, will put you down.

It doesn’t mean you know less, it shows that you know more than many and just now faced what is real. So people in this phase might say:

• I don’t know anything, many subjects that I should just learn before having an opinion
• Many know a lot more than me, I don’t know how to do anything anymore.

Aren’t these sentences familiar to you? you must have heard of Imposter Syndrome?

Imposter Syndrome is an effect when a person feels like they are incompetent and they can’t do anything correctly.

None of these feelings is rational. Knowing this raises some questions that how I can use this.

How can I use Mount Stupid Concept?

Are you interviewing someone, or are you networking with some other fellow engineers? this concept will help you understand where the other person’s confidence is coming from.

Are they at the beginning of this?

Easy to say if someone is at the beginning, not having confidence and at the same time not knowing where to go and what to learn, their confusion shows they are low-confidence because of lack of knowledge. You know what to do with them, guide them, show them a path, send them links, and courses and introduce them to new senior engineers.

Encourage them! they need it.

Are they on a high of stupidity?

If someone is overconfident, they might be rude. they might also accept more responsibility, feeling that they can. It’s harder to act on their actions. You don’t want to undermine them, remember, they don’t know it themselves.

If someone hasn’t executed or done what they are talking about, if there is no result and they show high confidence, they might be here at this state. They say, they think they can, that’s easy, or they might say, I have read it, I can do it easily.

I recommend you tell them keywords, show them details, use more professional words, and show them high-level achievements, and high-scale applications. Ask them to practice their knowledge, and show some results.

You can only show the key points that they might have heard but don’t have the knowledge for. They need to fall down.

Show them a variety of what they don’t know, and then ask them to start showing some results to their knowledge in action.

Are they having imposter syndrome?

If someone shows results, or has something in their portfolio, but they say they don’t know much, or they have a lot to learn, they are on imposter syndrome.

Why they are is irrelevant, you just want to know them, they can be a lot more productive than what they say.

To best act on this, is to trust them, show them you let them do it themselves, and you don’t expect to do it in a certain time, faster than others. They are stressed, which helps them feel relaxed. Let them know that you are listening to them, you understand their concerns and you trust them.

Simply show them there are no high expectations on their tasks, and you trust them and in case of needs, you support them.

Conclusion

Knowing mount stupid, Kruger-dunning effect and imposter syndrome will help to act better in situations to delegate responsibilities, some people simply need a push, some others need to be shown what they don’t know and others need to be heard and trusted.

Make sure you follow me! I will publish more articles on leadership and am happy to hear your thoughts in any shape or format.

Sources:

• Paper on Dunning-Kruger Effect