Daily Quote and Reflection:Power to Perform Better–Learn From Your Mistakes

Daily Quote: “The only true wisdom is to know that you know nothing.” Socrates 

The ability of people to improve their performance is for them to be open to both positive and negative feedback and do something to improve their knowledge, skills or attitude. Most incompetent people to not believe or listen to feedback that could help them improve. Psychologist studying this phenomena refer to it as the Dunning-Kruger-effect- of – Incompetence. Other people call it denial and defensiveness.  The reason seems to be that poor performers fail to learn from their mistakes.

The proposed solution is that people who are performing at a lower than satisfactory level of competence need to be confronted directly and be told shown why they are incompetent.

Unfortunately the problem is that incompetent people have probably been getting this type of feedback for years and failed to take much notice. Despite failing exams, making boring presentations at work, messing up relationships and irritating other people, the incompetent still don’t believe they’re incompetent.

Maybe other powerful interventions could work better to change their view of incompetence or poor performance, such as the suggestibility factor–Experiments have found that people in general…

“…make more successful putts when they are told that a golf ball is lucky, solve motor-dexterity puzzles better when experimenters make a “good luck” hand gesture, and shine on a memory game when they are in the presence of their lucky charm (Damisch et al., 2010).”

Our expectations of others affect how they perform:

“…when teachers hold expectations that students are high performers, they unwittingly provide those students with an enhanced learning environment that produces better performance See Rosenthal 2003 for more information on the power of expectations and performance.”

Action Assignment:

Before someone’s next speech provide them with a good luck and say I expect you to “knock them dead” with your speech today. Using these small but smart-step interventions might make the difference in their performance; if they trust you and believe in the power of luck.