The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. How to Expand Your Circle of Competence

“The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along.”

Arnold Glasgow’s observation rings disturbingly true today, as the Dunning-Kruger effect runs rampant.

This cognitive bias makes incompetent people grossly overestimate their abilities, while modest experts underestimate theirs.

Counteracting Dunning-Kruger requires cultivating intellectual humility — an accurate self-awareness of our knowledge gaps as much as our strengths. Or in other words, honing our Circle of Competence.

This powerful mental model was popularized by Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner.

As Munger explains: “You have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose.”

Embrace clarity, not confusion. Double down on what you do best.

Life’s too short to fumble in the dark. Choose your path based on your true talents and watch your confidence and success soar.

Remember that saying, “practice makes perfect”?

Well, guess what?

It also stretches the limits of what you’re good at.

As CEO coach Verne Harnish puts it, your skills are like a balloon — with focused effort, you can blow it up bigger and bigger over time.

The edges of your “skill balloon” are not fixed. They are elastic and ever-growing.

So let’s discover where the boundaries of your abilities lie right now. Identify the growing edge of your skill balloon in this moment.

Once we’ve mapped your current talent terrain, we can start targeted training to inflate that balloon dramatically.

With consistent practice outside your comfort zone, you’ll be amazed how far you can stretch your skills and exceed the limits you once accepted.

Getting Clear on Your Circl

Start by auditing your expertise. What domains do you have authentic experience and talent in? Where have you achieved demonstrable excellence consistently?

At the same time, inventory your knowledge gaps. What areas are you weak or just dabbling in? Where have you flailed or floundered in the past?

Probe your circles in two dimensions: horizontally and vertically. Horizontally means spanning different fields. Vertically means penetrating deeper into one specialised discipline.

Horizontally, you may have surface knowledge across technology, design, and business. Vertically, you possess deep expertise just in accounting.

Getting painfully honest is critical. We easily overestimate our capabilities outside core strengths. Embrace the discomfort of facing your vulnerabilities. Therein lies the opportunity for growth.

Equally key is distinguishing between degrees of competence, not just binary categories.

As author Tom Butler-Bowdon writes, “We need a more nuanced idea of competence as a spectrum.”

You may have moderate competence in programming from a college class, but you are highly incompetent at AI algorithms. Both are software development skills but differ vastly in level.

So refine your self-evaluation through higher resolution. Identify where your skills cluster on the spectrum from novice to expert.

The “Soft” Skills Matter Too

Hard technical skills are easiest to map in our Circle of Competence. However, so-called “soft” skills play an enormous role in mastery and performance.

Interpersonal abilities like persuasiveness, empathy, negotiation, and communication determine success in most realms. Don’t underestimate their contribution.

Socioemotional strengths like self-awareness, resilience, managing stress, and even humour make us effective. Cognitive talents like creativity and system thinking separate the visionary from the mechanic.

Leadership skills constitute a subset deserving of meticulous self-review: Inspiring others, cultivating talent, strategic planning, change management, building culture. The list goes on.

Getting feedback from others on your blindspots here is invaluable. Behavioural patterns that limit us often are more visible to objective observers. Don’t avoid the discomfort — lean into it.

Expanding Your Circles

Once you map your circles accurately, the real work begins.

The initial impulse may be abandoning weak areas altogether to just play from your strengths.

But modest competence in diverse skills compounds capabilities. Well-roundedness expands possibilities.

For hard skills, there are no shortcuts: Consistent, deep practice over time. But set your sights on measurable improvement through deliberate learning sprints, not perfection.

Be a devoted student.

With soft skills, seek experiences outside your comfort zone. Attempt unfamiliar social roles.

Observe those excelling where you fall short. Their mindsets and behaviors hold keys to your growth.

Finally, connect the dots across disparate fields. Hybrid thinking generates breakthroughs. What cognitive technologies might be applied to medical puzzles? How can biophilic design principles inform urban planning? Think linearly and laterally.

Stay on the boundary, continuing to push it outward. Avoid settling into the false comfort of stagnation.

Remember Newton’s dictum that “knowledge is about depth and headroom — not just breadth!”

Cultivating a Culture of Competence

At an organizational level, the Circle of Competence is just as vital. Business strategy should align with and amplify collective expertise.

But even more crucially, leaders must nurture a culture that rewards intellectual humility. Psychological safety is essential for accurately locating skill gaps. People must know admissions of uncertainty won’t be punished.

Model candid disclosure of your own knowledge frontiers.

Share stories of when stepping outside your circles backfired. Emphasize learning from failures, not just successes.

Also, provide resources and incentives for skill development. Support employees’ growth experiments through funding pilot programs and passion projects. Budget for continuous education.

Keep also expanding your team’s collective circles, not just individual ones. Hire for cognitive diversity, not simply merit. Disparate mindsets breed creative friction.

Finally, maintain high levels of knowledge flow. Cross-pollinate ideas across silos and specialities. Rotate staff through different roles. Multidisciplinary collaboration prevents insular thinking.

Progress Compounds

Mastery doesn’t grow in a vacuum. Abilities intertwine, multiplying talent in unseen ways. Excellence in one skill catalyzes another in a virtuous cycle.

Like compound interest, knowledge builds on knowledge. Each new competency acquired strengthens those adjacent to it. Expertise reinforces expertise.

Skills evolve symbiotically, bound by this hidden force. As we patiently expand the boundaries of our talents, they feed into each other, accelerating our potential.

Dive deeper into a few focused domains and watch your capabilities surge exponentially. Commit to the upward spiral of mastery. Momentum amplifies when competence compounds.

Here are a few ways the Circle of Competence model can be applied to personal relationships and decision-making:

Relationships:

• Identify your strengths and limitations in emotional intelligence, communication styles, conflict management etc. to determine the relationship roles you thrive in.
• Get honest feedback from trusted ones on your interpersonal blindspots that may be damaging connections.
• Work on expanding your competence in areas like empathy, listening skills, and understanding different personalities.
• Avoid overreaching into types of relationships you lack the skills to navigate well currently. Don’t rely on charm to cover up incompetence.
• Partner with those whose competencies complement yours to create well-rounded relationships. Leverage each other’s strengths.

Decision-Making:

• Determine areas where your past decisions were most thoughtful vs impulsive. What conditions bring out your best judgment?
• Before making an important choice, pause to check if it falls within your circle of expertise. Don’t let ego or FOMO override objectivity.
• For unfamiliar choices, seek counsel from those competent in that domain. Don’t assume you know best. Mitigate blindspots.
• Over time, work to expand your decision-making competence by learning mental models, critical thinking skills, and bias awareness. But stay humble about current limits.

The key is balancing self-belief with honest self-awareness — identifying current competence frontiers so you can keep expanding them wisely.

So take up the exhilarating challenge. Continuously refine your self-awareness of precisely where your skills apply. Then get to work diligently enlarging that scope — mastery by inches

© Buzzedison

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First Published on Medium