Managing Leadership^®

We began this part of our current series by discussing the danger of overconfidence among the incompetent from two angles: 1) the incompetent who are overconfident, and 2) the overconfident who are incompetent. Here, again, is the original axiom, together with its first corollary, that cover these points:

• The dumber they are, the smarter they think they are.

• The smarter they think they are, the dumber they are.

Discovering that it might be more difficult than we had thought to recognize incompetence, we went on to consider how we might know competence when we see it. Here, again, is the second corollary generated from our original axiom:

• The dumber they think they are, the smarter they are.

While reviewing the second corollary, we saw that Socrates adopted a peculiar attitude – the profession of ignorance – to force himself to reject glibly offered assumptions; rather, he re-subjected them to questioning in order to ensure he understood them. As it happens, he usually discovered in the process that they had fatal flaws, casting into doubt the beliefs and practices that were built upon them.

With that in mind, let’s take a brief look at the last corollary:

• The smarter they are, the dumber they think they are.

On the face of it, this would appear to be a simple restatement of the preceding one. But I think there is a distinction suggested here that does make a meaningful difference. After all, we know that, for all his protestation of puzzlement and ignorance in the Dialogues, Socrates was in fact smart, and knew that he was.

But his intelligence didn’t consist in his possession of greater knowledge than others – and certainly not in conspicuously displayed overconfidence. It resided in his willingness – eagerness – to consider the possibility that he was actually ignorant regarding any particular point or context, and to thus submit received wisdom to collaborative re-examination – to question it.

Throughout this part of the series, we have noted that we should be cautious of our presumptions not only that we are able to identify the incompetent around us, but also that we aren’t to be found, even if only sometimes, among them. Here’s another corollary for you: Socrates not only resisted allowing himself to be identified as being inordinately smart – he refused to presume the same about others. He questioned everything – and everyone.

Keeping that thought close at hand, let’s consider perhaps one of the most enlightening of our previous quotes from The Apology. Socrates, striving to find a man smarter than he in order to disprove an oracle, attempted to discover such men among the eminent citizens of Athens. Here is what he had to say about a typical one of these:

. . . he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him.”

There is nothing slight about that advantage – it’s huge. And you don’t have to have Socrates’s intellect to attain it for yourself – all you need is his attitude.

Do you have it?

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Here is a list of all the posts in this popular series:

1. Radiating Imbecility
2. Rays of hope
3. Pulsating inconsistency
4. Radiating confidence
5. Blind faith
6. Mirror, mirror . . .
7. Socratic genius
8. Socratic ignorance
9. Socratic method
10. First principles
11. The Socratic attitude
12. Why we do what we do
13. Recon by fire

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Today’s tip: Please take a moment to view this insightful piece by Miki Saxon, at Leadership Turn, commenting on recent research into the topic of our current discussion.
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