There’s a scientific reason we need feedback on our speaking skills. And it’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect.
In 2000, David Dunning and Justin Kruger published research called “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” In it they said, “when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it.” In other words, when we don’t have the skills we need, we falter and fail, but we can’t figure out why. We need feedback.
Knowledge of the Field
One of the reasons for this is that we need to know the very skills we lack in order to evaluate ourselves. We need knowledge of the field. Say you deliver your first business presentation. Following your presentation, your coworker asks how you feel you did. You felt confident about your presentation so you say, “great!” But what if we were to dig into that “great?” Why did you feel great? What, specifically, made it great?
You might be able to give a few guesses, but you couldn’t really say whether you did well or not if you don’t know the language and theory of the field. That takes education and research and experience. One of the things we aim to do on our blog is to help educate presenters. For example, check out our blog on the secret C.O.D.E. of a great presentation to see how content, organization, delivery, and effectiveness can make you a successful speaker. But even if you study your field, it still helps to have someone else giving you feedback because self-assessment is inherently flawed. Here’s why.
We Overestimate Our Performance
Charles Darwin said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” If you doubt that, consider that Dunning and his colleagues found in one of their studies that “roughly 90 percent” of participants who were asked about concepts that the research had made up “claimed some knowledge of at least one of the nine fictitious concepts we asked them about.” Dunning goes on to say, “A whole battery of studies conducted by myself and others have confirmed that people who don’t know much about a given set of cognitive, technical, or social skills tend to grossly overestimate their prowess and performance, whether it’s grammar, emotional intelligence, logical reasoning, firearm care and safety, debating, or financial knowledge.” This proves that often, when we don’t know something, we pretend that we do or we convince ourselves that we do.
It could be that you give a truly great presentation by field standards. However, the Dunning-Kruger effect says that we can’t be the most accurate judge of that. One of the best ways to truly evaluate your speaking skills is to get feedback from 1) someone who knows the field and 2) who isn’t you.
That’s where Ethos3 comes in. We’ve got years of experience helping speakers just like you with presentation design and delivery. Ready to get some feedback? Get in touch with one of our experts now.
