The Illusion of Perfection: How Positive Illusion Causes Workplace Problems

Imagine with me this situation...

A stranger enters the room, reads some information from a piece of paper in less than 90 seconds, and leaves. And then I asked you to guess this person’s IQ. Would you be able to?

Of course, you can make a guess, but most probably you will say ‘’how can I accurately guess the IQ of someone that I just saw for the first time and for less than 2 minutes?’’

But let us say that I put you under pressure to make an assumption, and after a few minutes, you made a guess.

Later, we asked this stranger who entered the room, to make a guess about his own IQ. Who do you think made a better guess?

Most probably you will say the stranger, but maybe you will be surprised to know that most probably you did. You made a better guess.

What I shared with you now was part of a psychological experiment conducted by 2 psychologists, Peter Borkenau and Anette Liebler, from Bielefeld University in Germany, where they gathered a group of people in a room and asked them to predict the IQ of a stranger who entered the room, sat behind a table and picked a piece of paper and started reading the weather report in less than 2 minutes, and then walked out of the room.

When they conducted this experiment, they found out that the people who were asked to predict the IQ of the stranger made better predictions than the prediction of the ‘’stranger’’ who was reading the weather report about himself. Their predictions were about 66% more accurate!!

But here is the catch. It is not that you -or the other people who were asked to predict the stranger’s IQ- are better predictors. It is that we are not good at evaluating ourselves. We are poor self-evaluators.

And why exactly are we poor self-evaluators?

Because of what they call in psychology the ‘’Positive Illusion’’.

What is ‘‘positive illusion’’?

Positive illusions are unrealistically favorable attitudes that people have towards themselves or to people who are close to them.

And in 1988, two psychologists, Taylor and Brown, identified 3 positive illusions:

1- Unrealistic and excessively high assessments of one’s own abilities, or what is called ‘’the above-average'' effect.

2- Unrealistic optimism about the future.

3- Illusion of control. Which is an exaggerated assessment of the individual's personal control over environmental circumstances.

In this article, I will speak about point number 1 and the ''above-average'' effect.

The Above Average effect

According to research done by David Dunning, Chip Heath, and Jerry M. Suls in 2004, people, on average, tend to believe themselves to be above average.

In a survey of nearly one million high school seniors, 70% stated that they had “above average” leadership skills, but only 2% felt their leadership skills were “below average.”

On their ability to get along with others, almost all respondents rated themselves as at least average—with 60% rating themselves in the top 10% of this ability and 25% rating themselves in the top 1%.

College students think they are more likely than their peers to live past 80 and have a good job; they think they are less likely to acquire a drinking problem or suffer a heart attack.

Positive Illusion and its impact on change initiatives in the workplace

Positive illusion and specifically the above-average effect, lead to several problems in the workplace:

1- Positive illusion makes it hard to evaluate ourselves and to know exactly how we are doing. Accordingly, change (on a personal scale) and change initiatives (on a corporate scale) become very hard to consider and execute.

2- People become reluctant to improve or to ask for support. Because why should they improve if they believe that they are above average? And why should they ask for support, if they do not detect that there is a problem?

A personal story relevant to this point: From my own practical experience, leaders inside corporations who are affected by the positive illusion bias usually pass through three phases (or at least 2 of them). I experienced all of them while working with leaders and teams:

1- Denial…We don’t have big issues. Everything is fine.

2- Discovery…Actually, we have an issue.

3- Shock…We never thought that we had such problems and deep issues.

 I rarely had a first discussion with a leader and this leader told me ‘’we have big issues’’, or ‘’we need to change immediately’’.

Usually, when I talk with leaders, they first claim that ‘’everything is fine’’ and that ‘’nothing unusual. Just the normal day-to-day business challenges’’. (phase 1: Denial)

But after a while and having several discussions, they start saying ‘’actually, we have an issue and I believe we need your help in xyz.’’ (phase 2: Discovery).

And after I enter the company and I start working with the leaders and teams, more hidden problems become evident, and they start saying ‘’we never thought that we had such problems and that these problems are causing us all of these hidden losses. We never felt their impact because they are not reflected directly in a clear KPI like ‘’costs’’ or ‘’expenses’’ or ‘’scrap rate’’ or ‘’turnover rate’’..etc.’’ (phase 3: Shock).

I even remember one time when I conducted an engagement level analysis for a team as a part of a project that I was running with a big multinational company.

This engagement level analysis showed that their engagement level is more or less around 30-35%.

The analysis showed that they were disengaged. And there were clear signals that a lot of members of the team were disengaged. And the team members confirmed in an indirect way that their engagement level is low and that their performance can be much better, and that they have a lot of issues in the organization and with cross-functional teams.

But before this analysis and before bringing this topic officially to the table everyone was ignoring the signals because work was being done anyway and ‘’nothing unusual. Just the normal day-to-day business problems’’ (the denial phase).

On top of that, the standards are not so high in most big companies which is one of the reasons why it is hard to judge that someone’s performance or engagement level is low unless this person failed totally or made a disaster (I will write a separate article about this point).

However, the question is not if the work is done or not. The question is how much money we are losing each day regardless of whether the work is done or not because we have disengaged employees who are trying to do the bare minimum.

Later, I took the report, I showed it to one of the leading management figures inside the company and then he said ‘’I truly never thought that the situation was bad like this. We need to make something fast’’ (the shock phase).

An example of ‘’Positive Illusion’’ in leadership

When it comes to self-evaluation, the positive illusion makes us evaluate ourselves as ‘’above average’’. This evaluation is not mainly based on facts or information, but it is emotional and involves interpretations. These interpretations are for events that took place in our lives, and we perceive them positively.

Let us take an example using a fake name.

James is leading a team. He is good at delegating tasks to his team members. And when he delegates tasks, his team members say that they have learned a lot. Also, other co-workers are always speaking about his delegation skills and that when he delegates someone to do a specific task, usually this person is the right person for this task.

When James hears the praise of his team members and co-workers about his delegation skills, his brain makes this interpretation ‘’They are praising me. And they are praising my delegation skills. And delegation is one of the traits of good leaders. On top of that, my boss chose me to lead this team. Then I must be really a good leader.’’

But, in reality, James is a below-average leader. Yes, he is good at delegating, but his team always complains that he doesn’t listen to them or their ideas and that he is not giving them enough feedback or trying to bring the team together.

But because leadership itself is a fluid term, a term which is ambiguous and can easily be defined differently by each person, James fell into the ‘’positive illusion’’ trap and considered himself ‘’above average’’ just because he is good at one of the characteristics of great leadership (as well as his emotional interpretation to other positive events from the past, like his boss choosing him to fill this leadership role).

Reducing the Positive illusion’s bias and impact on leadership.

If a term like ‘’leadership’’ is ambiguous, then let us try to make it less ambiguous.

How?

By doing 3 possible things in parallel. 1 action is the responsibility of the organization (and hiring managers), and the other 2 are the responsibility of the leader him/herself.

On an organizational level, if you are a hiring manager and you want to hire a leader who will report to you and will lead a team for example, make sure that you define exactly the needed set of leadership traits and behaviors of the leader who will be hired, before defining the KPIs or even searching for someone to fill the job opening.

You also need to make it clear to this new leader that he/she will be evaluated not only based on the results of his/her team but also based on specific behaviors and leadership traits that you want him/her to exercise with his/her team.

Then, after hiring this leader, and during the probation period, make sure that you are always evaluating his/her behavior regardless of the results and take action accordingly.

This is the first thing.

In parallel, if you are a leader and you do not want to fall into this trap, then you can do 2 things:

1-Do not rely solely on your own judgment.

Instead of relying on your own judgment or the positive feedback that someone gave you to know if you are a good leader or not, try to get more honest information.

Seek to get feedback from the people around you consistently. Seek feedback from people who know you well at work and also from people who met you a few times only (the type of questions that you will ask each group of them will be different of course).

Make it clear to the people around you (specifically your team members and colleagues at work) that you are aiming to grow personally and professionally.

Make it clear that it is important to you and that you are serious. And that when they provide you honest feedback, they will help you achieve your goals and become a better leader.

And give them time. Do not expect them to be completely honest from the first time. Trust takes time. And giving honest feedback requires trust between people.

And remember one important thing. Your team members -the people reporting to you directly- and colleagues from other teams will not volunteer to give you feedback unless you invite them to. Waiting for them to provide feedback by themselves to you directly rarely happens.

You must keep doing it all over the year and provide them with the safety needed to give their honest feedback.

In parallel, seek feedback from people who know you in a non-work-related context like friends and family members.

And remember, you do not have to accept everything that they will say and share with you. Sometimes someone can perceive you negatively after 1 or 2 times of meeting you because they misunderstood a specific action that you have taken (or even misunderstood your body language).

The goal is to search for patterns in what people will tell you and to search for things that were not appearing on your radar, and that you were doing unconsciously.

Aim for this feedback consistently and in an unofficial setting.

A personal story relevant to this point: Sometimes I ask the leaders that I work with if they go to their spouses consistently to ask their opinions about them.

I asked those leaders ‘’how many times have you gone to your wife/husband during the past year without a reason or a special occasion, and asked if they were happy with you and if there was something that you could change to make your life better together?’’  

And usually, the leader to whom I ask this question laughs and says that it rarely happens after several years of marriage. And this is very similar to what happens at work as well. We take things for granted.

2-Reduce ambiguity and aim for clarity.

One of the things that I usually do when I work with leaders is to keep challenging them to tell me ‘’what type of leaders they want to become and where they want to take their people?’’

I ask this question regardless of their leadership position and age.

The purpose of this question is to try to reduce ambiguity from one side, and from the other side, to remind them and to switch their focus in the middle of their fast-paced environments to what is important. To remember why they are doing what they are doing, and who they want to become.

And trust me, I rarely worked with a leader who answered this question directly or found an answer to this question in 1 or 2 meetings. This is why I wrote above that I ‘’keep’’ challenging them because it is an ongoing process until they come up with their own answers to these 2 questions.

When you know what type of leader you want to become, you will automatically start thinking about traits and characteristics. After that, what you need to do is to translate these characteristics and traits into behaviors that can fit your daily routine and your work environment, and then the testing starts.

You take a specific behavior because you believe that it will add value to you, your company, and the team. Then you start designing the ‘’when’’ and ‘’how’’ and ‘’frequency’’ of doing this behavior until you get to do it unconsciously (while expecting internal and external resistance that will try always to stop you from doing this behavior).

Then after a while, you measure the results. If the results are positive, then you reinforce this behavior. If not, then you modify it or even change it totally.

If every one of us who is in a leadership position started doing these 2 actions. And if the hiring managers inside the organization became focused on defining what leadership exactly means and what traits they want to see and started evaluating based on this, then we can reduce the negative impact of the ‘’positive illusion’’ on Leadership.

One final word

I already shared the paragraph below in my other article 2 weeks ago and I will keep reminding you of it whenever possible.

Changing what is happening inside our organizations nowadays is crucial. All of us are responsible and should hold each other accountable if we want to change something.

So, no matter who you are, what your title is, and where you are located, I want you to believe that we -as humans- are powerful and that you and I can make a difference.

Start with yourself and what you can do.

Do not say ‘’I am still young’’, or ‘’I am in a managerial role, but I do not have enough authority’’, or ‘’I am only 1 person, and I cannot do anything’’. You always can do something. It just starts with believing and that is what I am inviting you to do.

To believe in what we are trying to achieve together. And not only for a better future for me and you but also for my kids and your kids and the next generations.

Let us create a workplace that is attractive, healthy, and optimum for the new generations. Let us once leave something in this world better than we found it. Let us build something now, that our kids and the new generations will thank us for later. And let us do it together…This is my vision.

P.S.: If you are a fan of listening while commuting, you can find the audio version of this article here.