Does Our Sales Incompetence Prevent Us from Seeing Our Sales Incompetence?

This is reflective of a case in New York where a bank robber went in as ‘himself’ to rob a bank.  When the police asked him why he didn’t wear any disguise he said that he put lemon juice on his face, took a Polaroid picture of himself and he was nowhere in the picture, thus he concluded that lemon juice made his face disappear.  Click here to read the article The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is by Errol Morris.

A couple of psychologists got a hold of that interesting fact/story and decided to look at it from a “competency” standpoint. They have concluded that our incompetence precludes us from seeing our incompetence. 

The reverse of that is why the highest achievers among us rate themselves the poorest when it comes to self-assessing a skill.  The reason is that they see where they could be and where they are and detect a major gap.

A less competent person rates themselves higher because they don’t see much of a gap between where they are and where they could be. They don’t think they can be any better than where they are.

So the next time someone asks you about a skill that’s a core skill for your success, make sure that you think about your answer and be cautious about self-0assessing too high.  If you do, that may be an indication that there’s a lot of room to grow.