Have you met Chad? Popularized on TikTok and other social platforms, creators refer to Chad as a brash, overly self-confident caricature whose unquestioning belief in his abilities is the key to his success. As we know, humor only lands when there is that internal “yessss” of truth.
We’ve all met someone like Chad, might have worked for someone like Chad…and the challenge is how to know if *we* might have some Chad characteristics in us as leaders?
We may believe our teams are functioning well, but in the meantime, the team is having a very different “side-eye” experience—struggling with communication, missing a few deadlines, and feeling uncomfortable speaking up about the salty problems.
This disconnect between what leaders think is going on and what’s actually happening is what we sometimes call the “daylight” between leadership and team perceptions. In this post, we’ll dive into why this gap exists (at some level, in every team), how it impacts team dynamics, and what leaders can do about it.
Grab your sunglasses…the truth can feel glaring.
The Leadership Perspective Gap
Leaders have a bird’s-eye view of the team and its activities, while team members deal with the day-to-day realities. Understandably, leaders tend to focus on outcomes—deliverables, deadlines, and big wins.
The team is more attuned to how it feels as they work to hit deadlines, and if the priorities have been well communicated, feel logical, and there is alignment on roles and responsibilities. Is there a supportive vibe? Is it psychologically safe to speak up when things go wrong?
Some consequential research (stay tuned) shows that leaders often overestimate their abilities. There are positional elements…for example, it’s a natural consequence of leaders being one step removed from the daily grind, but team members also do not want leaders micro-managing. We see leaders sometimes misdiagnosing underperformance where there are actually highly capable team members in a dysfunctioning organizational structure. Symptoms include missed opportunities, slow productivity gains, communication fault lines.
Recognizing this gap is the first step to closing it.
But why does it happen in the first place? The world of behavioral science offers some clues. Let’s start with the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect on Leadership
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where people tend to overestimate their competence based on minimal training or skill development. This phenomenon can be particularly sneaky for leaders who are successful in one domain, then misapply their confidence in another domain. For a deep dive, check out Adam Grant’s interview with David Dunning in July for his WorkLife podcast.
Here are two ways we’ve seen this play out:
- A strong C-suite leader in one domain (eg. Engineering, Finance) says “I’ll take over People/HR”. Being great in one area doesn’t mean they’re equally skilled in other key aspects of leadership in a new domain. We’ve never seen a Chief People Officer take over a CFO or Engineering organization, although we have seen interim situations where the skills of leadership can apply across multiple organizations without domain expertise. And there certainly are some leaders who can successfully lead without domain expertise, the question is, how do you know if people are actually following the leader? (Not positionally, but with actual respect and growth)
- The most regular way this shows up is when a highly-skilled individual contributor gets promoted to be a people manager, and after a class or two on management, they overestimate their ability to lead effectively, especially regarding key leadership skills like emotional intelligence, fostering psychological safety, or spotting and resolving dysfunction with a positive outcome.
The result? Leaders might think everything’s going great with the team, while the reality on the ground is far different. Teams might feel unheard, overwhelmed, or even unsupported, but leaders are unaware of these challenges because they’re trapped in this cognitive bias.
To make matters trickier, some leaders maintain a blind spot where issues like miscommunication, unspoken frustrations, or missed opportunities can linger unchecked. The more self-aware a leader can be, the more likely they are to close that gap between perception and reality.
But how can leaders become more self-aware and avoid falling into the Dunning-Kruger trap? Enter the research of Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer.
Insights from Ellen Langer’s Research on Cognitive Bias
Harvard psychology professor Ellen Langer’s pioneering research on mindfulness spans decades. Her findings offer a powerful antidote to the blind spots created by the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Langer’s research shows that when people practice mindful awareness, they’re better able to see things as they truly are, rather than through the filter of their assumptions or past experiences. Mindfulness in this context means being present, attentive, and open to new perspectives. Langer’s research also suggests reframing judgments by seeking understanding. Leaders can avoid dismissing ideas of team members that don’t fit with their worldview by seeking to understand the reasoning behind people’s ideas which promotes learning and innovation.
Langer’s work also touches on overconfidence and the illusion of control, both of which align with the Dunning-Kruger effect. Leaders who are overconfident in their abilities might believe they have everything under control, but this can prevent them from seeing problems that seem obvious to the team. She suggests acknowledging that situations are constantly changing, so avoid relying on past solutions for current problems.
Langer encourages leaders to embrace flexibility in their thinking. By considering multiple viewpoints and remaining open to new information, leaders can foster psychological safety and address issues before they escalate.
In short, the more mindful leaders are with flexible thinking, the better equipped they are to identify the gaps between their perception and the team’s reality.
Back to Chad: Are There Benefits to Overconfidence?
While overconfidence can create blind spots, there is a flip side. In fast-paced environments, the confidence to decide instead of waiting for perfect information can avoid analysis paralysis—where teams are stuck in energy-sucking, endless deliberation without making progress.
Leaders who make swift decisions can keep the team moving forward. This momentum creates iterative learning opportunities to evaluate results in real-time. If a decision turns out to be less than ideal, a sense of direction helps unify the team and inspire action.
Even so, as we’ve seen, overconfidence can be a double-edged sword. This brings us to the critical question: How can leaders strike the right blend?
Optimizing the Blend: How Leaders Can Bridge the Daylight Gap
So, how do leaders tone down the Dunning-Kruger effect yet remain decisive and effective? The key lies in finding the balance between confidence and self-awareness, and that’s where Forshay can help.
The strong approach to bridge the gap between a leader’s perception and the team’s reality is to bring an outside perspective—someone who isn’t embedded in the day-to-day dynamics and can offer a clearer view. This is an area where our team at Forshay loves to play—bringing in objective insight: we can step in as a “team gardener,” helping leaders see hidden challenges, untapped opportunities, and areas where the team could improve.
For example, several Forshay clients asked for leadership development workshops and growth opportunities for their teams after the tricky hiring freezes (or, for others, post-layoff), so that teams could keep growing in affordable ways. Yet after a quick discovery asking team members what they value most, the answers for what kind of development was valued were very different from organization to organization, and in some cases, the desire was for more clarity on team roles and responsibilities (vs workshops). What the leaders *thought* would be valued (if we had been hired just to execute a specific workshop, for example), would not have hit the mark of what would have landed as time – or money – well spent. The leadership team believed they knew what the team might want, but with a quick outside discovery by our team, we helped align the team’s hopes with the leaders’ goals. This is also something we see again and again in re-orgs and new ways of working…there is often daylight between what the leadership thinks will be the ideal model going forward, and what the team wants considered in the process as they are multiple ways to organize and redefine the future. And as the objective outsider, we often get multiple versions of “the truth” and can help navigate to a shared vision forward.
This can be a tricky puzzle. At Forshay, our consultants have the insight and experience to understand the business goals, leadership personalities, company culture, and align everyone to a win-win-win solution.
The “daylight” between a leader’s perception of their team and the team’s actual experience is a challenge every company faces at some point. At Forshay, we help leaders answer these questions by offering real-time, data-driven insights into team dynamics, capabilities, and growth potential. Reach out for a coffee chat to learn more.
