When you think of your own circle of competence, you quickly come to realize that this model is a way to express self-knowledge — and self-knowledge in turn helps you articulate your circle with more clarity.
Your circle effectively begins with you. There is comfort and truth in that. Plagued by self-doubt, if you were to tell me, you don’t know that you are good at anything, that perhaps your circle of competence is empty, I would disagree like this: “Impossible! There is at least one obvious thing that you know better than anyone else!” When you then raise your eyebrows and want to know what that would be, I would respond “You! You know best what it is like to be you!“
It is so obvious, you cannot help but smile at it, even if just in exasperation. That makes it a great place to start. But where to go from there?
For sure your circle of competence is not empty and contains at least a certain amount of self-knowledge. This is true for all of us, individually.
Everyone of us could likely claim “I know what it is like to be me better than anyone else!” However, what that actually means differs from person to person, because we are all different — and our combination of skills, beliefs and lived experiences are all different.
So: Your circle of competence contains your knowledge of you. Mine contains my knowledge of me.
This still feels obvious, does it not? And yet.
You ever hear or read about someone else, what they decide or do and you’re just not getting them? Actually, it seems so clear to you: They are not getting it! Are they blind? You find yourself thinking or even saying out loud “if I were them, here’s what I would do instead …?! Obviously!”
But of course there is the blind spot: You are not them. You do not have their lived experiences, their beliefs, their personal history. If you truly were them – carrying all of their self-knowledge – there is a good chance that you made the same choices they did.
I am not at all saying that people always make the best, rational decisions, given the information they have. That is clearly not the case.
However, it is also true that it is way too easy to project your own perspective onto others, assuming you know better, when it is very easy to overlook that just as your decisions are rooted in your own (self) knowledge, theirs are rooted in theirs.
We all have our own circle of competence and each person’s circle begins with their self-knowledge. Your knowledge of you is in your circle, not in mine.
You know less than you think — and so do I.