> If your organisation needs to rely on 'confidence' to determine who is competent, then by definition it cannot directly discern which employees are competent.
That's correct specifically because in the absence of the ability to judge competence (the original research by Dunning and Kruger showed that those low in competence overestimated the competence of others as well as their own), confidence becomes the stand-in. So over time if you don't start with the most competent people in positions of leadership, and maybe even if you do, you end up with the most confident (and probably least competent) people in them over several refresh cycles.
That's correct specifically because in the absence of the ability to judge competence (the original research by Dunning and Kruger showed that those low in competence overestimated the competence of others as well as their own), confidence becomes the stand-in. So over time if you don't start with the most competent people in positions of leadership, and maybe even if you do, you end up with the most confident (and probably least competent) people in them over several refresh cycles.
Longer form piece on the subject: https://hbr.org/2014/07/the-dangers-of-confidence/