Latest / Career Skills with Fexingo: Hard Skills, Soft Skills, and Future-Proofing Your Career / How Skill Dissonance Creates Hidden Career Friction
Transcript
- Lucas: I want to talk about something I’ve been calling skill dissonance — the gap between how you see your own abilities and how others actually perceive them in practice. Luna: That sounds a lot like the classic feedback gap, but I suspect you mean something slightly more specific. Lucas: Exactly. Feedback gap is broad — it’s any difference between your self-assessment and external assessment. Skill dissonance is a particular strain of that. It happens when you genuinely believe you’re strong in a skill — say, communication — but your colleagues, your manager, your reports consistently experience you differently. And you have no idea. Luna: So it’s not impostor syndrome, where you think you’re worse than you are. It’s the opposite — you think you’re better, or at least adequate, but the data says otherwise. Lucas: Right. And the tricky part is that skill dissonance feels invisible from the inside. You have a self-narrative: 'I’m a clear communicator, I always over-communicate, I send follow-up emails.' And that narrative is true from your perspective. But if your team feels micromanaged or your stakeholders feel talked down to, there’s a gap — and it’s costing you trust, influence, and promotions. Luna: I’ve seen this play out with a project manager named Elena at a mid-size tech company. She prided herself on her communication. She’d send detailed daily status updates, hold weekly syncs, and always cc'd the right people. She thought she was the gold standard. Lucas: And what was the actual perception? Luna: Her team described her as controlling. They felt she was checking up on them, not empowering them. Her manager said she was creating noise, not clarity. Elena was stunned when she heard that in her performance review. Lucas: That’s a textbook case. Elena’s self-assessment was anchored in effort — she was working hard at communication. But the impact was the opposite of what she intended. The dissonance wasn’t in the skill itself, it was in the application. She was communicating for her own comfort, not for her audience’s needs. Luna: So how does someone even discover they have skill dissonance? Most people don’t get that kind of honest feedback unless they ask for it specifically. Lucas: And even when they ask, they often get vague answers. 'You’re doing fine' or 'Maybe just be more concise.' That’s not actionable. So I like a structured approach I call the perception gap audit. You pick one skill you think you’re strong in — say, strategic thinking — and you ask five people who work with you closely to give you a specific example of a time you demonstrated it well, and one time you didn’t. Luna: That’s gutsy. Most people wouldn't want to hear the 'didn't' part. Lucas: That’s exactly why it works. The 'didn't' examples are where the dissonance lives. Elena, in our example, might hear: 'When you sent that daily status email, it felt like you didn’t trust us to move forward without oversight.' That’s a concrete signal that her communication, while well-intended, was landing as distrust. Luna: And from there, she could adjust. Maybe instead of daily updates, she shifts to a shared dashboard that the team updates themselves, and she only checks in on exceptions. Lucas: Exactly. That’s a behavioral tweak, not a personality overhaul. And that’s the encouraging part about skill dissonance — once you uncover it, the fix is often small. It’s not about learning a whole new skill; it’s about recalibrating the expression of a skill you already have. Luna: It reminds me of a concept in user experience design: the gap between the designer’s mental model and the user’s mental model. If they don’t match, the product feels broken. Same thing here — your mental model of your skill doesn’t match your colleagues’ experience of it, so your 'product' feels off. Lucas: That’s a great analogy. And just like in UX, you don’t fix it by guessing. You gather data, you identify the friction points, and you iterate. The perception gap audit is essentially a user test for your professional brand. Luna: You know, this kind of conversation is exactly why listener support matters for the show. We keep Fexingo ad-free so we can dig into frameworks like this without a sponsor break interrupting the flow. If you’ve found these episodes useful for your own career thinking, you can support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it’s a small gesture that helps us keep the lights on and the conversation focused. And now back to skill dissonance — I think there’s another layer here that’s worth exploring. Luna: What’s that? Lucas: Skill dissonance doesn’t just affect how others see you. It also affects your own decision-making. If you think you’re a great negotiator but your deals keep falling apart at the last minute, you’ll probably blame external factors — 'the other party was unreasonable' — instead of looking at your approach. Luna: So dissonance creates a blind spot that reinforces itself. You don’t seek feedback because you think you’re fine, and the lack of feedback means you never correct. Lucas: Exactly. It’s a self-sealing loop. And it’s particularly dangerous for senior leaders, because the higher you go, the less direct feedback you get. People start telling you what you want to hear. So the dissonance can grow quietly for years. Luna: Is there any research on how common this is? I remember a study from a few years ago that said something like 90 percent of people rate themselves as above-average communicators. Lucas: That’s the classic Lake Wobegon effect. But more specifically, a 2023 study from the Harvard Business Review found that in 360-degree reviews, the biggest gaps between self and others were in the areas of emotional intelligence and strategic thinking. People consistently overrated themselves there. Luna: Those are exactly the skills that matter most for promotion into senior roles. Lucas: Right. So the cost of skill dissonance is real. You can be technically excellent but held back by a perception gap you don’t even know exists. That’s why I think the perception gap audit should be a regular practice, maybe once a quarter, focused on a different skill each time. Luna: How do you actually ask for those examples without making people feel awkward? If I ask a colleague, 'Give me a time I wasn’t strategic,' they might freeze. Lucas: True. So I recommend framing it around a shared goal. You say something like: 'I’m trying to be more effective in our planning meetings. Could you share a moment where I helped move the conversation forward, and one where I might have derailed it?' That makes it about the process, not about you as a person. It lowers the stakes. Luna: And you get concrete examples you can actually work with. Lucas: Exactly. And once you have the examples, you look for patterns. If three people mention that you interrupt during strategy sessions, that’s not a one-off — that’s a dissonance signal. Your self-perception might be 'engaged and contributing,' but the external perception is 'dominating the conversation.' Luna: And then the fix is as simple as waiting three seconds before you speak, or writing down your idea instead of saying it immediately. Lucas: Exactly. Tiny behavioral shift, huge perception change. That’s the beauty of addressing skill dissonance — it’s often the smallest adjustments that close the biggest gaps. Luna: I think a lot of our listeners probably have at least one area where they’re experiencing dissonance and don’t know it. I know I’m going to try the audit on my own 'active listening' skill — I suspect I’m not as good at it as I think. Lucas: That’s a great one to start with. And if you find a gap, you’ll know exactly what to adjust. Thanks for the conversation, Luna. Luna: Thanks, Lucas. See everyone next time.