Hi, Mary - thanks for your kind comments.

Another thing that occurs to me about folks who believe their skills are better than they actually are.  I am seeing an increasing number of articles around this issue - mostly pointing out that people in general tend to view themselves as more (smarter, effective, better, and so on) than they actually are.  Makes sense that managers would also fall prey to this human condition.

After all, there's some truth to the observation that " ... all the children are above average".

This probably connects to the Fundamental Attribution Error, where we attribute own our shortcomings to circumstances, other people's failures, or something else external to our own skills, while someone else is just "stupid" or "inept", indicating a basic failure of competency.  Source:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

Here's a few citations for the Manager superiority illusion thing:

Illusory Superiority (Wikipedia):  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

David Brent effect:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/9241721/The-David-Brent-effect-managers-think-they-are-better-than-they-are.html

Your posts are always such fun to digest and kick around:)

John