Why Meta Cognition, Why Now?

By Ali Lalieu

April 2026

In her latest book, Strong Ground, Dr Brené Brown names Metacognition as one of the top five skill/mindsets leaders need to develop to be ready for ‘a future that’s already upon us’, because it builds intellectual humility, curiosity over certainty, better informed decision-making and self-awareness (less ego and more learning).

Without it, leaders tend to overestimate their capability, shut down feedback and create cultures where confidence is rewarded over competence.

In a brittle, anxious, uncertain world, the leadership differentiator is no longer just what we know, it’s how we think about what we know.

Metacognition.

In this ‘The Curiosity Shop’ podcast, Brené Brown and Adam Grant describe Metacognition as:

“The ability to notice what your mind is doing, evaluate it, and deliberately change it.”

They break Metacognition into two parts:

• Awareness: noticing your thoughts, assumptions, and gaps

• Regulation: adjusting your thinking based on that awareness

At its core, it’s the intellectual humility to recognise what you don’t understand, and what it will take to understand it.

Calibration is the bridge between the two (an important part of Metacognition) speaks to how closely your confidence aligns with the reality of your situation.

Metacognition drives calibration:

• Low Metacognition leads to poor calibration, which results in the Dunning–Kruger effect (overconfidence). Dunning–Kruger is what happens when awareness is missing.

• High Metacognition leads to more accurate calibration, which develops grounded confidence.

Here are some examples of Dunning- Kruger in action!

• People with the worst sense of humour are more likely to overestimate how funny they are

• People who struggle the most in emotional intelligence are the most likely to exaggerate how great they are at reading and managing emotions

• People who do poorly on a trivia test are the most overconfident about their expertise

For highly technical professional teams, the invitation is to recognise that their technical expertise may not translate to accurate self-awareness across all domains.

The differentiator again becomes Metacognition and emotional intelligence, not just capability.

Here are some Coaching questions for a team looking to challenge themselves to build Metacognition.

1. Awareness: “What might we be missing?” Create space for intellectual humility.

• What assumptions are we making that we haven’t tested?

• Where might our confidence be ahead of our evidence?

• What might we not yet know yet that could change our view?

• What if the opposite were true?

• What perspectives are not in the room right now?

 2. Calibration: “How do we know we’re on the right track?” Bring confidence into alignment with reality.

• What data or evidence supports our confidence?

• How would we rate our confidence (1–10), and what specifically justifies that number?

• What would increase or decrease our confidence?

• Where have we been overconfident before, and what did we learn?

• How are we testing our assumptions?

 3. Self-Assessment: “How accurate is our view of ourselves?” Challenge blind spots with care.

• What feedback have we received that we may have dismissed too quickly?

• Where might we be overestimating our capability or readiness?

• What skills would an external expert say we still need to build?

• What would “not yet competent” look like here?

• Where could we be confusing familiarity with mastery?
  

 4. Learning Orientation: “What would it take to get better?” Shift from ego to growth.

• What would great look like, and how far are we from that, really?

• What are we not yet practicing that would improve our performance?

• Where do we need more input, training, or challenge?

• What experiments could we run to test our thinking?

• Who could stretch our thinking or disagree with us constructively?

5. Reality Checks: “Let’s pressure test this” Introduce productive friction.

• If we had to defend this decision to a critical board, what would they question?

• What would a competitor say we’re underestimating?

• What risks might we be minimising or ignoring?

• What does smart failure look like?

• If this goes wrong, what will we wish we had questioned earlier?

6. Psychological Safety Lever: “Make it safe to not know” Essential for surfacing Dunning–Kruger patterns.

• Where do we feel pressure to appear certain or competent?

• What would make it safer to say “I don’t know” here?

• How are we rewarding curiosity vs. confidence in this team?

• Who hasn’t spoken yet, and what might they be thinking?

• What’s one thing you’re unsure about but haven’t said?

When teams build this capability, they strengthen their calibration, aligning confidence with actual capability, creating space for intellectual humility, curiosity, and honest conversations.

In the language of Brené Brown and Adam Grant, this is the shift from knowing to learning, and it’s what prepares teams not just to perform, but to adapt and thrive in complexity.

Cheers Ali x