Facilitating Conscious Competence: Rethinking

 by Eric K. Kaufman -- 

Do you recall learning how to drive a car?  For most of us, we had experience as a passenger in a car for more than a decade before we were in the driver's seat.  As a passenger, we were blissfully unaware of the complex challenges of safely navigating a vehicle through a busy intersection.  It looked so easy, until we had to do it ourselves.  Then, suddenly, we realized there was so much to learn and keep track of.  And, there was an incentive to learn quickly, because we didn't want to harm anyone or anything and have to face the consequences.  However, after years of driving, navigating a car through a busy intersection requires relatively little conscious thought.  And, when I needed to teach my son how to drive, I had a hard time articulating all of the details involved.  Why is that?  The answer lies in the ladder of conscious competence.

As noted in a one-page overview by Bright Morning, the conscious competence ladder operationalizes our understanding of "the learning curve" and outlines a process for learning a new skill, based on the presence or absence of two distinct factors: Consciousness (i.e., awareness) and Competence (i.e., skill level).  The conscious competence learning model describes four stages:

1. Unconscious Incompetence, when we are blissfully ignorant because we don't know what we don't know.
   
2. Conscious Incompetence, when we feel vulnerable because we know that we don't have the necessary skills.
   
3. Conscious Competence, when we are self-confident because we know we have the skills to experiment and modify.
   
4. Unconscious Competence, when the skills become natural and we apply them without thinking about it.

Although the model is sometimes referred to as the "four stages of competence," the visualization of a ladder helps us think through the work of learning in a way that involves striving (or climbing).  A key starting point is to recognize that "Learning a New Skill is Easier Said Than Done."  From there, we can build resilience and scaffold the learning process (see career development program example by Taylor et al., 2022).

 

While the conscious competence learning model was developed decades ago, it has parallels with the rethinking cycle offered in 2021 by Adam Grant in Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know.  Sometimes this takes the form of learning from a mistake, as highlighted in the following graphic from page 74 of the book.  

 

 

How will you incorporate these insights into your own learning journey or the facilitation of learning for others?  While it may be uncomfortable to acknowledge our incompetence or naivety, it can be a useful start for the learning journey.  Also, once we get comfortable with rethinking, learning can be an exciting journey of discovery.  It goes beyond learning to drive; there are always new skills to learn and worlds to explore.

 

 

Acknowledgments:

Driving photo by Orkun Azap on Unsplash.

Conscious Competence Ladder graphic from Taylor et al. (2022) article on "A career development program" in Australian Journal of Career Development.

Rethinking graphic from Adam Grant's Think Again website.