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By Jeff Bell.
We can all recognise great leadership when it has happened, but where does it start?
You may be aware of leadership growth initiatives, such as my own Band of Leaders—in a tight group of 16 non-competing business leaders, we do and have:
- Group problem solving.
- Leadership coaching.
- A sense of belonging—away from the constant glare of being in charge.
- A concentration on leadership skills—what we focus on, improves.
But how can we fix a stage and track the progress of a leader?
I have repurposed a model that shows the psychological states from incompetence to competence. Initially described as “Four Stages for Learning Any New Skill”, the theory was developed in the 1970s by Noel Burch. David Robson, in The Intelligence Trap, has introduced a fifth stage.
The combined model shows that people are initially unaware of how little they know. If and when they recognise their incompetence, they consciously acquire a skill, then use it.
Eventually, the skill can be employed “automatically”—then the person is said to have acquired unconscious competence. But there may still be a serious issue.
- Unconscious incompetence
The person is often unaware of not understanding or how to do something, because no situations have arisen to demand the skill and to raise an alert to the deficit. But even when alerted that there is a skill lacking, he may deny its usefulness. He must recognize his own incompetence and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage. The length of time in this stage depends on the person’s motivation for learning and his hunger to acquire new skills.
2. Conscious incompetence
The person becomes aware that she does not understand or know how to do something. She also begins to recognize the deficit is significant and that it would be valuable to learn new skills in order to address the deficit and gain competence. The making of mistakes can be frequent and may be central to the learning process at this stage, as the learner refines the skills through practice. This means being prepared to embrace new challenges, to delay gratification and to absorb the pain of failure.
3. Conscious competence
The person understands or knows how to do something. He can demonstrate the skill or knowledge but it requires concentration and effort. It may need to be broken down into steps or detailed processes. There is often heavy conscious involvement involved executing the new skill. The frequency of mistakes begins to decline. The demand on physical and emotional energy increases. There is a growing sense of achievement and satisfaction as the repertoire of skills widens and deepens. Self-esteem and acclaim by others both reach new levels.
4. Unconscious competence
The person has had so much skill refining practice that she does not really need to think about what to do. It has become “second nature” and can be performed with minimal energy expenditure and very low frequency of errors. Because the skill is not occupying much of the person’s conscious thoughts, it can often be performed while executing another task. The person has become so comfortable with the skill she will often be able to teach it to others. She may also become less inquiring or complacent.
5. Reflective competence
The person may hit a kind of ceiling where accuracy plateaus as a result of expert biases—when he may have jumped too quickly to a decision without fully drawing on his experience, or applying a rigorous set of evaluative criteria, or exploring all possible options. He sees the danger in making assumptions, develops the capacity to explore feelings and intuitions and identifies biases before they cause harm. He will have developed high level impulse control, agile thinking systems and the wisdom of doubt in all things.
Several elements, such as helping someone to recognise a blind spot, can be compared to the Johari window, which deals with self-awareness.
Both of these models create key reference points in the Band of Leaders. We use many thinking and discussion frameworks, personality profiles and problem solving techniques in whole-of-group and 1to1 sessions.
We are climbing this pyramid.
Would you like to join us?