“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light that most frightens us…”
--quoted by Nelson Mandela, 1994 Inaugural Speech
I mentioned in my last blog that 'no matter how gifted or talented, nobody comes into a job fully up to speed'. It just will not happen. Nope. Won’t happen. In fact, there is a definite process for attaining competency. And, for the record, competency is the quality of being adequately or well qualified physically and/mentally for a particular undertaking. In my experience, the gaining of competence involves awareness, understanding and mastery.
Several years ago, I heard this process broken down into four phases. The four phases were described as Unconscious Incompetence, Conscious Incompetence, Unconscious Competence and, finally, Conscious Competence. Allow me to elaborate on each of the phases as it relates to mastering a certain task or combination of tasks-- i.e., a job.
We come into a job not knowing what we don’t know. This is Unconscious Incompetence. Simply put, “I don’t know what I don’t know." This is the period of trial and error and ‘fake it till you make it’. We project a confident demeanor; we pretend we knew a particular approach was risky’; we put forth points of view intended to impress—yet devoid of certainty and/or facts. During this phase, feedback is intense and swift. Our learning curve is steep and fraught with anxiety. Yet, it is during this phase that well- meaning colleagues and good bosses come to the rescue. They point out, in very clear terms, what we need to know to be successful in the job. With their help, we are on track to the next phase of gaining competence—Conscious Incompetence.
In this new phase, we are, at least, beginning to ‘know what we didn’t know’. At this point, we become conscious of the voids in our knowledge, skills and abilities needed to do the job in an acceptable manner. Conscious Incompetence is a critical phase in our development. Because, it is in this phase that we are able to identify and isolate specific areas of development needed to be successful in this job. It is during this phase that the performance appraisal process becomes more than just perfunctory. To use an athletic term, this were we start to become “fundamentally sound”. We begin to grasp the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the job—both ‘the what’ and ‘the how’ aspects of performance. The job requirements begin to make more sense to us. Heck, we are even able to help the ‘newbie’ who, like us not too long ago, is trying to get their ‘head around’ the what and how of doing the job.
And, as we begin to share our knowledge of job requirements with others, a strange thing happens to us. We become aware of what we are good at in performing our job. This zone of awareness is moving us towards Conscious Competence. During this phase we exude a confidence in our ability to do what is expected. We take initiative without getting approval at each step of the process; we see opportunities for improvement; and, we feel the job getting smaller and less daunting. Out of the ashes of uncertainty, fear of failure and just plain ignorance, we rise like the mythical Phoenix bird. As the great boxer, Muhammad Ali, once said, we are “not cocky, but confident”. We think that we know what we know.
But, alas, the next phase moves us back into the unconscious realm— more specifically, Unconscious Competence. Fact is that we don’t know all that we really know. So much of how we perform our jobs becomes rote, routine and automatic. This is revealed to us when we struggle to explain to people what we really do on a daily basis, and what our job really consists of and requires from us. We are in that phase where an objective party who has observed us can reveal us to ourselves. This is the phase where instincts informed by experiences kicks in to enhance our performance; this is where we begin to question how we “pulled it off”; this is where we are becoming a bit bored--because we have seen every business cycle, every seasonality surprise and every annual crisis. If not aware of what’s happening, we can easily slip into cynicism. We don’t have the time and/or patience to deal with those in the earlier phases of competency development. This is where we should be looking for new challenges. Look for challenges that involve a new role in the existing job. For example, consider becoming a mentor or moving out of your comfort zone by transitioning to a different role.
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