Abraham Maslow wrote about the four levels of learning. As we push ourselves beyond our comfort in learning, we progress through the four levels. Once you understand and have awareness with the levels you can self-identify what level you are in and how to progress in your skill sets.
Level One-Unconscious Incompetence
This level is when you don’t know that you don’t know. Imagine learning to drive a stick shift and you are sitting in the passenger seat watching someone demonstrate it who has driven one for years, at that moment you are unconscious to the fact that you are incompetent to the skill. Once you get behind the wheel you quickly, in this scenario, move into level two.
Level Two-Conscious Incompetence
You guessed it! You now are consciously aware of your incompetence. Now you know you don’t know how to do the skill. For some, this level is the end of their learning because they give up on learning the new skill. Sometimes it’s your own self talk “I don’t need this” “I don’t want this” “I can’t do this.” It also can be the type of encouraging or discouraging coaching you are receiving while learning this new skill (which is part of the Cycle of Continuous Improvement in another newsletter you should check out.) Hopefully, you stick to progressing with this new skill and move into level three.
Level Three-Conscious Competence
Due to practice and guidance you now have developed the skill however you have to really focus and think about it. Let’s go back to the stick shift scenario, you are on a very steep hill stopped at a traffic light and there is a car very close to your bumper and you aren’t allowed to wave for the car to go around you! Yes, you are extremely focused, but you know you can do the skill if you stick to the steps. This phase doesn’t have a timeline, some can quickly move into level four and some may stay at this level for some time depending on the skill and the person. The key is to keep practicing the skill, so you don’t fall back to one the other levels.
Level Four-Unconscious Competence
You have now entered the DANGER ZONE also known as your comfort zone. You can do the skill and no longer have to think about it. It’s scary to think that many of you reading this have driven somewhere and once you arrived the thought crossed your mind of “who drove here?” that is being unconsciously competent. Now, here is where some may argue that being in this “comfort zone” is a good thing because you are so confident in your abilities you no longer have to think about it and my response to that is I believe we can always improve on any skill set because there is always room for progress. I’ve driven for years but I always could be a better driver. Sometimes progress can happen through awareness and becoming conscious of your skill set again. Other times it’s stretching yourself to uncover what you are unconsciously competent about so you can continue to grow.
Something I find fascinating about humans is we have our tapped potential, which we have tapped into it and are aware of what we are capable of. We also have our untapped potential, things that we have no idea yet that we are capable of doing. Unfortunately for many they chose to stay comfortable and will live their lives never knowing what they could have achieved. What are you capable of?
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