Have you ever worked really hard at something, only to suddenly feel really disconnected from it? Or, like you suddenly don’t know anything about anything? Let me introduce you to the Four Stages of Competence, a concept widely used in coaching.
The idea is that we begin from unconscious incompetence, or we don’t know what we don’t know. Think of flying the Space Shuttle. Then we go into conscious incompetence,where we know we don’t know, are learning and make lots of mistakes. After that comes conscious competence, where we are doing really well but are still very aware of what we are doing and often still need structures. Finally the holy grail: unconscious competence. Here, we aren’t even thinking about it, and it is happening easily, effortlessly.
What coaches often forget to tell you is that unconscious competence can feel very disorienting. The “hard” part is no longer there. It can feel like you are not working, and so it can feel unproductive. What’s more, reaching a new level of competence is like reaching a base camp on a long climb. It is nice to take a rest, but when you look up and see the next big challenge, you can suddenly feel very small and incompetent all over again.
I see it with my clients quite a bit. A sudden feeling that nothing is happening; a release in tension that feels like a rope snapped. What they don’t realize is that the hand that was holding the back of the seat is gone and they are now riding the bike all on their own. In my own life, I am in this kind of moment. After three years of working with more than 100 clients, regular teaching workshops and speaking engagements, I am feeling firmly established and confident as a coach. BUT…as I look ahead I am finding that my next peak is just becoming visible out of the fog. It will surely be around using my learning towards Leadership Development in a corporate setting, but exactly what it will look like is still developing.
What would it look like to take a moment and appreciate what you have achieved? What competence have you mastered in the last 12 months? What were the signs that you had begun to do it without thinking? What new possibility has that opened for you that did not exist before?
Please, take time to rest and celebrate before you take on the next climb!