The four stages of competence (2)
The fact that you've reached this point of the website means that you've already achieved the first two stages of competence. Notice how good it feels to have made so much progress so quickly and notice what you say to yourself in your own mind as you realise how much you've already learned.
Stage 3 we call Conscious Competence because this is where we know what we know.
In stage 3 we focus on actually learning the knowledge or skills that we identified as being of value to us in Stage 1. To learn effectively we have to actively concentrate and consciously think about exactly what we are doing at every stage as we store the learnings that will enable us to make use of our new knowledge reliably, at will and without assistance in the future.
In the later parts of Stage 3 we should be able to demonstrate the skill or knowledge to other people, but we may not be able to teach it well to others yet. Repeated practice is the single most effective way to move from Stage 3 to Stage 4.
In our example of learning to drive a car, passing our driving test would be a good example of the end phase of Stage 3.
Stage 4 is known as Unconscious Competence which is where we don't know what we know (that is to say we become less consciously aware of what we know) and through continued practice the use of what we know becomes second nature and moves from being a conscious to an unconscious functioning.
People who have been driving for a number of years usually demonstrate unconscious competence. All of the skills required to drive the car have become so entrenched in their unconscious that they may be able to do other things at the same time. People may describe operating at this level of competence is operating intuitively.
At this level of competence we may find that we can effectively teach what we have learned to others. After an extended period we may also find that as we do what we do in an unconsciously competent way it has become so instinctual that we actually find difficulty in explaining it to others. This is why we must avoid complacency and periodically check our unconscious competence against new standards.