The accepted model in the training world is the four step shift from 'Unconscious Incompetence' to 'Conscious Incompetence' to 'Conscious Competence', and ending with 'Unconscious Competence'. Normally this model is expressed as a progression through the levels, like up a flight of steps. However in working as a trainer, in fact in any honest field of endeavour, I would suggest, if progress is indeed like a flight of steps it is at very least a spiral staircase. Allow me to explain! A regular anaology is a young man or woman who is learning to drive. Initially they are 'unconsciously incompetent' where it comes to driving. They have been driven around since early childhood. They have sat in a car with their mother or father and driving seems not much more complicated than pointing the car in the right direction, working a brake and occasionally using a steering wheel to turn. With regard to driving they are now aware of just how difficuly driving is. When they begin to learn, they shift to 'conscious incompetence'. Driving is in fact a lot harder than it seemed from the outside. With a bit of practice the learner will progress to 'conscious competence'. That is, they begin to drive effectively, if they concentrate really carefully and no one talks to them while they are thinking. And then a few years later they are reversing out of the garage, using only one hand, programming the radio with the other and holding a conversation at the same time. Do not accept this as a safe method of driving, but it recognizes that your familiarity with driving is now so well ingrained, it means you are now 'unconsciously competent' as a driver. And that is where the traditional model usually ends. However to follow the driving analogy one step further, we are probably all aware of long-standing drivers, who cut corners, no longer indicate properly, cease to use their mirrors and hold the car on a hill with the footbrake alone. The Incompetence to Competence learning model is in fact not a straight upward path; at worst it is a circle, at best a spiral, because once one is unconsciously competent, like a sportsman who no longer trains properly or a musician who ceases to take lessons, it is possible to unconsciously slip back into a form of incompetence. The solution? The Workshop leader's best friend. Feedback! As a communicator, it is feedback that stops us from tumbling from unconscious competence back into unconscious incompetence. Most training and workshop feedback forms consist of a rather bland series of general questions whose answers amount to little more than 'Yes, I had a nice day'. Feedback should be challenging. It should make both the trainer and the participant think. No one likes to feel they are being criticised. Unfortunately,feedback is not always expressed in a tactful manner. As a trainer you need to embrace feedback. Remaining consciously competent means you're doing a good job, and the feedback will be more acceptable, and the occasional barbed comment will keep you on your top game. Feedback must not be just an end of session event. The best type of trainer is continually monitoring the class; body language, actively listening, continually asking questions about pace and content to make sure everybody is still on board. There is not much point in completing the day's training if half the participants go 'missing in action'. So for the genuine communicator, like the serious artist, the learning process is not a straight linear path; instead it is a continuous cycle. It is about staying humble and using feedback to make sure professional competence never slips into professional incompetence. Copyright (c) 2009 The College Of Public Speaking
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