A classic model of individual learning describes learning in terms of 4 stages, consisting of:
- unconsious competence, to
- conscious incompetence, to
- conscious competence, to
- unconscious competence
I usually illustrate this as follows:
For example, in public speaking, a person might say “um” frequently, but not be particularly aware of it – and they are certainly not be aware of it as an issue. They are, with respect to this aspect of their communication, in the stage of unconscious incompetence.
Next, however, they may become aware (e.g. someone may point it out to them) that they use “um” extensively as a space filler. As they become aware of this, and they also recognise this as an issue, they begin to move into the next stage – conscious incompetence.
Once they are consciously aware of the issue, they can begin to make efforts to do something differently – for example, to keep silent pauses in their presentations while they gather their thoughts. As they begin to make these conscious efforts and they begin to achieve effective results, they begin to move into conscious competence. At this stage, effort and conscious attention is still required in order to consistently maintain or achieve the results.
Eventually however, the behaviour of consciously avoiding saying “um” and replacing it with silent pauses becomes habitual, internalised and automatic. It becomes ‘unconscious,’ and at this point the person has reached the stage of unconscious competence.
For an individual going through such learning, clearly the greatest effort is required at the “conscious” stages of learning. However, different challenges exist at the “unconscious” stages, for example the ability to recognise a problem as an issue in the first stage and to bring it into consciousness with ongoing mindfulness of the issue, and continual reinforcement and internalisation of the new behaviours in the last stage.
Luc Gallopin recently posted a blog article translating these four stages of learning to the organisational context, and relating the levels of learning to levels of organisational resistance to the learning or change. This is represented by Luc in the following diagram (image reproduced from Luc’s Blog):
