In Search of Competence, Part 4

Over the past three months, we have explored different levels of competence that your team members might exhibit. Each level of competence growth stands on the shoulders of the previous level of competence. How well team members embrace and pursue the next level of competence is up to them, as well as you as their leader.

The next tier up is Unconscious Competence (UC). At this level, people do not become bogged down in overthinking a challenge; instead, they simply get it done without wasting time or creating any drama. They make difficult tasks and challenges look effortless and easy without much conscious thought.

How is Unconscious Competence Possible?

How is this possible?

It’s mostly muscle memory, years of experience learning from mistakes, and being able to adjust thinking and responses in real time. An example would be someone who can hold a conversation while performing a high-speed, complex driving maneuver, all without panicking or breaking out in a sweat.

The most interesting fact about this group who has attained the peak of learning is that, when you sit down and interview one of them, they will have difficulty answering the question, “How do you make X look so easy?”

A prime example is Michael Jordan, the best basketball player of all time. When asked how his skills rose to such a high level, he responded, “I was coachable.” This extends back to his time at the University of North Carolina and the Tar Heels winning a national championship in his first year in 1982. Let that sink in for a moment: He was coachable.

An Unconsciously Competent young player became a dominant force in his professional career with good coaching that challenged him and helped him fine-tune his skills.

Developing Their Capabilities

The following are key considerations for developing your team’s capabilities to be unconsciously competent.

• Recognize people who have the core values of discipline, drive, hard work, resilience, big dreams and humility, and who are coachable.
• Those with talent but who are not open to coaching represent a long-term project. How can you motivate them?
• Longer-term legacy associates might wish to claim this ground, but their ego or pride might restrict them from making the leap to being a superstar.
• Define for your team how the ideal UC model looks. This will help them relate to your thinking.
• A UC person is calm in high-pressure situations; they possess confidence and experience.
• Consider the challenge of shortening the development cycle from conscious competence to unconscious competence.
• To shorten the development cycle, you must develop yourself to become a UC coach of people.
• Consider DISC assessments for your team so you can learn their communication styles.

To accelerate your personal training, you first must become self-aware. What is your communication style? This first step will enable self-awareness of how others perceive your communication.

Knowing your team’s individual communication styles — and, yes, they will be different — will enable you to tailor your coaching so they can “hear” you more effectively.

The Reward for Your Effort

What’s the reward for your effort?

All this will ultimately save you time. UC people require less of it. They also become the role model for the type of behavior you expect less experienced people to exhibit. The time you save can be used to coach up your high-potential CC people who will become UC leaders one day.

A word of caution: Your lower-potential Unconsciously Incompetent (UI) employees are your squeaky wheels who can be time vampires. Spending too much time “saving them” is to the detriment of your higher-potential performers.

Be aware that over-investing your time in UI employees can mean cheating others who want and deserve your coaching time.

Understanding the Four Stages of Competence

The following are some final thoughts for this series:

• Strive for demonstratable competence from your team.
• One-time training approaches rarely help achieve real competence.
• UC people take less management time to direct, allowing you more strategic thinking time.
• Develop “Wheel of Fortune” progress charts when developing your teams.
• When observing a competence-measuring task, provide positive feedback and constructive advice.
• Confidence is a result of increased competence.
• Confidence builds individual and team morale.
• Customers have great confidence in doing future business with competent teams.

Questions to Ponder

In conclusion, let me leave you with some questions to ponder:

Have you ever known an unconsciously competent person in your career or life experience?

Who were they?

What was their relationship with you at that time?

How would you describe them to someone who did not know them?

What five words would you choose to describe them?

This is a great tool to use when training or coaching because it engages the other person’s life experiences. It also conveys the end game of your expectations, training and coaching efforts.