Practice, Practice, Practice: Part 3 of the Conscious Competence Ladder

Conscious Competence

When you started out on the ladder, Unconscious Incompetence, you began to learn how much there is to learn and then began to learn what was needed to be learned. Hmmm! Say that three times really fast! Unconscious Incompetence helped us be aware that although we desired to do or be something, we were not equipped to acquire it so we advanced to Conscious Incompetence to consider what skills we need to do or be that thing we desire and decide if we want to move forward or not.

Now in Conscious Competence, we are gaining a level of knowledge and experience enabling us to do a certain thing well or very well. Now you are aware of your skill level, confident and making strides. You are consciously competent; putting what you are learning into practice, gaining confidence, and refining you new skills.

Practice Makes Perfect 

Two things are being learned at this level: 1) You are learning a few basics and 2) You are learning to do something reasonably well without the assistance of a mentor or teacher. You know the skill but you don’t know it inside and out. Overtime we become more and more competent with many skills through repetition making the skill increasingly automatic.

I love to watch the show Chopped and other cooking shows. They are my favorite because you get to see skill level at its best. With Chopped, these cooks have to create a dish under a time restraint and use ingredients that they may have never used together. They have to use their skill of cooking & their knowledge of that particular ingredient to dazzle the experienced judges. Sometimes I’m able to guess how they would use the ingredient but most of the time I haven’t a clue. The reason being is that I am not a cook by the judges standards and I’m not competing for $10,000. 

Know That New Skills Can Be Lost If Not Practiced 

Most of our “skill” based knowledge is somewhere in the area of conscious competence making us “competent” in a number of areas. FREQUENTLY + EXTENSIVELY = COMPETENCE. The key factor with conscious competence is the being CONSCIOUS part. We all have different levels of conscious competence. Each of us have a broad number of skills and within each skill we have a specific level of competence. Take inventory of the skills you use along with your level of competence. This reminds me of the time I composed a elevator pitch for my business. I had to zero in on what I wanted the person I was speaking to know about my business and make it memorable so my business remained valuable to them. Do you have an elevator pitch for your business or yourself? Does it excite you or do you need to break out the “pitch crafting” polish?

Onward and Upward! 
What's your Elevator Pitch?

Posted in: Blog,The Gracious Entrepreneur