Managing Your Confidence During the Journey from Development to Mastery

Do you ever struggle with confidence when you're learning something new or you're in a new situation?

Many of my clients are quite hard on themselves when they feel they don’t know something, or they don’t know it as well as they would like to. To be honest, I’ve had to work on my own ‘self-talk’ in this space at times.

Many people also suffer from ‘Imposter Syndrome’. You know, that feeling that others will discover that you’re a fraud, that you really don’t know what you’re doing and that you don’t really deserve to be in your job?

There’s a model of learning that I really love here that has helped a few of my clients to ‘reframe’ this mode of thinking. It’s definitely worked for me. It goes by a number of names, including the Four Stages of Learning and the Hierarchy of Competence. It’s a model that was developed by W.S. Howell and it highlights the journey from development to mastery. What better model for coaching!

This model highlights that to achieve mastery of a new skill, we all go through four stages of competence:

1. Unconscious incompetence – This is where we ‘don’t know what we don’t know’. It’s where we aren’t even aware we don’t have the skills in the area we might need them. Emotionally, this area is ok as we aren’t aware of any competency gaps, so we’re not beating ourselves up yet.
2. Conscious incompetence – This is where we become aware we don’t know something or that we don’t have the skills or knowledge we require. While at some level we probably know that it’s impossible to go from not knowing how to do something, to knowing how to do it without passing through this stage, this awareness of our competence gap can leave us feeling a little vulnerable. It can shake our confidence and self-esteem if we don’t recognise this stage as just that, a stage of learning. Think about when you were learning to drive a car. You didn’t expect to be able to drive perfectly the moment you got into the car, yet sometimes this is exactly what we expect when learning other new skills, and it shakes our confidence when we need time and practice. The thing is though, the awareness we don’t know something is incredibly positive as it provides an avenue for learning.
3. Conscious competence – This is where we know how to do something, but we have to really think about. If we go back to learning to drive, it’s the stage where you’re acutely aware of everything you’re doing. You can do it, but you have to think about it very hard. Emotionally this is easier than conscious incompetence, but it can still challenge us, and particularly the impatient amongst us that want to feel like an expert yesterday!
4. Unconscious competence – This is that wonderful stage when you’ve mastered something and you don’t even have to think about it. You know, you’re driving, having a conversation, singing along to the radio and feeling good!

In line with this model is a common theme amongst my clients, and that is their love of learning. This makes sense given coaching is often going to challenge you to develop, to learn and to grow. The thing is that if you love learning, you are regularly going to be a novice for at least a period of time. I would therefore encourage you to:

1. Acknowledge that you will have periods of time where you won’t feel competent yet and that this can be challenging to your self-esteem and confidence. This is normal, but it does not mean that you are a failure, a fraud, or any of the other unkind things you tell yourself. It merely suggests you are on a learning curve.
2. Remember that if you don’t go through these stages, you won’t ever learn something new!

So if you love learning and challenging yourself, Howell’s model can help to normalise the feelings you experience as you move through each stage. There are also strategies you can put in place at each stage to help you maintain your confidence, especially when the skill or knowledge you are acquiring takes a little longer to master. For help with this, please give me a call. I have some strategies in my toolkit that may just help.

Happy learning!

Warmest wishes,

Laurenne Di Salvo
Leadership & Professional Development Coach | Corporate Trainer | Learning & Development Consultant
0413 776 564
www.harvestcoaching.com.au 

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