Four Stages of Learning a New Skill

It is impossible for any of us to know what we don’t know.

D. Brown Management

May 13, 2018 2 minute read

And this is the stage where we all must start at when learning a new skill.

Leadership Tools: Four Stages for Learning Any New Skill. Unconscious Competence, Conscious Competence, Conscious Incompetence, and Unconscious Incompetence. Safety Risk for Construction Contractors Lives Heavily at the Unconscious Incompetence Stage.

Leaders must be extremely self-reflective about their own blind spots; the areas where they are at Stage 1 (Unconscious Incompetence). They must be aware of where their team has blind spots and work the frustration that comes when anyone is working near the edge of their current knowledge base.

Dr. Igor Kokcharov does a great job of aligning a variety of the models for human development in a SlideShare called Hierarchy of Skills bringing together models including:

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Work Motivation M5 Model
From Apprentice to Craftsman:
The Cone of Learning
The Four Stages of Learning a New Skill

Great leaders are constantly looking to improve their knowledge around how people learn and what motivates them. They focus on developing their people every day and that development starts with themselves. Turn your team into Multipliers; not just Managers.

Four Stages of Learning a New Skill

Tasks vs. Key Results

Seeing the Mountain - Levels of Detail

Leadership Spotlight - The Diffusion and Multiplication of Perceived Behaviors