Are you getting stuck in 'conscious incompetence'?

Perfectionism, ironically, is a pretty serious obstacle to growth. For better or for worse, there's no path to excellence and success that doesn't go through failure, and perfectionism can keep us from doing the necessary work around our failures to learn and grow.

Learning a new skill has four different phases to it. This model, developed by Noel Burch at Gordon Training International back in the 70’s, outlines them, and I think it's a really useful framework to hold in our minds when developing a new skill, be it physical, mental, or emotional.

Phase 1: Unconscious Incompetence

This is where you start with any skill. You don't know how to do the thing, so you're (probably) also no good at the thing. In fact, you might not even grasp the value of the skill, which can be an additional obstacle to growth.

In this phase, you struggle and fail ... and you don’t know why you're failing, either. (For those of you who expect that you should ‘just know’ how to do something if your'e going to be good at it, this is probably where you’ll give up. My early life is littered with learning efforts abandoned in this phase.) If you do keep trying, you'll just keep struggling ... unless you improve your knowledge and/or skill. That might happen intuitively, but it might not.

If you choose to seek out some support, that starts the process of learning and understanding, which leads to Phase 2.

Phase 2: Conscious Incompetence

Here's where you learn both what 'doing it right' looks like and how you're not doing it right. Turns out that's a 'good news / bad news' kind of thing. Why? Well, you’re still not able to do the thing successfully.

And, even worse, you now understand what you're doing wrong ... but you can't do it right. So, it really highlights the gap between your ability level and the necessary ability level. Not comfortable ... and that's especially true for perfectionists and high performers.

Personally, I think this is the toughest of the four phases, and it’s the place where I see the most people give up. "This is too difficult" and "I just can’t do this" are common complaints during Phase 2.

If you're able to step back from your expectations, though, and allow yourself to be an imperfect human on a journey of growth and learning, it'll help you keep moving forward. Repeated cycles of 'do, review, and refine' will build up your skill until you finally break through to Phase 3.

Phase 3: Conscious Competence

Finally! When you get to phase 3, you know how to do the thing and are able to do the thing competently. Huge progress, right?

Yes … but you’re not out of the woods yet. There are a couple of challenges to be aware of in this phase:

1. You’re working in your conscious mind vs. your unconscious mind. This takes more effort and energy. As a result, even though it feels good to be doing things right, it’s also more draining than you might expect. At times, the level of effort required may lead you to question whether it’s worth it or whether you can sustain it. (Great place to make sure you've got good self-care and recovery routines in place, btw).
2. Under stress, you’ll tend to revert to your old way of doing things. So, that means you’re only able to successfully use the skill under certain conditions. For example, a golfer who’s great on the driving range might wonder why they're struggling on the course. Or, a couple who’s able to talk through a disagreement most of the time is surprised when, at the tail end of a hard day for each of them, they stumble into their old negative argument patterns. These regressions are especially problematic for the critical perfectionist, who can rise up and say "See! I knew you couldn't really do this."

But, if you stay aware of these dangers and understand that persistence & good self-care will get you through them, you'll finally get to Phase 4.

Phase 4: Unconscious Competence

FINALLY all the hard work starts to pay off. When you're in phase 4, you do the right thing without thinking about it … and you’ll even maintain that level of skill under stress. It’s now ingrained, automatic, a new default.

Interestingly, once you hit this phase, if you think about how to do something, you’ll actually tend to perform worse at it. (Example: we’ve all tied our shoes thousands of times. Try thinking specifically about each step of tying your shoelaces while you do it sometime.)

My .02: you’re probably capable of more than you think.
This process can be applied to any skill you wish to develop - mental, physical, relational, whatever. It can be a lot of work, but once you understand the phases, it's a lot easier to see them for what they really are instead of assuming that you're a failure.