- Unconscious incompetence: you don’t even know that you’re bad at something, or it doesn’t matter to you that you’re bad at it
- Conscious incompetence: you realize you’re bad at something and you think that’s bad
- Conscious competence: you’re no longer bad at it as long you are making a concerted effort to not be bad at it
- Unconscious competence: the thing you used to be bad at is now natural and easy for you (so much so that you might be bad at teaching it)
Many want to become a better manager, but don’t know how. Management is one of those things people feel like they should know how to do well, despite that it’s the most difficult aspect of business that most people receive little to no training for. Especially if you already are a manager, there’s an assumption that you ought to know how to do it well. But what if you don’t?
Can you give yourself permission, wherever you are as a manager, to admit you have a ton to learn about it? Can you let yourself really feel how bad you are still at it, without beating yourself up unproductively? This requires real strength, and it’s how you become a better manager. Focusing on your strengths is important, but if that’s all you do, you’re in trouble.
In the 1970’s, Noel Burch created a model many of us learned in high school, but probably not in a way that helped you as much as it could. It’s the four stages of competence, summarized here: