Tap Into Greatness. Sarah Singer-Nourie
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the car was stalling, jumping, and you felt like you were going to drop the transmission any minute. You thought you knew what you were doing a little, but the voice in your head was either screaming, “Wow—cool,” or “You have no idea what you’re doing—you suck at this!”
Welcome… You’ve arrived at Conscious-Incompetence. At this point you were no longer completely ignorant or blissful. You were definitely still Incompetent, but now Consciously so. That could be painful or inspiring—it depends on you, the situation and the voice/s in your head.
Jump out of this driving flashback for a moment and back into present time, with one of the people on your team who’s clueless in one of those skills they need to learn and perform. There are two ways this can go:
1) Eager Beaver… Wide-eyed, eager to dive into what they haven’t experienced or learned yet. They blink a lot, processing as fast as they can, might ask a lot of questions right away, consciously mapping the territory of what they have yet to learn.
2) Bubble Burst… Full of confidence without actual competence to back it up, they think they know a lot more than they really do. They get a rude awakening with real-life feedback (likely from you) to that effect, and in fact have a whole lot to learn, quickly. Ouch.
Either way, remember what it felt like to be behind the wheel that first time…scary, exhilarating, overwhelming, cool…a lot at one time. That’s where your newbie is right now. How it goes at this point is key, and can either accelerate the rest of the learning or grind it to a screeching halt. Here’s why…
Downshifting
We have moments that cause our minds to flash-flood with unproductive emotions like fear, anger, panic or frustration. Realization that we really don’t know what we’re doing or are looking really bad3 trying could be one of them, especially when exacerbated by our little voice freaking out in high critic mode. The more overpowering those negative emotions are, the more compromised our mental processing becomes.
Some neuroscientists aptly call this downshifting4; like driving a car in fifth gear at 70 mph, all systems firing. If we suddenly downshift to first gear, the engine simply can’t go that fast and we’ll burn up the transmission trying to force it. A blast of panic, fear or anger (like “Oh @#%!—I can’t do this! I look really stupid! My boss is watching me flail right now!”) downshifts you into the brain’s first gear: survival mode. There, you can’t access higher-order-thinking-skills as normal, and can’t process anything beyond basic preservation by defending yourself (fight) or bailing out of the situation (flight, which also manifests as shutting down). It’s not pretty. It’s the worst spot when there’s learning or performance on the line, yet we’ve all been there. We’ve also all triggered it for someone else. The more you confront someone about how much they’re NOT getting it the more likely they are to downshift, making it worse.
You might have someone on your team who’s there right now, their thinking and ability to learn/perform completely crippled.
When downshifting occurs, the only antidote is to cool down enough for the brain to upshift back to full capacity. That’s why you always think of your best comebacks hours after a big argument or confrontation. Your brain can’t get to where the clever comebacks are (fifth gear) when you need them in the moment of conflict, because it downshifted into first gear, far away from that sophistication. Hence, you come up with those best retorts in hindsight, after you’ve regained thinking power. I’ll give you more tools5 for how to upshift yourself or someone else, but for now, just keep this phenomenon in mind and know that the best thing to do is keep the learning experience positive6 and calm so you or that person can stay present, clear, firing on all cylinders of fifth-gear, higher-order thinking skills, learning forward. Be their supportive yet challenging coach, not their critic. Now, back to that diagram.
3. The Sweet Spot of Learning
If you’re driving today, you stuck with it. You made it through that discomfort and kept practicing, but it was probably messy. One minute you had it, the next minute you didn’t, and you weren’t consistent for a while. The little voice hates this part because it wants you to always look good, and that’s hard to do here because you’re all over the place until you start to really get it.
The great news is that you can quiet the inner heckler, and turn up the volume on your inner positive coach. Then this phase can be awesome. And it is truly the sweet spot of learning. You’re fully aware that you don’t have it down yet, but really want to learn it, doggedly determined, hungry… the best!
For your newbie in this spot, your role as their coach is important. If they’re into it, it’s a blast to coach someone here because they’re wide open, sucking it in. But if they’re getting nervous, showing signs of defensiveness or shutting down, pipe up your visible, audible support to drown out their little voice which is telling them they can’t do it. You’ve been there yourself, so go back to your empathy as a fellow learner.
4. I Think I Can, CC Conscious Competent
After a period of flailing, they can finally do this new thing, but it takes a lot of brainpower. The new driver is still gripping the wheel, unable to have the distractions of passengers or the radio yet. You may even need to cue yourself out loud as you do it: “Press in on the clutch, let up on the gas, then shift!”
So you’re definitely driving (competent), yet definitely need hyper-focus to do so (conscious). In fact, it feels like it takes all of your consciousness to stay that competent at this stage.
Finally the pieces come together. You can pull it off decently. You can drive with the radio on. Then you can have a passenger, and then you can talk about something else while driving. For your newbie learner, s/he can do this new thing without so much buildup beforehand or being so mentally exhausted afterward… at last!
On it!
For most things we need to do well, we get smoother, able to handle curveballs, and that deliberateness remains. We execute well, with intentionality to every part of it, which ensures its success and quality. This is solid Conscious-Competence, where we can crank out consistently solid results with great control. We’re completely competent, aware of why, what, how and when we’re doing what we do the whole time. Your solid, consistent performers are here, conscious to the point of conscientious.
5. Mastery, UC Unconscious Competent
As a driver, you got to the same place of that guy to the right of you on the highway. Now, you sip your smoothie, cart passengers, listen to the radio and talk on your phone while driving, not even thinking about it, right? You became Unconsciously Competent.
Coming back to real time and competence areas you’re seeking or expecting others to master and excel in… this smoothness is what we’re going for, isn’t it? With the right intention, this is when ease with speed, efficiency, excellence and range (competence even with unexpected challenges in the mix or within a diverse range of situations) expand. When someone’s got that, we start dropping “the T word”…
Talent
“Talent” is the way we reference how unconsciously awesome someone is at something. We then compare, rank, and measure. You’ve got lots of talent on your team right now, both realized and potential.
This is a big topic in coaching, leadership and human performance. How someone becomes talented is important, and hotly debated. Is talent learnable? Is it not? I could share an equally significant stack of books from my shelf representing both