The Learning Ladder
We have much to learn. No matter how far along life’s path I travel I am always reminded of my ignorance and incompetence. It’s humbling and at the same time extremely nourishing. I find one of the juiciest aspects of my work is to find myself in the company of someone (or a group of people) who still has an appetite to learn, particularly if, like me, they are getting old and grizzled. When this happens I often find a model helps people make sense of their experience and it’s then I usually reach for the learning ladder.
Also known as the conscious competence model, the learning ladder can help people understand why things they imagined would be easy to pick up turn out not to be so, and how to persevere even though things feel clunky and failure is often knocking at the door. The model was has an uncertain history. Some people say it dates all the way back to Socrates but of course there is no real evidence of that. The four stages certainly. appeared in the 1960 textbook Management of Training Programs by three management professor at New York University. If you google ‘conscious competence model’ you’ll find all sorts of creative variations.
The ladder has four steps, which I often write out in two ways:
Unconscious incompetence – I don’t know I don’t know
Conscious incompetence – I know I don’t know
Conscious competence – I know I know
Unconscious competence – I don’t know I know
They are complicated concepts in isolation, but I’ve found they make complete sense when accompanied with an example. I usually plum for learning to drive a car, which we can either remember ourselves or have experienced traumatically when teaching children.
Step 1. (I don’t know what I don’t know). I’ve never driven a car but it looks really easy. And it looks fun, I can’t wait. Others seem to just jump in, press a few buttons and off we go.
Step 2 (I know what I don’t know). Oh my word how hard is this? No matter what I try it ends badly. Kangaroo hops, stalling, near misses. What the hell is a clutch anyway? I just can’t do this
Step 3 (I know what I know). I can do it but boy do I have to concentrate. When I’m driving my whole focus is on the many things I have to do at the same time. Accelerate/break, change gear, steer, look out for hazards, obey traffic signs, work out where I’m going. It’s tiring having to focus so much.
Step 4 (I don’t know what I know). Driving is just something I do. I don’t really think about it. Working the car is automatic. I’m more focused on the journey and what lies at the end of it, the radio, my fellow passengers or all of the above.
Put like this it’s a simple model. I’ve found it really helpful when applied to less obvious behavioural development, such as active listening, challenging power, speaking in public, disagreeing agreeably, grieving, giving difficult feedback.
Having worked with this model over the years, I’ve developed a few tips and (hopefully) helpful observations, which may increase the value you get from this:
Once you’ve moved on from step 1 (arrow A on the diagram) it’s very rare to go back there, It’s hard to unknow your incompetence once you’ve experienced it
Step 2 can be the most psychologically challenging place to spend time. We are validated by our competence and so hanging around with our incompetence for any length of time can be tough. But it’s important we don’t rush by this, it’s a big learning zone. Working out why you keep stalling the car is helpful if you want to stop doing it.
There’s no easy way to get from step 2 to 3 (arrow B). It’s here we can fail regularly, get grumpy and give up. What’s often needed is a cycle of practice, reflection, adjustment, more practice.
Step 3 can feel unnatural, and it’s just useful to know that. We are developing muscle memory and neural pathways as we improve our competence.
The journey from step 3 to 4 remains a bit of a mystery to me. Things just click. It’s the most impermanent journey in that there’s often a dance between the two steps before settling.
The risk of step 4 is complacency. As someone who has been responsible for several car crashes, I know they were all caused by sloppy, complacent indiscipline. At best we can become a bit stale and half-hearted, at worse we can lose competence with catastrophic consequences.
The key to high performance step 4 is mindfulness. Take something like brushing your teeth. We all know how to do it unconsciously, but cleaning those teeth offers us a twice daily opportunity to be present to these vital parts of us and show care and attention to the act of keeping them in good condition.
It’s a ladder which means you can go down as well as up. There is a dance to be had between step 3 and step 4 (arrow D), as you encounter more subtle aspects of the behaviour you are working on
There can also be reversion from steps 2 and 3 (arrow E) as you encounter aspects of the behaviour you’ve not encountered before. Remember when you first tried to park a car!
Although it’s a ladder, I’ve seen people use step 4 as a gateway to a new step 1. For example, having learned to speak in public, the next learning goal might be to do so without notes.
If you need any more help visualising this, check out The Backwards Brain Bike video on YouTube. It doesn’t speak directly to the model but is an entertaining way to engage with the steps. See if you can point out Destin’s journey up the four steps.