Tom Lemanski's

Your Bridge to Discovery

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The Process of Pursuing Proficiency

The Bridge of Discovery Exit Sign

Gaining Proficiency

Our days are filled with countless routine tasks and activities that we successfully complete with little thought and low awareness.  After lots of repetition, we can become so proficient, we’re able to simply go because we know.”  Your proficiency only happens after repetitive practice. 

What are some new skills or behaviors you’d like to develop?  Have you considered what’s involved in getting to the point where you can “go because you know”.  

Let me help you gain more awareness about your path to proficiency

Cruise Control Living

Assuming that drove to work this morning.  Allow me to ask: 

  • How many times were you stopped by a traffic light? 
  • Which traffic lights were green? 

If you’re like most people, you don’t remember.  Safe driving is a critical skill. Yet routine trips don’t require much thought or awareness. 

Traveling to work is something that you’ve done so often, you can do it without thinking. You have programmed your subconscious to get you from home to work without much thought.  While you likely did not use your car’s cruise control feature, you did use your brain’s cruise control feature for doing without thinking.   

traffic light

Where and when did you stop on you way to work today?

Doing Without Thinking

Driving to work is only one example.  If you’re really skilled using Excel, you can copy, paste, format and add functions without much thought. 

Consider the hundreds of things that you habitually do every day without giving them much thought.  You can’t do that exercise on cruise control. It’s not routine.  It requires conscious thought

The operative word here is habitual.  Our habits enable us to put our lives on cruise control.  Repetitive actions program us to be more efficient. Imagine how exhausting it would be to have to think about everything you do.  Stroke victims learn this first hand when they have to re-learn how to position their tongues to form words. 

Beyond Cruise Control "Doing": Cruise Control "Thinking"

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

 – Wayne Dyer

Living in cruise control goes beyond our routine, habitual actions.  We also have habitual ways of thinking; a.k.a. our attitudes

Attitude development is a prerequisite for changing habitual behavior.   

When it comes to developing attitudes that support positive behavior change, most of us don’t know what we don’t know.  Perhaps I can help with that.  

The Law of Proficiency

The Law of Proficiency is a developmental model that explains how habits are formed and how new skills are developed.  

The image below is my graphic enhancement of the concepts, created in 2004 to empathize the four bridges that are crossed in the endless loop of development. 

Bridges on The Path to Proficiency

Developing Shoelace Proficiency - A Simple Example

Learning to tie your shoes is my simple example for developing proficiency.  The process you experience learning to tie your shoes is the same as your path to proficiency for any other skill you seek to gain today. 

Think back to when you were a toddler.  When you didn’t know or care about tying your shoes. And you had little reason to care. Mom or Dad did the tying for you and you were off to run and play in the grass.  Until the time that you reached The Bridge of Discovery

To be continued in the green sections as we cross each bridge.

shoelace proficiency2

Unconscious Incompetence and The Bridge of Discovery

Bridge Icon

We all begin our quest for new habits or skills in the state of Unconscious IncompetenceYou don’t know what you don’t know.  You’re both ineffective and unaware of a proficiency development opportunity.  You’ll stay that way until you experience an ah-ha moment that leads you across “The Bridge of Discovery”.  You then gain a new awareness. And, there’s no going back. The Bridge of Discovery is a one way bridge. 

The Bridge of Discovery Exit Sign

Your Shoelacing "Bridge of Discovery"

Consider that toddler running in the grass with his laced up Keds.  Suddenly one of the shoes becomes unlaced and falls off.  The child is left standing with one shoe on and one wet sock.  He’s crossed The Bridge of Discovery.   He now knows what he doesn’t know. Both unaware and ineffective.

Conscious Incompetence

Upon Crossing The Bridge of Discovery

Bridge Icon

Now You Know That You Don't Know

Now you’re aware of what’s missing. Welcome to the Conscious Incompetence state.  Now you know you don’t know.  You’re aware yet still ineffective.  You have a development opportunity at hand, should you decide to cross the next bridge.

If you’re uncomfortable enough with being ineffective, The Bridge of Change awaits.  You figure out that you need to start learning, gaining new skills and taking action.  You begin to DO!  

However, the Just Do It approach needs to be repeated for the change to stick.

Shoelace Proficiency and The Bridge of Change

What would lead a child’s desire to learn shoe tying skills?

  • As children develop, they seek to be less dependent on their parents.
  • Peer pressure from their shoe proficient friends.
  • The experience of running around with a wet sock slowing you down.

New Skills: If You Don't Use Them, You Can Lose Them

The Bridge of Habit Forming and Repetition is a two way bridge. You can and will cross back and forth. If you don’t practice your skill enough, you’ll revert to consciously thinking about how to do it. 

Conscious Incompetence

Crossing The Bridge of Change

Bridge Icon

Gateway to Learning, Knowledge, Skill and Action

Now the work begins.  When you’re unfamiliar with a task, procedure or process, you need to concentrate on all of the steps or elements involved.  You have the knowledge to do it. But that need for concentration slows you down as you need to pause to consider each action. 

Just Do It over

Developing Shoelace Proficiency

As you’re learning to tie your shoes, you need to pause and think about each step in the process. You make mistakes and learn from each one. You can do it, eventually. Just not so quickly.

Unconscious Competence

Crossing the Bridge of Repetition and Habit Forming

Bridge Icon

You Simply GO because of What You Know

Personal Cruise Control

After enough repetition, you reach the state of unconscious competence: doing without thinking. You simply go because you know. Mental cruise control.  Like your drive to and from work. 

Unconscious Shoe Lacing Proficiency

You can quickly and easily tie your shoes in the dark.

Unconscious Competence

The Bridge of Complacency

Bridge Icon

Back to Square One

After enough repetition, you reach the state of unconscious competence: doing without thinking. You simply go because you know. Mental cruise control.  Like your drive to and from work. 

The Bridge of Complacency and Apathy

When you become highly proficient, it’s easy to develop a blind spot for the next improvement or development opportunity.  We become complacent or apathetic.  Unconscious Competence IS a comfort zone. Pursuing something better can be uncomfortable. 

Complacent Shoe Tying?

Vel-cro?

Loafers?

Who needs any of that?  Love my laces!

Seeking Your Next Proficiency

Where is your next development opportunity?  You’ll need to cross The Bridge of Discovery to find it. 

Will you have enough of a motive to pursue it?  Only then will you cross The Bridge of Change

Will you have enough perseverance and patience needed to cross the Bridge of Repetition and Habit Forming to sustain the positive change?

Once you become highly proficient, will you cling to your comfort zone or rest on your laurels?

The Law of Proficiency applies to every skill you’ve developed.  And every one you’ll need or want to have.  

Credits and Acknowledgements

Origins of The Concept

I am calling this model The Law of Proficiency.  It is built upon published principals that date back to 1969.  I want to acknowledge the origins. 

The enhanced model graphic shown above evolved through collaboration with my colleague Ray Overdorff.  We met in 2002. Ray had already used and applied this model for Leadership Development for about a decade prior. 

Along with others in my affiliate network, I’ve used this development tool to help hundreds of leaders continue to cross the bridge of discovery. 

More History

In psychology, the four stages of competence, or the “conscious competence” learning model, relates to the psychological states involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to competence in a skill.  –  Wilkipedia

The origin model was developed in the 70s by  Noel Burch, an employee with Gordon Training International and was called The Conscious Competence Ladder. 

Leadership author John Maxwell labeled it The Law of Process. He popularized the model  in his 1998 book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership.

More from Gordon Training International: What Every Teacher Should Know  (PDF)

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