MindsetGo iCommunicate Podcast
Welcome to the iCommunicate Podcast where we develop the mindset and provide communication strategies to foster confidence, emotional intelligence, as well as organizational, team, or personal growth. Our progress and improvement is not limited to a training session; it embodies a constant cycle of self-reflection and continued learning on individual and communal levels.
MindsetGo iCommunicate Podcast
ICommunicate Radio Show #57: Unconscious Incompetence
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Welcome to iCommunicate on full service radio, AM 830 WCRN. To join the conversation, call 508-871-7000. Now, here's your host, Mark Altman.
SPEAKER_01Good afternoon, everybody. Hope you're all having a wonderful afternoon and uh glad to be back. I'm your host, Mark Altman, uh founder and uh president of MindsetGo. And uh MindsetGo, we are helping people with behavioral intelligence, conversational intelligence, and emotional intelligence. And uh this is a show called I Communicate, and I communicate for those of our regular listeners. It's uh it's a love of mine to help people uh find a voice, advocate for themselves, improve their confidence skills, and shift their mindset. And today we're gonna talk about uh a topic that was inspired by our producer, Ted, who does a wonderful job here at the station. And it's about the value of knowing what you don't know, you don't know. And uh before I get into this, I want to give a shout out this week to I was just in Florida visiting my mother and son, and uh I dealt with a restaurant called Olive U. And it was a Mediterranean restaurant, and the food was great. And I met the owner and I walked into the restaurant. It's in a big shopping strip mall, and I walked into the restaurant, and literally the entire staff behind the counter, when you walk in, yells, Welcome! And I was like, Where am I? So I ended up talking to the owner and asked him where he had the idea to get that. And he went on to, and I might even have him as a guest on the show, he he went on to share with me his philosophy about building employee culture and building a customer culture. And he actually, for the first three days when he hires people, he doesn't even teach them the product. He just wants them to focus on being friendly and nice to the customers and creating a customer experience. And I thought, wow, what a what a novel concept. So, anyway, shout out to Abdul, uh founder of All of You Grill in uh West Palm Beach. With that said, as we get into our topic today, I remember uh about a year ago I was talking to some parents about their student who was getting ready to, or their son who was getting ready to go to college. And I asked him, I asked them what their son was going to major in, and they said, well, probably business. And I said, Well, what about communications? Your son's pretty outgoing, he's pretty outspoken. And they said, Well, why would we have a major in communications? What kind of job is there for that? And I started laughing to myself because communications continue to be the single most important skill we need to have, but it's the most nebulous skill because it's not like one aspect of communication leads to a specific and tangible job. So that is why I enjoy so much working with companies in communication. So today, as we talk about uh knowing what you don't know, you don't know, I'm I'm I'm extremely passionate about this because we so focus on self-awareness. When we do training and coaching, uh it's such a critical element of emotional intelligence. And I was uh reading the book of David Weinberger called Too Big to Know, and he talks about an important kind of wisdom where we fall into the delusion of thinking we know a lot more than we really do, and he calls that illusory superiority. And, you know, I went on to study this a little bit, and I realized that there's a lot of downside to admitting. It's one thing to recognize to know what you don't know, it's another thing to admit it. And so today we're gonna talk about both aspects of that. And there's actually quite a bit of stigma that even if you were able to identify it, there's a stigma around. Think about when you were in school raising your hand in the classroom. You ever see those people in the class who are kind of half raising their hand and half not? That's a ver that's a reflection of their lack of confidence around sharing their thoughts and ideas, knowing they're going to be judged or ridiculed for asking a dumb or stupid question. I think about in the workplace, uh asking for help. I mean, there's a lot of stigma around asking for help because it admits a weakness or a vulnerability in your skill set. And even asking for feedback on your performance, which is such a great way to really understand your strengths and weaknesses. So it is hard. It is hard. But Princeton psychologist Emily Pronin talks about something called introspection illusion. And it's pretty amazing because she talks about how we're blind to the effect we have on others for reasons that we don't see our own facial expressions, gestures, and body language. We don't see that we're giving away indicators that our blinking eyes are showing stress or a certain posture indicates something's weighing on us. And because it is so difficult to observe ourselves, we're really forced to rely on the observations of others to give us that feedback. And then what evolves out of that is we create templates that really dictate where our confidence comes from. So it's really a wicked cycle, a vicious cycle, because on one hand, we have to rely on others, but the other hand is are we relying on the right people? And are the people that are setting those templates for us the right ones to go to in the first place? So today we're gonna really talk about the stages of not knowing what you don't know. And when it when the first part of this really comes down to is knowing how you can even improve the situation in the first place. And there's lots of uh benefits to this. First of all, it gives you the opportunity to refer to someone else who can help you. Now, we've talked about on past shows is how do you decide those experts? How do you decide are the credible go-to people? There's a lot of talk uh in in the workplace about mentorship. And one of the comments I make to co people who coach sports or co or or who direct theater is those people have such an impact on the confidence and future development, and so do mentors in the workplace. So when you choose that person you go to, is that person going to give you the cold hard truth, but in a respectful way, in a direct way, in a way that you can hear it based on your personality. The second thing is where this mindfulness element comes in, which is it allows you to step back before making an ignorant and a hasty decision. We live in a society where we often are making instantaneous reactions, and that has evolved because of texting. So when we get a text, we could get emotional, good, bad, and different, and we could say the wrong thing. And the need to give people instantaneous results and gratification often takes us a bat around a bad path and takes away our ability to think through a situation. But what's so interesting about the concept of recognizing what you don't know that you don't know is if you understand the limitations of your knowledge, it puts you at a huge advantage from people who overestimate their knowledge or who aren't aware of their own ignorance. And think of how many times you've interacted with someone, either personally or professional, professionally, where they've come across and told you something and you're like, there's no way. You know, there's no way. There's no way you believe them, there's no way you think you might you might perceive it as a false sense of confidence, you might perceive it as they're overcompensating, and whatever the reason is, it really gives you a leg up to help have that self-awareness. Now, part of what I'm a big believer in when we work with people at mindset go is helping people get to the root cause of their confidence issues. So if you are afraid to recognize or admit or attempt to be mindful enough to identify what you don't know, these are some questions you could be asking yourself to get to the root cause of what's what's what's creating those uh thoughts. One of them is ask yourself, what caused you to form this belief and where did you learn it? And was it from your parents? Was it from teachers? Was it from other adults that were influencers? Perhaps it was from your friends. I still remember, I still remember when I was a kid, I think I was a freshman or sophomore in high school, and I remember I had just started to put on a little weight, and I remember my oldest brother came up to me and he said, You know, you better start eating better. You're gonna try you're gonna be fat. And I'll never forget that stuck with me. Like he put this fear of God as if that's the end-all be-all terrible thing. But the the comments people make to you, the way people can subtly influence your thoughts and your behaviors and your attitudes, is something that it is imperative to be so mindful of because it really will influence our actions permanently in some cases. The second thing is what kind of evidence would help support this belief as true? Now, this is funny. Have you ever been in an argument with someone who will say to you, okay, well, give me an example of when that happened? And then you feel like saying, well, it was at 207 on uh March 17th, and you're put on the spot to come up with examples. Now, it is fair to ask for evidence if you're asking someone to change their behavior, but if it's your own actions, you know, part of the problem is like Emily Pronin said from Princeton, she said, you know, the only way you can figure this stuff out is from getting observations from other people, unless you're smart enough to be and have reached the point progressively where you can be mindful on your own. And then, on the same hand, you could ask what kind of evidence would make this belief false? So I think that there are really critical things that you can start asking yourself to get to the root cause of the things that are holding you back, whether it's distorted thinking, whether it's protecting your ego, whatever it is, if you really want to get to the absolute truth, I don't remember who said it, I'm ashamed to admit it, but someone said the truth will set you free, and that is never more applicable in this case. So part of what we're trying to figure out is we have to be motivated to change our habits, to change our beliefs, to maybe in some cases change our values, believe it or not. But what we have to be motivated is, assuming we're able to have that recognition, what is it, why do I need to know this stuff? And and you know how many people have been in a school classroom that have said, I'm not gonna learn this, it's not relevant to me, I don't care. So if you're gonna really try to delve deep into understanding what you don't know, you don't know, you have to understand the relevance, you have to understand the motivation and why it would be worth it. Which is hard when you don't know. So for the purpose of our show today, I've divided professional competencies into four sections. And so the first one is what I would call non-technical competency. These are communication skills. Um, these could be things like leveraging technology. And those are things that can be applied in all aspects of your life, personal or professional. A second set of competencies are technical competencies, and those are competencies that you need to have mastered or be adept at to succeed at a certain job that you might have or a profession you might have. The third are leadership and management competencies. And these are the competencies to be successful leader or manager. And again, that even ties into the non-technical because that ties into specific communication skills. And lastly, we have what are called executive proficiencies, and these are proficiencies designed to identify the skill sets of the top levels of management and can really help drive behavior in an organization. So the model I'm about to walk you through, it really highlights two factors that affect our thinking. One is we learn a new skill, consciousness and awareness, and the other is a new skill level of competence. So awareness and competence. So when we return from our first break, I will get into this model. And this has been I Communicate. I'm Mark Altman, and we'll be right back.
SPEAKER_00You're listening to i Communicate with your host, Mark Altman, on full service radio, AM 830 W C R N. Once again, here's Mark.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to i Communicate. Uh, hope you're having a wonderful afternoon. And so we're gonna get into uh the model that we're talking about here. And uh before I do, uh Ted Ted uh share with me over the break the full quote from James Garfield, which, oh my God, do I love this quote? The truth will set you free, but it first will make you miserable. And I I gotta tell you, I I still that moment in the movie A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, when Tom Cruise says to Jack Nicholson, you can't handle the truth, I mean, I I have always considered myself, and and and people have told me how how much they appreciate my transparent and direct approach and communication. But you know, one of the biggest lessons I learned about the truth a while ago is that even if you're open and honest and direct with people, it doesn't really let you off the hook. I used to think it did, but it's like it's like you, it's I almost felt like, okay, hey, I'm doing my job. I'm being direct and transparent, but it's really incomplete because so much of good communication requires really effective two-way communication, relying on, as I've always said, active listening and body language and tone and word choice. So uh boy, that James Garfield quote, it is so true. Because in this unconscious and competence stage, if you really want to learn, if you really have a core value to be to grow and be honest and self-aware, boy, it it is it is a slow it is a short-term pain equaling long-term gain. So I want to get into this model that Noel Birch developed called the conscious competence ladder. Boy, I should have done some tongue twisters before the show today. And basically, what we've been talking about is it really suggests that individuals are initially unaware of how little they know and they're unconscious of their incompetence. And as they recognize that incompetence, they consciously acquire a skill and then can consciously use it. Now, you can use it to understand emotions that you'll experience during the learning process. And this brings up a focus on the word resiliency. And when you think of changing a habit or addressing an area of your life you want to develop, think of the stages you have to go through and think of the stage where if you've identified it, if you've actually understood the motivation on why you would move forward with it, think of the gamut of emotions you experience as you're trying to change the habit. And so much of this process is intertwined with the concept of resilience because it is difficult to go through the process. So think about certain skills. As you're listening to the show today, I want to run through a few skills and tell me if as you're sitting in this car, certainly call in that the number of the show is 508-871-7000, but think of what of this what of these resonates with you. So think about perseverance. Think about your ability to be a storyteller. Think about skills like critical thinking and problem solving and conflict resolution. So there's a handful of skills to start with. Now I'm gonna kind of walk you through as we go through this the simple model, the model we've all come to know and love before I walk through Noel Birch's model. So the first is if you if you have a proficiency in a certain area, you start out with a basic knowledge of it. And that's where it gets tricky to me, because we can rationalize the definition of basic knowledge all day long. So if that in in the competency proficiency scale, if basic knowledge, what does that actually mean? And I think that's an important question because uh there's this tendency we all have to sound like we're experts in a lot of areas, again, because we don't want to be called out or doubted. The second is that we we've we've upgraded to become a novice. And a novice means you have limited experience in something. Again, set up to fail. So if I was to say, you know, I was gonna try to fix one of my children's toys, have I done that effectively two or three times in my life? Yeah, I've also probably failed at it another 20 times as well. So I guess I'm a novice. I guess I have limited experience. All right? And then if you're a novice, here's what you're if you want to go to the next level, you're supposed to be focusing on through practical experience. You can actually understand and discuss the concepts and principles related to being competent in that, and then you can then advance to become intermediate. And again, we hear these terms in swimming, we hear these terms in lots of proficiency areas. So we go from fundamental, basic knowledge, novice, limited experience, intermediate, practical application, advanced, and then we become an expert. But those, again, those that scale is too generic. And what what Noah Birch has really done in this scale is he talks about what are the five levels. And I'm gonna walk you through these five levels so you understand this competency ladder and know how you can apply it to your own professional and personal life. So the first one we're gonna call is unconsciously unskilled. And this basically, we don't know that we don't have this skill, or more importantly, we don't know that we need to learn it. So that speaks to whatever job or whatever opportunity you're trying to tackle, are you aware of all the things, the skills, the qualities, uh, the mindset you need to do it? And one of the ways you can always know if people are unconsciously unskilled is they might say things like, if I had only known, you know, if I had known your plane was gonna be two hours late, I wouldn't have rushed to the airport. If I had known you were gonna get such bad grades on your report card, I wouldn't have let you go to the dance last weekend. If I had known the van was gonna overheat, I would have driven the car instead. We we call this Monday morning quarterback. And part of this unconsciously unskilled level is we we we often might say what we don't know, but we don't stop to be mindful and self-aware of it. And even if we did stop to do it, would we be motivated to change it? Now think about think about that simple sentence I read. If I had known your plane was gonna be two hours late, well, there's an easy way to know that. You you would just have to go online and check the airline and see what what's gonna be on time or not. You know, if I had known you were gonna get such bad grades on your report card, well, you knew the report cards were coming out, you could have inquired. So this whole thing about unconsciously unskilled. Now, I can remember a time when I was becoming a sports broadcaster, and that was a real passion. I'm a big sports fan. And I remember I was working for a local TV station in Worcester, and I thought I knew it all. You know, I I knew my sports, I was comfortable in front of the microphone, I was comfortable public speaking, and then they had me do a live stand-up, and it was like I forgot everything. You know, I was staring and I didn't even mind the camera being on me. It was almost like I felt like I had to be rehearsed, which is what I had to say, which is the opposite of what you're supposed to do. And so I realized in that moment, holy smoke, that's an art form. That live stand-up is really a different skill set that I didn't have. But I didn't learn it until I failed at it. And unfortunately, this level of unconsciously unskilled, what usually drives us to find out is failure. And so, how can we find this out without waiting for something bad to happen and becoming reactive and proactive or instead of proactive? But unfortunately, so many habit changes and so many life decisions, we need something bad to happen to drive that. Now, one of the things, and I I I I'd like to think I'm a glass half full, I'm a I'm I'm considered a very positive guy, but I really believe what I'm about to tell you. You know, if you if you can really increase your self-awareness, it puts you in a place of power. You know, it can it can improve the choices you make, it can give you an honest view of your knowledge and capabilities. But here's the biggest how much stock would you put into having the skill to know your ignorance and limitations? Think of how your decision making and critical thinking process would change if you You were able to recognize your ignorance and limitations. It's really essential. So now let's say you've graduated, you've moved up, you've started to recognize some of the things you need to learn and some of the skills you don't have. And let's say you've even understood your motivators to know why you need to do something different. This brings us to the next phase, which is consciously unskilled. So, what consciously unskilled means you know you don't have the skill. You know you don't have it. But here's where it gets tricky because you know you need to do it, you know it's going to be difficult, you know there are going to be frustration points along the way, but is it worth it? And then it becomes a new level of motivation. Is it worth it? One of the jokes I always make to salespeople is salespeople are ones that always like to say, I only want to work smarter and not harder. And I always say, Well, that's not true. You don't even always want to work smarter. And so this consciously unskilled really requires you to shift your mindset and say, hey, look, it's going to be a tough ride, but I want it, I can accept it, and I'm going to recognize it. And then it comes to consciously skilled, where we know that we have this skill and we've started to become good at it, and then it's unconsciously skilled where it just seems easy. We don't even have to think about it. It's like eating, breathing, or sleeping. And one of the challenges when you become unconsciously skilled is you might not practice it as much. You might get complacent, and it reminds you of the skills you gained. But you know, one of the things I see in leadership is leadership who is unconsciously skilled often becomes too impatient with people who have yet to gain those very same skills because now it's so easy for them. So when we come back from the break, we're going to continue on and we're going to talk about how you can actually apply this model that we've been talking about about unconscious and conscious competence. I'm Mark Altman. This has been iCommunicate. We'll be right back.
SPEAKER_00You're listening to iCommunicate with your host, Mark Altman, on full service radio, AM 830 W C R N. Once again, here's Mark.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back, everybody. Uh, this is Mark Altman with iCommunicate, and happy to have you staying with us this afternoon. So, we want to continue to talk about the model that we just talked about and how to apply that. And one of the interesting things I wanted to discuss today is a personal SWOT analysis. And for those of you who don't know what a SWOT analysis is, lots of tongue twisters today. Good lord. So wanted to uh explain. So, SWOT analysis is something that's often used in business. It's frankly very much done in marketing, when you're trying to come up with a marketing and a sales strategy for your company. And SWAT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And we're so used to doing it from a company perspective, but we very rarely do it from a personal perspective. And I think that to really understand knowing what you don't know what you don't know, it's you need to do a personal SWOT analysis. And I'm going to actually walk you through that process. Okay, and it's it's it's a process that if you want to learn more about it, certainly you can reach out to me at maltman at mindsetgo.com or call call me at mindsetgo at 978-206-1535. But I just want to walk you through what's involved because, see, to me, to really understand for starting points, to really understand your strengths and weaknesses, you need to do the SWOT analysis. But you need to think about what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy. And one of the things that's important about that, a lot of people, when they talk about what they like to do, they'll say they like to do something because they're good at it, not because they love it. And understanding the difference between something you're good at and something you love is a very important uh differential to make. Thirdly, you could ask for regular and honest feedback from people, managers, peers, brothers, siblings, sisters, friends, anybody in your network of people who you can trust that can give you reliable and direct feedback. And lastly, this is something people forget about all the time: review past appraisals. Review past performance reviews. Understand what people have said to you that they don't think you know or a skill that you need to develop. So here are the rules. When you're try trying to come up with your strengths, all right, think about things that influence and motivate you. Think about what you attribute to your success. Think about personal characteristics, we can say analytical skills, determination, problem solving. And then what exam what advantages do you have that others don't? Is it a certification? Is it an education level? Is it an ongoing learning? And one of the things that I see really that experts in their field are people that are constantly reading and studying their industry or their trade to stay up on the latest and greatest. And what do other people see as your trend strengths? What are achievements you're most proud of? What values do you believe in that others fail to exhibit? So if you actually sit down and put a little list together of your strengths, one of the reasons why that's important is because as you're going through the stages, this Noah Birch's conscious competence ladder, it's really important that you are able to go through a process we teach at Mindset Go called appreciative inquiry. And appreciative inquiry is the ability to write down your accomplishments, achievements, and things you're really good at. So as you're going through these obstacles and hurdles to develop the skills you don't have, you can appreciate, you can inquire within, appreciate yourself to understand that, hey, it's tough, but you still have a lot going for you. And, you know, a lot of people, when I share that with them, they say, well, you know, it's like what you're, it's almost like you're trying to trick yourself. Well, you are, because your inner voice is really strong. And so the ability to combat the messages your inner voice is giving and offsetting those negative messages that are telling you you can't and you should try to, you can and you should do. So that's the strengths aspect of it. The next aspect is the weaknesses. Of course, this is where it really gets tough because this is where that introspection needs to come in. So, but here are some simple questions you can ask yourself to really understand what those weaknesses are. What tasks do you usually avoid because you don't feel confident doing them? What will the people around you see as your weaknesses? What are your negative work habits? Are you late? Are you disorganized? Do you procrastinate? Do you have a short temper? Are you poor at handling stress? You know, we've talked about these on past shows. Again, those are all kryptonite to resiliency. And so if you do have any of those habits and you're really unconscious about how those are hurting your reputation, how people perceive you and your performance, you'd have to understand how that would help. Do you have personality traits that would hold you back? If you have to conduct meetings on a regular basis, if you have a fear of public speaking or don't think you're effective at influence or persuasion, that would be an unconscious incompetence. But it becomes a conscious incompetence when you can make that recognition. So consider from an internal perspective and an external perspective. Do other people see weaknesses that you don't see? Do co-workers now here's here's an important concept. Do coworkers consistently outperform you in certain areas? Now this is really an interesting uh concept because have you ever heard someone come up to you and say, you know what, you're just so good at that. I so admire you for that. What they're really saying is, I'm not good at it, I don't really want to become good at it, or I'm not good at it, but it would be too painful of a process to become good at it. So think about that. Next time someone gives you a compliment of a skill they admire about you, they're also internally saying, in many cases, they don't have that skill, and to get that skill would be overwhelming and not appealing. So that that's that's a really important contr concept around understanding when people outperform you in certain areas, the truth might be unpleasant, the truth might be unfair, but if it's the truth, again, it comes down to you're in control of your own life. What do you want to do about it? Now, the third piece of the SWOT analysis is opportunities. Now, when I speak about opportunities, I'm talking about positive external conditions that you can take advantage of. Now, if you're listening in your office right now or if you're driving in your car, think about opportunities you currently have in your life right now that you could either leverage, you could move forward on, and ask yourself why you're not? If you have an opportunity, why aren't you? If if you've been given an opportunity at work to take on more responsibility or get a promotion, and you're shying away from accepting it or shying away from even initiating the opportunity, how come? Is it because of an unconscious incompetence? Is it because of a fear of skills that you don't have that would be difficult to build, or your perception is that they would be difficult to build? A lot of times you'll see in professional sports that when athletes, male or female, are successful at a certain role or responsibility on their team and they're asked to take a more advanced role, they really struggle. You know, if you look at a backup goalie to a starting goalie in hockey, different level of responsibility, different level of commitment on the team. An ace pitcher or a number two or three starter in baseball. And I think where that really plays out in the workplace is I see in all the companies I work with around the country, I see more and more people being put in leadership positions, not because they're qualified, not because they've been trained to be a leader, but because they did good at their current job and companies were trying to recognize and reward them for their work ethic, for their communication and relationship building skills. But the skill level you have at one position doesn't necessarily translate, and in most cases, doesn't translate into another position. So when people are put into those leadership roles, how it's not just going to magically happen, you become an effective leader. You have to know how. And unless you've had formal training or coaching or mentoring, that sets you up for failure. And then in addition to that, often at companies I see situations where leaders are put in positions and they have leadership experience at other companies, but the experience they have or the training they have isn't effective. So think about if you're reading a resume and you're about to hire someone as a manager for your company or as an executive, you might see they have eight years of leadership experience, but that doesn't mean they were good at it. That doesn't mean they were mentored and managed effectively. That doesn't mean they have the same core values you have for your company. So it really does create a lot of opportunities. So that simple question: what are opportunities you can take advantage of? What is getting in the way, and not only the fear and the perceptions, but what are the assumptions that you are making that are getting in the way? If you are part of an industry that's really growing, for instance, in my world, the e-learning, e-learning is becoming a huge aspect of training. So, you know, we're building that offering at Mindset Go because I don't want to be scared. I I've never created an e-learning training video, but I know how to train, I know how to engage people. So I'm gonna learn how, and I'm gonna surround myself with people who can mentor and coach me. Do you have a network of strategic contacts to help you and offer good advice? Think of all the people in your life that could be experts in a support system for you that could help you advance in these opportunities, but help you advance in a unique way, help you advance by help talking you off the ledge of the fear you have and taking chances and developing skills, the inner voice you have that's not allowing you to shift your mindset and the behavioral challenges you have of shifting your habits and behaviors. So when we come back from the break, we're gonna talk a little bit more about the different opportunities you can take advantage of. We'll talk about the threats that can get in the way, and we will continue to explore the benefits of the conscious competence ladder. This is i Communicate. I'm your host, Mark Altman, and we'll be right back.
SPEAKER_00You're listening to i Communicate with your host, Mark Altman, on Full Service Radio, AM 830 W C R N. Once again, here's Mark.
SPEAKER_01So welcome back to iCommunicate, uh, finding your voice. Today we're talking about uh the importance uh of knowing what you don't know, you don't know. It's such a tongue twister, and I and I think it's really important because this unconsciousness we walk around with, this real lack of self-awareness, and what's going to motivate us to do anything differently, and that's a lot of what we're talking about today. So we're talking about doing a personal SWOT analysis. And for those of you just joining us, uh SWOT analysis is understanding your strengths, your weaknesses, your opportunities, and threats. And before the break, we were talking about opportunities, and we're talking about different opportunities you could have personally. You know, we could talk about a colleague going on an extended leave and taking on some projects to gain experience. You could take on a new role at a company that forces you to learn new skills and get you outside of your comfort zone. So I think really understanding what opportunities exist for you is important. And the last piece of this is threats. And those threats are negative external conditions you can't control, but you can minimize. And so if you were to sit down and think about what obstacles that you currently face at work and what those obstacles, what can you control, what can't you control, and how are those obstacles holding you back? For instance, think about colleagues that are competing with you for projects or roles. Do you tend to become passive because you think being assertive, uh, which is a skill in itself, by the way, around unconscious incompetence, is not something you're comfortable with? So do you kind of fall by the wayside because you don't want to become aggressive when you could be just becoming assertive? Is your job changing? You know, is that something that feels threatening to you? Because if your job's changing, whether it's different responsibilities, expanded responsibilities, decreased responsibilities, again, are you being held back because you haven't actually sat down to figure out the root cause of what your job changing means for you, your skill set, skills you still need to develop. And then could any of your weaknesses lead to threats? Could you eventually be replaced? Could you be passed over in promotion because you're not developing those skills in those areas of improvement? And I hear a lot of companies when when employees or managers or C-suite executives, when they do complain, they're very frustrated that they were passed over for an opportunity or they weren't recognized for a certain thing. But part of that can be that unconscious incompetence of not really understanding why you were passed over for that opportunity in the first place. And think about this. If you are passed over, how many of you listening today are actually going to the person and asking why you were passed over to develop that self-awareness? You know, I'll never forget my uh I remember having a conversation with my 23-year-old son three years ago. He took a job as a hostess, a host at a restaurant, excuse me. And I remember the first week he was at the job, he'd come home from work and I'd say, Well, how are you doing? He was like, I'm doing great. And I say, Well, how'd you know? And he says, I don't know. It just seems like I'm doing great. And I said, But you really can't know unless you're getting feedback or seeing some kind of body language or some kind of reaction. And so to me, if you don't really have the ability to understand how to assess yourself, then you're setting yourself up for failure. So whether it's going on a job interview and not getting the job, whether it's getting passed over promotion for a promotion or a new project at work, whether it's competing at a certain sport or participating in theater or music, if you don't know, you're never gonna know. And if finding out the truth, remember what James Garfield said, if finding out the truth is gonna be so miserable for you, it's really gonna hold you back as you try to develop as a human being. And you don't have to feel bad or apologize if that truth is gonna be so miserable. But what we do, what we would need to do is get to the root cause of why you're experiencing those emotions, because they are getting in the way of your progress and development as a human. And so I think this self-assessment tool, it's so funny, you know, if you're really to self-assess, this is what this whole thing is about. It's certainly about self-awareness, but it's also about self-assessment. And if you are, if your inner voice is playing tricks on you, or if the people around you are not comfortable giving you the truth, you lose in either of those circumstances. So let's try let's transition to the we've been talking about the unconsciously unskilled, but now we want to transition to the consciously unskilled. And as I mentioned before, what I really wanted to touch upon this in our final few minutes today is this is where you know what you don't know, you're conscious of it, and you you're thinking about trying, but here's what gets in the way it's setbacks. It's we've tried things in the past. We've tried climbing mountains, we've tried overcoming problems, we've tried facing our fears, we've tried confronting people for what's upsetting us, and at one time or another, it didn't work. And we have that record playing over and over and over in our mind. And the way the human mind works is if we've tried these things f seven, eight, nine, ten times, if it worked five times but it failed two, then we're just gonna remember the two. That's what that's what's gonna play in our mind, and it's gonna really discourage you from moving past the consciously unskilled stage. And you know, if you experience contempt or belittlement at some point in your life, that can trigger, it does often trigger negativity, which in turn can limit what pe what you can accomplish, leading to distrust, leading to distrust. And if you are generous, if you've been told and confident that you're generous, intelligent, or sociable, you might make less of an effort to prove it because too much self-assurance tends to make people complacent. Therefore, those who think they know themselves well are particularly apt to know themselves less well than they actually think because those habits of complacency creep in. And the more I study this and the more I train people on it, it's really a fine line. You know, having the self-awareness to know what you need to know and what you don't know, but having the confidence and not getting complacent along the way, there's a lot of moving parts along the way, but the answer is flexibility. The answer is being agile, the answer is adapting to the people around you, the situations around you, the people you work with personally and professionally, all the moving parts. And you know, one of my favorite authors, Carol Dweck, who is the uh the authority on growth mindset, is she has done a lot of research and studying that says people with a rigid sense of self take failure badly. If you're gonna strike out, if you believe you're gonna strike out, you're gonna strike out. They see it as evidence of their limitations and they fear it. And then fear of failure itself so often causes failure. And everybody listening to that, you know this. You probably experienced this at one time or another. So if you understand that a particular develop, a particular talent can be developed and you can accept setbacks as the nature of the beast and as an invitation. To do better next time, that's the biggest key to personal growth. And when in doubt, we should assume that we have something more to learn and that we can improve and develop it in the face of setbacks, in the face of failure, in the face of constructive criticism. So, what's key as you're going through that stage is really to have people providing you encouragement and support to combat ongoing feelings of discouragement that you're experiencing based on some of the life templates and the experiences you've had in the past. And this is where, at this stage of consciously incompetent, we realize there's much more to what we're trying to do than we first understood. We really begin to grasp the scope of what we need to learn, and it feels even more daunting and it feels even more overwhelming. Because there's so much to grasp and master. It's an important progression, though, in the learning process, and still not a place which we can perform independently. And again, that's where the coaching and mentorship and continuous learning really plays a role. So I want to thank you for joining us today. The other two levels, which we're not going to have time to get to today, are consciously skilled and unconsciously skilled, and we touched upon them a little bit earlier in the show. But these are such important elements in your personal and professional development. So we will look forward to chatting with you again next week. And as you go into your week, I want you to think about what it is incrementally. Think about incrementally what is a skill, what is a quality, what is a characteristic that not only you maybe can recognize you need to develop, you want to develop, and start to formulate the steps you might take to set yourself up for success. Because habit change and behavior change require a village. Get your accountability partner. So I wish you all a wonderful week. This has been Mark Altman for I Communicate, and we'll look forward to seeing you next time.
