You’ve been to class, you’ve read books and articles, you’ve watched videos.
Whatever you’re studying, you’ve … studied it.
Do you understand it?
Unless it’s quantum physics – which I’m not sure it’s possible to understand, even by the people doing the science – and assuming you really have studied, you’ll probably say Yes, yes! I understand!
Okay, then. Can you do the thing?
In my early corporate days when I was a fledgling – and then, I’ll claim it, an expert – software developer (they called us programmers back then), I went to plenty of classes on different aspects of code.
It all made perfect sense in the classroom; I got it. I completed the class exercises with no problems. Yay me; I understood the topic.
And then I got back to my desk and faced a real-world, non-class-exercise problem. Then it was all, wait, what? How does this work again?
This is even more real when it comes to so-called “soft” skills. (I hate that term – there’s nothing “soft” about those skills – but I also know that you know exactly what I mean by it.) Any interpersonal skill – listening (see last week’s article), giving feedback, coaching, asking questions – these are all essential skills for work and life, but they’re not skills you can learn by reading, taking classes, and so on.
Sure, you can pick up ideas and tools – that article last week offered several, as do my workshops and keynote talks.
But understanding the skill – which includes being able to describe it to someone else, being able to ace a test, being able to complete the in-class exercises – is very different from practicing it in the wild, at what my husband calls “game speed.”
I seem to be on a weeks-long rant about practice, but that’s what it takes. Whether it’s code or conversation, we don’t really know something until we’ve practiced it often enough, and in enough different situations, to have a “felt sense” of it, along with our intellectual, conceptual understanding.
In short – there are four defined levels of competence:
- Unconscious incompetence – you don’t know what you don’t know. And let’s face it, maybe you don’t need to know!
- Conscious incompetence – you know you don’t know, but you still don’t know. Now you’re probably encountering something that you’re interested in, and might in fact need to know.
- Conscious competence – this is the beginnings of what I call understanding, but not yet having a felt sense.
- Unconscious competence – now you really know; you’ve internalized it, you have a muscle memory for it; it’s beyond the intellect.
Study will get you from (2) to (3).
Only practice will get you to (4).
If you like my articles here on my website – have you seen my Substack? I dive deeper into leadership question in The Leadership Leap, and I’m starting to offer brief thoughts on our current political situation in Grace Notes. Come on over!