We Learn in the Messy Part
Embracing the value each proficiency stage provides.
In a world that celebrates speed and efficiency, it’s easy to view learning as a straight path to a final destination. For coaches, trainers, and change agents especially, there’s a constant push to accelerate progress and quickly check off milestones. But this focus on reaching the end often results in no real change. Learning sticks when we experience the insights, transformations, and depth of reflective understanding.
When we rush forward, we risk intellectual bypass.
We may grasp concepts on the surface, but without fully integrating them, we struggle to apply our learning in real-world contexts.
However, floundering in a sea of valuable experiences can have it’s own set of problems. We still do need to make progress towards high proficiency on skills!
So how do we keep these in balance?
The short answer? Focus on the value for each stage when we are in it.
Each stage of proficiency brings a unique value, and this value drives the growth that leads to the next stage.
Familiarity
Years ago I was offering a workshop on using the verbs of Bloom’s Cognitive Taxonomy in ways that could help them measure learning. One of the participants was pretty familiar with the taxonomy and idea, but wasn’t connecting how it could help her as a coach to teams she was helping.
Afterwards, she flew up to me in pure excitement. “I get it! I can do this!”
The reality was she had no practical experience yet applying the skill and there would be a lot of that ahead of her. But she was excited and had the realization euphoria.
That workshop allowed her to take what was theoretical and make it actionable. This is the deep valued experience during Familiarity.
Comprehension
One of my past professional roles was being an instructional designer for academic curriculum. This meant working with subject matter experts that ranged from professionals who never taught (desperate for direction) to professors who taught for years (threatened by outside guidance).
However, I consistently saw the same pattern: they felt stupid for needing help and defensive of their own knowledge. It was my job to make the mystery box approachable, which I did with a template that broke down all the pieces of course design separately from their course content.
This separation and clarity gave them the single way to succeed. This is the deep valued experience during Comprehension.
Conscious Effort
While the first two stages usually take place in highly coached or workshop environments, this stage is usually taking place in the thick of real life work. This is the time for taking recipes or templates to the real world and seeing how easily they break.
In the technical world, Ensemble is a great way to reduce frustration. I have watched Arlo Belshee tackle this stage very scientifically. He would ask the team to create a checklist or recipe to solve x, then have them perform x a few times, and have them edit that checklist or recipe with each performance.
This cycle allows them to gain grounded experience at the tactical level - learning how to perform the behavior to implement a solution. This is the deep valued experience during Conscious Effort.
Conscious Action
Honestly, I’d be happy if I just got my team members to this proficiency stage. That transition between Conscious Effort and Conscious Action is high performing and alert. Skills at a tactical level are effective, and when they start working with a strategic level, it is the cherry on top.
Looking back, I can see this stage in myself clearly when I created my classic template that I used with subject matter experts in my academia time period. I started creating it when I was doing more tactical work. However, when I saw how contexts were different, strategies had to shift, resulting in different contextually driven templates and exceptions.
This cycle allowed me to gain grounded experience at the strategic level - learning how to pick a good solution for each problem. This is the deep valued experience during Conscious Action.
Proficient
When individuals are looking beyond the recipe, the template, or the process, you can bet they are starting to transition and experience the proficient stage. I call this the listening stage. This was a time when I was starting my conceptual work around the Green Path, and as much as I wanted to throw down on paper what “seemed right”, the reality is listening. Listening to people. Watching systemic impact. Questioning everything, but not from a sense of answering directly; rather, from a sense of opening new mind spaces. It was simple enough to handle complex issues, but there was the continuous search for making things easier for others.
This cycle allowed me to develop higher levels of empathy across people and systems. This is the deep valued experience during Proficient.
Unconscious Competence
To be clear, the individual transitioning to and experiencing Unconscious Competence isn’t likely the speaker guru. They very well might be a great speaker, but they are more likely the curious nerd that managers find a bit exhausting … and also essential.
This is the stage where the Green Path really fell into place for me. Instructional Design within several different contexts, systems, and industries finally got me to a point where everything broke, got excessively complicated, and then simplified.
This cycle allowed me to develop deeper insights across systems and industries. This is the deep valued experience during Unconscious Competence.
Each of these stages provides a deep value to recognize and fully experience with acceptance. All of these stages and values are messy… and critical for true skill acquisition.
A big thanks to those who have asked to be notified when my Green Path Masterclass is released! I’m currently developing it to model everything I’ve been discussing, and very excited to offer it.
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