Many years ago, I was coaching youth baseball with a friend, and he shared with me the concept of the Four Stages of Competence:
1. Unconscious Incompetence: At this stage, we are not good at something, and we don’t even realize it. We don’t know the possibilities.
2. Conscious Incompetence: Here, we become aware that we are not good at something. We see our shortcomings.
3. Conscious Competence: In this phase, we start to improve. We are getting better at a skill, but it requires a lot of concentration and effort to execute it well.
4. Unconscious Competence: Finally, we reach a point where we can perform the skill effortlessly. It feels natural, and we don’t have to think about it anymore.
In baseball, for example, this is why major league hitters make hitting a 95 mph fastball look so easy. They’ve practiced their swings thousands of times, so it has become second nature. With respect to swinging a baseball bat and connecting with a 95 mph fastball, they have Unconscious Competence. Therefore, they can focus on the pitch rather than their mechanics.
Now, what if we apply this concept to parenting?
Our goal should be to guide our children toward Unconscious Competence—where they instinctively do the right thing because it has been ingrained in them.
Is this possible? Absolutely.
For instance, our family embraced the concept of siblings as best friends early on. We were at a conference, and the speaker gave us a vision of our kids not only not fighting – that would have been a huge win at the time – but really caring for one another and wanting to be around each other.
We started with Unconscious Incompetence. We thought sibling fighting was just inevitable and all we could do was manage it, discipline it, and endure it.
But then that speaker opened our eyes to a new reality. We became aware of the possibilities of siblings as best friends and, of course, we saw how far our family was from that possibility. We were no longer unaware of our incompetence, but now we had moved to Conscious Incompetence.
So what was the next step? Develop Conscious Competence. We began to try to consciously work to knit our children’s hearts together.
We prioritized the time the siblings spent together.
We made sure they valued the relationships more than the toys or the things (see last month’s article for a full discussion).
Yelling at a sibling was a high offense in our home. We invited our older children to partner with us in being a great influence with their younger siblings.
We taught the younger children not to be brats and to respect their older siblings.
And you know what? It was hard. And it was a lot of work. Conscious Competence really is the hard part. There was resistance. We had to think about it a lot. We tried things and some worked, and some didn’t.
In Conscious Competence, you are willing to fight for your ideal over time. That major league hitter didn’t get there in days and weeks. He got there in months and years. Remember Malcolm Gladwell talking about needing 10,000 hours to achieve mastery of a subject? Think like that with Conscious Competence.
But then at some point there is a tipping point – no pun intended for another Malcolm Gladwell book – when Conscious Competence becomes Unconscious Competence. You have pursued Conscious Competence so long and so often in your family that the family begins to internally believe in the value.
They may not even know they are doing it. In our case, our children started to value their relationships with each other. At that tipping point, two things happen:
You don’t have to work at it as hard. The team is going with you instead of against you.
You get the enjoyment of your work. Watching our seven kids want to be with each other and invest in one another is very enjoyable and rewarding.
So you want to change something in your family? Start by recognizing and admitting the issue (move to Conscious Incompetence). For example, you may want your kids to own their own homework and grades. Or maybe you want everyone in the family to take care of the house and their rooms.
Then begin to focus on putting that value into your home. Remember, the Conscious Competence stage is hard. Takes work. It doesn’t have to be harsh – in fact, the less harsh the better – but it does need to be consistent. And also remember, real change takes time. For us and for our kids.
But it is SO COOL when it works, and you get the joys and benefits on Unconscious Competence in your home!
Jesus challenges us at the end of Matthew 10 to “take up your cross and follow me.” In other words, do the hard things the right way. But then at the end of Matthew 11, he says, “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
I think Jesus is talking about Unconscious Competences. If we do the hard things in our family, over time the interactions of family become easier and more of a blessing.
