Another view of competence

Ross Woods, 2022

This is a report of an interview with Christie Jenkins on ABC radio 720, at 5.15 a.m. 23 April, 2022. Jenkins was a professional athlete is three different sports and now runs a coaching service. She proposed the following series of four levels.

1. Unconscious lack of competence.
The spectator is unable to perform the skills, but quite willing to discuss strategy and how it should be done. The spectator doesn’t know how hard it is or what is involved. They don’t know that they don’t know.

2. Conscious lack of competence.
At this stage, one cannot perform the skill, but knows that there is still a lot to learn.

3. Conscious competence.
Persons at this stage can perform the skill but must think about it very carefully.

4. Unconscious competence.
A performer at this stage can perform a difficult task and make it look easy. He or she doesn’t need to even think about it very much. To paraphrase Jenkins, “Most people would find jumping up ten meters from a trampoline and doing a triple back somersault to be very difficult. But if you have already done it a thousand times, you can do it while thinking about a shopping list.”

Comments
This series has several interesting parallels.

• The first stage resembles the Dunning-Kruger effect, where one has much more confidence than ability.
• The second parallel is that the series seems to be based on Donald Rumsfield’s famous speech about known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, which can be paraphrased as:
• Known knowns: We know the answers
• Known unknowns: We know the questions but not the answers.
• Unknown unknowns: We don't even know what questions to ask.
• The idea of unconscious competence is common in martial arts, where it is the purpose of extended, repetitive practice. It is also common in some kinds of military and emergency training, where one does not have time to think analytically but must immediately take the correct action.