How can taking a step back, help you move forwards?

I find when working with many clients that this scenario is commonplace and sometimes can be difficult to progress, as, in essence; you have to unlearn something to learn something else or something new.

Also often leaders or managers can be heard using the phrase or something like, “we need to take a step back for a minute on this” or “we need to take a step back and regroup”. In many cases this can just be a matter of procrastination or maybe a moment of hesitation looking for some final aspect of reassurance before proceeding, however, my reference here is to a physical shift in ones’ own thinking to secure a better result.

As a coach, I passionately believe that the key to achievement is understanding yourself better. This insight into your personal abilities and thinking helps you prepare for situations, process problems and understand how best to formulate solutions.

This concept of moving backwards as a definitive action; can seem a bit odd to many. However, actually planning to do something and working towards a goal by acting in a conscious way, is a conscious act to move towards something. This builds on thinking in other articles I have written about the way you think and the way you frame the way you think.

This strategy is no accident by many people who are deliberately changing the way they act or behave to achieve a better or different result. To be clear here, deception or trickery are completely different things. The concept here is a mind-set shift and this affirms my earlier point about understanding yourself so you know when and how to do things.

The concept is called the conscious competence theory and it focusses on the process and stages of learning a new skill or behaviour, ability or technique.

The concept is sometimes also referred to as the 'conscious competence learning model', or 'conscious competence learning theory'; 'conscious competence ladder' or even 'conscious competence matrix'. It is also referenced in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), where it’s recognised that each mind has its strengths although it focusses more on the unconscious mind.

There are loads of papers, research and teaching on the way the mind behaves and that the conscious and unconscious mind work in different ways. It is accepted though that the power of the mind is more in the unconscious mind than the conscious one.

If you consider the human body as an example, the brain is controlling everything that you do, which is quite a task. The majority of activities or systems at work in the body, such as the 5 senses and important tasks such as breathing, pumping your blood around your body or say standing up; your brain is just getting on with it whilst you do what you do. Such as teaching a class of students about climate change, building a wall, cooking a meal, cutting someone’s hair or performing a medical procedure on a patient.

Thing is, we take all this for granted as from when we are first born our brains are being stimulated, developing, learning and growing. Hence we see the stages of development in humans as we learn and age. As we learn things they move into what I usually call “automatic” mode or the unconscious mind and here this is where the vast amount of things you need to know about or understand exist and control what you need to do. The challenge here is determining what is important in the moment as that is what the conscious mind is focussed on.

Sigmund Freud is arguably the person who brought this whole concept to our attention in the 1920’s. His work used the metaphor of an iceberg, where what you see above the waterline is the conscious mind and what exists below the line is the unconscious mind and the mind processes that move thoughts and issues back and to between the unconscious mind and the conscious mind. This is an excellent illustration of the workings of the mind and should provide a visualisation to how we are operating.

The thing is and there is some disagreement amongst thinkers here from my readings over time, as how much the conscious mind can actually do. Seemingly, in the moment, the conscious mind can only focus on 7 things with a variation of ± 2 either way at any one time. This was referenced by George Miller’s research in the 1950’s. This does give you some perspective about how things are managed in your mind, as most things are managed by the unconscious mind based on your own set of rules or your own operating system. The operating system is based or framed on your beliefs, values and experience or learning. This is a complex area and can be changed with detailed work when working with a coach or using self-coaching.

Considering the information thus far, I suspect you are wondering how does this help you? If I explain the competency model next, this will help to appreciate the opportunity of learning.

To assist with this, if you first consider something you have recently learnt to do and now feel you are competent to do/take part in/perform before reading the model.

As a working example, that I daresay most adults will be able to appreciate, think about your past, or maybe even your current experience of learning to drive a car. I find this example makes the point nicely when I am trying to educate clients to understand this concept.

• Level 1 - Unconscious Incompetence (You Don't Know that You Don't Know) - At this stage, you are curious as to how to drive a car, you have yet to learn what it takes, you lack the knowledge to appreciate the task ahead as you have little or no comprehension of the complexity of the multi-tasking required.
• Level 2 - Conscious Incompetence (You Know that You Don't Know) – At this stage this is where driver training or instruction has started and at an early stage and you are very aware of what it’s going to take and are trying to cope with everything and getting loads of correction and feedback from your instructor.
• Level 3 - Conscious Competence (You Know that You Know) – At this stage you are demonstrated competence as a safe driver although there is a high amount of concentration and effort required to make the grade consistently. The standard to be “pass ready” is in sight or grasp and some days you are there and some days you are not. Therefore, you may be at this stage when you pass the test.
• Level 4 - Unconscious Competence (You Don't Know that You Know - It Just Seems Easy!) - Finally this is the stage where you should be demonstrating competence and be a safe driver (hopefully qualified!). This is where you enter automatic mode and driving comes second nature to you, it’s just something you just do. The task of learning is sufficient (we should always consider there is room for improvement in skills and knowledge so should avoid thinking about complete) to progress this to the unconscious mind.

With this example, you also have to consider from your own experience, how during training and post qualification you can move backwards in the model and forwards again, learning from your experience, when confidence, or over confidence in a given situation, demonstrates a lack of competence and a consequence is the experience of a near miss or a shock on the road or indeed the damage of a car and/or injury of others.

It’s this learning which illustrates how you can move forwards by stepping back.

In most learning experiences, practical application doesn’t always demonstrate to you or anyone else your competence or success, as there is a lag in obtaining this information. In many situations though, this can mean you won’t know when you will get feedback either. With driving that feedback is instant. This is the point here, that making a conscious shift in your mind to do something or to prevent yourself doing something will demonstrate competence. It’s moving out of automatic mode and really thinking about what you want to do; it makes the necessary mind-shift to achieve the goal.

We can therefore apply this thinking to other aspects of our life, as we basically spend most of our life in unconscious competence and are seldom in conscious competence or as some coaches phrase it, “be in the moment”.

When we actually take time to understand ourselves better and gain that insight to become more self-aware, we begin to learn about where we can improve ourselves and what we need to do when. The remaining step is starting to consider when we need to activate this switch in our minds and flick across to “manual” or conscious mode.

Therefore, next time you are planning to try and achieve a new goal or indeed with a client or colleague where you feel that engagement hasn’t really progressed in the way you like, just move into the moment and utilise the power of your conscious mind to help you consider what you really need to do to achieve a win-win here. Once you have formulated a plan, have a chat with yourself to help re-programme your unconscious mind as how to best work this out and consider when best to deploy it. Based on your insight, this should then emerge as a clearer plan as to when this should be deployed, when it does, just really think about what you are trying to do and achieve. The results of shifting to being in the moment in the conscious mind may well surprise you.

Raymond Smith is an experienced and accredited Executive Coach, Master NLP Practitioner and certified Mental Toughness Practitioner.

Insight Leadership Solutions specialises in leadership development by coaching leaders to improve their performance and wellbeing by developing their self-awareness and their mental toughness.

If you would like to learn more about improving your personal effectiveness contact Raymond Smith at [email protected] or get in touch via the website.   www.insightleadershipsolutions.co.uk