Skip to main content

The Hierarchy of Competence

The hierarchy of competence is sometimes also referred to as the stages of learning. These are the psychological stages of learning or acquiring a new skill. Mr. Noel Burch used it at Gordon Training International in the 1970s' as a training model for its employees.

I came across this while reading a book by mental game coach Dr. Jared Tendler called The Mental Game of Poker. I found it very interesting and realized that we could apply this in learning to play the guitar, because technically, what we are really doing is acquiring the new skillset of playing an instrument.

As you can see in the diagram, acquiring a new skill is gradual progress that starts from being unconscious incompetent and ends at unconscious competence when mastery is achieved.

1] Unconscious Incompetence

This is the beginner stage. You have just come across the guitar or seen someone play, and you like it! You want to play it, yet you do not where to start though. Because at this stage you do not even know what you do not know. At the start of acquiring any new skill, we will start in the Unconscious Incompetence stage of learning. The baby steps start and the learning begins.

2] Conscious Incompetence

As you start practicing your new skill set and begin learning the ins and outs of the instrument, you will reach the stage where you are now aware of the things that you do not know. This is the intermediary level where you continue to practice, practice, practice because you now know what you do not know.

3] Conscious Competence

This is the proficient stage. Now the guitarist is able to fully apply the skill set he has been learning. He is able to utilize the skills along with the knowledge, but it still requires a conscious effort to use these skills.

4] Unconscious Competence

The last stage of acquiring a skill. The guitar player has become so proficient that he is able to perform those skills without any conscious effort. This is also known as the stage of mastery.





We all go through these practical stages when we learn any new skill. It could be learning to fly a kite or learning to dive, this model is applicable in all sorts of scenarios and has been used as a training guide for new employees in a company.

Let's take the example of learning to drive or ride a bike. When you are a young kid, dreaming about the day he/she would be able to do it themselves, we are at the stage of Unconscious Incompetence. We have no idea how to make the bike even start. After asking older siblings and asking friends or from your parents you start learning to find out how to ride a bike. Now we enter the second phase; Conscious Incompetence. We now know that there are many things you do not know yet to start riding a bike. Back to practicing. Then through hard work and dedication, you reach the Conscious Competence level. Where you are now able to ride a bike with no problem, but it does require his full concentration and effort. And finally, you become Unconsciously Competence where you are able to ride the bike with no second thought at all. Some call it being in the auto-pilot mode. Think about your own experience and try to relate it to that experience.

Before we wind up I want to conclude with one important factor. When you are in the later stages of learning, like conscious competence, you might not see a huge improvement, you might feel this way as you reach the mastery stage as well. That's not true! Your skill is becoming effortless Like in our previous example of riding a bike, ask yourself, how do you ride your bike? You do not know because it's so much ingrained in your subconscious you can do it without any thought. It does not mean you are not progressing or not improving.

Thus now you know the four stages of learning and how it can apply on your new adventure learning to play the guitar, what are you waiting for, take those baby steps towards mastery now!!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Welcome to Guitar Therapy - One to one Tutorship

Greetings all string-pulling, jumping, slamming, ass-kicking, ax-wielding musicians. This is for all of you guitar freaks out there! Don't be fooled so easily though, my private coaching sessions do not only cover guitar, but also music theory, learning pathways to advancing your music skills, composition, and basics of arrangements as well. So whether you want to shred out, or learn to write your own songs on your guitar, you are at the right place. It's in a long time we are making, and I think it's finally time to give it away for the new generation. First, before I go any further, I want to say that I'm not a guitar guru, nor a music maestro, I consider myself always as a student of music. Yes, my primary instrument is music, and I also play piano, drums a little bit, and the bass as every guitarist would or should. I've been playing for 29 years and have enough experience teaching not only guitar but music production as well. I have formal education in mus

Introduction to Guitar Tablature - Part 1

Although we call it guitar tabs nowadays, tablature has been around since the a5th century. It was used to write for lutes, vihuela, ukelele. It was used in Renaissance and Baroque eras; there were many types of tablature for even for organs. Today it is commonly used for guitar and stringed instruments and the like. For us, we will solely focus on guitar tablature. Unlike music notation, tablature indicates the note to be played in numbers rather than musical pitches or notes on music sheets. Guitar tablature allows you to read and write the technical aspect of playing the guitar. Techniques such as hammer-on, vibrato, pull-offs, etc. are all easily demonstratable. Here's an example Add caption Guitar tablature is easily adapted into bass player's tablature as well. The diagram of a tablature as shown above is the view of the guitar if you kept it on your lap frets upward. The top most line is high 6th string and the bottom the lowest E. The numbers are the note you need to fr

An In-depth look at Guitar Tabs

As we have seen in our previous session, which focused on the introduction of tablature, the diagrams differ from those of chord diagram illustrations. The numbers on the horizontal lines indicate the fret number rather than the finger number. You can see this when you keep going above the 5th or 6th fret on the guitar diagrams. To learn something, I believe the best teacher is a practical application itself. Therefore I have devised a fretting exercise, an improvisation from a Steve Vai exercise I came across a long time ago. It is advisable to use a metronome or if you can, maintain a count yourself while doing the exercise. First, we do it in a simple chromatic run starting from 1st fret on the 6th string. Examine the diagram below. It’s a simple chromatic exercise you start with lowest string and chromatically decend. Once you do then you ascend in the oppsite starting with your pink from the highest string. It’s important to have a metronome on or try and count yourself as you do