Developing competence as Leader in Adult Care
- Holly S
- Sep 17
- 7 min read
Stages of developing competence as a Leader in Adult Care
During learning and development, Leaders and Managers in adult care and anyone who is studying for a qualification will find it useful to know where they are in the competence learning model. This will help them to stay motivated, keep going and not give up, as it can feel tough when trying to gain new and specialised knowledge and skills.
Based on the competence model, there are four stages of developing competence, and these are:
Ignorance of the skill or knowledge (Unconscious incompetence)
Awareness of the gap (Conscious incompetence)
Learning (Conscious competence)
Mastery (Unconscious competence)
The conscious competence learning model can help learners and tutors improve their approach to filling skill gaps.
It is important that learners as well as trainers, leaders, managers, and anyone else involved in the learner's development are aware of these stages, as they will assist in maintaining motivation and momentum for acquiring new knowledge and skills.
1. Ignorance - Unconscious incompetence
In this stage, the individual is ignorant of the required knowledge or skill and does not understand or even know that it exists.
This state of Ignorance is the Unconscious incompetence stage of learning where someone is unaware (unconscious) of their own incompetence or lack of skill.
Unconscious incompetence can also occur when someone is learning a new skill for the first time, or when they're performing a task they've done before but are doing poorly.
Some characteristics of unconscious incompetence:
Ignorance: The person does not know what they don't know.
Difficulty recognising gap in knowledge or skills: It may be hard for the person to recognise their own lack of knowledge or skill, mainly due to their lack of awareness.
Risk: People in this stage can be a risk to others as well as themselves, because they may not be aware of what could go wrong. In the care industry, such lack of awareness can have terrible consequences, such as the death of a service user, or at an extreme, an incompetent manager who allows the unchecked behaviour of a murderous care worker who is harming patients.
The person is not aware of the knowledge gap or the skills gap, and may not even recognise that they have a gap in their own knowledge and skills.
This ignorant person does not know how to do something and does not necessarily recognise that the activity requires a certain skill, knowledge, or competence.
Such an individual may deny the usefulness or necessity of the skill, or the need to gain the right knowledge.
If the ignorant person is in a senior role within their organisation they may use their authority and power to pressure others into adopting their way of thinking, inevitably leading to a culture of "dumbing down" and outdated practices while the situation prevails. This may seem far fetched, but it does happen.
In this care sector, this situation can also be seen when a highly qualified care professional is appointed to a management or leadership job role, and the person fails to recognise the gaps in their understanding of business, management, and leadership knowledge, skills, and behaviours.
Often, within their own area of technical specialisation in their organisation, this highly qualified care professional has acquired mastery or unconscious competence in their specialised field, leading to the assumption that they possess the same level of competence in leadership and business management. This assumption subsequently leads to all sorts of problems for the organisation, including loss of business quality standards and downgrading of CQC ratings.
To remedy this stage of ignorance, the individual must recognise their own ignorance and incompetence, and the value of diligently gaining the new knowledge and skills, and keeping up with changes knowledge and skills requirements in their area of responsibility.
The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the individual being honest enough to acknowledge their own ignorance and lack of knowledge. Once this acknowledgement happens, moving to the next stage of Awareness depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.
2. Awareness - Conscious incompetence
The stage of Awareness or Conscious Incompetence is when someone becomes aware of the gap in their knowledge and/or skills and understands that they need to undertake new learning activities to stay up to date.
While being conscious of their incompetence, the individual does not understand or know how to do something, but he or she does recognise the gap, as well as the value of a new knowledge and skill in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.
If the individual is undertaking formal qualification, this is the stage at which some dishonest learners resort to cheating on their assignments and assessments. The person becomes aware of the gap in their knowledge and skills and instead of undertaking their learning themselves, they resort to cheating by buying essays, using artificial intelligence to construct their assignment submissions, and other types of deception to fraudulently gain the qualification without undertaking the required learning activities.
Unfortunately, such cheating behaviour is not a victimless crime. There are always vulnerable persons and service-users who will be harmed by the learner who cheated their way through their coursework, as the learner's lack of the actual required knowledge, skills and behaviours, leads to incidents, errors, omissions, commissions, repeated near-misses that evolve into actual mistakes, and more.
Some tips for dealing with conscious incompetence:
Embrace the learning process: Conscious incompetence is a good thing, as it creates awareness of gaps to bridge to stay up-to-date and keep everyone safe.
Plan and implement: Create a personal development plan to work through the skills gap, for example, the Leader in Adult Care National Occupational Standards, and diligently work through the gaps in knowledge and skills to achieve your goals.
Study your coursework: Follow the course curriculum and methodically study all your course materials.
Stay positive: Don't panic. Every time you complete a piece of learning, your confidence will improve.
Seek help: Ask questions. Your learning mentor or coach to help you learn the skills you need.
Don't cheat: It's not worth it. Even if you are not confronted with evidence of your cheating, the people assessing your work will know that you tried to deceive them, and they will regard you as untrustworthy,
3. Learning - Conscious competence
In this stage, the individual has started their learning activities and updating their knowledge and skills.
In the Learning phase, the individual has learnt and understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the new skill.
The person is conscious of their competence, they can perform the skill but it is not a smooth execution of the task. Since they have just learnt this new skill, they still require conscious effort and concentration to perform that new skill or recall the new knowledge.
With individuals who are undertaking a formal qualification, this is the stage when the learner's assignments and assessments start meeting targets. The learner knows what they need to learn, how they will learn it, the assessment criteria and standards that they need to meet, and the quality of their performance and evidence starts improving.
Some characteristics of conscious competence:
Requires concentration - The person needs to think and concentrate to perform the skill.
Performance needs to be broken down into steps - The person may break the skill down into steps and consciously execute each one.
The skill can be demonstrated - The person can demonstrate the skill to others, but may not be able to teach it well.
Repeated practice is important for consistent performance - The person should continue to practice the skill to become more proficient
4. Mastery - Unconscious competence
Repeated performance of the newly acquired skills leads to consistently good results, with the skill becoming "second nature".
In this stage of unconscious competence, the individual has had so much practice with the new skill that they have mastered it, with consistently competent and smooth performance each time.
The person can effortlessly explain the related concepts, and demonstrate their knowledge, as well as analysing and evaluating related situations or events.
Once the individual has gained mastery of the knowledge and skill, they can unconsciously demonstrate their competence, thereby demonstrating the highest level of skill or competence, where a task can be accurately performed with seemingly little to no thought or effort.
The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.
In this stage of competence, the mastery of the skills means that the individual may even be able to perform the skill while executing another task, for example, driving and eating a snack at the same time.
This skills mastery is achieved through repetition and practice, and can be characterised by:
Familiarity,
Unconscious decision making (and gut instinct)
Keeping up to date.
Some examples of unconscious competence include: driving, typing, sports activities, listening and communicating, digital skills, and manual dexterity tasks.
With individuals who are undertaking a formal qualification, this is the stage when the learner's assignments and assessments are consistently of high quality, meeting the full range of skills required.
Once the learner reaches this stage, full completion of the qualification becomes a certainty.
The learner knows what they need to learn, how they will learn it, the assessment criteria and standards that they need to meet, and the quality of their performance and evidence consistently meed the required standard each time.
While unconscious competence can be a great achievement, it can also be dangerous.
Moving on after mastery and unconscious competence
It is easy to become complacent and assume that things will remain the same.
If the person does not conduct a personal skills scan at regular intervals, the person may not be aware when new gaps appear in their knowledge and skills. This can lead to mistakes in the future when the person does not keep up with the changes.
It is important to regularly revisit the four stages to find out the gaps in knowledge, skills, and behaviours, and undertake learning to bridge any newly discovered gaps. This can be done through training or with the help of a coach. In the care sector, this can be done through regular supervision meetings, with an appropriate competent professional.
For the Registered Manager or Director who is head of the organisation, the best supervision is undertaken by an external individual who is outside the internal power structure within the organisation and can tell the Director or Registered Manager the honest unvarnished truth and support them with their professional development.
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