Conscious Competence for Educators, Trainers & Students

Conscious Competence as a Value Proposition

If you are an experienced educator, trainer or instructor, you may invariably agree that a good way to start off a training class is to show your students that you care for them - sympathize with them. You may say you know they are at tremendous inconvenience to come to your class, and to thank them for traveling so far to see you. How you further break the ice is all up to you. It depends on your skill as an engaging teacher. But after these polite acts of introduction some students may still give you a cold hard stare - and that stare says: "I don't want to be here."

At this point it would be great to hand students wads of cash as a means of piquing interest. However, assuming your education budget doesn't allow for such subsidy, perhaps the next best thing is to offer students their due "WIIFM" - What's in it for me?

Conscious Competence provides several obvious benefits both for the trainer and for those being trained. The idea behind offering these benefits is to impart value in education and to have the student walk away as an embodiment of value.

What Is Conscious Competence?

Conscious Competence refers to the level of ability (or inability) by which one may perform a task. This task can be anything, from something abstract such as planning a framework for writing a report, all the way to the execution of a physical task such as the operation of a jackhammer.

The concept of Conscious Competence is not a new idea in itself, and has been tossed around in purely academic circles since the 1980s. The purpose of this discussion is to walk away from heavy academic discussion and to introduce Conscious Competence as a simple concept and to suggest its use as a possible practical tool by which instructors and students may gauge progress in learning.

What Is The Conscious Competence Matrix?

The Conscious Competence Matrix (CCM) is the concept of Conscious Competence fleshed out into a usable high-level practical form.