The 4 Stages of Competence

Prime your team for upskilling and reskilling

Author

Vaugan Nayagar
May 12, 2025

In partnership with

Morning friend ☕️ 

Hope all the moms were well pampered yesterday for Mother’s Day.

Well deserved foot rubs, flowers, and a brief break from the daily grind.

I wanted to cook something impressively delicious…

But alas, the kitchen is not my area of expertise

A classic case of conscious incompetence.

One of the mental models that helped me build my Growth Mindset ( Do you have a Growth Mindset? ) is the 4 stages of competence model.

It’s a very useful model to frame skill acquisition for both yourself and your team.

Today, we have the bumbling and unconsciously incompetent Michael Scott from The Office here for some quips and entertainment.

Grab your coffee ☕️ 

Let’s chat!

It’s a framing and mindset challenge

Everyone Starts Stupid. Good Managers Know What Happens Next

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.”
– Stephen Hawking

Let’s be honest: Most of us think we’re better than we are.
At powerpoint. At delegation. At conflict resolution (read: passive-aggressive emails).

There’s a reason for this delusion:
Sometimes, we don’t know what we don’t know.

Real mastery of a skill involves 4 distinct phases, and just knowing these stages gives you an edge (confidence) to persevere through the process.

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You’re Not ‘There’ Yet. Here’s the Map.

Sahil Bloom uses the word "yet" to promote a growth mindset.

He emphasizes that achieving something is a process, not a destination.

And that current limitations are not insurmountable:

Let’s walk through the 4 stages of competence, and assume you’re managing people in all four.

  1. Unconscious Incompetence
    They have no idea they’re lacking the skill.

  2. Conscious Incompetence
    They now know they’re bad at it.

  3. Conscious Competence
    They can do it, but only with focus, and conscious mental effort

  4. Unconscious Competence
    They’ve mastered it to the point where it feels mentally effortless.

The 4 Stages of Competence

Check out this short video explanation of the model:

Fake It, Break It, Learn It: The Dirty Truth About Competence

As a manager, your job is to get results.

And in today’s fast paced world, you need to get your team comfortable with upskilling and reskilling in order to deliver those results.

You have to move people from Stage 1 to Stage 4 without breaking them (or yourself) in the process.

That means:

  • Spotting the loud and wrong early

  • Celebrating the awkwardness of learning

  • Teaching the unconscious masters to slow down and explain to the others

  • Creating a culture where sucking temporarily is safer than faking forever

Because when people fake competence, bad things happen.

Budgets explode. Projects collapse.

The manager gets blamed.

What you can do as Manager

The key is to ingrain this model with your team, so upskilling and reskilling is seen as a challenge with clear stages leading up to mastery.

Work with each team member to assess where they are, develop a plan of action, and then use feedback/reflection to course-correct as needed.

Constant upskilling and reskilling is the new reality in the age of AI

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Summary

Upskilling and reskilling is a necessity with the pace of change we are experiencing.

Framing this well helps you and your team navigate the process with confidence.

Normalize the 4 Stages of Competence model with your team.

Make it okay to say “I don’t know, yet”.

Make it an expectation that your people work towards mastery of their required skills (unconscious competence).

That’s it for today, friend.

Till next monday!

Vaugan

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Black to mate in 4 moves…

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Constant upskilling and reskilling is the new norm

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