| Three main factors go into building trust-based mentoring relationships: competence, integrity, and caring. In this newsletter series, we will explore how you and your mentoring partners can leverage these areas to create powerful and transformational experiences.
In the previous newsletter, we looked at an assessment process to identify the talent, skills, and knowledge needed to support competency development in the mentoring relationship. This builds trust that the relationship will be productive as it progresses. In this newsletter, we will focus on the second part of competency development: Understanding how new abilities are acquired and how we can measure progress as the relationship moves forward.
Most mentoring relationships involve collaboration when developing abilities. Learners and advisors work together to improve talent, skills, or the knowledge base that the learner has identified. This improves the learner’s ability and reinforces the advisor’s competency in that area. A great starting point for addressing acquiring new abilities is a common model that looks at four sequential stages of skill development.
In learning any ability, we travel clockwise from Stage 1: I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know to Stage 4: I Don’t Think about What I Know.
Stage 1: UNCONSCIOUS INCOMPETENCE: I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know
In a mentoring relationship, the discovery of blind spots may be critical to the learner’s development of competence in an area of talent, skill, or knowledge. For example, someone new to management is experiencing conflict with several direct reports and does not know why. After some dialogue, it becomes clear that the learner does not have any training or awareness of differences in personalities and behavior styles and how that can impact the way people respond to directives. They did not know this was even an issue. Simply discovering this leads them to the next stage.
Stage 2 – CONSCIOUS INCOMPETENCE: I Know I Need to Learn Something
This stage may be the starting point for some learners. They are aware of their need, but require quite a bit of help in putting together the development plan to acquire the new ability. Let’s continue the example into this stage. The learner now has awareness of why they are having problems with direct reports, but does not know what resources are available to help them learn about behavioral style differences and how to manage people with this insight. The advisor will need to suggest books, an online course, or some other learning tool to provide the learner with basic information and a framework that aids in application of this understanding to their job. Once they get to this point, they are then ready for Stage 3.
Stage 3 –CONSCIOUS COMPETENCE: I Know Something New Now
Some learners already possess a fair amount of skill and experience in an ability. They are seeking to move deeper in their own understanding and practice though interaction with an advisor who is perceived as an expert in the area. Mentoring is an ideal environment to practice, debrief, and deepen the abilities needed to become an expert. In our example, the advisor could role play management discussions with 3 or 4 different behavior styles to help the learner gain awareness of their own styles and tendencies. The advisor could also help the learner understand how to apply what they are learning to the actual management situations they are facing.
Stage 4 – UNCONSCIOUS COMPETENCE: I Don’t Think about What I Know
This is an important stage for the advisor who has significant expertise to reflect upon. They may need to analyze the components of a skill or think back to how they moved from Stage 3 to 4 in order to be more helpful to the learner trying to gain expertise. In the above example, the advisor was easily able to identify that the lack of understanding of behavior styles was leading to conflicts with the learner’s direct reports. However, it had been many years since the advisor had even thought about this skill set, since this management ability was now second nature for them. Reviewing the same material as the learner proved helpful for them, allowing them to think about how they sized up the basic behavioral orientations of their own reports. The advisor thought of people in their own sphere of influence who illustrated the basic styles, then provided the learner with both positive and negative examples of management conversations they have had in order to help illustrate this skill to the learner.
This model has a number of obvious applications to mentoring, where people help others learn a new ability or skill through sharing their wisdom, knowledge, and experience. The advisor is typically in Stage 3 or 4 and helps the learner achieve that same status. The Acquiring Abilities Model is helpful for setting goals—ones that reflect the level of competence that is realistic for the time commitment anticipated in the mentoring relationship—and for assessing progress toward that goal.
In order to make the most of the Acquiring Abilities Model, consider giving your mentoring partner permission to point out any blind spots in your understanding or skill set that may be impeding the progress of your learning. Too often we are blind to our own shortcomings or don’t have the awareness we need to even know what to look for. Trusting our partners to help us detect and overcome these blind spots can be critical for success.
Working through the middle stages of the model takes effort and persistence on the part of learners. Stage 2 demands that we be ruthlessly honest about how large the gap is between what we can currently do and what we need to be able to do. This dictates just how much personal transformation must take place to master the new ability. Work with your mentoring partners to help ensure gaps are identified appropriately.
Open and honest communication is essential in any mentoring relationship, but it takes on an even greater importance when it comes to assessing our abilities as we strive to learn something new. Share openly with your mentoring partners about the nature and progress of your development, particularly in Stage 3. This sharing includes practices and principles being used, along with the positive and negative results being experienced. The only way they can help you is if they know what is truly going on.
With your mentoring partner, reflect on the Acquiring Abilities Model and how it shows up in your mentoring relationship.
1. Identify with your partner how you have experienced these four stages.
2. Discuss the relevance of the model to your relationship. What talents, skills, or understanding do you want to achieve? What level does that expertise need to get to?
3. Determine how you will communicate each perspective of the model and move forward to the next stage(s). What new experiences or practice will help the learner move to the next stage? What experiences or practices has the advisor used in the past to help them move to that stage?
4. Highlight relational commitments you need to make or honor as development moves further into the model, such as the type of communication that needs to occur and principles you need to follow to track progress through the model. How much accountability does the learner want from the advisor in making progress toward the desired stage? How much effort is the advisor willing to make to providing the experience or opportunities to practice the skills needed to progress toward the next stage of acquisition?
5. Set up a time to meet to evaluate your progress and refine your learning plan as needed.
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