[Neurons] 2023 Neurons #33 HOW DO YOU BECOME AN EXPERT?

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2023 Neurons #33

July 31, 2023

 

HOW DO YOU BECOME AN EXPERT?

 

In the last Neuro-Semantic "Wisdoms," July 8, I spoke about competence.  I
asked the question, "Who wants to be competent?" and then made several
distinctions.  The first one is the distinction between confidence and
competence.  It is a strange, and to my mind, a weird thing that so many
people come to trainings or coaching wanting confidence.  When we ask, "What
do you want to achieve?"  They say that they want to feel confident.  A
great many of them seem oblivious to the fact that you cannot legitimately
feel confident if you are not actually skillfully competent to do with what
you want to do. 

 

But that's the thing.  Confidence without competence means you are fooling
yourself.  And it probably means that you are wanting to con others into
thinking you can do something which you actually cannot.  The problem of
"confidence without competence" is that that is the definition of a fool who
thinks he is something he is not.  So first, if you want to feel confident,
then do what is required to become skillful.  Then confidence will naturally
follow.

 

The next distinction distinguishes between having some skills and being
competent.  They are not the same.  Question: Can you be skilled and
competent at the same time?  Yes.  That is possible.  You could become
highly skillful in a particular skill, in fact, highly competent in doing
that skill.  But if the skill is a part of something larger, then you could
have some skills, but not sufficient skills for competency. You could be
skillful in scrambling eggs, but that is just one sub-skill of being a
competent chef.  You could be skillful at fixing a flat tire, but that is
just one sub-skill of being a competent auto-mechanic.

 

The point?  One sub-skill within the full range of skills necessary for a
particular competency does not make you competent.  You may be able to
organize your thoughts into a coherent order but that does not, in itself,
make you an effective public speaker.  You may be skilled in asking
Meta-Model questions, but that does not make you an effective coach or
modeler.  Each of those competencies requires more than just the questioning
skill.

 

Actually, most competencies do not refer to a single thing or a simple
thing.  It is involves a lot of things at both the primary level and many
more at the meta-level.  

              Knowing about the skill: know what, understanding.

              Knowing how to implement the skill: know-how, implementation.

              Ability (capacity) to do X.

              Context where to do X.

              Timing for when and how long.

              Practice, discipline, motivation. 

              State: the right state, the right intensity.

              Convincer: person's unique convincer strategy.

              Feedback loop: receiving and using feedback information to
keep shaping a response.

              Standards to evaluate: values, criteria.

              Intention to develop: Intentionality, purpose, one's big why.

 

No wonder competency generally takes a lot longer than just learning a few
skills.  Once you know the skills and can perform them at will, then you
have to integrate all of the sub-skills into a single unified response and
do that until it becomes dependable and consistent.  Competence requires a
full integration.  Anders Ericsson who studied expertise and developed the
10,000 hour rule (10 year rule) said that it does not arise from merely
"practicing."  It arises from a special form of practice-deliberate
practice.  

 

This refers to breaking down a skill into its most elemental variables and
then practicing each of those variables one at a time until it becomes a
behavior that you can do with consistent dependability.  That means doing it
until it becomes automatic.  At that point, it's yours.  Every sports-person
knows that.  Athletes know that you never get away from the basics.  You
keep returning to the basics to keep those fundamental variables fresh and
rejuvenated.  Baseball plays get together for "Spring Practice."  What do
they do?  They throw and catch the baseball; they practice pitching and
batting the ball.  Basics! 

 

When you see true expertise or mastery and you stand back and observe it, it
is awe-inspiring. We stand amazed at the athletic skills we see in the
Olympics.  We ask ourselves, "How did she do that?"  "How did he learn
that?"  What comes together in one of those performances are a lot of
sub-skills that were practiced over and over and over until the competence
emerged as something more than the sum of the parts. 

 

How do you become competent and develop expertise?  Learning,
implementation, and a thousand hours of practice every year.  By contrast,
many are self-deceived is in thinking that because they "understand"
something, they know how to do it.  What's deceptive is that between knowing
and doing is a gap-the neurological gap of translating from mind into
neurology so that you body 'knows' how to do it.  True competency requires
that.  And how you know what we're doing in Neuro-Semantics to help people
become experts.

 

 

 

 

 

 




 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

ISNS Executive Director

P.O. Box 8

Clifton Colorado 81520 USA

(970) 523-7877

drhall at acsol.net  



 

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