In the new movie Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 thrilling scene, Cruise rides a motorbike off a cliff, jumps off, and descends to the ground via parachute.
Tom Cruise, along with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, explained in a special behind-the-scenes video at the event that the stunt took 500 hours of skydiving training and 13,000 motorbike jumps to get it just right. The clip shows some of the extraordinary things that were done to prepare for the scene, like doing hundreds of parachutes jumps from a helicopter and thousands of motocross jumps on mud tracks built just for Cruise to practice on.
Cruise said, “Don’t be careful, be competent”.
This translates to me, becoming competent is the key to getting things to work.
However, because the experience of becoming competent is surprisingly nuanced, it’s a lot trickier than people think. It’s complicated even at the elementary school level. First, let’s define what we mean when we say “competence.” Ability to “carry out an action or series of actions to achieve a desired result” is what this term denotes. That opens up a lot of possibilities:
- Ability — capacity, training, development, etc.
- Performance — actions coordinated to affect a result.
- Measurement — what is sufficient? Sufficient as measured by the outcome, quality of the skill or sub-skill, timing, coordination, etc.
- Outcome — specific results that can be measured.
Competency vs. Skill
Simply based on it alone, there is a great deal that can be said about the concept of ‘competence.’ Now, let’s make a distinction between competency and skill. This is due to the fact that one might be skilled without being competent. You could have one of the essential coaching abilities, such as “questioning,” but if you lacked supporting, listening, and other similar qualities, then you would not be able to function as a good coach. To have talents is necessary for being competent, and almost usually, having more than one skill is required.
When it comes to Meta-Coaching, we start off with seven core skills (ACMC), and we need eleven more to reach the full level of expertise (PCMC). There are even more skills need for executive coaching, on top of those needed for group and team coaching, etc. And we have 20 sub-skills for each of these skills, such as supporting and listening; that’s a total of 40 sub-skills only for the first two fundamental talents. First come the skills, and after that comes competency through the proper coordination of those skills. Despite the fact that we frequently overlap the meanings of the phrases, they do not refer to the same thing. For the purpose of Training, we have selected nine main skills, each of which contains a significant number of subskills.
In keeping with the concept of the complexity of competence, there are other variables, including the following:
- Number of skills required for a specific competence.
- Difficulty of the skills, some may be easy and quick to learn, others more challenging and time-consuming to learn.
- State that a person needs to be operating from to perform the skills.
- Timing of the skills and their co-ordination for the competency.
- Interferences to be managed to prevent the skills from being sabotaged.
- Attitude of the person performing the skill.
Now, each of these many different variables has the potential to have an impact on the skill, and as a result, the overall competency. However, that’s not even the beginning! There is a great deal more. When we travel above the primary level, into the meta-levels, or into the Meta Place, in a person’s mind, then we have many more variables—variables that affect the person’s state and attitude, including the following:
- Beliefs and understandings about mistakes— open or closed to them?
- Intention to develop the competency— how weak or strong, robust and resilient?
- Openness to feedback information— how respond to error messages?
- Beliefs about time and repetition— how patient or impatient with practice, especially deliberate practice?
- Commitment to learning and growth— willingness level for staying the course?
- Separate person from doing— refusal to put one’s self or ego on the line about one’s actions and/or results?
From Physical to Mental/Emotional
Think of all the skills we associate with the body: tennis, free throw shooting in basketball, lifting weights, golf, playing an instrument, etc. To become proficient at any of these, one must first learn the fundamental moves, then practice them until they become second nature. How many times must you shoot a basketball at a hoop before you can make 90 percent of your shots? How many? a lot! Countless times; in the hundreds or thousands.
When you act in such a way, what are you doing? Your brain is getting a workout! Researchers like neuroscientist Donald Hebb have found that “cells that fire together wire together.” That’s exactly what you’re doing; you’re coordinating the activity of the cells in your brain and body. When that happens, using the talent is second nature. You can do it with your eyes closed.
That refers to one’s physical skills. Now consider the mental and emotional skills that you possess. Take a straightforward example, like visual access cues or auditory predicates, for example. Again, you need to engage in repeated practice of the skill in order to educate both your mind and your senses to recognize these cues without conscious effort. How much time is required for that? What is the recommended number of times that you should practice utilizing the eye-accessing cue chart? How many times must you hear a predicate before your ears become hardwired to do it automatically? It took me a full three months of daily practices with multiple people on a consistent basis in order to figure it out.
You should now have a better understanding of why we have been placing such an emphasis on deliberate practice. To successfully complete this task, you will need to carefully repeat something over and over again. Through the use of Hebbian learning, you are instructing your neurology such that your “cells wire together,” and once they have done so, they will naturally fire together. And for genuinely difficult capabilities, such as those required to be a surgeon, an airplane pilot, a capable lawyer, or a professional coach, it is going to take years of practice and, as a result, a significant commitment.
You Can Master 90% of all skills on Earth in just 30 to 60 days
If that’s too much to take in, take heart in the fact that you can master 90% of all skills on Earth in just 30 to 60 days. You can learn to play tennis, chess, shoot free throws, drive a car, type on a keyboard, etc. in a month to three months. If you dedicate yourself to learning and practicing for a few hours every day, you can pick up a wide variety of talents in a short amount of time. It will take much longer if you do less.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Certified_meta-coach] 2023 Morpheus #28 WHY IS COMPETENCE SO HARD? by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
- https://www.dailywire.com/news/tom-cruise-releases-footage-of-most-dangerous-stunt-hes-ever-attempted-for-new-mission-impossible-film?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dwbrand
