The Negotiation Book: Your Definitive Guide To Successful Negotiating

6.2. CONSCIOUS COMPETENT

An unconscious incompetent negotiator is one that is not aware of the impact of their actions and therefore generally attracts suboptimised deals. These individuals might also deny the relevance or usefulness of developing negotiation skills. Any negotiator must become conscious of their incompetence before development of the new skill or learning can begin. The key to becoming more effective as a negotiator is to move into the 'conscious competent' stage, by being able to demonstrate the skill or ability. As you become aware of the existence and relevance of the negotiation skills you also become aware of your own shortcomings as you attempt or try to use the skill. The negotiator achieves 'conscious competence' when they can perform at will. They need to concentrate and think in order to perform the skill; the skill is not yet 'second nature' or 'automatic' and requires the negotiator to operate as a 'conscious competent'. Over time the skills become so practised that they enter the unconscious parts of the brain and it becomes 'second nature'. Common examples of unconscious competence are driving, sports activities, typing, manual dexterity tasks, listening and communicating.

It becomes possible for certain skills to be performed while doing something else, for example, knitting while reading a book. Also, the person might now be able to teach others in the skill concerned, although after some time of being unconsciously competent the person might actually ...