A partner on a new volunteer project asked me to teach her how to get organized. She wants me to start writing down how I do what I do. Organizing meetings, prioritizing work, coordinating activities, etc, etc. I’m completely stumped. I came out of the womb with a prioritized to-do list in my fist. It’s like breathing to me. I’ve honed this skill over time, just as I’ve learned some new breathing exercises in yoga classes, but I didn’t learn this.
It’s like asking a charismatic leader to teach me how to be charismatic. They probably don’t know what they’re doing – they are unconsciously competent. You don’t know, what you do know. You can’t know what the other person doesn’t know. If you try to teach things that are so deeply innate, you feel like you’re teaching the obvious. It’s condescending. Who wants to listen to that?
I realized that it’s much easier to teach things that you have learned yourself. You understand and can recognize the different steps that it took to acquire a certain skill or knowledge yourself. You first had to move through the stages of unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence .
So how do we break this up? How do we start sharing and learning from each other when it all seems too obvious, and you don’t know what you know? I’m turning that over to my subconscious for incubation. I’m anticipating a 3am ah-ha! moment on this one.
lynnmorstead 
