Have you ever starting learning something new and then abandoned it? Probably. The question is, “Why do we do that and how do we stop?”
Last week I was working with a company on their listing presentation. I had just finished demonstrating the process start to finish and now it was the agent’s turn to practice.
Immediately a couple of them starting remarking that they felt their way of doing a listing presentation was fine…no need to add a new way! After asking them a couple of questions, I quickly realized their way of doing a listing presentation was not working.
Hmmm…so why the resistance to a new way that works?
The answer lies in Maslow’s Stages of Learning.
The 4 Stages of Learning are described as….
Stage 1: Unconsciously incompetent – In other words, you don’t know what you don’t know. This was the agent prior to coming to the class.
Stage 2: Consciously incompetent – Now there is a realization of other information. For example, a different way of completing a listing presentation. BUT has they attempt to implement this information it feels uncomfortable (mainly because they aren’t good at it yet) and they reject the new information as “not for me” and call fall back to the comfortable.
Stage 3: Consciously competent – In this stage a person has persevered through Stage 2 and now using that information (i.e. a new listing presentation) feels good, BUT they must think about it as they do it.
Stage 4: Unconsciously competent or mastery – Using the new information feels natural.
As you might have guessed, Stage 2 is the answer to why we abandon a new (and perhaps better) way of doing something.
Why? Because in the beginning we suck, and it feels bad. Our brains will always try to correct this problem and often its method is to justify that how we do it now works.
How do you change this? First, accept that sucking is part of the process and is indeed the path to mastery. How do you accelerate up the steps? Practice.
Practice with kids, practice with significant others, practice with the dog, practice in the shower, practice while driving. Just practice.
This is particularly important as a real estate agent because our words are one of our greatest assets and being good at explaining information is critical. So, practice.