The Heroic Journey of Teenagers
3 Core Challenges
  1. Table of Contents & Summary
  4. Developing Competencies
Home > 3 Core Challenges > Developing Competencies > The Foundation

The Foundation

There are Twelve Types of Competencies to be Built
And they go beyond school.  This is the exciting part and the scary part. 


It’s exciting to see all the competencies you can develop and think about what you might be able to do in life.  It’s also scary because there are so many competencies to develop.

Competencies are Built in Many Places and in Different Ways
Competencies can be developed in school, in families, in the community, on teams/clubs, in faith communities, even in community colleges and universities for some high school students. 

You Don’t Have to Master All the Competencies
Some of these competencies you just have to be OK at.  Some you will want to be good at.  A few will be competencies that you really want to master.  Those are choices you will make.


The point is – you can be a successful young adult by being OK at a bunch of these competencies, good at more of them and a master of a few.

There are Four Stages of Competency Development
There is a natural four step process that we go through in developing a new competency.  We usually go from (1) unconscious incompetence (don’t know what we don’t know); to (2) conscious incompetence (we know what we don’t know); to (3) conscious competence (we know but have to focus a lot); to (4) we know and it’s a natural flow.This will happen lots of times during the teenage years because there are lots of competencies to build.  It will also be a natural part of your adult life.