By Ashraf Al Shafaki
Performance of a specific skill goes through 4 main phases with each phase having its own characteristics and order.
During this phase involves the person takes input through sensory perception.
The person starts by observing someone performing the skill.
The person admires the performance level of the skill being performed.
The person then absorbs the way in which the skill is performed or analyses it to determine how it is being done.
Admiration is a phase that usually overlaps with, accompanies or follows observation.
Admiration leads to strong motivation
Admiration triggers a powerful fast-track learning process
Admiration can automatically lead to imitation
After deeply observing someone performing a specific skill and admiring such a performance comes the phase of imitation.
The person tries to imitate what he has been observing.
The skill level of the person is still very basic.
The person also does not have any creativity in performing the skill and tries to imitate it exactly as he has seen it done without any additions or modifications.
After having improved his level of performance considerably through repeated imitation of the skill the person then goes through a more advanced phase in which he introduces modifications to the skill being performed.
The person adds his own input not by just imitating what he has been observing verbatim but making changes to it signaling his mastery of the skill being performed as well as a higher state of creativity and self confidence in performing it.
Having observed a skill being performed, admired the performance, imitated it and reached the phase of introducing his own modifications to it the person then may be able to reache the fifth and final phase which involves innovating his own creative design of the whole performance from scratch.
In contrast to the phase of introducing modifications, in the innovation phase the person actually redesigns the whole thing from scratch seemingly dissolving all traces of what he has initially been imitating.