Shaping
Building a complicated behaviour by rewarding rough attempts first, then gradually only the better ones.
Also called: successive approximation · building a behaviour
Nobody waits for a dog to perform a finished behaviour and then rewards it, because most useful behaviours never happen by accident. Shaping pays the first step — a glance towards the mat — then the second, then only the full journey onto it.
The skill is in raising the bar at the right speed. Too fast and the dog gives up because nothing is working; too slow and it gets stuck at a step that was meant to be temporary.
It is the most transferable skill an owner can learn, because it is how you build anything you have not been given a recipe for.