Creative Car Control Handbook
« Introduction
Model of Successful Driving »
Coaching is key to fast, efficient development at all levels of sport, business and personal development. Driving is at the very core of who you are. Developing your driving often has wide-ranging repercussions in other areas of your life. We can develop an awareness of any experience in a number of useful ways and gain insight into how we think about our activities differently in each of five key logical levels.
This is simply the place where we are engaged in whatever behaviour we are doing. Road, track, proving ground, Porsche, BMW etc. are all environmental.
This is simply what we do as a result of beliefs values and skill or as a result of instruction. The Instructor is that person who tells us what to do, what our behaviour has to be to satisfy them. Sometimes it is necessary to instruct e.g. when giving directions, or in an emergency where there is no time to put the fire out, jump on the brakes etc. Track-day instructors are typically in this mode of operation, they know why they want you to do something (and it might be very important) and at the same time they keep the reasoning to themselves (those beliefs and values) and tell you what to do at the level of behaviour. They get out of the car at the end of the day and take the knowledge with them!
These are the things we do at an unconscious level of competence which drive our behaviours. We generally don't have to think about how we operate the clutch; we have the right beliefs about how it works and after a short learning process we can easily develop the motor skills to do that activity in the muscle as well as the mind. Once the basic motor skills are mastered it is relatively easy to modify them to operate in subtly different ways e.g. to be smoother.
Beliefs are the things that we use to operate with or from. We operate from beliefs as if they were true (even if they are not). Our beliefs have a profound effect on how we do what we do and the outcomes we generate for ourselves. Values are simply beliefs that we regard as important. "It's important to drive smoothly" is a particular favourite of many high-performance drivers.
It is our beliefs and values that drive our ultimate behaviour. We attempt to do things because we believe that they work. When we model something in the field of human endeavour we establish what works and try to make sense of why it works. When we have success we can teach the model to others who will be able to emulate the original exemplar's performance to a much greater extent than if they simply tried to do so on their own. The beliefs and values of the exemplar are thus transferable.
This is the level of who you are; an expert driver, a master driver, an HPC driver. These are all "identity statements" about who we are when we drive. Striving to be the very best, most accomplished driver is in everyone's interest.