Strange details that you might want to know about Don Palmer. . .
Who he is, what he's done, what makes him tick. What qualifies him to do
what he does.
The main thing that keeps Don going is a curiosity for knowledge, freedom and fun. More specifically knowledge about how people think and how they run themselves holds a fascination beyond all others. Don is a coach first and foremost and that means coaching people how to choose better structures, better habits and better thinking.
Do less....be more.
Don left school at 15 and completed an Engineering apprenticeship in a heavy engineering environment where cold bending ten foot sheets of 14 inch thick armour plate was the norm. It was a baptism of some magnitude that brought about an engineering bent that never left.
At 22 Don "went to sea" or rather went under the sea to work as a professional diver on the west coast of Scotland. Diving is still a fascination that takes up time on holiday in warm climes. At that time it was a hard way to earn a living that demanded physical fitness. During this spell in Scotland Don met the good lady Joyce and they have been married since 1976.
The realisation that diving was probably a relatively short career and that engineering bent caused a return to college and eventual move to Loughborough University to study Automotive Engineering. The peculiarities of married studentship, a talented wife and an obliging supervisor made it possible not to do a first degree, not get wound up in the first three years of a four year sandwich course but pass the final year only (with honours) as a warm up lap for a Masters degree by research.
Don thus has an MSc in Automotive Engineering but no first degree.
A job at Lucas Industries Noise Centre in diesel research supported the degree activities and Don became an authority on diesel engine combustion noise. He also met one or two people who were free thinkers and mentors. One of whom used the phrase, "The best technology is indistinguishable from magic," still used by Don regularly today to describe Mercedes', "electronic stabilisation programme," during the Mercedes AMG Experiences which run a hundred or so times a year.
Research Manager of the British Internal Combustion Engine Research Institute beckoned and Don spent the next eight years becoming a Chartered Engineer and rising to the top end of the organisation. The recession of 1990 put paid to that.
During the '80s Don's passion for cars blossomed and he built a prototype Caterham seven with a full house BDG 247 bhp engine that was monstrous. So he dropped in an Opel twin cam that had even more torque.
In 1990 Don started The Driving Business Ltd, a company specialising in defensive driver training for company car drivers. During this time he gained a Practitioner certificate in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). The claim that thinking skills were more important than driving skills was borne out by a training programme that focused on attitude for half a day in a workshop and half a day on the road. The result was that the distance between crashes moved to eight times better than the national average. One company achieved a staggering 250,000 miles between crashes. Three more NLP practitioner courses followed. As did a relationship with Sir John Whitmore's company "Performance Consultants" who specialised in coaching skills development enabling businesses to benefit from the extraordinary coaching expertise that he and David Hemery had founded as sports coaches. (John Whitmore later authored the definitive book on the subject "Coaching for Performance".)
A Master practitioner course in NLP followed along with NLP modelling and business practitioner NLP courses.
In 1996 Don became involved in training chassis engineers for Jackie Stewart in Michigan in the USA. Two seasons enabled the completion of a personal modelling programme which defined the structure of limit handling and the foundation for the current business. After thirty thousand laps of training Don understood what mattered.
A modelling research programme distilled the essence of "living right on the edge" - specifically related to racing drivers and then generalised to any activity that could "get a bit edgy".
In 2002/3 Don became a Certified NLP Coach.
In 2006 he was awarded ITS post graduate diploma in Coaching Mastery.
Don Palmer M.Sc., C.Eng., M.I.Mech.E.,
D.M.S., M.S.A.E, M.CIM, DTp ADI.
Practitioner and Master Practitioner in the art of NLP.
International Coach.
