Have you ever experienced the sensation that your mind has suddenly fogged over, and nothing you do while diagnosing and/or fixing an issue on customer’s vehicle seems to make sense? If you have, you likely experienced a mental block. Mental blocks happen to all of us at some point in our careers, and while the causes differ from person to person, all causes have the same results- an inability to formulate even simple diagnostic procedures, and/or to take decisive action(s) to resolve problems. In this article, we will take a closer look at mental blocks, and how they can prevent us from performing reliable repairs right the first time. Let us start with this question-
Many of our customers suffer from the delusion that we always have answers or explanations for whatever ails their vehicles ready at hand, and much as we would like to maintain that delusion, we have to admit that sometimes, even seemingly simple issues can leave us stumped. This is not because we don’t have an answer or can’t find one, but because sometimes, we can’t think of an answer or explanation for seemingly simple issues right away, no matter how hard we try.
Nonetheless, the concept of mental blocks has many possible definitions, but as far as mental blocks pertain to automotive repair, which is a creative endeavour, the definition given below serves better than most-
“An inability to remember or think of something a person could normally do without any difficulty. Typical manifestations include an inability to formulate thoughts, strategies, and/or appropriate procedures, as well as an inability to organise or express thoughts coherently, and/or effectively.”
It should be noted though that this article is not intended to be a treatise on the psychological aspects of mental blocks. However, this writer has had many opportunities during his long careers as both a technician and a workshop owner to observe first hand not only the causes of mental blocks, but also how the effects of mental blocks can prevent the successful diagnosis and resolution of customers’ concerns. As stated elsewhere, mental blocks can have many possible causes, so let use two practical examples to discuss the causes of mental blocks (and their effects) that are most commonly seen in the car repair industry, starting with-
While being the most successful diagnostician in any workshop does have some rewards, there are also some drawbacks, the biggest being that colleagues and management can sometimes make impossible demands on both your time and resources.
We are all used to working under pressure, but in the case of a particular diagnostician who was in this writer’s employ, it seemed that the more the pressure piled up, the happier and more focussed he was. In fact, some of the staff thought that he was some kind of magician, until the day he was tripped up by a simple wheel speed sensor fault. Here is what happened-
A regular customer complained that the ABS system on his 8-year old Toyota Corolla had stopped working after he had hit a pothole at some speed, which forced him to have the left front wheel bearing replaced in another town where he was conducting some business. As it happened though, the workshop was forging through a particularly busy time, and the diagnostician was overwhelmed with work- as he had been for the previous several weeks during which he felt obliged to put in overtime hours just to keep up.
Not being one to turn away from a simple diagnosis however, the diagnostician connected a scan tool and although the stored trouble code indicated that the sensor was not communicating with the ABS control module, the diagnostician could not find the fault immediately since the wiring appeared to be in good shape, and the wheel speed sensor tested OK. There were no additional faults present, so it had to be the ABS module, right? However, before the diagnostician could test his hypothesis, he was called away to attend to what seemed like a serious CAN bus issue on another vehicle, and it was at this point that the diagnostician’s already huge workload reached crisis, and even insane levels.
Long story short: the diagnostician was completely overwhelmed, and he started losing track of his priorities. During the next two days he made serious mistakes, overlooked some things, and instructed technicians to replace the wrong parts. In fact, he instructed an apprentice to remove the Corolla’s ABS control unit on the (as it turned, mistaken) assumption that the unit was defective.
We have all been in situations where we felt overwhelmed by our workloads, but in the case of the non-communicative wheel speed sensor, the problem was aggravated when the diagnostician became fixated on the idea that the Corolla needed a new ABS unit, and in his exhausted and over worked state, he could not recognise or consider other, less expensive possibilities.
When a new ABS unit did not resolve the problem, a senior apprentice took it upon himself to take another look at the issue. Starting with the work order, he noticed that the left front wheel bearing was replaced a few days prior, and upon closer inspection he found that a), instead of the entire hub only the bearing was replaced and b), that the bearing was located the wrong way round. This meant that the wheel speed sensor could not react to the reluctor ring in the bearing, because the bearing was installed incorrectly.
Fitting a new wheel bearing the right way round fixed the issue, but how does one cure the issue of feeling that your workload is overwhelmingly heavy? Here are some useful ideas-
Recognise the problem
The biggest problem with being overwhelmed by a heavy workload is that it is difficult to relate the symptoms of being overwhelmed to the fact that you are overworked. Nonetheless, if you are unusually irritable and/or impatient, or are experiencing problems sleeping, concentrating, or focussing on the task at hand, you are experiencing the classic symptoms of not being able to cope with your workload.
Learn to say “No”
It is part of the human condition to want to please everybody- in this case, your employer, your customers, and your colleagues. However, in the real world it is impossible to be everything to everyone all of the time, so it helps to be able to sometimes say something like “ Glad to help you out, mate, but just let me finish what I am doing first.” Note though that how you say this, and to whom, plays a big role in how your reaction is perceived- it might be seen as hostile or a refusal to cooperate, or even as an inability to be a “team player”, so use your best judgment when you say “No” to people making impossible demands on your time.
Take a step (or several) steps back
If you keep on doing the same thing, and you keep on getting the same negative results, you are doing something wrong. Therefore, if this happens, just step back, and re-evaluate what you are doing, as well as your reasons for doing it. This is not always easy, but one way of taking a step back is to do something unrelated to the problem you are trying to solve. The human brain is a wonderful thing, and you might find an answer popping into your head while you are not even thinking about your original problem.
Self-doubt can be defined as having a lack of faith in oneself, or being unsure about ones’ abilities, and/or skills. All of us have been unsure about which course of action to take when diagnosing and/or repairing tricky problems at some point in our careers, but self-doubt takes being unsure about something to another level, entirely.
A good case in point would be the young technician that joined this writer’s staff after having completed an apprenticeship and a year of service as a qualified mechanic at a BMW dealership. This technician was trained by the dealership, and as a result, he had no experience of anything other than BMW’s.
Long story short: this techs’ first job involved replacing the cylinder head on a Holden Astra. This vehicle had been in and out of the workshop with noisy valve lifters, until the owner eventually decided to follow good advice (ours), and have the cylinder head replaced- valves, valve lifters, and camshaft included.
Under the guidance of the workshop foreman the new tech completed the job in one day, and the Astra started and ran fine during the test drive. Two days later though, the Astra was delivered to us on the back of a recovery truck.
The vehicle had a no-start condition, although it cranked fine. There was no visible damage to the valve train, it had great compression on all cylinders, and everything appeared to be connected correctly. However, when the tech connected a scan tool, instead of getting a list of fault codes as he had expected, he got a “No Communication” message, which he immediately interpreted to mean that the ECU had failed- a diagnosis that both the chief technician and the workshop foreman immediately rejected out of hand.
The tech was instructed to fit an in-cylinder pressure transducer, and to use an oscilloscope to check the synchronisation between compression pressure and ignition timing, and it was at this point that the tech literally fell apart, psychologically speaking, when his scope connections failed to produce an ignition trace.
The rest of the story is sad to relate, but suffice to say that the young tech had lost his self-confidence and with it, his ability to use his knowledge of automotive electronics to plan an appropriate diagnostic procedure, regardless of the fact that as he said at the time, “this car looks nothing like a BMW”. Instead, he used the rest of the day poking at this, tugging at that, and when that failed to produce a positive result, to run the battery down cranking the engine hoping that the issue would magically resolve itself.
At that point, the chief technician could not endure the young tech’s suffering any longer, and gave him something less taxing to do. Next, he put the car on a hoist, checked the reference voltage on the crankshaft position sensor, and as he had expected, found that the engine wiring harness connector had worked itself out of the connector on the ECU- hence the absence of a reference voltage on the sensor, and the “No Communication” error message on the scan tool.
It turned out that while the tech had connected the engine harness to the ECU, he had failed to engage the locking mechanism, resulting in the connector vibrating apart. The young tech was forgiven for his mistake, but he never quite regained his self-confidence. In fact, he spent the next few weeks either second-guessing himself on every diagnosis, or pestered other techs to validate his opinions, strategies, and repair options. In the end though, he simply resigned, and returned to the BMW dealership that trained him.
It would be fair to say that we all experience a measure of self-doubt from time to time, but most of us snap out of it fairly quickly. However, in this writer’s experience some people seem to be perpetual self-doubters, and with the exception of some introspection and a critical evaluation of your own skills and abilities, there seems to be no easy cure for self-doubt.
In the case of the young BMW tech it is easy to see how several factors combined to destroy his self-confidence. He was the new guy that was eager to impress, but a likely over estimation of his own abilities coupled with a major job on a vehicle he had never encountered before conspired against him to the point where he could not use his theoretical knowledge effectively.
The two above examples of mental blocks should adequately describe how these episodes can prevent us from executing diagnostic procedures and repairs effectively. Nonetheless, mental blocks can take several other forms, such as tunnel vision that prevents us from seeing the proverbial wood for a single tree. Others include an over confidence in our skills and abilities that leads us to continue to follow diagnostic routes that are demonstrably wrong despite ample evidence to the contrary, or a lack of simple common sense, which usually manifests as an expectation of different results while we are doing the same (wrong) thing over and over, which leaves us with this-
We have more in common than we realise; both as technicians and as human beings, which translates into the fact that all of us experience some form of mental block at times, but it is what we do when we realise we are suffering from a mental block that determines how we deal with the blockage. This might appear to be self explanatory, or even self-evident, but there is another side of mental blocks we need to consider, because some mental blocks can serve a positive purpose that far exceeds their potential negative impact on your productivity.
For instance, if your natural tendency is to hesitate before jumping head first into a diagnostic problem, you can use that hesitation to strengthen some of your other, useful abilities. For example, the time you spend hesitating can be used to define the problem, devise several alternative diagnostic strategies and/or evaluate the appropriateness of various repair options, or to anticipate likely obstacles in your way to reaching your ultimate goal, which is to resolve the problem you are facing definitively, the first time.
