COACHING
We call it coaching, but “Coaching” is really just a third of the way that Operatives learn Fieldcraft.
Imagine you decided you were sick of Mixed Martial Arts on the weekends and wanted to learn a new way to batter and bruise your fellow man whilst releasing all of the stresses of the work week. Let’s say… Rugby.
Someone would need to TEACH you the rules of the game. For that you need an instructor, and a playbook to serve as the basis for what you need to know about how the different positions on the team contributed to the effort.
Someone would need to COACH the team you were placed on so that it was successful, and to be successful, that coach would need to have the winning experience necessary to replicate their own success. It’s a short term process carried out in cycles, like a team practice.
But most importantly, if you REALLY wanted to get good and develop your skill as a rugby player over time, someone would need to MENTOR you as you trained on your own time, and slowly perfected your ability to Scrum, tackle and pass.
Our Operative On-Boarding Process is very similar.
Our instructors TEACH the basics after you do your own background reading:
- Proper Practice of Operational Security
- Individual Skills
- Frameworks for Communications Networks
- Practical Application Of Best Practices
- Individual Analysis Before Deployment To The Field
Our instructors COACH nuaces of specific techniques, impart tips and tricks and micro-analysis of the way you’re adapting to your environment in the field and give you the no BS assessment of how you’re performing.
For tactics and techniques related to the “soft arts” like social engineering, denial and deception operations, seduction or any other interpersonal pretext related to a particular goal, a block of instruction is provided by a team of coaches certified by CovertChemistry and followed by work in the field.
For the harder stuff related to intel analysis, operational security practices, lock picking, etc there are other models and modes for coaching delivery.
A MENTOR on the other hand can take many forms. Whether it’s an accomplished CC Op, active on our forum boards who mentors you via remote, or a peer whose strengths and weaknesses compliment your own as they’re identified by a coach. Your relationship with Headquarters, however, begins with your download of the Operations Manual.
For the first six weeks following your download of the Operatins Manual, you will receive a weekly cable in the form of an email from Communications Branch related to the doctrine managed by each of the other five directorates:
- The Operations Group
- The Office of Clandestine Services
- The Clandestine Imagery Branch
- The Office of Technical Services
- PSYOPS (Psychological Operations)
- Communications Branch
While the Operations Manual is comprehensive and should serve as a reference, the weekly email cycle serves as a guidepost for internalizing and applying the ideas and theoretical principles (the “hard arts”) to the theories and experiences that you encounter in the field.
The six week cycle can be restarted to automatically generate the emailed cables at any time, should you like to go through the process again, or should you want to retrain to keep your skills sharp.
This is encouraged, as the six week on-boarding process and Operations Manual will be periodically updated to deal with changes to commonly encountered scenarios in the field.
To receive a free example of a training email, or to review an abstract from the Operations Manual, visit our contact page and enter “Manual Preview” or “Email” in the subject line along with any additional questions you might have.
