So what can we do? The Practical Steps/Tools for Bringing HF/NTS into Diving

This blog follows on from the blog yesterday (26 Nov 25) about the practical steps you can put in place, so that Non-Technical Skills (NTS)/Human Factors in Diving (HFiD) become core elements of your diving, be that at an individual/team level or at a dive centre/club or organisational level.

The following is taken from a research paper close to be submitted, looking at the development and deployment of NTS/HFiD in scientific diving. This summary is based on the research focusing on the successes and failures of deploying NTS/HF programmes in oil & gas, healthcare, maritime, and other high-risk domains. 

“The most successful CRM* deployments are those that move beyond isolated training events to become part of a sustained, organisation-wide change process, with leadership commitment, contextual adaptation, and ongoing reinforcement as central pillars. Barriers are most often organisational and cultural, not technical or content-related.”

*CRM is Crew Resource Management, similar to Non-Technical Skills (NTS)

Practical Steps for Diving Teams

The blog yesterday provided plenty of information on the benefits of applying NTS/HF to diving, the following section provides you with four practical things you can do at the team level:

Create shared language using behavioural markers

Define what good NTS looks like on your boat or team:

• “Clear communication relating to gas remaining.”
• “Calls out deviations and adaptations early.”
• “Asks for clarification without hesitation.”
• “Checks in on the team’s workload.”

Make it observable. Make it normal. This is the Behavioural Marker Scheme we use for The Human Diver programmes. 

Reduce hierarchy

Borrow the Fire Service’s lesson: encourage inquiry (be curious) and support advocacy (speak up, listen up).

If you see something, say something, early, clearly, respectfully. And for the leader, when that message comes in, say thank you before anything else. Your team have demonstrated a level of vulnerability when speaking up, that needs to be overtly acknowledged.

Note, to be able to do this, there is a need for psychological safety to be developed. There are many blogs on the site about this, but these four give you a good starting point on how to build it. You can also refer to the link from the previous blog in which Nic Emery gives a practical example of what can be done. 

Integrate NTS into every training moment

CRM must become part of the everyday culture. Every debrief should include:

• What information was shared?
• How did we make decisions?
• Who spoke up? Who stayed silent? Why?

as part of the discussion. The DEBrIEF framework can help with this. See the next section.

Debrief everything

Oil & Gas emphasises that behavioural markers improve both training and learning from unexpected events i.e., incidents and accidents, because they give you something specific to focus on. Debriefs work when the topics are specific and not general in detail. 'Communications was good'  is a poor statement in a debrief, 'It was good that you closed the loop by checking of understanding using open questions at the end of the brief' is a good piece of feedback.

One of the biggest takeaways from the students in the HFiD: Applied Skills classes is the value of the debrief. In fact, the session I ran last weekend at a university in Porte Alegre also brought up this point, and they were only running a small LEGO game as a team. The Human Diver has a number of debrief formats/structures, but they are all geared around improving, not finding out what went wrong.

You can download a guide from this page www.thehumandiver.com/debrief

Practical Steps for Organisations & Centre

Step 1: Train to Technical Diving Proficiency

A diving-focused NTS/HFiD programme only works when divers and staff are trained to a baseline of technical proficiency. The framework we teach as part of the Human Diver HFiD syllabus highlights that outcomes are based on the interdependence of technical skills, context, luck, and non-technical skills. The weighting factors show how important non-technical skills are when it comes to successful outcomes, and so can't be discounted. You might have the best kit, able to hold a stop to within 10cm, but if you don’t notice something critical, or you do notice but then don’t pass it on to the team, then you can have a catastrophic outcome.

While technical proficiency doesn’t mean turning everyone into a tech diver, it does mean ensuring that every instructor, guide, supervisor, or support diver understands:

• What to do
• How to do it
• Why it is done that way

In aviation, one of the reasons why CRM succeeds is because every pilot already has thousands of hours of structured training. They know what information matters, what doesn’t, and how to integrate cues into decision-making. In diving, we often skip this foundational layer.

When a diver, DSO, or instructor doesn’t understand the underlying principles of gas physiology, buoyancy control, task loading, stress responses, gas planning and minimums, they are less able to recognise deviations, detect emerging threats, or contribute meaningfully to discussions.

Without technical proficiency, NTS/HFiD discussions can be derailed by irrelevant information, misplaced certainty, or “advocating for silly positions,” as the fire service book mentions. Furthermore, without this proficiency, teams often drift into discussion about in-water skills rather than behavioural changes that lead to safer, more effective divers.

As such, professionals operating in diving centres, course directors/instructor trainers and training agency staff all need technical competence as the platform on which HFiD/NTS sits. You can’t build good decision-making on shaky foundations.

Step 2: Train to HFiD/NTS Proficiency

Once the technical baseline is in place, organisations need to explicitly teach HFiD/NTS, including:

• Decision-making under uncertainty
• Situation awareness
• Communication (verbal, non-verbal, and task-specific)
• Leadership and followership
• Teamwork
• Workload and stress management
• Debriefing and reflective practice
• Psychological safety and Just Culture

These concepts cannot be a bolt-on. They must be explicitly taught, demonstrated, practised, and reinforced. HFiD/NTS doesn’t work by osmosis. Divers do not magically “pick up” good communication habits or robust decision-making simply by being experienced.

Just as instructors teach how to run a dSMB or hold buoyancy stops, organisations must teach divers how to:

• Speak up
• Challenge
• Share workload
• Ask for clarification
• Provide relevant information
• Recognise cognitive overload
• Support teammates

Without intentional teaching, what we get is culture by accident, not design. The implications for this are that those in leadership positions (instructor trainers/course directors) also need to be au fait with the materials. This has a cost, but I can guarantee that cost is less that what organisations and individuals are paying for liability insurance!

Step 3: Train Potential Loss vs. Reward Explicitly

Diving is full of emotionally loaded decisions:

• “Should we push into the wreck?”
• “Should we continue the dive with low visibility?”
• “Should we do the second dive even though I’m tired?”
• “Should we accept this student who is marginal?”

In firefighting, the phrase is “risk a lot to save a lot.” In diving, we must adapt this to our reality:

“Risk a lot only when the potential benefit is meaningful and fully understood by everyone involved.”

Divers risk something, often sometimes a lot:

• to get a photo,
• to explore a wreck,
• to complete a training objective,
• to preserve ego,
• or simply because they’re caught up in the moment.

Dive centres and organisations must normalise potential-loss-vs-benefit discussions:

• What are we trying to achieve on this dive?
• What’s the value if everything goes right?
• What’s the cost if it doesn’t?
• Is this risk acceptable for this diver, this team, today?
• Are we being pulled forward by curiosity, expectation, or sunk-cost thinking?

Every diver should feel empowered to call a pause, to ask:

“What are we doing? How does this make sense?”

This is the heart of NTS – creating a shared mental model, so that we can prevent avoidable losses, especially those driven by hormones (especially dopamine!), social pressure, ego, or inattention. We are social and emotional creatures and we need to influence divers to understand the tension between logic and emotion, and how to manage it.

Step 4: Make HFiD / NTS Part of Daily Culture, Training, and Debriefing

HFiD/NTS cannot be taught once and forgotten - running a two-hour human factors seminar and then assuming the ‘job’ is done. HFiD/NTS becomes effective only when it becomes cultural.

Just as dive centres ensure equipment is washed, logged, repaired, and always operational, they must also maintain the same care for:

• team dynamics,
• communication,
• psychological safety,
• situational awareness,
• leadership and followership.

This means:

Integrate NTS into debriefings

Use structured, blame-free debriefings after every session. Everything from guided fun dives, to training dives, to pool sessions, to rescue exercises, and incidents. If you don’t want to use the DEBrIEF format, considering asking:

• “What did we see?”
• “What did we miss?”
• “Where was workload high?”
• “What information did we need earlier?”
• “What assumptions did we make?”

Integrate NTS into skills training

During buoyancy, navigation, rescue, or ascent drills, ask:

• “What would the dive supervisor want to know at this moment?”
• “What communication would make this smoother?”
• “How do you know your teammate is okay?”

Test situation awareness

Periodically pause training and ask (in your own head if underwater or, if on the surface, to others in the team):

• “What’s happening around you?”
• “Did anything change in the last two minutes?”
• “Has anything drifted out of normal parameters?”

This builds real-time metacognition (thinking about thinking) and perceptual skills.

Model good communication off the dive site

Staff briefings, dive shop interactions, and classroom sessions must reinforce:

• inclusive communication,
• curiosity,
• humility,
• clear role expectations.

Align authority with responsibility

If you give a guide or instructor responsibility, you must give them the authority to act when safety is at stake—without punishment for calling a dive early or challenging a plan. Empowerment isn't a word, it is based and grows with trust. A HFiD/NTS culture grows strongest where autonomy and psychological safety coexist. If you don't trust your team to do something, is this a failure on your part because you haven't given them the skills and coaching to succeed?

And Finally: Culture Change Requires Persistence

"It is often the small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting change." - Queen Elizabeth II

Not every diver or instructor enthusiastically embraces HFiD/NTS:

• Some will resist because they see it as a threat or a business cost.
• Some deny its relevance because nothing has gone wrong. Yet.
• Some cling to “the way things have always been done.” because the status quo bias is powerful.

Just like in the fire service example, some people must be “dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century” (and this is a major issue in a recreational, discretionary activity) because diving, like society, has changed. Equipment has changed. Training has changed. Risk perceptions have changed. Expectations have changed. The diversity of participants has changed. What worked in the 1990s and 2000s does not work for today’s environment.

The key to making HFiD/NTS effective constant reinforcement, applied consistently across the organisation. Not a one-off workshop. Not a poster. Not a checkbox.

It's a cultural journey based on a shift in paradigm from 'divers need to be controlled to be safe' to 'divers are the only people who can solve the problem in the moment and need to have the capacity (not compliance) to deal with the situation'. 

This is a culture where divers feel heard, where information flows freely up, down, and across the system, where the authority for positive outcomes is shared, and where reflection and learning are normalised.

Only then does HFiD/NTS stop being a “safety programme” and become what it is meant to be - a system whereby effective shared mental models are created, enabling better decisions, stronger teams, and safer dives every day.

If you are part of an organisation (centre or agency) that wants to make a difference to diving safety by developing and deploying a HF/NTS programme to your team, get in touch. 

Gareth Lock is the owner of The Human Diver. Along with 12 other instructors, Gareth helps divers and teams improve safety and performance by bringing human factors and just culture into daily practice, so they can be better than yesterday. Through award-winning online and classroom-based learning programmes, we transform how people learn from mistakes, and how they lead, follow and communicate while under pressure. We’ve trained more than 600 people face-to-face and 2500+ online across the globe, and started a movement that encourages curiosity and learning, not judgment and blame.

If you'd like to deepen your diving experience, consider the first step in developing your knowledge and awareness by signing up for free for the HFiD: Essentials class and see what the topic is about. If you're curious and want to get the weekly newsletter, you can sign up here and select 'Newsletter' from the options.