Top tips for Diving Instructors: Performance Influencing Factors

If you’ve been a diving instructor for any length of time, you’ll have had at least one student who just couldn’t seem to get it no matter how clearly you explained or how many times you demonstrated a skill. 

Maybe they kept floating to the surface. Maybe they panicked during a mask clear. Or maybe they froze on a skill they nailed the day before.

When this happens, it’s easy to think: “They’re just not cut out for diving” and that might well be the case. But....

Performance is influenced by far more than knowledge and ability. There are countless factors – physical, psychological, environmental, and social – that affect how well a person learns and performs on any given day.

Perhaps more importantly, these factors affect you as the instructor just as much as they affect your students.

When you’re tired, stressed, cold, or under time or financial pressure to finish on time, your teaching suffers. Your ability to make sound decisions, maintain patience, and adapt will also suffer.

Understanding and managing these performance influencing factors (PIFs) is critical – for both you and your students. This blog will explore what they are, why they matter, and ways to manage them effectively.

What are Performance Influencing Factors?

In simple terms, PIFs are anything that affects human performance.

They’re widely studied in aviation, medicine, and other high-risk industries because these fields understand how important they are in terms of achieving safe, consistent outcomes. Diving should be no different.

Common PIFs include:

• Physical: Fatigue, dehydration, cold, illness, hunger.

• Psychological: Stress, anxiety, fear of failure, overconfidence.

• Environmental: Weather, water temperature, visibility, noise.

• Social: Peer pressure, family expectations, instructor-student dynamics.

• Task-related: Complexity of skills, pace of instruction, time constraints.

When these start to stack up, even competent individuals– student or instructor – can struggle.

Why do PIFs matter for both sides?

When performance dips, it’s rarely about capability alone – conditions have a far bigger part to play than we give credit for.

For students, PIFs might show up as missed skills, slow progress, or even panic. For instructors, they show up as shortened patience, rushed decisions, and lack of clear communication.

You can’t eliminate all PIFs (you can’t make the ocean warmer or add hours to the day), but you can:

• Recognise them early.

• Mitigate what you can.

• Adapt your teaching – and self-care – accordingly.

Dive instruction is more than just passing a course. It’s about creating a safe, positive learning environment while staying sharp yourself.

Top tips for managing Performance Influencing Factors

1. Check in on Both Sides

Before the first pool session, go beyond the paperwork. Ask your students open questions such as:

• “How comfortable are you in the water?”

• “What concerns do you have about the course?”

But also check in with yourself:

• How much sleep did you get?

• Are you trying to squeeze this class in between two others?

• Are you stressed about weather, logistics, or time constraints?

If you’re running on empty, your ability to adapt and empathise will be reduced.

2. Manage physical comfort for everyone

Cold, hunger, and fatigue are silent performance killers – for you and your students. A shivering student can’t focus on skills, and a shivering instructor will rush through the training.

What helps:

• Recommend proper thermal protection. Much better to be comfortable slightly too warm and especially slightly too cold. 

• Schedule breaks for both of you. You need fuel and hydration too.

• If you’re fatigued, slow the pace rather than forcing a push to “get it done.”

3. Acknowledge anxiety—Theirs and yours

Students fear failure. Instructors fear dissatisfied clients, negative reviews, or failing to meet agency expectations. Pressure is real on both sides.

As an instructor:

• Normalise mistakes. Talk to your students: “This is tricky for a lot of people, let’s work through it together.”

• Manage your own stress signals. If you feel frustration starting to build, pause before responding.

• If external pressures (such as time cost) are creeping in, communicate early rather than letting it explode later. As the saying goes: A problem shared is a problem halved.

4. Watch social pressure

Students face peer pressure or family expectations. Instructors face the opposite: trying to satisfy clients who expect speed and certainty.

Be upfront:

“Certification is performance-based, not time-based.”

And remind yourself: your reputation depends on doing the right thing, not just finishing fast. A recent blog on having difficult conversations gives more ideas on dealing with this.

5. Respect environmental stressors

Conditions add cognitive load for everyone. Cold water, low vis, surge – these all make teaching harder and learning harder.

What helps:

• Use the easiest environment available for early skills. This is not necessarily the cheapest.

• Progress gradually. Conditions may mean this is slower than you expect.

• If conditions worsen, don’t push through for the sake of the schedule. It compromises both student performance and your teaching quality and could have far reaching consequences.

6. Slow down when time pressures build

Time is possibly the biggest PIF in the world we live in today. Students expect to finish within the days they paid for. You will feel it too – boats are booked, gear is rented, the next class is waiting, etc. etc. 

Rushing increases anxiety, reduces comprehension, and critically, leads to shortcuts – from them and you.

Be transparent from the start:

• The goal is competence, not speed.

• Extra time may be necessary – and is worth it for safety.

If you feel yourself speeding up to “get it done,” stop and reassess.

7. Debrief with PIF awareness

When a student struggles, don’t jump to: “They need more practice.”

Ask appropriate questions:

• "Were you cold? Hungry? Overloaded?"

• "Were you tired, stressed, or distracted?"

If the answers don't flow freely, show vulnerability yourself:

"I felt pretty hungry at the end of that dive and should have allowed more time to get some lunch. I expect you felt the same so I apologise for rushing the day."

Debriefing through the lens of PIFs gives you insight into their struggles – and yours.

Final thoughts

Performance Influencing Factors don’t just affect students – they affect you. And they probably affect you more than you give them credit for. When both sides are under pressure, risk increases dramatically. 

Great instructors go beyond teaching the technical dive skills needed to pass the class – they create the conditions where learning can thrive and they manage themselves to lead effectively.

Next time something feels “off,” ask:
"What’s influencing performance right now—for them and for me? And what can I do about it?"

Higher Performance diving is about more than equipment redundancy – it’s about human reliability.

Mike Mason is part of the Human Diver Team. Our mission is to give you the skills and knowledge so that you can be better than you were yesterday. If you'd like to deepen your diving experience, check out the youtube channel and consider taking the online introduction course which will change your attitude towards diving and make it better and safer. Alternatively, visit the website or start your journey into Human Factors in Diving with this introduction blog .