Top Tips for Diving Instructors: Psychological Safety and the Thumb Rule

Technical and cave divers often talk about the “thumb rule” or the “tech divers credo”, the sacrosanct rule that any diver can end any dive at any time for any reason without question or subsequent criticism. It is very easy to talk about rules like these, but often much more challenging to actually call a dive. This is especially applicable to instructors, who may have time constraints to complete a training dive, financial pressures to finish a class, or a reluctance to call a dive because they do not want to show fallibility.

This is an excellent example of how psychological safety, or a lack of it, can have a profound effect on a dive team. Psychological safety is the shared belief that it is safe to speak up, ask questions, challenge the status quo, or talk about mistakes without fear of negative consequences, socially or professionally. Leaders such as diving instructors have a huge role in creating this. They can set an example by demonstrating vulnerability and curiosity though talking about their own mistakes and seeking feedback. It is also important to ensure all team members feel valued by using structured debriefs, encouraging discussion, reflection and non-judgemental learning.

Timothy Clark’s 4 stages of psychological safety describes how teams progress from feeling accepted, to learning openly, to contributing freely, and finally to challenging the status quo without fear.

 A couple of years ago I was teaching a cave class to a fairly strong two person team. We had enjoyed a good morning dive, with some complex failure scenarios dealt with successfully, and the students were in a good place to complete the final dives of the course the following day. Whilst preparing for the afternoon dive, the team experienced a series of issues: a first stage handwheel was bubbling slightly and needed tightening, a pressure transmitter had intermittent connection problems and then failed, as well as some other minor issues that were easily solved with the resources we had. Having spent twenty minutes or so sorting all these issues, including removing sidemount cylinders and exiting the water to get spares from the truck, the team started briefing the dive again. As usual, they started with a flow check (ensuring valves are open), a bubble check and a comprehensive equipment check. After four or five days of training a team, their pre-dive routines become familiar, and differences from normal are very obvious. The final pre-dive check on this occasion was really discordant, with some aspects being missed, others repeated several times and other items mentioned in an unfamiliar and illogical sequence. After the brief was complete, we talked about how it went and what was different to previous dives and pre-dive checks. I thumbed the dive, to the evident relief of the team, and we discussed how important it was to be aware of these nuances and to be able to call a dive without any negative consequences.

Psychological Safety sign at Underworld Tulum.

 The top tip for instructors (as promised by the blog’s title) is that creating an environment of psychological safety is one of the most powerful things we can do to improve the effectiveness of our training. In this specific scenario, there were two important aspects to this.

The first is how you as an instructor react to minor failures that disrupt your schedule and the dives you have planned for your students. Many of us will have come across instructors whose style is “shouty” and who will berate students for forgetting an item of equipment or having a minor failure, or those who make it clear they are annoyed through body language and communication style without being outwardly disparaging. The result of this approach is that it does not encourage students to be open about any mistakes or failures: “I forgot to charge my back up light, but don’t want to get shouted at, so won’t mention it “. It is much more powerful, and effective in the long term, to have a calm conversation about any issue and how it can be prevented. The second is that to establish a psychologically safe environment, demonstrating by example is much more powerful than talking about an action, specifically in this case that anyone can call a dive at any time for any reason.

What is the level of psychological safety in your dive team? If you are an instructor, do you encourage an environment where students feel included and feel safe to learn, contribute and challenge. How do you react to the minor delays and frustrations that are inevitable in diving?  An understanding of psychological safety is a key part of the online Essentials and the “in person” Applied Skills classes from The Human Diver. Click here to see what classes are available in your area. 

There are also some excellent resources and previous blogs from our human diver instructor team that examine the impact of psychological safety on dive teams:

 https://www.thehumandiver.com/blog/HFforD-part-10-psychological-safety

 https://www.thehumandiver.com/blog/what-if-just-culture-and-psychological-safety-is-not-enough

 https://www.thehumandiver.com/blog/the-challenge-of-psychological-safety

 https://www.thehumandiver.com/blog/what-we-get-wrong-about-psychological-safety-in-diving

 https://www.thehumandiver.com/blog/top-tips-for-beginner-divers-psychological-safety-just-culture

https://www.thehumandiver.com/blog/team-building-psych-safety-1 - Part one of a four-part series.

 Lanny Vogel is a full-time cave, technical and rebreather instructor trainer based in Tulum, Mexico. He is the co-owner and lead instructor at Underworld Tulum and is part of the local cave line and safety committee. He regularly speaks at dive shows on cave diving and human factors topics and has been a passionate advocate of the integration of human factors principles into dive training for many years.