“Would you speak up to the Commander?” - “No. They already know” - Making changes to your team's diving

Divers love gear. They love the shiny stuff. You only have to read the social media posts about the latest computer, DPV, CCR, or BCD/wing that you need to have (or someone has just bought). We love the comfort of “how we’ve always done it.” or “My instructor told me to do it that way.” However, when it comes to learning, really learning, deep learning, we often struggle.

This pattern isn’t unique to diving. Two very different high-risk worlds, the Fire Service and the Oil & Gas industry, have spent decades wrestling with the same challenge: how to implement Crew Resource Management (CRM) and Non-Technical Skills (NTS) programmes into environments immersed in habit, hierarchy, and operational pressure.

This blog is for those who want to learn. The lessons and experiences described shine a bright light on why diving agencies, clubs, and teams frequently find it difficult to move beyond checklists, buddy skills, and glossy manuals. They are prevented from moving deeper about how and why divers behave in the way they do, why accidents and incidents keep happening (and it’s not ‘human error’ or ‘stupidity’), and more importantly, what we can do about it.

The Hardest Part: Changing Hearts and Minds, Not Checklists or Process. What's in it for me?

In the US Fire Service, the introduction of CRM wasn’t blocked by lack of evidence, enthusiasm, or even funding. According to Okray & Lubnau, the biggest barrier was psychological: firefighters like doing things, not talking about concepts, and they’re fiercely attached to tradition. Changing behaviour is “akin to quitting tobacco products.” and we know how hard that can be, to start with. But when the social norms shift, it becomes easier…

Does this sound familiar to you?

Divers, too, often resist anything that asks them to think differently about risk, communication, leadership, or decision-making. We can see that we’d rather spend money on a new computer, a camera, a CCR, or a DPV, than talk honestly about how we make decisions under stress or why we didn’t speak up when something looked wrong.

The Fire Service learned something crucial: if you want behaviour change, you must influence the change around the identity of the firefighters, not the information being provided to them.

This is why we recognise that simply teaching divers about human factors, or giving them a model like DEBrIEF, won’t embed learning. It has to become part of the culture, something people expect, use, and reinforce. Providing a language and concepts are critical, but they aren't going to make the real difference. Leaders, ambassadors, and supporters make that difference by demonstrating theory in action, reflection on action, walking the talk about learning.  

Behavioural Markers: What Good Actually Looks Like

The IOGP’s work on behavioural markers in Oil & Gas shows another key lesson: you can’t improve what you can’t describe. Their NTS frameworks define concrete examples of good and poor behaviours across situation awareness, decision-making, communication, teamwork, and leadership. In the HFiD: Applied Skills classes, we provide students with the behavioural marker scheme to describe what ‘good’ looks like and this then helps make their debriefs more accurate and targeted.

For example:

• “Regularly checks key sources of information” is a good behaviour.
• “Finds reasons not to act on unexpected information” is a poor one.
• “Shares information clearly and at the right time” is good.
• “Only communicates information that supports what they want” is poor.

These examples come from the offshore drilling world, but they map perfectly onto diving:

• Think of a diver who is so focused on their camera that they miss that their remaining pressure is below the minimums briefed.
• Or a dive leader who briefs a complex task but ignores team capacity and the factors that impact performance like cold, time pressures, or stuff that is going on at home.
• Or a student who notices something odd but assumes, “They’re the instructor, they must know.”

These aren’t technical failures. They are behavioural failures; they are failures of non-technical skills.

The Oil & Gas recommendation is clear: behavioural markers must be observable, specific, contextual, and used consistently.

Right now, most sports diving systems don’t do this. They talk about “good buddy skills” and “stay aware,” but these are vague. Without a shared picture of what good and poor NTS look like, it is like trying to manage buoyancy without understanding the physics of gas volumes, the impact of weighting, and the shift in weight when we progress through a dive and gas is consumed. You’re just guessing.

If you don’t have a common language, how do we communicate clearly? Or rather a better question, if we don’t have a common language, how often does miscommunication happen?

UA 173 - Crashed after running out of fuel on the approach. The co-pilot and engineer knew something wasn't right.

Breaking the “Command Knows Best” Illusion

One of the most powerful findings in the Fire Service CRM rollout was shockingly simple: most junior firefighters admitted they wouldn’t tell command if they saw a dangerous condition—because “they already know.” Not much different to the analysis of aviation cockpit voice recorders in the 1970s and 1980s when CRM was being developed. Co-pilots and engineers knew that something was right, but they couldn’t speak up, and aircraft and people were lost as a consequence.

This is identical to what divers tell me and other instructors on the HFiD: Applied Skills courses:

• “I didn’t say anything because they were the instructor.”
• “I assumed he knew where we were.”
• “She was more experienced; I didn’t want to embarrass myself.”

Hierarchy, formal or informal, kills communication unless the leader has flattened the authority gradient by helping to develop psychological safety.

In diving, where teams are fluid, mixed-experience, and often unfamiliar with each other, this silence can lead to serious or deadly outcomes. As the Fire Service discovered, asking one brave question can unlock buy-in across the entire leadership chain.

Try this in your dive club or course:

“If you saw something dangerous underwater, would you speak up to the most experienced diver in the team?”

Then ask

“If someone else who was also junior, would they speak up to the most experienced diver in the team/club”

The former is easier to defend because we don’t want to appear weak, but it is easier to describe what others would do, and in that way, we protect our pride. The responses will tell you more about your team culture than any in-water exercises when everything goes ‘right’.

The documentary ‘If Only…’ has numerous examples of authority gradient in action. There is a workbook you can download from that page which will allow you to run a great exercise in your club to explore discussions like this in a safe, ‘low jeopardy’ environment.

Embedding NTS: Not a Weekend Course, but a Culture

The Fire Service learned the hard way that CRM can’t be delivered in a one-off training block. They realised it must be baked into everything: drills, debriefs, leadership, day-to-day decisions, even the language that is used.

Oil & Gas discovered the same thing. Behavioural markers weren’t just for training, they improved incident investigation, shift handovers, emergency response, and everyday operations. This was my personal experience in the Oil and Gas sector in the Middle East. We would deliver two-days of training, and then seven days of coaching on the oil platform. The difference in uptake and application was marked – people ‘got it’ because they could see how it can be applied.

For diving, this is the crucial point:

NTS (and human factors) isn’t a course. It’s a habit.

We need to integrate communication skills, situation awareness prompts, shared mental models, and debriefing tools into:

• briefings
• pre-dive checks
• planning discussions
• post-dive conversations
• instructor evaluations
• club-level mentoring

Diving doesn’t need more PowerPoint. It needs everyday examples, reflection, curiosity, and practice. It’s one of the reasons we run the HFiD: Applied Skills classes because the activity brings the reality of NTS to life in a high-pressured, high-stress environment. It is also why the 2026 HFiD: Conference, running 30 May to 6 June in Vis, Croatia, will involve Applied Skills classes in the morning, and up to two dives in the afternoon. Bringing the learning to life. Finally, it’s why we include stories in most of the blogs this year, and why each module in the HFiD: Essentials class starts with a story.

Why Diving Organisations Struggle to Learn (which involves change)

The lessons from both Fire and Oil & Gas reveal a blunt truth:

Learning organisations aren’t created by systems or procedures. They are created by behaviours and relationships, and the want to learn and improve. If you don't evolve, and the world is moving on, you are actually going backwards.

Diving organisations often struggle with:

• Tradition and inertia (“This is how we teach it.”)
• Hierarchy (“Don’t question the instructor.”)
• Fear of blame (“If we acknowledge error, we’ll get sued or look incompetent.”)
• Fragmented teams (most divers rarely dive with the same people twice)
• Lack of psychological safety (no space to ask the “stupid” questions)
• Poor debriefing practices (most don’t debrief at all)

Both the Fire Service and Oil & Gas found that implementing CRM/NTS is threatening, because it changes the power dynamics, and shifts authority from “the expert” to “the team.”
The change encourages challenge, not compliance, and in the process, it highlights gaps in competence that people would rather hide.

Diving is no different.

Conclusion: The Diving World Needs the Same Courage

Implementing CRM in the Fire Service was described as harder than natural childbirth. Oil & Gas took years to get NTS into place, and it is only those with strong leadership who have managed it, even with comprehensive guidance. Neither industry changed because of attending a course. They changed because leaders and teams committed to becoming learning organisations, one interaction at a time.

Diving needs the same courage. The Human Diver team are providing the resources and nudges, but we can’t control what happens in agencies, clubs, or dive centres. Some organisations have started to put materials in place, but there are errors in them (and we’ve provided some feedback).

We do have success stories. Nic at Fifth Point, Brent at Scuba Adventures, Marc at TekDeep Asia, and a bunch more, including this quote from a friend who has worked to bring HF into their research organisation.

"Here reporting mistakes or non compliances was leading to people being banned and punished. When we arrived the researchers were terrified about talking to us. Now they feel safe, they call us, they ask, they stop us around, they self-report… 9 months made a big difference.” - leadership makes the difference.

Before the next incident, before the next close call, before the next social media debate about “bad divers”… think about what one thing you can do to be better than yesterday by applying the knowledge to your practice. If you want some pointers, whether you're at the training agency level, or the team level, get in touch via the contact form.

Part 2, released on 27 November, gives you the practical tools and processes to put in place so that you can make a difference in diving. 

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.