Testimonials
"Eye-opening class, these skills are applicable to all aspects of life, not just diving. As a nurse anaesthetist, I kept thinking of work scenarios during the course. Thank you Gareth for your passion and your wealth of knowledge." Heather Hamza, founder of LA Ghost Fishing, CCR and Cave Diver.
"A holistic view of team dynamics and the importance of effective communications to achieve a challenging role. Straightforward frameworks to drive improvements." Carlos Linares, Tech Instructor, CCR and Cave Diver
"The class was an honest look look at some, at times uncomfortable, truths in a safe environment which empowers you to become a far more competent team player." Franceso Camelli, GUE Fundamentals diver.
"What I personally got was a better understanding of skills that will serve me well in life interactions, not just diving. Communication, leadership & followership and situational awareness - all good! If everyone did this course it would help person-to-person and day-to-day interactions immensely, even non-divers! - Jim Babor, CCR and Cave Diver
"Gareth, through his HF Skills in Diving courses, has given me and the team I dive with amazing communication skills and techniques that will improve the performance, safety and efficiency of our diving" - Karim Hamza, GUE Tech and CCR instructor, owner of Hollywood Divers, LA.
“As the Communications Coordinator for NAUI Worldwide, I spend a great deal of time working as a team and coordinating information and events with our global membership. Coming into the Human Factors training, I felt that I had a fairly solid grasp of the relevant non-technical skills addressed in the course – leadership/followership, teamwork, communication, problem-solving, situational awareness, etc. I must admit, however, that the intensive two-day Human Factors training course left me humbled – and inspired to apply what I learned to both my personal and professional life. Completing this training with my supervisor and fellow colleagues made the experience even more effective and powerful. I would not hesitate to recommend working with Gareth Lock and completing the Human Factors training. If you are willing to give it your full effort, you will benefit greatly.”
Angie Cowan, Communciation Coordinator, NAUI Worldwide
"Gareth, thank you for creating and capturing a course that allows the exploration and tools to form a solid foundation base for the cultural anthropology in diving safety, and how to grow ourselves and others. Its just what our dynamic industry needs to be able to flourish and move forward safely."
"I would wholeheartedly recommend this course to any driver in this industry who wants to grow personally (and in a team) in their diver safety - no matter what agency or qualification level they hold."
Hannah Smeedon, OC & CCR Instructor
"An amazingly insightful course for improving teamwork and situational awareness for anyone operation in safety-critical or 'high stakes' environments when under pressure."
John Weedon, GUE Tech 2/Cave 2/CCR diver
"Great fun with LOTS of important lessons for all of us - seriously anyone would benefit from this training - especially instructors or team leaders. Really loved it."
Sue Crowe, OZTEK organiser.
"The HF class is a brilliant, engaging and fun way to understand personal strengths and weaknesses and their effect within a high pressure team environment. It helps improve all areas of personal and team performance as both a member and a leader playing to strengths and training to weaknesses to improve overall performance in a variety of roles"
Ryan Booker, GUE Tech 2/Cave 2 diver and GUE Fundamentals Instructor.
"This course fills the fields necessary for better and safer diving, as well as leadership development, beyond basic technical skills"
Steve Ratcliffe, Advanced Trimix and Full Cave Diver, Orthopeadic Surgeon
"Providing a far greater understanding and tools to utilize in helping our dive community maximize enjoyment when diving"
Jim Dixon, Advanced Trimix and Full Cave Diver
"If you think your team is high performing, take the micro-class and find out how much you don't know you don't know. If you want to make your team higher functioning, achieve more, have more fun, take the two-day class. A must for instructors, team divers and leaders of diving projects."
Meredith Tanguay, GUE Cave Instructor, Project Baseline Diving Safety Officer.
"An eye-opener on how we can leverage a simple but efficient framework for helping to go from an operating team to a performing team."
Francois Keen, Trimix Diver
"Exposes us to our weaknesses and provides exercises and development to overcome these."
Jay Olsen, Trimix Diver
“The training not only reinforced my my correct, hard-won paradigms, but revealed new methods for team building, maintenance and improvement”
Terrence Tysall, Director for Training, NAUI Worldwide HQ
“A refresh of my communication strong points and weak points. Refocussed the need to be more clear in my communication efforts.”
Derik Crotts, Director of Marketing, Operations & Communications, NAUI Worldwide HQ
“Great way to identify areas that need addressed in personal communications, teamwork and team building”
Jim Gunderson, Training Manager, NAUI Worldwide HQ
“Refresher of (military) experience on acting in team and how to apply to daily and dive team ops” Lonnie Sharp, NAUI Board of Directors
“This programme really focuses on the foundational reasons/factors contributing to enhanced safety/accidents. It really puts the spotlight on what we need to look at to improve safety.”
Dallas Edmiston, Executive Director, NAUI Worldwide
“A good insight into my shortcomings in briefing and debriefing” - Raymond Hunly, NAUI IT
“A must for any serious dive team” - Tim O’Leary, NAUI Director of Technical Training
“Every diver should try to do it. But every diver leader (DM, Instructor, IT & ITT) must do it because the value of the class is unmeasurable. This programme will take your teaching to the next level.” - Luis Augusto Pedro, COO IANTD
“The class and subject are imperative for dive teams, organisations and individuals to progress in a quantum step. Each diver knows the mental attributes of the discipline is of paramount importance. Gareth has given the discipline a path to success in these avenues.” Ed O’Brien, DSO WHOI
“We are all different and on different journeys. I love the focus on teamwork and using people’s strengths in specific areas. I liked taking and learning an unknown programme and translating it to diving. My strengths were reinforced and light was shone on the areas to work on.” - Renee Power, OWSI, Intro Cave Instructor, NSS-CDS Full Cave Intern
“I learned a new insight into evaluating not _what_ went wrong but _why_ it went wrong and most importantly _how_ do we correct it” - Kelly Baker, Full Cave Diver, OWSI
“It became painfully obvious what my default non-technical skills are in a new situation. The training also provided realise strategies for awareness and improvement of those skills" - DR, Full Cave Diver, OWSI
"At around £500/$750 it’s about the same cost as a standard recreational or technical diving course (less specialities) and it’s worth doing. And to make it easier, you can spread the cost of the course over 3 monthly payments. You may not get a c-card for your logbook (although you do get a certificate and t-shirt) but you will walk away a better individual and a better team member. " - Timothy Gort, BSAC First Class Diver. His full length comprehensive review is here.
Online Micro-class
"Fortunately everything sorted itself in the end, but" ... it's that "but" you need to watch out for.
Nontechnical skills are critically important, and should be taught and/or incorporated into early diver training. I am thankful this class was recommended to me, and thankful to Gareth for its creation...it is so valuable.
I am a fairly new diver, and the skills and techniques I have learned in the micro-class will be a huge asset in all facets of my diving—in both my work and recreational diving, and also as I move into more advanced technical dive training.
I now have a new set of skills to implement and practice along side my regular driving drills. I look forward to the opportunity to take the two day class as well ...
Shane Paradis—Certified Rescue Diver
Online micro-class: "One of the few on-line courses I sit till the end. My computer is usually reserved for other activities, so the quality of this course is obvious. Not just for divers, it's useful everywhere. Thanks G!" - Arthur Lim, UTD Foundational Instructor.
“Awesome! Overall challenging and concepts well presented. Learning team and personal behaviours under pressure and areas to watch for improvement is invaluable. Incredible with the debriefs and feedback along with pulling feedback out of the class. Facilitation was awesome.” Rebekah Marshall, Advanced Trimix Technical Diver
“Class was fun, insightful and engaging. Kept material interesting, engaging and fun.” - Ryland Bryant, Trimix Technical Diver
“Eye-opening experience that really shows how much we all have to learn about working in teams. Great use of specific examples tied with students experiences and related well with the students. ” Alex Adolfi, GUE Fundamentals Instructor, Advanced Trimix Technical Diver
“This course helped develop an awareness of human factors in team operations - increased awareness by providing points to look at.” - Guy Shockey, GUE Instructor Trainer / Instructor Examiner
“This course taught me to not be afraid to challenge myself. Clear communication and made the material easy to understand. Didn't make anyone feel stupid.” - Andrea Petersen, Owner Ocean Quest Charters.
"Just finished the full weekend course Human Factors in Diving given by Gareth Lock. It was a transformational experience for me, improving my situational awareness, dive planning, communication and more. The focus is on human factors, not the technical aspects of diving. The applicability goes beyond diving, hence I recommend this course without hesitation to divers and non-divers alike.
The great thing about this course is that there is nothing like it, but that makes it harder for me to describe the huge value it provides for performance improvement with the benefit of increased safety.
You simply have to take it. I recommend starting with the online micro course. See the website at http://www.humanfactors.academy/. It is time and money very well spent, a course that I will strongly recommend to all my students, dive buddies, and fellow dive professionals." - Michelle Nelson, OWSI
“Confirmation in my methodology and belief systems. Great course. I would encourage all Meg instructors to participate in this class, and Meg divers that want to grow in the discipline of CCR diving. This class would be great for anyone, and that is the bottom line. I made 3 new friends that I would dive with anytime💪 This is where Bovin meets the scat. This class made it a pleasure to be a student again. Hooya!” Leo Scamahorn, CEO ISC
“You will truly see yourself in another light that will impact your life, forever.” Jacqueline Patel, OR Nurse and OW Diver
"An incredible learning experience that teaches you trust, teamwork, situational awareness and communication.” Michelle Nelson, OW Instructor
“This course greatly expanded my situational awareness and team cooperation skills.” Kosta Koeman, OW Instructor.
“Excellent training for self-evaluation and team development, well worth the time, money and effort.” Steve Sellers, DSO for National Parks Service
“This course required me to do a lot of personal reflection and will hopefully help me make improvements on my own leadership and followership skills.” - Shelby Moneysmith, NPS SRC Diver, UW Photographer
"This course emphasised important aspects of teamwork and how small things can greatly impact outcomes in life or diving. The safe, but stressful testing allows for a great learning environment while having fun!” - Jessica Keller, NPS SRC Diver
“This course focusses a team to identify their own short-comings as a leader and follower, and during the course it allows them the freedom to improve. I find that I am good at tasks and following orders, but as a leader I demand too much.” - Bert Ho, NPS SRC Diver
“Excellent course to reaffirm skills with excellent teaching aids which allows self-recognition of my own and team members strengths and weaknesses.” - Jim Nimz, NPS SRC Diver
“Its like taking a stone out of your shoe - you don’t know how good your team can be until you remove your biases and get some insights.” Dave Conlin, Chief Scientist, Submerged Resources Centre, National Park Service
“Essential for any professional or occupational diver or programme. Agency, institutions or formal organisations have the most to benefit from a path to becoming a highly effective dive team; this course provides the tools to achieve that level!” - Brett Seymour, DSO, Submerfged Resource Centre, National Park Service.
"This course opened my eyes to character traits that I often try to suppress (assertiveness & control) but that are both present is a possible strength or weakness in given situations. This awareness helps my understanding of how to achieve my individual goals and best support my team." JW, SRC NPS
“It will keep me thinking about the important of good communication.” Suzanna Pershern, SRC NPS
“This course was not only insightful and inspirational, but eye-opening and relevant to our team dynamic in high stress, complex and task loaded dive environments.” Matt Hanks, SRC NPS
"Want to be a higher performing diver and team member. Want to think more about what you're doing and why you're doing it. A good diver / instructor / tech diver is always learning and growing. This course will provoke more thoughts about awareness, team building skills, peer pressure, stress, how to be a good leader and follower, task loading, and taking steps to becoming safer. It doesn't matter the agency you've learned from or the level of diver you are. This is something that everyone can learn from and evaluate themselves and what they can do differently. I've recently seen Gareth Lock speak at the dive shows and went thought his micro online class. It takes about 2.5-3 hours but there is no time limit. It's full of presentations and insightful thoughts on how failure can occur and how human factor skills could prevent incidents from happening."- Online Micro-class, Becky Kagan Schott
“The course is about improving the safe and effective functioning of teams - I would highly recommend it” - Sean Sheldrake, Diving Safety Officer, USEPA
“It has validated my approach, dive brief wise, but has also given me insight on how to improve it” - James Piper, DSO Applied Research Laboratories
“Error is a natural human behaviour, learning how to take a positive aspect of it is very important” - Edgardo Ochoa, DSO Conservation International
“Provides a good framework to step back and evaluate processes and interactions in high stress, team-based, technical operations.” - Daizel Montague, California State University OSI
“This course teaches you about team dynamics, situational awareness and your individuals behaviours and how they influence situations and people around you.” Will Love, DSO University of Washington
“Teamwork needs to be driven by the team. I keep thinking of the old saying ‘There is no I in team’” - Brenda Konar, DSO University of Alaska, Fairbanks
“This programme provides a neutral environment where skilled dive leaders can be challenged and stressed (in a positive manner) to reinforce our personal capabilities of leadership towards safer diving. It fills the gap between accident analysis and performance improvement.” Vallorie Hodges, DSO University of Tasmania
“I recognised the potential and the consequences of human error and how to recognise and deal with the pitfalls. We all know human error is out there, but it is valuable to analyse it in the context of this course.” - Robbie Christian
“It got me back to the basics of safety and the psychology involved. Sometimes this is hard to stick to when in warm, sunny, clear and currentless Bonaire.” AV, DSO CIEE Research Station, Bonaire
“Enlightens the student of the factors of experience and perceptions can impact the way we identify the real issues at hand, and start to take the appropriate steps in reacting to and mitigating the risks.” Doug Schleiger, DSO Smithsonian Institute
“This course is a great way to experience and observe factors that effect team dynamics and communication.” Amie Hufton, DSO Texas A&M University Galveston
“This course really directed me to focus on my behaviours and helped understand why I do what I do” Zach Feltz, DSO Smithsonian Institute, CCRE Programme
“This class has helped me to have amore clear view of ways that I can can help my teams deal more effectively with the inevitability of human error.” Jackie Cooper, DSO, National Aquarium
“This course did a great job of reminding me what task loading feels like, and gave me some good insights as to how to incorporate non-technical skills topics into training to help deal with these common issues.” - Kevin Busch, DSO and SBSO Oregon State University
“Better communication skills with a team and others are attained by understanding how individual’s personality traits affect the overall team dynamics.” - HB, DSO National Aquarium
“It is not just the standard HF theory but a highly practical framework to apply to diving and non-diving environments” - Paul Ransley, OW Instructor, Commercial Saturation and Life Support Supervisor
“This course is brilliantly thought out and these ideas should be a must for divers at all levels” - SB, Diver
“The class gave me more self and team awareness of what human factors are, and their effect on my diving and daytime job” - Graham Allathan - Cave & CCR diver
“This course is beneficial to all as a series of vital life skills enriching everybody’s and anybody’s ability to deal with whatever life throws at them” - Paul Duxfield, Award-winning Underwater Photographer and Diving Instructor
“Stress is the one thing that you cannot extensively simulate in diving. This course allows you to experience, discuss and develop the skills and awareness about stress and human factors and their role in diving” - James Porter, Diver
Post course: “Implementing the debriefing structure we learned in our Human Factors course proved invaluable as everyone in the team felt comfortable providing both critical and positive feedback for everyone (including the instructors) in the team. The goal shifted from the typical “do the skills well to pass the course” to “do the skills well to better support the team”, and it was a lot of fun to watch.”
Jon Kieren, Training Director, TDI/SDI/ERDI
“This course really allowed me to take a step out of my own skin to look at the way I think and handle challenging scenarios from an outside perspective. As a result, some things will remain but I will work to improve those remaining this as I go forward. Simply and effortlessly took the group in and out our comfort levels to reveal areas each of us can hone in on for improvement on an individual level and role within a team.”
Lauren Kieren, Director for Product Development, TDI/SDI/ERDI
“A very good addition to agency training to enable a focused point of view on problem recognition, management and solution”
Phil Short, Instructor Trainer Trainer, IANTD
“This was a fascinating insight into the role of human factors in increasing the safety and performance of a dive team or project.”
Richard Walker, Technical Training Director, GUE
“Excellent consolation and extension of existing human factors and practice, enabling me to deepen value of training offered.”
Tim Clements, Instructor Trainer, IANTD UK
“A unique and beneficial two-day journey into the best (and ‘other’) practices in communicating, learning, performing and diving as a team. I have spent 20 years being taught and practicing CRM in military and civil aviation, and now realise how little I knew abotu CRM."
Michael Puz, Airline training captain, Recreational Diving Instructor, Rebreather diver.
“A great self-evaluation tool and environment. A range from simple to slightly more complex items to apply not only in diving, but a multitude of other daily activities”
Josh Thornton, CCR Cave Instructor.
“Interesting, fun and able to challenge pre-conceptions. Makes you much more aware of areas to develop in your own teaching style.”
Gregory Parker, Diving Instructor.
“A comprehensive and thorough course which was a real eye opener for human behaviour which could affect somebody in the diving environment. I have learned many lessons, and hope to use these in my future teaching.”
Steve Millard, AIDA free-diving coach and competition judge.
“A never ending subject area which will always be instrumental to diving, but I fear will not be recognised on a level it should. But I do!!”
Cat Braun, Technical OC & CCR Instructor Trainer, SSI XR
“Restimulated my personal passion for the subject area, even though I am performance driven.”
Matt Jevon, CCR Instructor at South West Technical, Executive Coach.
“Good food for thought that forces you to hold a mirror up to your own behaviour and how you interact with others. Fascinating to understand why we respond the way we do and gives you the tools to change that behaviour."
Jason Brown, Owner BARDO Creative, Advanced Trimix OC Diver
“I received some information regarding my performance as part of a team - painful at the time, but accurate and invaluable”
Chris Sterrit, PADI Diving Instructor, Gliding Instructor
“A very useful course which was excellent at developing leadership and situational awareness skills.”
Louise Hector, Owner Dive Academy
