Counter-Errorism in Diving: Applying Human Factors to Diving7 Feb

SH251: Top Tips for Diving Instructors: Psychological Safety and the Thumb Rule

This episode explores why calling a dive can be harder in practice than the famous “any diver can end any dive” rule suggests, especially for instructors under time, money, or reputation pressure. Using a real cave-diving example, the blog shows how small equipment issues and disrupted routines created warning signs that the team wasn’t ready, even though nothing had gone seriously wrong yet. The dive was safely called, and the team later recognised how important psychological safety was in making that decision feel acceptable and supported. The key message is that psychological safety — feeling able to speak up, admit mistakes, or stop without fear of criticism — is essential for safe and effective training. Instructors play a major role in creating this by staying calm under pressure, reacting constructively to small problems, and leading by example when it’s time to call a dive.

Original blog: https://www.thehumandiver.com/blog/top-tips-for-diving-instructors-psychological-safety-and-the-thumb-rule

Links: Some previous blogs about psychological safety:

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.

Tags: - english cave diving human factors lanny vogel psychological safety teamwork top tips training

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