Team Building

[Deep6]

In my relatively short experience with DIR/GUE I have been keen to observe the typical divide between a diver's appreciation for Team Work, but a lack of appreciation for Team Building.

In terms of relatively advanced projects, The Team is not only an obvious necessity for accomplishing a project's objectives, but also the most difficult obstacle to overcome: One can never underestimate the challenges of building a dependable team.

Unfortunately, it seems that divers that are in the best position to start this team-building process are often the most embarrassed, uninterested, or indifferent to this process - the recreational DIR divers! For recreational diving, the pressures on a team are relatively minimal, and thus it may seem convenient for newly certified GUE diver to simply enjoy the organization’s commitment to consistency and dive with anyone who has a similar mentality.

I am not criticizing an open-minded, positive attitude towards meeting new divers, which is a central value of our hobby. However, depending on one's interests and ambitions, it may be important for a keen diver to start paying attention to those who share his/her enthusiasm whom he/she also seems to work well with underwater. In time, such relationships are often developed in the diving community through natural process, but by leaving it somewhat to chance it might end up being a rather lengthy process, which may frustrate an ambitious diver.

By focusing on the challenge of team building, divers might be able to accelerate this development and get involved with the type of diving that inspires them in a more timely manner, or simply enjoy an even greater reward out of the diving they already do (in fact, why not take both?).

In my experience, I find that identifying individuals that share a similar objective is one of the easiest ways of facilitating the development of a team, and in GUE this objective can easily be the next level of training. Naturally, a particular destination for the next diving holiday, or the desire to visit an unusual site would serve the same purpose.

However, identifying something that requires a small level of commitment, and gathering people who are all keen on such an objective, is a way to focus on building a team - after all, as the objective is met the team has usually developed a good coherency. This makes it even more practical to carry on with new objectives and the shared passion for diving.

I would like to identify the importance of team building, and invite others to express their experiences (good or bad) in developing their own teams. After all, for all the expenses sacrificed for our equipment, and all the commitment and drive necessary to develop good diving knowledge and skills, none of these measures up to the challenge and difficulty of building a good team.

[Dan Partelly]

Id like to throw in some toughts reagarding the ideea exposed in this thread. It will probably spawn multiple posts, so bare with me please if I start talking a bit about the individual before going to team. I do this because I beleive that while a team can be the sum of the strenghts of the members, it can also be the sum of their weakneses. And in serious situations , the weakest member of the team can determine the "breaking point" of the team.

For an (advanced) team to be succesfull, and result in a unified (dive) team I beleive that it's potential members must meet a basic set of conditions:

1. Share the passion for the sport.
2. Have an open mind
3. Share a common set of *realistic* goals.
4. Share a minimum common level of knowledge in sport specific skills and theory. Differences in this level should be minimal.
5. Have a success oriented attitude
6. Have the ability to adhere to a set of standards and procedures which are adopted by the team for its operations.
7. Manifest a continous need for improvment in sport specific skills, general sport skills, theory (where aplicable), and mental training.
8. Subject themselves constantly to self assesment and peer assesment.
9. Adopt a common configuration for equipment and hardware.

While many of those 9 points are either self explanatory or have beaten to death as in the case of equipment configuration , Id like to insist a little more on some other points. Specifically:

Share Realistic goals:
Its clear that sharing goals is a condition ot have a good team. However goals should be realistic as well. By reaching your goals in the near future
you bascially propel your motivation forward for the next set of goals. Setting unrealistic goals, and failing to reach them can act as a demoralizing agent , which will weaken the individual and implicitly the team
which have this individual as member. But goals shouldnt be to easy to reach also, so they should be set in such a way that a considerable ammount of work and progress must be done to meet them.

Have a success oriented attitude

Simple. The individual should expect success. Failure is not a defining point in the evolution of the individual. Should failure to meet goals occur , the individual is prepared to learn from it, and derive a positive experience. Such individuals also often decouple their self-image from their actual performance. This should allow a individual to enjoy and derive new experiences , whithout having their self esteem lowered by eventual failures.

improvment in sport specific skills, general sport skills, theory (where aplicable), and mental training.

I think mental traning is important in a individual. Even in a sport like diving.
There are situation when an inapropiate emotional state, strong emotions like anger or fear can spell disaster. An individual should cultivate its mental abilites, learn to control strong emotions, deal with fear (real or imaginary).

Subject themselves constantly to self assesment and peer assesment.

Self assesment is important. Is important to identify current level of training , identify weaknesses and set goals for correcting the identified weaknesses. However , an even greater importance is to submitt yourself to peer review. While self assesment is a great asset for proggress, its still a subjective evaluation, and therfore should be completed with peer reviews.
In the process of a learning experience its also important to ask your instructors for a complete assesment.

[Dan Partelly]

In the previous post, I talked a bit about mental attitude of an athlete . I beleive that in any sport mental training is very important, and mental and emotionl aspects of training should always be considered.

Related to diving , for example, there are direct implications of emotional state of mind and fear over diving. Think cave diving for example, and think at the old book "A blueprint for survival" by Exley, where at least two from the 10 commandments in the book are directly related to psychological factors and mental discipline. For those which didnt read the book , I refere to rule 4 , "avoid panic by building up experience slowly .... " and point 10 "never permit overconfidence to allow you to rationalize violating recomended saftey procedures".

But mental attitude and fears play a critical role in the educational part of an individual as well, altough this may not be so obvious at the first sight.

For example, a failure oriented attitude, will hinder progress of an individual towards goals. More so, a failure oriented individual will fear embarasment and fear failure above anything. Such an individual will avoid failure at any price, instead of deriving a new experience from it, and move forward towards his goals.

A direct consequence of fear of failure may be that the individual will avoid high quality training, for example it will go forward with its training with a organization and instructor whose standards are lower, will avoid very good , but tough instructors , and in a word he will move away from anything which even remotely can be a cause of failure.

A consequence of fear of embarasment can be , for example, to pass a experience offered by a more experienced member of the comunity, because you fear that "you will look bad and be embarassed by your lack of skill"

This is why posts like "only 1% pass " on The decostop

http://thedecostop.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20777

exist in the first place. And to be fair, I hope that the instructor did not
scared the student by saying him "that 1% only pass". This can only add unnecessary burden to the student. Rather I hope the instructor told him:
"It will be very hard, but I will do anything which depends on me to see your goals for enrolling in my course come to life"

[Dan Partelly]

Preferably, a team should be formed by members which share as many as charachteristics as discussed in the previous post. Some of them are mandatory to exist, such a set of common goals, and passion for the sport, and the will to adhere to a set of common rules and procedures + equipment configurations adopted by the team, while others , such as slight differences in the techical level for the individual can be compensated for in training.

Many times when such individuals meet, assuming that they are not already part of estabilished teams, a natural bond will form, which is the first step towards building the tam. It is likely that a individual which meet another with which he shares so many charachteristics will prefere him as a member of a team, instead of another person which dont share the same state of mind and goals.


unfortunately, it seems that divers that are in the best position to start this team-building process are often the most embarrassed, uninterested, or indifferent to this process - the recreational DIR divers!


Well nailed. From my point of view , creation of the team will not happen so
easily here. This is because I beleive the immediate goal is "to be a safe DIR rec diver", but for most of them the next goal misees totally. Because of this, a motivation for progress doesnt always exist, and a team, even if one forms , will be focused on "lets meet next sunday and spend some time toghetther diving" , rather than evolution to the next level of training and improvments in both individual and colective performance.

Dont get me wrong, such a team is OK as well, and can be safe and educated. And many ppl will genuinly want to stay at this level and not go
further than that.

Here, I beleive , a positive role can have the instructor. The instructor should try (especially instructors comming from agencies for which the team is central in diver education) to spark the need for continous self improvment and a thirst for knowledge in the individuals he just trained. For many of them, this will be enough to want to know more, to be better, and help others to be better.

In other cases, as for example in palces which are isolated geographically ,
team members may initially share less common traits the above. This is because they might be the only potential members for a team there. Yet
as long as an open mind is kept, and players work toghether to meet
the required charachteristics and work for improving the team , this is OK.

In conclusion I beleive that best teams are configured by individuals which share common profiles. It's only natural to be so. Its also for the best, cause this way progress is natural and unhindered by capital differences in mind set ond perception betwen the members.

Players in such a teams are powerfull ones, and can recognize easily individuals with similar charachteristcs. Dont dismiss a potential team member just because he was trained by agency "X" and you are trayined by agency "Z". Recognize the potential and help a potential team member improve , of course if he accepts that =).

[Dan Partelly]

This is a complex part. A part about which I beleive one can easily write books with hundred of pages, and a very hard subject to handle. Coaching a team is way more complex the coaching a indivdual, after all, despite the fact team members share a lot of traits, they are different human beeings. Not only one have to deal with different humans, but also with the links and interdependecies between the humans forming the team.

Once individuals are linked toghether in the team, they must begin to think as a team. This doesnt mean that individual thinking is discouraged or negates the fact that each team member is unique. Yet each team member will contribute something, and will move the whole towards the next common goal.

Maybe the best results are meet when the members of a team constantly train themselves toghether. This have the advantage that the set of procedures and standards will almost become a religion for the team members, and the familiarity between members enables them to act as one.

The efficiency of this type of team was fully proved by military in many cases.

A point which is also important for the team, at least as important as its for the individual is self-evaluation and peer review. Like a individual , a team should asses itself and its workings, and constantly work forward to improve the team. Like an individual, a team should always exercise its weak points, not its strengths. Individuals should complement each other and function in such a way that one compensates for the other`s weakneses.

[Dan Partelly]

This is a interesting essay , with an unknown author, at least unknown for me. I beleive is a fit closing for my posts:

************************************************** *****
* Sense of a goose *
************************************************** *****
When you see geese flying along in "V" formation, you might consider what science has discovered as to why they fly that way:


As each bird flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird immediately following. By flying in "V" formation, the whole flock adds at least 71 percent greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own.


People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going more quickly and easily because they are traveling on the thrust of one another.

When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone, and quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird in front.

If we have as much sense as a goose, we will stay in formation with those people who are headed the same way we are.

When the head goose gets tired, it rotates back in the wing and another goose flies point.

It is sensible to take turns doing demanding jobs, whether with people or with geese flying south.

Geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

What messages do we give when we honk from behind?
Finally ... and this is important ... when a goose gets sick or is wounded by gunshot, and falls out of formation, two other geese fall out with that goose and follow it down to lend help and protection. They stay with the fallen goose until it is able to fly or until it dies, and only then do they launch out on their own, or with another formation to catch up with their group.



If we have the sense of a goose, we will stand by each other like that.

[Diving princess]

Nice! Have been wondering about this my self for a while...

http://www.ocean-discovery.org/forum/showthread.php?p=2394#post2394