5 Leadership Lessons From Open Water Diving
Friday Five
Takeaway: I share my personal account of how I became open water diving certified during a trip to San Diego. I take you through the entire adventure, start to finish, and share the valuable leadership lessons I learned along the way.
5 Leadership Lessons From Scuba Diving
In February, I traveled to San Diego for ten days to escape the Michigan cold and to visit my brother and his family.
The day before I left for California, I decided to do something crazy.
I signed up to get open water diving certified. It was a tight schedule, needing to pack in the mandatory three days of diving during my trip, accounting for potential weather issues that might delay one or all of the dives.
And I had to actually study the material. I ordered the textbook from Amazon while I was on the plane and had it delivered to my brother’s address the next day. (Score for Amazon Prime.)
My experience becoming dive certified was an adventure. In reality though, it was also one of the best practices in leadership training I could have asked for.
From Swimmer To Psychopath
In those three days, you spend the first in a pool learning the basic skills—how to use the equipment, how to navigate safety issues (i.e. running out of air), and to control buoyancy, etc.
My partner and I were doing so well the instructor, Lando, decided to challenge us.
At the bottom of a 12-foot pool, he had me sit on my knees facing the wall. Then, he had my partner do the same on the opposite end of the deep end. Neither of us knew what was next.
I quickly learned that Lando turned off my air without me realizing.
What I should have done was immediately swim to my partner and begin to use his reserve air, but that’s not what I did.
I went to take a breath and no air came out. The clock began.
Instead of using my precious time to reach my partner, I tried to breath again—as in disbelief that I’d run out of air. Nothing.
It’s amazing how we can often trick ourselves into thinking there isn’t a problem in front of us, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You think not having any air to breath would be good enough evidence that something was wrong, but even then my brain was trying to explain away the problem.
“There must be a mistake, try to take another breath. It will surely work this time…” (Stupid brain.)
Now I realize he must’ve turned off my air. I reach for my reserve regulator. Nothing. I should have known, they’re connected to the same air source. If one doesn’t work, then chances are good the other doesn’t work either.
At this point I know I don’t have enough air to swim to my partner so I surface at the top.
It was the one task I failed.
As Lando comes to the top, he’s visibly laughing at me through his regulator. He admits he was mean to cut off my air without saying anything, but he was curious to see what I’d do.
What happens next shocked him.
I asked him to turn off my air again at some point so I could get it right.
In eight years he’s been certifying open water divers, I was the only person to ever ask him to cut off their air a second time. Pretty sure he thinks I’m a psychopath.
Shark-Infested Waters
Day two was reviewing those basic skills, this time in the ocean. It was a shore dive, meaning we had to wade through the surf toward deeper water. The biggest challenge here was trying to get your fins on, while carrying the full weight of your gear, in the few seconds you have between each wave.
And the surf was unforgiving that day. A storm the night before meant we were battling eight-foot waves. Each time you missed getting the fin on in the few precious seconds you had, you’d brace yourself for the next wave crashing against you.
It took us some twenty minutes to finally get on our fins and through the surf.
Lando also failed to mention—until we reached deep water—that this particular beach, La Jolla Beach, is known for most Great White sightings in California. WONDERFUL.
Alas, I survived the second day with no shark incidents.
The Test of Leadership
Day three is where my leadership was tested.
On this day, me and my two dive buddies were responsible to plan the entire dive, start to finish. Then, we had to execute that plan without input from the instructor (unless he noticed we were going to do something very stupid.)
One of my dive buddies was from Indiana, but had lived in SD for four years. He was an avid surfer. The other—a gentleman from Canton, Michigan of all places—was a former firefighter and now working as a traveling EMT.
For some reason they chose me to lead the dive.
And let’s just say everything went smoothly, until it all turned into a shit show 60ft below the surface.
In the end we passed, all became certified and had quite the adventure. But let me walk you through what I learned as dive leader:
Lesson #1: Know your teams’ skills and trust them.
Part of our dive planning involved choosing where and how to enter and exit the water. I don’t have much experience in reading ocean water, but our surfer buddy has spent plenty of time doing that very task.
We left it up to him to decide and trusted his judgement.
We were able to enter the water smoothly, avoid any big currents, and that was probably the most well executed part of the entire dive.
Lesson #2: Your teams’ safety is your responsibility.
For a shore dive you have two options with your air: turn it on before you enter the water, or turn it on when you get to about chest height in the surf.
Some divers choose the latter because, occasionally, the pressure of the surf can turn on your regulator and cause a free flow of air, which, unless you catch it and turn it off ,will waste much of your air and shorten how much time you can spend at depth.
We had one team member wait to turn on his air.
In the excitement of the surf, he’d all but forgotten he still had to do this. Good thing the rest of us had remembered, and we caught him to turn it on before he got too deep.
Lesson #3: Make sure everyone has—and agrees—on the important information.
As part of the dive planning, we had to set a course that we’d use to navigate our dive. Underwater it’s easy to get disoriented with sense of direction, so you use a compass to navigate. We’d set a landmark on the shore to set our compass bearings, a lamppost on the beach.
When we got out to our drop point, I double-checked with everyone that their compasses were set the same so that no one would get lost (and they could double check that I wasn’t leading us off course while underwater).
It turns out they and I were talking about different lamp posts and I would have been taking us to a much different place than we had intended.
Additionally, our goal was to reach a depth of sixty feet, three times as deep as any of us had gone in the prior dives.
We were all confident, but we all knew there was a chance of anxiety or other issues as we went deeper. Here’s why that depth can cause anxiety:
At twelve feet in the pool, you can easily get to the surface on one breath.
At twenty feet, you can probably reach the surface on one breath.
At sixty feet, there is no chance that you’ll reach the surface on one breath.
If you have oxygen issues at that depth your only hope is to trust your skills and use your dive buddy’s reserve regulator. That fact can cause people to feel a bit of anxiety the first time going to that depth.
The last thing we want is someone getting anxious and going to the surface without the rest of us knowing. Visibility underwater this day was maybe fifteen feet, so we’d have no idea where they went or if they were safe. That would be a bad situation.
To help avoid this, our plan was to swim in a flying “V” shape. (An homage to the Mighty Ducks.)
I’d be in front navigating and the other two guys on either side, about half a body’s length behind. (Lando would tag along above to monitor.) With the goggles, you don’t have a particularly wide field of vision. Unless I stop and turn I can’t see either of them.
We agreed that after reaching thirty feet of depth, I’d stop and check on everyone every ten feet of additional depth to make sure everyone was ok. We agreed that unless they were facing a catastrophic issue, they’d try to make it to one of these checkpoints if they had concerns (such as anxiety).
If it was something serious, they’d gently grab and tug on one of my legs. This way, no one surfaces without the rest of us knowing.
We agreed on this system on shore, and I reviewed with everyone again before we dropped below the surface. As you’ll see in a bit, it’s a good thing we were all on the same page as we definitely faced some unexpected issues.
Lesson #4: It’s your responsibility to be aware of small, important details the team might miss.
Once we swam out to about twenty feet of depth, that was our drop point. I remembered from the day before that the visibility was horrendous, maybe fifteen feet. Anything beyond that and you can’t see anything.
When you’re below the surface it can be frightening to not know where anyone is.
I’d set a plan with everyone that we’d start in a circle and drop down until we hit the bottom, trying not to spin. Then, once on the bottom, slowly move forward until we can see each other. That’s when we’ll get into formation and travel to our dive site.
As your dive group gets larger, it becomes easier to lose track of people. This small detail ensured we got a smooth start regrouping on the ocean floor.
Sometimes, the little details matter.
Lesson #5: When sh*t hits the fan, everyone is looking at you. If you can’t keep it together, neither will they.
We’re now on the ocean floor, the dive is going perfectly as planned. We drop, regroup, get into formation, and I’m navigating us on our heading to the dive site. We hit that thirty-foot depth mark and we come up on an underwater cliff that seemingly drops into the abyss.
There’s nothing but darkness below. I turn to check on everyone. Ok on both sides.
Forty feet… All good.
Fifty feet… No issues.
Then we hit sixty feet and I turn to one of my dive buddies signaling me that he’s having issues equalizing. This is where the problems begin.
If you’ve ever swam to the bottom of a deep pool, you’ve likely felt your ears pop.
This happens because the water pressure on the outside of your eardrums is unequal to the pressure on the inside, and it’s pressing your eardrums inward.
To avoid this you have to equalize the pressure on both sides. You do this by plugging your nose and mouth and gently blowing a bit of air, which then travels through your sinuses to equalize the pressure in your head.
There are a number of reasons why you might have issues equalizing. If you have any congestion and air can’t flow properly, it can get trapped and stop you from equalizing. If you wait too long (you have to equalize often as you descend) and pain sets in, and can be hard to equalize to the point of comfort.
Dive buddy #1 is signaling that he can’t equalize, so I stop everyone and have him go a bit higher to try again. Once you equalize at a depth, you are usually good to go back to that depth without issues. The solution is to go a bit higher, and then try again to equalize as you descend.
While we wait, the dive buddy #2 starts signaling that he’s also having issues equalizing. He’s a bit more frantic, so I try to calm him down and get him back to a higher depth too.
He starts to settle a bit, so I turn my attention to the other diver who Lando was now communicating with. I turn back and dive buddy #2 is frantic again. He’s not out of air, but continues to signal he can’t equalize.
We’re at roughly forty-five feet of depth, and he only becomes increasingly frantic. I decide to signal him to go to the surface.
I turn back to Lando to signal him that we have a diver at the surface. He tells me we’re going to do our last exercise, which is a three minute safety stop at fifteen feet that you’d do for deeper dives. (This helps you avoid risk of “the bends,” or decompression sickness.
The three of us remaining underwater complete this safety stop, then surface.
The Aftermath
It turns out that dive buddy #2 had gotten dizzy. Once we got to sixty feet, the entire ocean bottom was spinning and he became severely disoriented. It’s no wonder he became frantic.
As dive buddy #1 removed his goggles we saw a stream of blood running down his nose. He’d blown an eardrum from the pressure build-up. Neither were having a good day.
At the surface, and given the circumstances, we decided to swim back to shore. (With a diver who was now bleeding in shark-infested waters. But who’s paying attention?)
Upon return to the shore, Lando pulled me aside, and in his typical direct manner said to me, “Alex, that was sh*t show. But you handled yourself well and I’m impressed.”
I realized how important it was to keep cool even though the others were having issues. Who knows what would have happened if we all got frantic. When you brain is in that hyper-emotional state, your rational brain shuts off. In that state, you don’t make good decisions.
And when those decisions could be potentially life or death, they better be good.
Not everyone is capable of keeping cool under pressure, but as a leader it’s your responsibility to do so.
A Tale To Tell
In the end, we achieved our goal (hitting the proper depth) even if we couldn’t stay very long. I became open water certified and can now continue to explore the world beneath the surface.
The most rewarding part for me, aside from the story to retell, was the message Lando had sent me a few days upon my return home to Michigan:
“You did a great job leading the group and your skills have gotten better. You’re definitely a leader!”
It was written in a dive logbook he’d mailed me, which was adorned with a giant shark on the cover. What a sense of humor.
~ Coach Alex