How to make teams of three work?

[zoom5]

I have absolute no desire to get involved in a bickering fest of who was in the right position or who was drifting at particular points of the dive.

It's important to realize who did what if we want to avoid repeating the same mistakes. To put it simply, each of us screwed up, just in different ways. Rik should have paid equal attention to you and me. You should not have given Rik any space, signal for him to back kick or do a fist bump. I should have signaled with the light when it was clear you two weren't going to return to position.

-Sean

 

[Captain12Pk]

It happens. That's why we train.

 

[TSandM]

+1 to that!

 

[kathydee]

Keeping your team together is very important; it’s great that you are so concerned! Did you take GUE-F with a team of two or three? Do you remember the responsibilities divers assume in a team of 3 as the #1, #2, and #3 diver? I seem to recall a section on team roles in the Fundies course material -which might be helpful to review?

Using your example , pretend #1 & #2 are engaged in a V drill. Three sets of eyes are better at catching problems than two. As Lynne said, #3 is not as task loaded so should be watching all the steps of the drill to make sure nothing is missed, #3 also watches team depth, position, movement & navigation. If the team starts to drift off, #3 can keep track of the motion and reposition it. We often maintain arms distance from each other, at most a kick away. If #1 & #2 have enough situational awareness they can use #3 as a position reference without #3 signaling. #3 should stay engaged in the drill and close enough to help if needed.

When diving in a team of 3, we usually either dive 3 side by side (wing on wing) , or single file. Remember #1 ok’s #2 - #2 checks with #3 for an ok before telling #1 the team is ok ;-).

 

[Lobzilla]

It's important to realize who did what if we want to avoid repeating the same mistakes. To put it simply, each of us screwed up, just in different ways. Rik should have paid equal attention to you and me. You should not have given Rik any space, signal for him to back kick or do a fist bump. I should have signaled with the light when it was clear you two weren't going to return to position.

-Sean

I absolutely agree with your assessment of the individual errors. Passivity was one of our issues on that dive. I saw videos of less skilled divers doing a much better team job because they were outright aggressive in not allowing any slack to anyone.

What is your take on the "lost teammate" issue ? (Another thing that would most likely not have occurred in a team of two).

 

[aquaregia]

I'm also guilty of passivity.

 

[TSandM]

If you want a piece of advice from me, guys -- don't air dirty team laundry on a public website. Specific discussions of who did what and where are for you guys to do over a beer. Discussions of the basic strategy, or tips on how to execute it better, are fine to do here.

 

[Lobzilla]

Lynne, you have my OK to pull the entire thread.

I neither wanted to have names involved nor was I looking for the obvious but useless suggestion to perform every drill/procedure perfectly.

At the bottom of the totem pole we have a training dive where the total mess was bigger than the sum of the individual deficiencies. At the top of the totem pole we have the Miller accident. In between I have seen teams surface from a dive and have a public divorce on the boat just to have honeymoon bliss on the following dive with other teammates.

If we take team diving seriously (and I do) we should IMO address team dynamics similar to what is called Crew Resource Management in aviation. (from Wikipedia: "Crew resource management or Cockpit resource management (CRM) is a procedure and training system in systems where human error can have devastating effects. Used primarily for improving air safety, CRM focuses on interpersonal communication, leadership, and decision making in the cockpit. The training originated from a NASA workshop in 1979, which found that the primary cause of most aviation accidents was human error. CRM has since been adopted to different industries and organizations, including for instance fire service to improve situational awareness on the fireground, and the marine industry, where CRM is referred to as BRM, Bridge Resource Management.)

Rather than diving into an abstract and theoretical discussion I wanted to use a simple example that everyone can relate to as a entry point to discuss and understand team dynamics. That attempt has obviously failed.

 

[lamont]

Rather than diving into an abstract and theoretical discussion I wanted to use a simple example that everyone can relate to as a entry point to discuss and understand team dynamics. That attempt has obviously failed.

Skimming over the thread, though, it seems like there's been fairly useful information given out.

I'd like to give my $0.02 though which is:

#1: team failures are team failures, and everyone has issues to work on with the team separation there.

- buddy doing the valve drill needs to not be so task focused and needs to be able to maintain awareness of both other buddies. this lack of awareness is probably an indicator of lack of skill with the valve drill and probably going a bit too fast into doing valve drills, not getting a more stable platform first, not getting your head up, going too fast or some other issues.

- buddy doing the valve drill needs to be aware of positioning and not be drifting off. a lot of the time 'drifting off' actually is more about kicking and flailing quite a bit during the valve drill which indicates that the diver really needs to slow down a bit and work more on fundamentals before trying to whip through valve drills.

- buddy immediately watching the valve drill is there as the safety diver, but also needs to be aware of positioning and the third buddy.

- the third buddy needs to be close. all of you should be roughly an arms distance from each other and able to donate. the third buddy needs to not be shy in valve drills and s-drills and needs to close the gap and get in to the point where ideally elbows are nearly touching.

- the awareness of the third buddy on location was good, but the prioritization was bad. team comes first. the third buddy can signal to get back into position but this will interrupt the drill. it really needs to be decided beforehand how much shifting in location can be tolerated and how much interrupting of the drill can be tolerated. if divers are new to valve drills they may want to just acknowledge that they'll drift in which case i'd want to see just an awareness of how much drift was involved in the dive and what the cause of the drift was -- if the diver was uncomfortable and doing a lot of kicking, or if there was sideways current or other issues.

the overwhelming issue seems to be here that the divers were focusing on different aspects of trying to do the drill correctly. eventually we want to be able to put together the drills so that everything gets done correctly, but when starting you're going to have to triage what you care about a little bit -- and you're going to have to communicate those goals as a team.

and i'll stress this is a pretty common problem. i was doing a valve drill one time in the dark at 20 feet in about 50 feet of water when i went onto my backup and found that it had been crushed and was breathing water and i dropped to the bottom while my buddy focused on maintaining a reference at 20 feet and we were separated while i had no breathable gas. later we found out that the better way to deal with vertical separation is to maintain a reference for your buddy as long as you're not +/- more than about 3 feet, and to *communicate* immediately on swings out of position of no more than a foot.

focusing on 'i need to be a reference for my buddy' is only good when the team is together, and it needs to involve more communication as that separation increases -- it needs to be discarded when the separation is putting the cohesiveness of the team into jeopardy.

again, i'd suggest for what you're doing to keep the team together, then possibly communicate drifting (e.g. signal "look" and point at your reference object) and then to debrief afterwards, and work towards improving and minimizing drift in the future. and *most* likely if you fix trim and buoyancy and comfort with the valve drill you'll also find that the 'drifting' around fixes itself too.

 

[jago]

My answer assumes you are in open water.
When you are underwater, there are 2 easy ways to maintain contact :

• looking the teammates
• touching the teammates

Some people are able to calm and reassure people by touching them.

If you are not doing some drill, the best way to do IMHO is to stay in line, the guy in the middle would be the messenger. Alternatively, you can choose to make a 1+2 divers. The lonely diver manages orientation, the buddies stay behind him, one maintains touch contact, the other manages depth and deco planning.

To my mind, the only one thing to do is to choose a "leader" who will manage the coms. If you don't, there will be probably one solo diver and 2 buddies.