I received this today. Excellent question I think.

[Crowley]

I used to work at a big and busy CDC in Thailand and my main role was the co-ordination of our DM classes and consequently been involved in the training of some 300+ DMs and over 100 instructors. I also taught the bulk of our rescue classes.

I saw a goodly number of people come through the doors who were not fit to be working in the dive industry in terms of their attitude, ability, personal fitness or mental agility. I was not able to refuse any of the students but I did fail some. What I did find was that most of the people who had the wrong attitude did shift their perspective as they realised they were in the company of other interns with a significantly better approach to the courses.

Working in this environment gave me a lot of advantages in terms of attitude re-adjustment because I could start at Rescue, and because the courses were large, other candidates would effectively shame the under-achievers into picking up their feet. If people turned up late, I locked the classroom door and told them to come back next month - although mostly I let them sweat for an hour whilst they thought about all the money they would lose in extending and rescheduling their stay in Thailand, and then let them back into the class. Nobody was ever late again after that.

I've had two DM candidates in my current job and they were appalling candidates - thinking they would do three weeks of fun diving and get a card at the end of it. Both of them were sacked by my management, for which I was extremely grateful. Because they were solo candidates, they didn't have the peer pressure to perform that my interns in Thailand had.

I agree that everybody should be given a chance, and there are ways and means of adjusting attitudes in all divers and dive trainees. One of the best methods is - like a learning agreement - being up front at the start of the class. "This is how it works, this is what I will do, this is what you will do if you wish to be certified at this level". If people are not performing during training then a simple "I am not going to certify you if you do not start showing some improvement (and therefore you will have wasted all your money)" is a wonderful kick up the backside for the lackadaisical.

I think you have to have a certain amount of professional, but friendly, authority over your students, regardless of their background. With DM candidates you have the possibility, at least in the PADI system under which I teach, of failing candidates on their level of professionalism - their approach to the course and "general understanding of the role of a DM"

I have to admit that there were still candidates I did not want to certify - and I talked to my Course Director and he basically said that you have to get used to the phrase "has met performance requirements" and yes, their first real exam will be their first job. This was a decision I had little control over but exactly none of these candidates ever worked in the dive industry. If I was ever asked to provide references for these people, I would tell prospective employers that "they had met the performance requirements of the DM course" - and most employers know exactly what that means.

There are some people who will inevitably slip through the net, but in my experience, poor professional divers often don't last very long in the industry. In my current job, poorly trained or attitudinally unprepared recreational divers are restricted in what they are allowed to do, and must undertake further training if they wish to continue diving with us. I appreciate that this does not happen in many locations.

Safe diving,

C.

[waynne fowler]

Wow. From OW to DM in 6 weeks.... do it through our store and you'll be in class for 6 months then you start your mentoring, do good and you could be done in about 10-12 months.

I couldn't even think about turning my students loose with someone with only 6 weeks of training and no real practical experience.

Amazing

[rob@diveinutila.com]

As instructors I believe we owe it to our customers to give them a go. Some people are harder to train - that doesn't mean we should give up on them.

Attitude is one of the hardest things to train. But it is trainable.

As scuba instructors we (should) attempt to train in knowledge, attitude and skills.

You can fail a student in any of these areas. More constructively we try and grow our students based on their short comings in all three areas.

What Crowley says is spot on, imo, as he so often is. Sometimes you just can't get there. The candidate/student is just too hard headed and unwilling to even listen. The ability or willingness to listen with respect to the speaker is the first rung on the ladder in being able to grow and if the candidate/student has taken that away from you then more likely than not that person will fail.

[LaMissJude]

What is the best solution?

-to say to that guy "Sorry, you don't have the right mind for it. Can not train you."
You have a lot of chance that he will run in other shops, and at least one will anyway accept to train him, and potentially not in a good way.

-or to accept to train that guy, which doesn't mean automatically certify him, as any other other course, in my opinion.
Give him a chance, he might be surprising... and even if he fails, he will learn some things. For example that being a Divemaster isn't only about fun diving all day long...

Something I noticed with some other instructor/DM: it's not because I don't like some of them as a person that they are not good, and same goes with students.
Maybe that guy has some people skills, maybe he just wanted to sound good, maybe he is just an arrogant full of himself kind of person.

As a professional, I would give it a good try to train him properly. And I might fail...

Sometimes you just can't get there. The candidate/student is just too hard headed and unwilling to even listen. The ability or willingness to listen with respect to the speaker is the first rung on the ladder in being able to grow and if the candidate/student has taken that away from you then more likely than not that person will fail.

[DevonDiver]

What is the best solution?

-to say to that guy "Sorry, you don't have the right mind for it. Can not train you."
You have a lot of chance that he will run in other shops, and at least one will anyway accept to train him, and potentially not in a good way.

Who cares if he goes elsewhere? I worry about the products of my work, not others.

This option would/could be a resort for those dive centers who have a limited capacity to train DMs. Smaller centers, and freelancers, might even have a waiting list for DM training....

In addition, any Divemaster Candidate becomes (to some degree) a representative of the diving business concerned. If they have any interaction with other customers (most do), then they're typically perceived as members of staff by 'regular' customers. Enrolling a dick onto your DM course can have counter-productive results on your wider business and can lose you more money than you'd make from the profit of their DM course.

I've encountered dive centers that actually interview/select DM candidates into training. I don't think that's a bad policy at all (unless $$$'s is all you're interested in).

-or to accept to train that guy, which doesn't mean automatically certify him, as any other other course, in my opinion.
Give him a chance, he might be surprising... and even if he fails, he will learn some things. For example that being a Divemaster isn't only about fun diving all day long...

Well, the purpose of the DM course is about educating.... and mindset is something that a good instructor would educate a trainee DM about.

If the instructor/center had the capacity to accept the trainee... then it'd be fair to enroll them for training, but ensure they understood that 'characteristics of a good DM' was an assessment issue - and that their first impression at the store highlighted a deficit in that.... it'd require remedial attention, otherwise failure would be a distinct possibility.

Chances are, when informed of that policy/requirement, the 'fast-track' prospective candidate may prefer to seek out a 'more guaranteed' training provider anyway......

Something I noticed with some other instructor/DM: it's not because I don't like some of them as a person that they are not good, and same goes with students. Maybe that guy has some people skills, maybe he just wanted to sound good, maybe he is just an arrogant full of himself kind of person.

I disagree. When run 'properly' the DM course places strong emphasis on a student-mentor relationship. Such a relationship requires certain inter-personal chemistry and, as a minimum, a modicum of mutual respect between teacher and student. Anything less is just 'going through the motions'...

[supergaijin]

A 5 minute meet and greet doesn't give me a clear impression over someone's DM potential. I would be willing to take the person on and see how it progressed. If we got along in at least a professional way, then that is enough for me. I wouldn't however begin the course the next day- it would involve a few dives to see where their own ability/experience and mindset is at before I could make a decision. I have the same way of thinking for AOW- not everyone is ready for it.

Professional relationship aside, I would also like for the DMT to be someone with whom I share the same philosophy to diving but if they don't, at least I am exposing that person to a 'different' philosophy which may influence them later if they continue in the industry.

[Thalassamania]

The cockiest student we ever had turned out to be one of our best instructors in the end:

We have an exercise were we bring all the buoyancy and trim stuff together, our goals are not construction evaluation or training but rather buoyancy control, planning and teamwork; on the final exam dive one of the students’ trials is, “the sewer flange.”

The parts: a 18 inch PVC sewer flange with gasket, eight 3/4” bolts, eight 3/4” nuts, sixteen flat washers to fit, eight lock washers to fit, a mesh bag, two large adjustable wrenches, two net floats, and some net twine.

The set up: Each flange half is tied to a ten foot piece of net twine with a net float at the other end. They are taken out over a flat bottom in 30 feet of water. Students are handed a net bag with the gasket, all the nuts, bolts washers and wrenches when they arrive in the area of the float. They were permitted to examine the flange in class and may bring their own tools if they’d rather.

The problem: A buddy pair of students must approach the flange underwater and assemble the flange, with the gasket in place, by placing a flat washer on a bolt, inserting the bolt through an appropriate hole in the flange, then placing a second flat washer followed by a lock washer and a nut onto the protruding end of the bolt. The bolt must be tightened more than hand tight. This process must be repeated for all eight bolts. The exercise is scored on time and points off. Time is from when they are handed the bag, point off are: 1 point if a net float is pulled beneath the surface, 5 points if any part of a diver or a diver’s equipment breaks the surface, 5 points if a diver or any part of a diver’s equipment touches the bottom. Completing the exercise is made interesting by the fact that the divers are passing tools and other items with significant weight back and forth and must maintain good buoyancy control to remain on level with the assembly, even while they are “loosing weight” as the bolts and washers become part of the assembly.

The best job ever done on this task was Steve Paulet, who is a member of the SB. Steve and his buddy brought their own tools and the kind of cocky attitude that only an undergraduate Ocean Engineer with supreme self-confidence, who’d been bragging for weeks that they were going to set a new record, can exude. They had practiced and came equipped with their own tools including a socket, a deepwell socket, a T-handle and a speedwrench. They swam out and set to work, the choice of tools was good, as one inserted a bolt through a flat washer and pushed it through one half of the flange, the gasket and the other half, and held the head of the bolt in a socket and T-handle, the other diver placed a flat washer, lock washer and nut on and tightened it down with a deepwell socket on a speedwrench. They were well rigged, the T-handle and speedwrench had wrist straps so that if they dropped them they’d not loose them and they were progressing faster than I’d ever seen a pair go. On about the fourth bolt Steve finished tightening it and pulled back on the speedwrench to get the clear the bolt end. He misjudged the angle and the socket came off the wrench and fell to the bottom. “Got him now!,” I thought. But the SOB reached into his BC pocket whipped out another deepwell socket, clicked it onto the speedwrench and was off and running with perhaps a loss of three or four seconds. Guess who was helping us teach the next year?

[Rick Murchison]

...We have an exercise ...

I *like* this exercise! Now I just have to fit it into the right place
Rick