cmalinowski
Contributor
I would, first and foremost, relax and understand that, as pointed out, these things are going to happen... especially when you're trying to work on everything that may be new to you. I think there is a bunch of stuff already pointed out in the thread to help.
GUE EDGE is good for defining roles and asking questions about the dive. The post-dive debriefs have always been good for figuring out where things can be improved. But they shouldn't be used as a weapon to identify why so-and-so screwed up. I use them to find out how I can improve my skills. I offer up information because my buddies are looking for input on how they can improve, and the only way to help them is to give them constructive feedback.
I can't remember a time where there was angst among the divers in the team during debriefs... well, not real angst anyway. And trust me, there have been times when we screwed the pooch in one way or another. We do this training so that we can make it back from "screwed the pooch" dives, not to look perfect in the water. We do this to have fun. We may poke fun at someone who had a brain fart and did something wrong on the dive, but even if we all realize that diver A may have been a catalyst for a team failure, that it was a team failure and we try to figure out what we can do to help diver A not do that again. Maybe we really were the catalyst. Maybe we were swimming too fast or making assumptions about diver A's skill set that we shouldn't have. It's all good. We dive as a team. We assume all responsibility for the success or failure of a dive as a team.
Situational awareness comes with time and comfort in the water. As someone explained it to me a while back, it's like we only have 10 brain cells. During normal swimming with nothing else going on, it's easy to have, say, seven of those in use for SA and the rest for other aspects of the dive--it probably takes far less brain cells to frog kick than to keep track of the team and surroundings. But when something goes wrong, you lose those seven dedicated cells to deal with the "something". This is the same with drills. When doing a drill, you don't have those seven cells dedicated because they are in use worrying about trim and buoyancy and... most of all... the drill. As you need to worry less and less about buoyancy and trim and other things that become natural (because you practice them), the number of cells devoted to those specific items will reduce and go back to SA, or whatever else needs them. Eventually, it takes less brain cells to manage the entire dive and you end up noticing a lot more things on the dive. It's like adding helium to deeper dives
And, understand that there is no one way to do some of these things. SA being probably the hardest to nail down. The comfort and familiarity of teammates with each other plays a large role in this. I would guess that Lynne and Peter don't devote as many brain cells to SA when diving together as a team as they would if I rolled in and join their team. And I would be devoting more brain cells as well because I am less familiar with their team.
Good luck. I am sure more things will become less frustrating as time moves on. Your CRM reference is a good one, but may be most valuable within your team first to figure out issues. None of us were on the dive so it's hard for us to identify truly where things may have been done in a sub-optimal fashion.
Chris
GUE EDGE is good for defining roles and asking questions about the dive. The post-dive debriefs have always been good for figuring out where things can be improved. But they shouldn't be used as a weapon to identify why so-and-so screwed up. I use them to find out how I can improve my skills. I offer up information because my buddies are looking for input on how they can improve, and the only way to help them is to give them constructive feedback.
I can't remember a time where there was angst among the divers in the team during debriefs... well, not real angst anyway. And trust me, there have been times when we screwed the pooch in one way or another. We do this training so that we can make it back from "screwed the pooch" dives, not to look perfect in the water. We do this to have fun. We may poke fun at someone who had a brain fart and did something wrong on the dive, but even if we all realize that diver A may have been a catalyst for a team failure, that it was a team failure and we try to figure out what we can do to help diver A not do that again. Maybe we really were the catalyst. Maybe we were swimming too fast or making assumptions about diver A's skill set that we shouldn't have. It's all good. We dive as a team. We assume all responsibility for the success or failure of a dive as a team.
Situational awareness comes with time and comfort in the water. As someone explained it to me a while back, it's like we only have 10 brain cells. During normal swimming with nothing else going on, it's easy to have, say, seven of those in use for SA and the rest for other aspects of the dive--it probably takes far less brain cells to frog kick than to keep track of the team and surroundings. But when something goes wrong, you lose those seven dedicated cells to deal with the "something". This is the same with drills. When doing a drill, you don't have those seven cells dedicated because they are in use worrying about trim and buoyancy and... most of all... the drill. As you need to worry less and less about buoyancy and trim and other things that become natural (because you practice them), the number of cells devoted to those specific items will reduce and go back to SA, or whatever else needs them. Eventually, it takes less brain cells to manage the entire dive and you end up noticing a lot more things on the dive. It's like adding helium to deeper dives
And, understand that there is no one way to do some of these things. SA being probably the hardest to nail down. The comfort and familiarity of teammates with each other plays a large role in this. I would guess that Lynne and Peter don't devote as many brain cells to SA when diving together as a team as they would if I rolled in and join their team. And I would be devoting more brain cells as well because I am less familiar with their team.
Good luck. I am sure more things will become less frustrating as time moves on. Your CRM reference is a good one, but may be most valuable within your team first to figure out issues. None of us were on the dive so it's hard for us to identify truly where things may have been done in a sub-optimal fashion.
Chris
