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Scuba Diving is great fun, and also an unexpected way to improve employee performance and teamwork. Here is how!
Even if you're a highly qualified diver, the first rule is to never dive alone. You dive with at least one ‘buddy’. 'Buddies' can literally be your friend-in-need during desperate times. If you get hurt, panic or damage your apparatus, your buddy can help bring you back up safely.
Getting your team to buddy up with each other helps improve co-dependency and coordination. With teams that may suffer from ego clashes, you will see the barriers disappear once they are underwater & dependent on each other.
Scuba requires that you return to the surface when you have a certain level of Oxygen still left in your tank. This means you don’t wait to completely exhaust your limits, before you move back up. But instead, return with a margin that you can leverage in case something goes wrong on the way back up. Also, before every dive, you must conduct a complete check of your and your buddy's equipment, to make sure you're fully prepared to go in.
Employees feel encouraged to push their limits, while assessing the risks involved every step of the way. They learn to make decisions after weighing the risks & rewards involved in tricky situations.
You hate 'em, but cannot do without 'em.
Members of your team may consider these boring or dogmatic, but processes & procedures are necessary to approach your goals in an organized manner, without burning out. Scuba is very strict in terms of following procedures and processes.
This can help get rid of divers’ aversion to following protocol and teach them to have fun while accomplishing goals, in a structured manner.
Apart from being aware of the internal environment & dynamics while creating plans & strategies, it is equally important to be aware of competitors. This means not the well-established giants, but those at your level, whose welfare lies in eliminating you.
Guhesh Ramanathan, a Bengaluru-based entrepreneur, and founder of startup incubator and capital advisory firm Excubator has been Scuba Diving for 2 decades now. In his YourStory Article, he says that Scuba teaches you that “Triggerfish can be more dangerous than Sharks”. Triggerfish, with their small territories, can prove quite vicious if you trespass into their territories.
The stalwarts in the industry don’t care about your existence if you’re a startup. It’s all about the scale of your enemies.
If you don’t have the budget or time limit to take your team out for a complete course, even a trial dive can work wonders for their motivation. Most employees now report that they are likely to stay with an employer who takes that extra effort to keep them happy and engaged. Even if the monetary benefits aren’t the best.
An hour in the water can help de-stress your team and make them see how much they really are appreciated. Also, some of them may have any apprehensions at the start. But once they overcome their fears and take that first step into the water, they get a confidence boost.
Scuba Diving provides just the right amount of challenge to encourage teamwork and overcome barriers. It can also provide a great environment for organizing fun team-building activities.
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