Diving Deep: Leadership Lessons from 100 Feet
In 2018, I dived to a depth of 60ft underwater for the first time. I had no idea this experience would forever change my life. I love the ocean. I have always loved the ocean. Prior to this moment, scuba diving was simply an underwater James Bond fight scene courtesy of Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again. I never imagined myself underwater in a life jacket type contraption that inflates, deflates, and attaches to this tentacle-like oxygen machinery. My immediate love of diving was surprising to me; suffice to say I don’t see myself as an adventurous person (one moment of light turbulence on an airplane has me frantically looking out the window in case the wings fall off).
When I tell someone that I scuba dive, the first question is always, “Why do you love it so much?”.
My answer usually surprises people.
“It makes me a better leader.”
There is something meditative about being underwater; immersed in a universe that we do not witness in our human-centric world, where the ecosystem of night and day reveals remarkable creatures, and where taking care of yourself is paramount. I now dive to depths of 100ft and the insights that I discover with each dive transforms how I move through the world. The underwater world has so much to teach us about ourselves as people and as leaders.
1. Trust is necessary for any ecosystem to survive.
In a coral reef system, you find these very cool cleaning stations, where larger species of fish, rays and even sharks, wake up and want to dust off all the parasites that have attached to them overnight. These cleaning stations essentially function as car washes, where tiny shrimps will feed off of the parasites, effectively cleaning the larger fish from top to bottom. In order for this underwater car wash to function, it requires a great deal of trust. Trust that no one is going to be preyed upon in this station, that there is a mutual benefit to carrying out this work, and that at the end of the day, everyone will leave feeling satisfied.
Think back on a time when you felt the most connected and disconnected in the workplace. Trust likely formed the foundation of your experience. How you move through team dynamics, communication, and getting your job done is directly related to trust. If trust is broken, or worse, non-existent in the first place, the “cleaning station” can’t function. Everyone is afraid, survival mentality kicks in, and no one is going to dare to help each other out. The ecosystem dies. If everyone has a mutual understanding of how they contribute to the organization, its goals, and their own livelihood, a healthy ecosystem thrives.
2. The underwater world exists even if you can’t see it.
The fallacy of humans is the assumption that the world operates around our own whims and needs. However, just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Every time I descend for a dive, I’m in awe of the world that is alive around me. Yes, sometimes I do pretend I’m in Finding Nemo, but once the voices of the surfer dude turtles depart from my brain, I bask in the glory of this watery universe. The stress of emails, meetings, meetings that could have been emails, client emergencies, interpersonal conflict, all seem so far away. Sometimes, especially as I have been landlocked this past year, I think about what might be going on in the hidden depths of the ocean. Are the parrotfish snacking on the reef? Is that tarpon guarding that shipwreck? Is the school of clownfish heading out for a group swim? The ocean world exists even when I’m not there to witness it.
Leaders who are connected and have strong relationships recognize and appreciate that there is the overt organizational culture- what is seen, what you can read from Glassdoor reviews and values statements, and what is unseen- the hidden culture, the unsaid rules that often don’t make their way to senior leadership. It’s the hidden culture that guides and impacts employees daily. I once worked in an organization where at the end of challenging team meetings, when it was time for the Q&A session, no one would say anything. The hidden culture spoke volumes in silence. Leaders who are in touch with their workplace ecosystem have relationships with their teams that can reveal what is happening outside of the all staff meeting or the annual holiday party. If you can tap into that system, you’ll have a much better sense of your organization’s health. Deny that it exists, and you deny the existence of anything beyond your own limited perspective.
3. Buoyancy control is paramount to great leadership.
Buoyancy control is the most important thing you can master as a recreational diver. Being in control of your own body and your relationship to the space around you is especially challenging, both physically and mentally. Without mastering buoyancy control, you may damage the underwater ecosystem, lose your orientation, and have difficulty staying in sync with your dive buddy. Mastering buoyancy control requires you to be in tune with your body and mind. Achieving a perfect state of buoyancy requires steadiness, focus, and breathe control. If you are in a state of anxiety, fidgeting around with equipment, or not fully trained on how to achieve buoyancy, you may unknowingly cause damage to the ecosystem around you.
Leaders who are in a state of burnout or exhaustion often end up unwittingly impacting the organizational culture in microscopic ways, leading to macroscopic impacts. Stress and impatience in leaders can filter into one-on-one coaching conversations, all staff communications, and everyday decision making, producing fear or unease within teams if not managed. The most important decision you can make in the workplace is to recognize the signs of stress and burnout in yourself and take action before you start crashing into the reef. Once you’ve crashed, the loss of habitat can have multi-layered impact on the whole environment, putting your organization at risk.
4. You always need a buddy.
One of my favourite things about diving is that you are in tandem with a fellow diver. You must be aware of yourself and your surroundings, but also be prepared to support your buddy with anything from a muscle cramp to an emergency no-oxygen situation, and vice-versa. My dive buddy is also my dive mentor. She has a few more years of diving on me, so when I first started diving, she was very conscious about normalizing my nervousness, celebrating my progress, and modelling good dive behaviour. We always mapped out our dive plan so I had control over my navigation and I knew it was safe to end the dive at any time, no questions asked. Beyond training, this mentorship, the feeling that someone always has my back, has been a significant reason why I feel empowered to explore my own limits. It’s made me a good diver, very quickly. On the other end, my mentor continues to learn from my journey, whether through reviewing dive course material with me or discussing a new solution I may provide for a dive problem we encounter. This “reverse mentorship” is mutually beneficial and ultimately makes us both stronger divers through our continual learning loop.
There have been countless articles written about how mentorship, particularly for women of colour, has a significant impact on an employee’s ability to navigate the workplace. Without a mentor (particularly one who has a shared understanding of your lived experience) who can help you move through challenges, confront micro-aggressions, and take risks, it can be difficult to advocate for yourself or proactively seek out the challenges that will propel you. Leaders who remain engaged with their teams understand the concept of reverse mentorship at its core. Having a life-long learning and growth mindset can help you better understand the needs and motivations of the incoming generation of employees. Reverse mentoring can help bridge the divide that often appears between older generation leaders and younger entry-level employees. Who else is going to explain TikTok or the latest app to you? It’s the social media coordinator in your organization that has the most insightful information about what’s trending, not your c-suite executive.
The joy of scuba diving exists in the beauty and magic of the underwater universe. As with all awe inspiring things, if you really listen and pay attention to the world around you, you will always find what you need. May it make you a better diver, a more connected leader, and ultimately, a more self-aware being.
Nidhi Khanna is the co-founder of Dive Tripping (IG: @dive_tripping), a newly launched scuba diving lifestyle brand. She has spent 18 years in the non-profit sector and has held leadership roles in a number of arts and culture organizations in Canada.
