DECEMBER 9, 1999, was almost the last day of my life, and I still get nervous when I think about it.

Ten of my Force Reconnaissance Marines and I were training for our deployment to the Persian Gulf. We were riding in the back of a helicopter, practicing maneuvers for vessel, boarding, search and seizure (VBSS) missions. Rather than coming in to a 60-feet hover over the ship we were practicing taking over, our helicopter came in too low and too fast and struck the side of the ship.

Recognizing his error, the helicopter pilot pulled on the “collective,” which would typically give lift to a helicopter, but on that day, the back left wheel was stuck in the thick metal netting that surrounds many large cargo vessels. With the wheel stuck, the helicopter inverted and plunged into the Pacific Ocean. My Marines. My teammates. We were all immediately knocked unconscious.

I’m Eric Kapitulik, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Program. The Program is a team-building and leadership development company that annually works with more than 150 collegiate and professional athletic teams, and corporations of all sizes. We have one mission: “Develop Better Leaders and Create More Cohesive Teams.” My Program teammates and I have been doing so for more than a decade.

Achieving the Ultimate Victory

Many families, athletic teams, and corporations do well. They “win games.” But many teams, whether athletic, corporate, or family, want more. They want the big prize. The championship trophy, the cover of Fortune magazine, the love and respect of many generations. The question they all want answered is: How do we achieve more? More from our teammates? More from our leaders? More together?

This book will provide readers, on whatever their chosen battlefield, with a road map to compete for championships. First, we will discuss what a Championship Culture is, define the Core Values that form the culture’s foundation, and develop the goals and standards that reinforce our Core Values on a daily basis. We will then discuss how we create an environment where all members of the team are committed to achieving those goals and standards.

Next, we will highlight the standards to which teammates and team leaders are held and how we create—despite the discomfort all of us feel while doing so—a culture of accountability in order to achieve the best versions of ourselves and our team.

We then discuss what we must do every day of our life while preparing to be the best teammates and best team leaders that we can be, on all the teams of which we are privileged to be a part, including our most important team, our own family. Specifically, developing our physical, mental, and emotional toughness, not making excuses or letting others make them for us, and defining “hard work” and committing to it.

Finally, effective communication is key for both teammates and team leaders; no organization can achieve prolonged, sustained success without it. The final chapters review what effective communication means, how to develop it, and then how to ensure our teams carry it out.

The Program team has led men and women and made decisions when those decisions had life-and-death consequences. Like my own. . . .

Surviving a Catastrophic Crash

We awoke in a sinking helicopter, wearing 50–75 pounds of gear, weapons, equipment, and ammunition—with no oxygen and no idea how to get out of our dire situation. I fought my way through the helicopter as it sank, looking for a way to exit. Then I started to swim, and only then did I feel true fear.

When the helicopter inverted, its blades sheared off, but the engines were still turning, causing bubbles to surround us deep beneath the ocean’s surface. By the time we fought our way out of the sinking helicopter, we were deep in the dark Pacific Ocean, still wearing all that very heavy gear. I don’t care how mentally and physically tough we may be, none of us can hold our breath indefinitely. Eventually, your body gasps and air rushes into your lungs. But if you’re deep in the ocean, salt water rushes in. My teammates and I were underwater for so long, looking for a way to exit that sinking helicopter, that by the time we started to swim, we were all drowning.

Our bodies were shutting down. Our worlds were going black. I still get scared thinking about that moment when I first started to swim, because I can still remember thinking to myself, “I hope I’m swimming in the right direction.”

Making things even more challenging was the fact that the helicopter had hit the water with such violence that it caused a compound fracture in my leg. So when I swam in a direction that I hoped was the surface, while drowning, I did so using only my arms. The bones in my right leg were completely severed.

A few meters below the ocean’s surface, I could see sunlight filtering through the water, and a few moments after that I was picked up by a safety boat. I had survived. Unfortunately, six of my Marines—six of my teammates—lost their lives that day.

Within one month, we had six new teammates from 1st Force Reconnaissance Company, our parent unit, volunteer to join our team and we successfully deployed to the Persian Gulf. While my teammates and I were deployed, I decided that I would raise money for a college scholarship fund for the children of my deceased teammates. To do so, I decided to compete in the world’s toughest endurance events and climb the world’s tallest mountains—things that I already enjoyed doing, but now I could do them for more altruistic purposes.

Since then, I have completed eight Ironman Triathlons. I have adventure-raced across the Kalahari Desert in South Africa, throughout the state of Alaska, and from the Pacific Ocean across Costa Rica to the Caribbean. I have completed the American Birkebeiner Ski Marathon and the Canadian Death Race ultramarathon, an 80-mile trail run through the Canadian Rockies. I was one of thirty finishers of the Leadville Silverman, a 50-mile mountain bike up and over six mountain passes all higher than 14,000 feet elevation, followed by a 50-mile ultramarathon up and over those same six mountain peaks the next day. I have summited five of the fabled Seven Summits, the tallest peaks on each of the seven continents. A few years ago, I stood on the summit of Mount Everest.

I am often congratulated on these “individual” accomplishments. Yet anybody who has ever accomplished similar achievements knows just how false that classification is. Nothing that we do in our life is done as an individual. Everything we accomplish is done as a member of a team, and we all fill one of two roles on those teams: teammate or team leader. Further, I am a husband to my wife and a father to my children. None of these “individual” accomplishments would have been possible without the love and support of my family and numerous other great teammates.

Privileged to Be Part of the Team

The Program Leadership Instructors are collegiate athletes, high-altitude mountaineers, Ironman Triathletes, business owners, and combat veterans. We are husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. We all share very similar personal experiences, and exactly the same professional ones working with more than 150 collegiate and professional athletic teams and corporations annually.

Program Leadership Instructors have led men and women in the world’s harshest and most deadly environments, including the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. They have made life-and-death decisions and have had to live with them.

Throughout this book, Program Teammate and Lead Instructor Jake “Mac” MacDonald and I will highlight some of our Program teammates’ experiences, as well as those that Mac and I have been fortunate to have in our own lives. Mac and I, and our Program instructors, have developed better teammates, better team leaders, and created more cohesive teams with thousands of teams throughout North America. We have helped to ensure that those teams don’t just do well, don’t just “win games,” but rather that they compete for championships on whatever their chosen battlefield.

This book explains how we do so, and how you can too. Each section finishes with “Action Items” and “Saved Rounds.” “Action Items” are meant to help you put our advice into action, challenge you and your teammates to advance to the next level, and become the best teammate and team leader you can be.

“Saved Rounds” is a military term used to denote any bullets that military warriors have not fired during a day of shooting, but that must still be accounted for. Even if those bullets haven’t been shot, they are still important. We use the term similarly at the end of every section. The information in “Saved Rounds” wasn’t “fired” earlier, but it is still important.