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“The key to making your mental, emotional, and physical platform work for you is understanding why you care,” writes three-time Navy SEALs platoon commander and Perfect Fitness founder Alden Mills.

Mills’ Unstoppable Teams explores the dynamics around building teams that thrive in competitive environments and defy conventional abilities. Mills bases his analytical and behavioral exercises around the thesis of “why you care” to better understand the motives behind achievement.

Through the practice of caring, Mills says that you can assemble a group that is unstoppable because they “believe in each other and in their collective mission.” Caring as a group serves as a cornerstone for trust and builds group morale and willingness to go beyond perceived limits.

Unstoppable teams are not reserved just for elite forces, such as the SEALs, it is also attainable for groups found in environments such as sports, business, and communities. What sets the most remarkable teams apart?

The CARE Loop:

  • Connect – Connect by empathizing and acting with transparency. An innate connection is built through communication (physical, mental, emotional), credibility (integrity, accountability, humility), and commitment (reliability, consistency, focus).
  • Achieve – Surpass real and imagined limitations, using the five A’s of achievement: Aspire, Assume, Assess, Assure, and Appreciate. This element of the CARE loop is contingent on a selfless attitude, “everyone pitches in without regard for individual glory.”
  • Respect – Inspire others’ actions by setting an example that carries forward in all interactions. Respect must be an active trait, established around the three R’s: Realize, Recognize, and Require.
  • Empower – Success comes from the entire team, not individuals. This action that closes the CARE loop, develops over time and creates an environment where each member feels a responsibility to coach and support each other; empowerment is built around the three E’s: Educate, Enable, and Engage.

Mills illustrates the growth of the team and the practice of the CARE loop as accelerating through team-building phases, in the ultimate goal of reaching the “10x advantage.” The 10x advantage is when the team reaches levels of performance that have not been seen before and truly enjoy spending time with each other. This phase magnifies and improves the team’s performance and achievements. Through the steps that Mills shares in Unstoppable Teams, tenements of legendary SEALs’ mentality and expectation-defying approach can be applied to your team’s own development and improvement.