Leadership Under Extreme Conditions
Leif Babin experienced the challenges of Hell Week twice: once as a candidate and then as an instructor observing a new generation of Navy SEAL candidates. Hell Week is a grueling five-and-a-half-day event within the SEALs’ Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training (BUD/S), designed to filter out those who aren’t mentally or physically up to the task.
According to Babin, candidates undergo a litany of physically exhausting activities-perhaps none more telling than the boat races. Candidates are grouped into boat crews and subjected to a series of races, paddling heavy inflatable boats over considerable distances. The instructors had the teams engage in a constant string of boat races, requiring the teams to carry their boats atop their heads to shore, paddle the boat to a specific marker, dump themselves out of the boat and get back in, and carry through a path to the endpoint back on land.
The SEALs candidates were grouped by height into boat crews of seven men and assigned to a WWII-relic inflatable boat that weighed more than 200 pounds. The most senior-ranking sailor became the boat crew leader responsible for receiving, transmitting, and overseeing the execution of the lead instructor’s orders.