Building Mental Fortitude, Confidence, and Self-Mastery with Scott Mautz

Unlock the secrets to becoming a mentally strong leader in an ever-challenging world with our special guest, Scott Mautz, on the Revolutionary Man Podcast. Scott, author of "The Mentally Strong Leader" and founder of Profound Performance, brings an enlightening perspective on the fundamental traits that define mental strength. We'll dissect the six critical "muscles" necessary for mental fortitude and learn the habits required to develop them. Scott's transition from a high-powered executive at Procter & Gamble to a thought leader in leadership offers an inspiring narrative that underscores the importance of resilience in both personal and professional spheres.

Explore the profound difference between mental strength, mental health, and emotional intelligence, and why understanding these distinctions is crucial for modern leaders. Scott and I will discuss the vital components of fortitude, confidence, boldness, decision-making, goal focus, and positive messaging. We'll also delve into the importance of self-regulation, especially during high-pressure situations, and present strategies to strengthen mental toughness. With Scott's insights, leaders can learn to provide, protect, and preside without sacrificing their well-being.

Finally, we’ll uncover the powerful parallels between physical and mental training. Scott introduces practical tools like the doubt continuum and mental reframes to help manage and conquer doubt. We’ll touch on legacy, servant leadership, and maintaining one's identity within personal relationships. Plus, Scott generously shares a free 60-page PDF for mental strength self-assessment, offering actionable steps to cultivate resilience. Tune in and start your journey to becoming a mentally strong leader today!

Key moments in this episode:
03:43 Scott's Journey to Leadership
06:07 Defining Mental Strength
09:52 The Six Core Mental Muscles
16:57 Building Confidence and Overcoming Doubt
23:08 Addressing Limiting Beliefs
26:21 Servant Leadership vs. Others-Oriented Leadership
31:53 Leaving a Legacy
33:41 The Importance of Momentum
38:15 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

How to reach Scott:
🕸:https://scottmautz.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/ScottMautzPP/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/scottmautz/
📺: https://www.youtube.com/@scottmautz3195
X: https://twitter.com/scott_mautz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottmautz
📖:

Chapters

• 0:00 Developing Mental Strength for Leadership
• 4:30 The Power of Mental Strength
• 15:05 Building Confidence and Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
• 23:14 Unearthing Limiting Beliefs and Servant Leadership
• 28:44 Understanding Legacy and Mental Momentum
• 39:14 Building Mental Strength Resources

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

In a chaotic world.

Speaker 1: 0:01

Mental strength is a leadership superpower of our time, and not only mental strength can leaders find the fortitude to persevere through challenges, but confidence to overcome criticism and setbacks, and the self-mastery to be a port in the storm for their teams.

Speaker 1: 0:17

So what does it take to harness this superpower? Today's guest has found six muscles that comprise mental strength and the habits needed to develop each one of them. We're going to get into that today, and before we get into this episode, let's come to grips about one thing, and that is inevitable there will come a time that we will hit a wall in our lives, and whether it's a marriage that's on the rocks, a career or business that's stagnated, or maybe your personal life is completely flatlined business that's stagnated, or maybe your personal life is completely flatlined, and so if you're dealing with any of these, or a combination of them, and are finally fed up with where your life is at, then allow me to help you get clear on what needs to be done and how to do that, so that you can get on living the life you were meant to live. Just go to the show notes for today's episode and book a clarity call. Let's get started today and with that, let's get on with today's episode clarity call.

Speaker 2: 1:05

Let's get started today and with that, let's get on with today's episode. The average man today is sleepwalking through life, many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother.

Speaker 1: 1:38

Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary man Podcast. I'm the founder of the Awakened man Movement and your host, alan DeMonso. I want you to consider a couple things as we listen to today's episode. Would you consider yourself to have a mental strength in all areas of your life, or do you have some areas that you need to build more mental strength? Think of it this way Throughout the ages, the pressures of being a husband and a father and leader has never been higher than it is today. And now we choose these roles because we are called to provide, protect and preside over our families, and that can take a toll on any man, especially if our mental toughness muscles are underdeveloped. And while there is a lot of pressure for us to perform, it doesn't have to be at a cost to our health or our well-being, and so all we need is some guidance. Today, my guest intends to do just that, as he shares some strategies on what we can do to build some mental strength, and so allow me to introduce my guest.

Speaker 1: 2:36

Scott Mauss is the author of the Mentally Strong Leader and he's the founder and CEO of Profound Performance. It's a keynote training and coaching company and is a former Procter Gamble executive. Scott's ran four of the largest multi-billion dollar companies or businesses, and he's also a multi-award winning author. Several books, some to mention are Leading from the Middle, find the Fire and Make it Matter. And so he's been named the CEO thought leader by the Chief Executives Guild, and I'm so happy to have Scott here on the show. How are things today, my friend?

Speaker 3: 3:11

Thank you so much, alan, for having me on. I'm hoping to bring revolutionary, or at least evolutionary, wisdom and thoughts and insights to the table today. It's great to be here.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Yeah, I'm totally sure that exactly what's going to be happening, and so here at the Revolutionary man podcast, we always talk about everyone being on their own hero's quest or their hero's journey, and so my opening question for you today is to tell us about that time in your life when you knew things had to change. What did you do about it, and how did that experience shape you into the man you are today and the work you're?

Speaker 3: 3:42

doing. Yeah, my moment happened about halfway through my corporate career, alan. I spent over 30 years in corporate life. As you had mentioned up front, I elevated to run some pretty large-sized businesses at Procter Gamble multi-billion dollar businesses.

Speaker 3: 3:57

About halfway through my corporate journey, I realized that I was a student of leadership, not just a practitioner, and I was really fascinated with trying to discern what makes great leaders great versus people who just happen to be in leadership positions both at work and in life.

Speaker 3: 4:15

Frankly, there's a lot of leadership positions in life, obviously, and I found I was just so interested and drawn to it that, actually while I was still in corporate, I wrote my first book because I wanted to share some of what I was beginning to learn.

Speaker 3: 4:30

Then I started really becoming an intense researcher and trying to codify all the things I was learning and at one point I realized, alan, I had a choice to make I could stay in corporate life, continuing to try to work the client at corporate ladder, or I could broaden my platform for making a difference with a written in the spoken word.

Speaker 3: 4:52

So about a decade ago, I chose to leave corporate behind forever and embrace being an author, a speaker, a keynote or a trainer, a workshopper so that I could bring to the world all the things that I've been learning through my intense research, that I apply in a variety of different formats. And people ask me how did you make the call? How did you make that leap? It's got to be hard to leave such a great career behind. I just kept coming back to one question in my life over and over again, alan, which is will I make more of a difference in more people's lives by staying in corporate or by broadening my platform through the written and the spoken word? And I just kept coming back to that one central question and as I did, it became very clear what I needed to do to make my life a revolution at that time.

Speaker 1: 5:37

Man, I love that question that you asked yourself and I would consider myself as well being a student and a practitioner of leadership and how we can become better leaders, and I would consider myself as well being a student of, and a practitioner of, leadership and how we can become better leaders, and I like how you frame that for yourself and how will you make a better, bigger impact in life, and I would suggest preparing for today's interview and our conversation that for sure you've made the right decision. As a matter of fact, your latest book is one that for sure I'm going to buy for several of the leaders that I currently work with, and because it was so profound, we're going to get into that in a little bit, and so, before we really dive into it, let's give everyone a bit of an understanding of what you mean by mental strength and why it's so critical today.

Speaker 3: 6:16

Yeah, alan, I want to start by getting clear on what mental strength is not. Mental strength is not mental health. That's something that requires its own separate topic, separate discussion with medical professionals, right? So mental strength is not mental health, nor is it just EQ or emotional intelligence. In fact, of course, emotional intelligence is the ability to get your emotions working for you versus against you.

Speaker 3: 6:39

Eq is a part of the broader umbrella of mental strength, which I define as the ability to regulate not only your emotions but your thoughts and your behaviors productively, even in adversity, and I think I would argue, especially in adversity. To shorthand it, it's how we manage internally so that we could lead better externally, at work and in life. And here's the thing, alan, why I think it's so important. Most of us intuitively understand that if you want to succeed at work, if you want to succeed in life, you have to be able to self-regulate emotions and thoughts and behaviors. I think you know that, I think your listeners already know that. But here's the thing this just in Breaking news for you it's really hard.

Speaker 3: 7:26

It is really hard In today's world that is more chaotic than ever, has more sparks of self-doubt that are created In a world where we can't even agree on what the facts are. At times where we're becoming more divided, more distraction, mental strength has become more important than ever and I believe it is the superpower for the next decade. It is the next EQ for the next decade. You're going to start hearing about it for the next decade because it's a level above empowerment in EQ and, alan, it could be the only thing that can explain why the Mentally Strong Leader, my new book, is off to such a hot start and why a course that I teach on LinkedIn Learning, called 10 Habits of Mentally Strong People, will have over a quarter of a million people have taken it by the end of this calendar year. It speaks to the power of this idea that some of you may not have heard the term before mental strength and why I'm so excited today to dive into it deeper and talk to your audience about it.

Speaker 1: 8:27

I just love, scott, the way you've really positioned this, because you're absolutely right and while it builds on a Stoic philosophy, really, of temperaments or temperance, I should say in that how we regulate ourselves.

Speaker 1: 8:39

I can't remember who the quote is, but it talks about that. There's that space between what's happened, what our thoughts are and how we react to it, and it's in that timeframe of how we choose, we make these unconscious decisions. And I think about a busy time period we just came out of and I watched some leaders not perform very well under pressure. I saw that they struggled and I think for many of us we don't realize that when we become under pressure, how do we change and react? And it's easy to say that I'm going to do this or this is how I would handle that situation, until you're really put into the fire. And so I think in your work you probably deal with a lot of that with executives, probably saw that at P&G and now even more so in your private life. Tell me a little bit more about what you're seeing as common challenges that leaders are faced with.

Speaker 3: 9:28

Yeah, and I think it goes to the challenges of mental strength. If you don't have all the proper mental muscles and I'll explain, excuse me. I'll explain. If mental strength equates to six core mental muscles and there's a common thread to all of them, which I'll explain in just a second, then I'll answer your question directly out. Mental strength consists of fortitude, confidence, boldness, decision-making, goal focus, the ability to keep yourself and your organization focused on their goals, goal-making, goal-focused, the ability to keep yourself and your organization focused on their goals, and what I call messaging the ability to positively message to the folks around you, even in the face of negativity, so that you're not bringing the culture down, you're lifting the culture up. So the common thread across all these mental muscles is self-regulation. You need to be able to self-regulate, to have good fortitude and resilience, to remain confident over time, to remain bold and stay focused on your goals and to make smart decisions and be decisive and stay positive minded even in the face of negativity. It's self-regulation that ties all of that together. Now, to answer your question directly, I want to share one piece of data I've found that continues to astound me.

Speaker 3: 10:44

I've conducted this study multiple times now and I do it 3,000 executives at a time, where I ask one question in this piece of research that I do either live in an interview or through a survey. One question I ask 3,000 people at a time, thinking of the highest achieving organizations that you've ever been a part of, that overcame the most obstacles. What were the attributes of the key leader at that time? And every time I run this study, alan, between 90% to 91% of respondents describe the same profile of a leader. They describe the exercising of the same six mental muscles fortitude, confidence, boldness, decision-making, goal focus and messaging, the ability to stay positive.

Speaker 3: 11:26

And here's what's even more incredible. When I follow up and I ask them okay now I want you to boil down that description to one or two words. How would you describe that leader in one or two words? And I'll give them a pick list to choose from and I'll have the term mentally strong on that list somewhere in different places.

Speaker 3: 11:43

As I do the variety of research 95% of the time, they then circle the words mentally strong and in interviews I see their eyes light up. Yeah, that's it. That's the term that helps describe them. So I believe that mental strength is emerging as the term we've been looking for a long time to describe the leaders that excel in moments of adversity, the leaders that help us achieve disproportionately. So now, to answer your question directly, what I see in organizations that the leaders are doing well, where they're not achieving it tends to really surface in adversity and when you dig deep it tends to be because the leaders are not mentally strong, exhibiting the six mental muscles that I talk about here, right? Does that surprise you, alan, to hear that?

Speaker 1: 12:29

Yeah, I'm not surprised at all and I would wonder, I think that how much does that also show up, because I mentioned in the intro, in all areas of our life?

Speaker 3: 12:40

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:40

And so does this also happen for them when the chips are down at home or in their other parts of their personal life, and because I think we tend to have, as humans, we have behaviors that are just embedded in us and until someone can point a light out, shine a light on it, and I'm glad that you you made the distinction that it's not about. Well, eq is a part of it, it's not. It's bigger than that yes and so what really the?

Speaker 1: 13:03

the genesis of the question for me was really getting an understanding of. Also, what can guys do? I know in chapter two of your book you have I think it's 50 questions, yeah, to give them a sense of where you're at. I really love those questions. That's what really intrigued me about wanting to take this a little bit further with some people that I know that how, what's the tool for them? And maybe it is EQQ, maybe that's that. It's that thing that happens just before we react.

Speaker 2: 13:29

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:30

And what is that first mechanism that happens that would gets them to stop and think and go wait a second? Is that the outcome that I'm looking for? If I did react this way, what? What would the outcome be? Just throw that out there for you.

Speaker 3: 13:42

Yeah, yeah, and what you're referencing is in the Mentally Strong Leader. It took me almost. It took me probably three years to develop this, working with data scientists. There's a mental strength self-assessment that you can take 50 questions that have been proven to validate and correlate to the definition of mental strength. If you take 15 minutes, that's all it takes. All I ask from the reader is that you have to be honest and be willing to be vulnerable, carve out 15 minutes of quiet time and answer the 50 questions. When you're done, what you get are a mental strength self-assessment that you can actually figure out which tier of mental strengths do you fall in all the way from the top tier, which is you're a beacon of mental strength.

Speaker 3: 14:26

Other people are drawn to your fortitude, your confidence, your boldness, etc. All the way down to a novice. You're just learning about the concept and you're just starting. No answer is any better than the other. It's all about you and your journey, and you also get a score by mental muscle, so you understand. So how do I score on fortitude, on confidence, boldness, decision-making, goal-focused messaging?

Speaker 3: 14:52

So what happens is you get the opportunity to create and craft your own custom-tailored mental strength training regimen and then you can level up the muscles that you want to, or choose to maintain the muscles that just need some maintenance, and you don't have to do everything all at once. Alan, I draw a metaphor that I think is apt to the physical muscles. If you want to go to the gym to get physically stronger and build your physical muscles, you don't go into the gym and say I'm going to work every muscle in my body Every time I go to the gym. It would take 19 hours. You would stop doing it immediately. Wednesday might be back day, thursday's leg day, friday's arm and stomach day, I don't know. But it's the same thing with mental strength. Once you discern where you want to level up and where you want to just simply maintain, you can create your own regimen to go back to it time after time, using the tools that I have in the book the Mentally Strong Leaders. That's the assessment, the mental strength self-assessment you were referring to.

Speaker 1: 15:44

Yeah, I just I really love that tool and it's it resonated. And why I love it and why it resonates so much with me is one of the things that we put our guys through is I call it integrity challenge, and it's really about looking at the different aspects of their life and it forces them it's similar to yours to self-assessment, but it forces them to look at where they need to spend more time and to your point. It's not about trying to do all of it at once. It's about okay, now you know where you're at. This is the water level.

Speaker 1: 16:12

What do we need to do to move forward? What's the most important things that we can do? And then you start to work towards building when, revealing that, developing that character that you want, and I think that's what it was so resonated so much with, with the work that you're doing. You also talk about I was reading a few of the articles on your website and one of them you talk about there's three different ways that people will fail. Tell me a little bit about that and then, and what we can do to avoid those.

Speaker 3: 16:38

Yeah, and let me set that up for you a little bit. Within the book the Mentally Strong Leader, there's a big thing that we have to work on. Many people have to work on is their confidence muscle. It's probably not surprising that confidence is a big part of mental strength, right, and so I'm going to get to your question directly in just a second. I'm just going to set it up here.

Speaker 3: 16:57

What people need to understand, though, is that confidence is not N-O-T. It is not the absence of doubt, it is your ability to manage your relationship with doubt, because we all have a relationship with doubt. Alan, out of the thousands and thousands of people I've interviewed for the Mentally Strong Leader, what I can tell you is even the most confident people would not tell you oh yeah, doubt is never present. For me, it's there, it's just in how you manage it, and there's a tool in the book the Mentally Strong Leader called the doubt continuum, which asks you to constantly be monitoring your relationship with doubt. And think about the continuum very simply for those of you listening at home. Think about the continuum. There's two ends of the continuum, and either end is a danger zone. On one end of the continuum, you can be overconfident. You believe you have all the data, you don't need to talk to anybody, you just want to find the decision that you want. You can blow through red light signals. The other danger zone is where you're paralyzed by a fear of failure, and that's where I'm going to come back and answer your question. By the way, in the middle you want to fall in the doubt continuum in the middle, where you're either perfectly confident, balancing your gut and your instinct with data and outside opinion, or you're embracing healthy doubt, where you're acknowledging okay, I don't know everything here, but I believe in my ability to figure out things along the way, and it's okay that I don't know everything. The danger zone you're talking about now, to get directly to your question, is where we let doubt enter, the place where we actually become paralyzed by fear of failure.

Speaker 3: 18:35

And in the book the Mentally Strong Leader, I share several mental reframes to rethink the way you think about failure. One of my favorite ones is what you're referencing, which is to remember that in truth, there's only three ways you can actually fail when you quit, when you don't improve or when you never try. And that's just one set. You know another. One of my favorite reframes is failure is never, ever a person, it is only an event, it's only a point in time. Another reframe that pit that you feel in your stomach, alan, before you're about to try something, that makes you really nervous, that you're afraid you're going to fail at that pit is there, that feeling is there to tell you that something must be worth it, because if not, you'd be feeling nothing? Yeah, so the book has filled the reframes like this to help people overcome what is the antithesis of confidence, which is a fear of failure.

Speaker 1: 19:30

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I just and I really appreciate how you really frame that and the other. The thing that came to my mind you're talking about failure and looking at it from that's, not about the person. One of the things that we spend time in my life working on is really about the lean principles, and we always talk about in lean principles is that it's process over person. And so where did it? Where did what I was attempting to do? Where did it? Where did what I was attempting to do? Where did it fail? So what part of that process did I miss?

Speaker 1: 20:00

didn't do well, needs to needs work on, and then you can start to work on that versus staying with and beating ourselves up about it, and I think that just becomes inherent, especially and I'm glad you brought up and I it's a great question on which of the six of was the ones that people tend to struggle with the most. And I'm not surprised to hear that confidence would be there, because we are reluctant to try something new, especially as we get older and we get older and we get set. We've had some experiences. Maybe things didn't always work out, and then we get into this mindset of trying for a lack of trying, because we don't want to fail.

Speaker 3: 20:40

And really it's about failing forward.

Speaker 3: 20:42

What are your thoughts on that? There's all kinds of you're exactly I couldn't agree with you more, alan and there are all kinds of degradations of confidence too. Again in the Mentally Strong Leader. Another tool I have is called the self-acceptance scale. That a lot of confidence too. Again in the Mentally Strong Leader. Another tool I have is called the self-acceptance scale. That a lot of confidence comes from a willingness to accept yourself and who you are and where you're at in your life's journey. Again, if you think of your listeners, think about a continuum or a scale On the left-hand scale is where your self-regulation levels are optimal.

Speaker 3: 21:13

You're self-regulating your emotions, your thoughts and your behaviors, keeping the positive ones discarding the negative, such that you have high levels of self-acceptance. And then there are degradations along the way as your self-regulation wears down. You go from self-accepting to the first sign of trouble where you start seeking approval. You start chasing, instead of chasing authenticity, you start chasing approval. Then there's another degradation of confidence where you begin to compare to others, irrelevant others, which is something I still have to work on forgetting that the only comparison that matters is to who you were yesterday and whether or not you're becoming a better version of yourself. And then we could degrade even further in our confidence. We could start to engage in negative inner chatter. We can get to the point, moving along that structure, where we actually believe we're not enough yes and then we can keep going all the way to the end of the structure where we actually engage in imposter syndrome, the opposite of self-acceptance, where you're not accepting who you are, where you got and how you got there, your skills and your experiences. So to understand all these degradations of confidence on the scale tells you how complex confidence can be, how quickly it can erode in how many ways, and that helps explain why it's such a common muscle that people have to focus on to build.

Speaker 1: 22:32

Yeah, absolutely. And then that scale really helps us put a sense of where it is that we're at, and so much of our lives are built around the stories that we've told ourselves and from our experiences. And then the challenge is is the older those stories get, the more the story has changed and been embellished, and sometimes it's in a good way and it helps propel us forward. But I find that many times in the men's work that I'm doing and in my own life that it hasn't served me any longer, and so I create and move these limiting beliefs forward, and I think in your work you also talk about helping people overcome some limiting beliefs and self-sabotage, so let's talk a little bit about that as well.

Speaker 3: 23:10

Yeah, I think it's a really important point that. Alan, I bet if I asked you to list two or three limiting beliefs that you've had in your life, I bet you could quickly list them now, and I'm going to bet that. Also, whether or not you realized it, you realized at some point, like you said, they weren't serving you very well. They became labels, no longer stories. They became labels. Then labels become beliefs, beliefs become values, values become action, actions become patterns.

Speaker 3: 23:43

And what happens is that if you don't replace these limiting beliefs with empowering beliefs, they continue on their own unimpeded. They become truths that you believe, and you simply need to intersect, in a way, on yourself and ask yourself the key questions that you need to discern. Why do I have this limiting belief? Where did it come from? Would people that know me agree with this limiting belief that I have? Would they accept it? Would super achievers in jobs like mine that have accomplished a lot believe the limiting belief that I've put upon myself? And I have a whole series of questions and a whole process that you can follow in the Mentally Strong Leader to help unearth what your limiting beliefs are and replace them with empowering beliefs, as well as identify your limiting behaviors and replace them with empowering behaviors.

Speaker 1: 24:39

Absolutely, and that train that you just built for us at that chain of events is really how our life unfolds and when we can recognize it and it's your work is so similar to some of the stuff that we're trying to do here with guys to help them understand that through. My personal belief is that there isn't anybody coming to save us or to save me. I have to save myself.

Speaker 1: 25:00

I have to be willing to do that. And there's there's the old. There's the old joke about the person drowning on the rooftop there and asking for God why they didn't come and save them. Yet he's saying several opportunities. And so we need to be willing to save ourselves, we need to be willing to take action, to do something, and if we choose to not do that, then our life becomes what it is. And so I always know guys are ready to do work, and to really change is when they're willing to accept with where they are at, for who they are and what they aspire to become, and when they can get that framework ready then I think they can start to move forward.

Speaker 1: 25:35

It doesn't mean it's an easy trip. It just means that we're going to deal in the now, we're going to deal with reality, and whether that's a leader in a company or you're a new father or, like I said in the intro, your marriage is struggling, it doesn't matter. We show up as leaders, men. We're called to be leaders in some way shape, shape or form. And so my next question for you is one of our virtues. We have 12 virtues here that we practice and we look to do it much like Ben Franklin would, and we just pick one a month and we focus on that. One and one is servant leadership, and I know you talk a lot about servant leadership as well and you have a different idea on how to measure your KPIs when it comes to that. So tell us a little bit about servant leadership and how you discuss it.

Speaker 3: 26:20

Yeah, I'm a fan of servant leadership up to a point, and that may or may not surprise you, alan. I believe there's one higher order form called others-oriented leadership. Servant leadership is a branch on the tree of others oriented leadership, and here's the distinction that I make. If you take servant leadership at face value, it can be, and this isn't my opinion. This is just my opinion. I've seen it personally for over many years in corporate. But there's also a lot of data and research on them.

Speaker 3: 26:52

Servant leadership has a few hidden downsides. Yes, it's a good thing that you're putting your organization out in front of you, that you've flipped the pyramid. It's not about you. Everybody's serving you. It's about you serving them. That's a good thing.

Speaker 3: 27:06

But things can go wrong for servant leaders. At times, research shows they can lose themselves in the fabric of their organization. They can continually put their organization forward and put them up front, to the cost of the organization's goals and even to that servant leader's reputation. There are times, even if you pride yourself as a servant leader, there are times when your boss wants to know that, they want to know that you're in charge. They don't want to hear about what your organization did in that moment. At times right. They want to know what are you specifically bringing to the table from a thought and an action process.

Speaker 3: 27:42

And servant leaders with all good heart and good intent can lose the fact that sometimes the leaders need you to be in front and sometimes they need you to do things that might not seem like they're the best for the organization in that moment but they are in the long run and servant leaders can tend to lose fact of that and believe that I have to serve the organization even though the organization sometimes doesn't even know what's best for them. I just put cautionary tale around servant leadership. I embrace the core principle of it it's a tree of others-oriented leadership around servant leadership. I embrace the core principle of it it's a tree of others-oriented leadership. I just ask people to be aware of some of the limitations of servant leadership and instead focus on the words others-oriented, because if you start with a belief of it's no longer about you as a leader, that's going to inform a lot of the behaviors you engage in.

Speaker 1: 28:29

That's a great distinction and while we've chosen to use the term servant leadership, it's a great distinction that you bring up because it isn't about losing yourself, whether that's in your organization or at home, and here's why I say that. So my wife and I went through some really challenging times about five years ago, and the challenges that we went through is because I was truly a doormat. I was trying to be Mr Nice Guy. That we went through is because I was truly a doormat. I was trying to be Mr Nice Guy, and so I was in this idea and this mindset of being this servant leader to my wife. The old adage, happy life, happy wife right, but so much so to the detriment that I lost exactly who I was. I wouldn't stand up for myself, I wouldn't argue with my wife, I would always have an excuse. Is this going to matter in a year from now?

Speaker 1: 29:15

But the point of having being servant leader is to embody some of the aspects of it To your point. Right, there are some good parts of it, but it's not the all, be all and end all, and it is about having control and coming back and still being solid with who you are and recognizing when it is for you to step forward and say and warn your leader. I think today's leadership is more willing to hear to some extent what it is that their trusted people have to say, and you have to be able to develop that relationship, that managing up piece, and so you can have those honest conversations. And so thank you for the distinction, because I hadn't considered the that some people might think of that as just losing themselves into it and that's not at all what we're talking about.

Speaker 3: 30:03

Yeah, that's exactly right, and also to a point you made earlier, alan. I wanted to we. I want to make sure that the listener understands that, um, becoming mentally stronger doesn't have to feel intimidating and daunting. The opposite of mentally strong is not mentally weak. You are not mentally weak, alan, because you wouldn't stand up for yourself in your marriage. That's not true.

Speaker 3: 30:27

We all have a baseline of mental strength to build from. It's just about embracing and understanding that we're all at different points and, to use the overused metaphor, we're all at different points in our own journey. It's about understanding where you are in your journey, which, of course, you do with the mental strength self-assessment in my book. But then it's accepting that self-acceptance of okay, this is where I'm at in my journey and it's okay. Maybe I don't stand up to my wife and say all the things that I want to right now. I accept that about how I got here and I want to change that about myself and I'm going to go at my own pace and do it in my own way. It's okay, we can all have.

Speaker 3: 31:08

I teach this stuff, alan, and I have many things to work on in mental strength. I was telling you earlier I still have to work on comparing to irrelevant others. I still have to work on that. I'll still look at oh wow, look at that author. Look at that keynote. Look what they did. Look at that researcher I also do work for Indiana University's School of Business and oh, look at that other researcher. They did more than I did and I teach this stuff. We all have things to work on, it's okay.

Speaker 1: 31:36

Yeah, I completely agree. It's a it's progress over perfection.

Speaker 3: 31:40

Yeah, as long as we stay there.

Speaker 1: 31:41

I was looking that you have a. You do teach several workshops and we're going to get to this at the end of the, at the end of the show. Make sure everyone gets a chance to reach out to you on those. But one that was really intrigued me as you talk about how to leave a legacy, you teach participants about these footprints and then right away when you were talking about the footprints in there, I was thinking about the footprints poem. But tell me a little bit more about what you mean by footprints of legacy.

Speaker 3: 32:05

Yeah, it's a very popular talk for a lot of companies because it's about the power of getting employees to understand that you are in a pivotal moment in your life right now. You just need to choose to see it that way. In some way shape or form something about where you're at in your company, something about where you're at in your life. I guarantee you it's a pivotal moment. In some way, shape or form. And if you choose to see it that way and you open your mind to the fact that you're at a point in your life right now where you can sharpen and articulate, if you want to or further sharpen, the legacy you leave behind and it starts by understanding the ways that human beings tend to leave legacies.

Speaker 3: 32:47

In general, right, we tend to leave it through enduring results. We leave it through our relationships that we build with others. We leave a legacy in the values we choose to live every single day, in the knowledge we choose to transfer to other people, in the stories that are told about us each and every day, and so I help the audience to understand. You may not have realized it, but you are leaving a legacy, whether you want to or not. Why not be intentional about it? Here's how to be more intentional about it, so you can leave the legacy behind that you want when all is said and done.

Speaker 1: 33:20

I just love how you put that together. It makes a lot of sense, and I think we do need to recognize, whether we're conscious of it or not, the things that have happened yesterday are parts of our legacy, and it takes a lifetime to build character and it just takes moments to lose it, and so having a legacy and being consciously aware of what we're doing makes a lot of sense yes the other thing I noticed that you that you talk a little bit about as well as momentum and I was thinking about this in a sports analogy that how momentum shifts and changes.

Speaker 1: 33:50

We just came through the nhl stanley cup playoffs and, as I said in my intro, sometimes in our lives we feel that our personal lives are flatlined and so momentum might not be at a peak for us. Yet we barely even consider this as something that we would do in our personal life. We consider it maybe in business, and so how is momentum tied into mental strength, what we can do to reclaim it and harness it?

Speaker 3: 34:16

Yeah, I think the most important thing to do is any championship team will tell you, alan, that momentum is maybe the most difficult thing to keep. That's why dynasties are dynasties. They're so hard to build in the sports world and momentum is such a precious commodity. And the momentum of building your mental strength is even harder because we talked about, look, building your mental strength. It's hard, self-regulation is hard. So the help, the arm around you, the arm around your listener, if you will, that guiding hand, is based on habit-building science. Guiding hand is based on habit building science. If you can build the habits to become mentally stronger, that's going to be more likely to help you maintain momentum when you start getting it. And I'll explain how.

Speaker 3: 35:04

So, for example, in the Mentally Strong Leader there are over 50 plus tools that are all based on habit building science.

Speaker 3: 35:11

And habit building science says that if you want to make a habit, you have to get repetitions in.

Speaker 3: 35:17

Just like if you want bigger biceps, you got to go to the gym and you got to do repetitions of curls, right. So if you want to get repetitions in, you need systems and frameworks in place to help you do that All 50 of the 50 plus tools in the Melody Strong Leader. They're all either systems or frameworks that are based on habit building science to help you figure out what's the first small step you take, what's the next step, what do you do in moments of weakness, when you feel that momentum starting to slide away? And if you have these habits in place, these systems and frameworks in place, it makes it so much easier to maintain the momentum you're starting to build in becoming mentally stronger. That's why the subtitle of the book Mentally Strong Leader is to build the habits to productively regulate your emotions, your thoughts and your behaviors, so that you can get a little bit of momentum. And then, once you get it, you can grab onto it, hold on it, because it's become a part of your system and a part of your life.

Speaker 1: 36:14

Yeah, I love that Absolutely. It is all about habits and, in developing the best habits we can, it allows us to move forward, so I think that's that's awesome. I'm not sure if you're in between books right now and you probably read a ton of books, but what currently is on your nightstand and if, like I said, if you're in between, what's a book that's been really influential for you?

Speaker 3: 36:34

Yeah, I'm not going to give the typical business book answer. I'm a fantasy genre fan. I'm even thinking about entering that genre myself someday. I just finished Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows.

Speaker 1: 36:45

I really like that quite a bit Cool Outstanding. Yeah, I've usually been reading business stuff or anything to help develop and I just started reading Sons of Valor because I happen to have the author on my podcast and I forgot about how great it is just to read a book for pleasure.

Speaker 3: 37:01

So grateful to hear that you're doing that too. It helps you actually solve problems. When you remove yourself from a problem and think about something completely unrelated to a problem, then you return to the problem. Things clear.

Speaker 2: 37:11

Yeah absolutely.

Speaker 3: 37:12

Yeah, I believe that to be true. Right on you the problem. Thing's clear.

Speaker 1: 37:14

Yeah, absolutely yeah. I believe that That'd be true Right on. You know, throughout your years, and you know all the work that you've been doing, I'm sure you've come across a mentor or two.

Speaker 3: 37:25

And so my next question for you is what's been the best piece of advice that you've had, and how is it still serving you today? Chase authenticity, not approval. No-transcript change the fabric of who we are. And if, instead of chasing approval, you act as if you already had it and you chase authenticity, returning to your authentic self, not letting this approval, the need for approval, change who you are, it's very powerful and I've I've played that throughout my whole life.

Speaker 1: 38:15

And that's an outstanding piece of advice and words of wisdom, Scott. Of everything that we spoke about today, maybe there was something we didn't get a chance to touch on. If there was a takeaway you'd want our listeners to have, what would that be?

Speaker 3: 38:26

I think I just don't want the listener to be intimidated at all about the concept of building their mental strength. You can do it. You can start with the mental strength self-assessment. Figure out is it fortitude, is it confidence, boldness, is it messaging? Is it decision-making you want to work on? Is it your ability to focus better and stay focused on your goals? You determine what you need to work on for you. You level up the muscles that you want to. You maintain the muscles that you want to. The opposite of mentally strong is not mentally weak. We all have a baseline that we can work from and the pursuit is so important, alan, because I am telling you mental strength is the next EQ. Your listeners are on the cutting edge, ahead of it right now. It's the leadership superpower and self-leadership superpower for the next decade and you can get ahead of the curve.

Speaker 1: 39:13

I love that Absolutely. Scott, thank you so much for being on the show today and really helping us get an understanding of what we need to do to build mental strength in all areas of our life. And so if men are interested in getting a hold of you and participating in your work, what's the best way that they can do that?

Speaker 3: 39:27

Yeah, you can go to scottmoutscom and you'll find out about my workshops, keynotes, trainings, the book the Mentally Strong Leader, all my books and also. I put together a gift today for all your listeners, alan, if they go, if they're interested, if they would like a free 60-page PDF which includes the mental strength self-assessment I was talking about earlier, as well as questions and prompts to help you get the most out of the book the Mentally Strong Leader. If you want that free 60-page PDF, you can go to scottmoutscom, slash mentallystrongguilt.

Speaker 1: 39:59

Scott, I'm going to make sure all that information is in the show notes, as well as anywhere that you are on social media, so people can reach out to you and get a hold of you. I want to say once again, brother, thank you so much for being on the show. I love the conversation. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 40:36

I Thanks for having me. I appreciate what you do, al, join the brotherhood that is the Awakened man at theawakenedmannet and start forging a new destiny today.