979: Building Greater Trust and Connection through Storytelling with Scott Mann

Pete Mockaitis
Scott, welcome.

Scott Mann
Hey, thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear your wisdom, and I’d love it if you could kick us off with a riveting tale that’s also instructive about your time in Afghanistan.

Scott Mann
Build trust when risk is low, leverage it when risk is high. That was the one thing that has stuck with me, yes, Afghanistan, but pretty much every tough place that I went to. It was something that I think is very true here. As a Green Beret, we’re a little different than Navy SEALs and Delta Force and those kinds of outfits in that our whole focus, everything we do, is to work by, with, and through indigenous people. That’s what we do.

And all of that, it’s kind of a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia approach. So, most of it is around social capital, building trust, interpersonal skills in really, really, really low-trust environments. And one of the things that I learned in Afghanistan, on multiple tours, was that when things get really difficult and really dangerous and really hard, it’s the trust that you built back when risk was low that will serve you in those high-stakes moments, and I frankly think that’s true in everything that we do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a good principle. And can you share with us how you saw that come to life?

Scott Mann
Most prolifically, I would say it was in the recent abandonment of our allies, almost three years ago to the day, it was in August of 2021, our government made a decision to leave Afghanistan, and I mean leave Afghanistan, like immediately. And as a result of that, probably close to 100,000 Afghan allies were completely left behind. Many of them on the run, hiding. One of them was my friend. His name was Nazam. He and I had fought together in Afghanistan in 2010. We had remained friends for many years.

He was shot through the face defending U.S. Green Berets. That’s the kind of guy he was, and then five weeks later, with a pair of U.S.-made dentures, came back to the firebase and continued to operate. You know, just the kind of guy that the most loyal friend you could ever ask for, and he was one of those guys left in the dirt, you know, left on the side of the road. And when the government didn’t pick up the phone and he was on the run, he called me, and basically said, “You know, sir, I never really worried about dying. It kind of comes with the territory, but I never thought I would die alone.”

And at this point, the Taliban were texting his phone. He was hiding in his uncle’s house, like Anne Frank, and they were circling the driveway, and that just, I don’t know, as I was watching the Taliban roll into Kabul, Pete, it hit me so hard, you know, all those years of fighting there and now my friend, who had stood up for us on so many occasions, was just going to be executed. I couldn’t live with it.

So, I made a commitment to him right there on the spot that we were going to do everything we could to get him out of the country and get him back to the United States. I called up some buddies who were ex-Green Berets and we started formulating a plan using cell phones and relationships, and we helped move him surreptitiously across the city, got him close to the gate. He got himself close to the actual location where the Marines were, and then we started working our contacts to get him pulled inside. And, ultimately, right at the last second, as they were about to throw him out, we got in touch with a State Department guy on the inside who said, “Tell him to say pineapple.” That was the code word.

And so, we’re screaming it to him to say that, and he does, and he gets pulled in, and we became Task Force Pineapple at that point, and that set in motion about a five- or six-day operation of 120 or so veterans to move about a thousand Afghan commandos and their families through a sewage canal and a four-foot hole in the fence, and then ultimately on to the United States where they are today.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow! Well, that illustrates trust right there.

Scott Mann
Exactly. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
You built it by taking a bullet to the face and more, and then, when the risk was high and in desperate need, there you were.

Scott Mann
And no authority, no resources, no time. We weren’t on the ground, so none of the things that you would want as a special operator, and, by the way, I’d been retired for 10 years. I’m a storyteller and a playwright. I’m not exactly your number one draft pick for hostage rescue, but what we did have were relationships. We had a very large portfolio of social capital in that country that we had built over the years, as did the other Green Berets that jumped into the fray.
And, you know, Pete, what I saw in that moment, it was just the worst case of duress that I had ever seen. I did not have answers, I did not have solutions, but what amazed me over and over again was how people were showing up for each other based on years of friendship, trust, and even people that didn’t know each other who were unified around this notion of just honoring a promise. Just honor a promise to our guys and get them out of there, and what lengths people were going to cooperate in real time in just complete chaos.

And, really, I don’t know, it drove home to me that, even in the worst of situations and chaos when nobody’s coming, human connection is the absolute underpinning of getting big stuff done. And it doesn’t matter what the context is, we’ve got to have that.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful. Thank you.

Scott Mann
Yeah, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So, I’m curious, your company’s called Rooftop Leadership. Do these principles factor into the name? Where does that come from and what’s the big idea here?

Scott Mann
That’s a great question. Where that came from is back in 2010, we were losing the war in Afghanistan. We had already been there for 10 years and we were so angry after 9/11 that we had spent most of our time focused on targeting the enemy, including the Green Berets, who, really, our job is to work by, with, and through Indigenous people. We kind of got focused on this top-down targeting approach, and we needed to get back to our roots.

So, we established a new strategy of basically living out in the villages, growing our beards, indigenous clothing, and living and working the way we had done for decades, really, out in these rural communities, helping them stand up on their own. The only problem was, at this point, these communities had seen so much war and violence, and, frankly, we had kicked their doors in for 10 years. It was very hard to establish trust there, but we did, one village at a time, one community at a time, we persuaded them to allow us in small teams to live in their villages, kind of a modern day Magnificent Seven.

And what would happen is the attacks would come from the Taliban as soon as we would move in and live in this community, the Taliban would attack our compound and the village really, and we would go up on the rooftops and we would fight. The Afghan villages would not. They would stay down below and they would hide with their families.

But then after the attack was over, we’d come down, we’d tend to our wounded, and then the next day, you know, we’d go out into the village, we’d meet with elders, we’d drink chai, we’d help them in their fields, we’d try to help them find solutions to food shortages or any low-tech farming problems they were having, dispute resolution, whatever and wherever we could plug in and be relevant, and be relevant guests in their community.

And then two, three, four weeks after getting an entry in that community, there would be a muzzle flash from up on another rooftop shooting in the same direction we were, and it’s not one of our teammates, but it’s a farmer that’s climbed up there and he’s now defending his home – one dude. But usually that would be the tipping point. The next night, you would see three guys up on their roofs. The next night, you would see 10. And ultimately, until the whole village was collectively doing what it had always done, which was stand up on its own.

And over the years, I saw this again and again and again in these really trust-depleted places. And so, one of my jobs was to bring out senior leaders to see this and to talk to them about funding and resourcing, and I would call that rooftop leadership, this ability to move people up onto a proverbial rooftop when it’s hard, when it’s scary, when they don’t want to go, based on doing the right thing, even when people don’t follow you, and human connection, social capital, people taking action because they want to, not because they have to.

When I came back to the United States and I saw how divided we were as a country here and how disconnected, I thought, “Well, we could probably use some rooftop leadership here in America.” So, I started bringing those same skillsets to corporate leaders and associates here at home.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s powerful. Thank you. So, you said they were doing it before, but then it was a big deal when the first guy started getting on the roof. So, can we clarify that?

Scott Mann
Yeah, so let me clarify that. So, these were communities, most communities around the world, most collectives, have a tendency to stand up on their own, and that is one thing I should have clarified, is that these communities had seen so much war and so much violence that they had just lost their purpose. They had lost their collective focus. They have lost their collective will to stand up for themselves, and they’d lost trust in each other, trust in their government, and so that’s kind of what we walked into, you know, and it was very difficult to persuade them in the beginning to take any kind of overt action on their own behalf.

And even though they had a long history before the 40-year war of doing that, and so a lot of this was simply holding space, building human connections, and enabling these individuals to do what they were predisposed to do. Most humans are predisposed to take action. It’s just that when we’re inundated with conditions that cause low trust and low morale and lack of purpose, at some point you start to kind of throw your hands up and check out, and that’s what we were dealing with. Those are the kinds of conditions that Green Berets typically get inserted into. And we turned that around using relationships and bringing one person up at a time to kind of make a stand.

And those same social conditions, although the stakes were different, I see here at home. I saw them when I retired in 2013, the same kind of disengagement and distrust and division that was permeating society over there, it’s terrible over here. We have a lot of disconnection and distrust here at home, a lot of disengagement. I found that that same approach, these old-school interpersonal skills, putting an emphasis on human connection, that’s what people are starving for.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s powerful. Well, I’m curious to hear then, when it comes to this trust-building stuff, I mean, some of it sounds pretty straightforward, yup, just go ahead and courageously put yourself at tremendous risk, and they’ll see you doing that and they’ll notice and appreciate it, like, “All right.”

But in business context, that may not look like shots being fired, so much as, “Hey, I am actually going to vulnerably admit that I made a mistake, that I need help, that I don’t have all the answers, that I desperately need everyone’s best efforts for this thing to work, and I’m going to give my best efforts. That I, as owner, am going to not receive distributions for a little while, while we’re in this tough economic time and we’re sorting things out.”

So, it’s just like kind of put your money where your mouth is, or your heart, your courage, your risk where you want to display that, “I am in this.” That’s a huge trust-builder, in general. Can you tell me, do I have that right or any kind of nuances or elaborations you want to put on that?

Scott Mann
No, I think it’s really good framing that you just did. I’ll just build on that framing, if it’s okay, in the sense that one of the things that Green Berets do and that I’ve done for 30 years is we really study closely what I call the human operating system, the way that humans navigate the world in terms of civil society and their day-to-day life, because we mostly deal in influence and social capital. And by social capital, I mean the oldest form of capital in the world, the tangible and intangible linkages between humans that causes them to take action because we’re social creatures.

And the reality is, Pete, what I’ve learned is that, what works in life and death, the kind of stakes we were talking about in Afghanistan, works even better in life and business, and the reason is because we’re remarkably similar in how we’re wired to navigate the world. Humans we’re very primal. We’re very primal, even though we like to think that we’re sophisticated and that we navigate this modern world and, you know, highly technical creatures, and we are.

The way that we actually navigate the world, the way that we actually take action, is around meaning and emotion and social connection and storytelling and struggle. I mean, we are very, very primal. In fact, I think it was Jared Diamond, an anthropologist who wrote The World Until Yesterday, he said that humans have been primal far longer than they have been modern. And we still have so many of those tendencies with us.

And so, what I’m trying to say is, you know, what I dealt with in terms of tribal dynamics in different villages, and how these tribes and interacted with each other, you see the same tribal dynamics in a merger. If two companies are smashed together, you are essentially putting two tribes together. You’re putting two collectives together with two distinct cultures.

And no matter how good that looks on paper for the associates, for the people that have to go through that merger, it elicits the same primal response of resource scarcity and status and fear-based behavior that our ancestors experienced 20,000 years ago. The amygdala, the ancient part of our brain, doesn’t know the difference. It goes into survival mode.

And what I’ve found is the more that we can understand those primal realities about how we are as humans, how we navigate the world, how we operate, how we take action, the fact, again, that we are meaning-seeking, we need meaning in our lives, the fact that we are first and foremost emotional, and that logic usually follows emotion, those kinds of things that when we do stories, that’s how the brain makes sense of the world.

If you use PowerPoint slides, a recent study showed that an audience will forget 90% of your content 30 per seconds after you say “Thank you for your time” because you’re engaging working memory. You’re not engaging long-term memory. The brain actually needs stories to make sense of things. So, there’s just so much available to us in this primal reality that, if we can tap into and understand that human operating system, it really makes us better at leading ourselves, our family, our co-workers. And it’s the same stuff we use in those rough places, it’s just as relevant here in just about any situation that you could think of at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, could you give us a key principle and then a story of that in practice at work?

Scott Mann
A hundred percent. I’m going to pick storytelling. Storytelling is, there’s different principles, but I’ll start with storytelling, and the reason is because we’re story animals. If you think about what most people have to do at work, I mean, we have to communicate in a strategic way. We have to influence, we have to convince people to believe in our ideas, our products, our vision. And whether that’s communicating internally to other associates or teammates, or whether it’s communicating externally as a salesperson or a client-facing professional, when you think about how distracted, and disengaged, and disconnected we are as a civil society today, I mean, just look around.

Look at how people are, they roll in kind of already skeptical. We’ve got our work cut out for us and you know most people are phones out in an environment where you have to get in front of people. If you’re not compelling right out of the gate, people are on their phones. So how do we how do we hold people’s attention? How do we actually engage them in a way that lends itself to authentic influence? And I have found that storytelling is absolutely at the heart of all of it. The storyteller is going to own the room every time.

And the problem is, our modern society has conditioned us for podiums and PowerPoint, which they’re kind of manifestations of the modern world, but they actually detract from good communication because we don’t understand what really makes humans communicate well. We don’t really have a language for it like we used to. And so, storytelling is such an essential skill. Whether you’re getting up and giving a presentation, whether you’re trying to pitch your boss on something or a sales engagement, narrative is everything.

If you could present your ideas in the form of a story, it’s far more impactful than if you just give facts and figures and PowerPoint, if you can lead off your PowerPoint presentation with a story. What do I mean by a story? I don’t want to be nebulous on that. Basically, a story should have a character. A story should have a character trying to meet some goals, who faces obstacles, and then ultimately overcomes those obstacles. We’re all natural storytellers. We really are. And if you can just integrate stories when you’re talking to your teammates, if you can integrate stories when you’re talking to your boss, it’s a much more effective way to connect with them.

The general rule is what’s personal is universal. Stories of struggle, stories of overcoming pivotal moments, stories of lessons learned, this is what people actually crave, and it kind of doesn’t feel that way and it feels awkward in a business environment, but it’s actually what we’re drawn to. And when you do that, and I’ll end on this, when you lead with story and how you engage people, it makes you more relatable to their pain, and it makes you more relevant to their goals, and that’s actually what people follow, way more than they follow experience or title or the money. We follow people who are relatable and relevant, and storytelling, by definition, makes you that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Scott, give us an example of a story you’ve heard someone tell in a work environment that was just phenomenal at illustrating these perspectives and building trust.

Scott Mann
I like to see it in the day-to-day. It’s great if you can get up on the stage and you’re the boss and you can speak a story of your vision. That’s great. That’s awesome. But for most of us, that’s not where we’re living. What I like to see is what I call narrative competence, the employment of storytelling, purposeful storytelling in real time to meet your goals.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Give me one.

Scott Mann
For example, how many of us have the opportunity to recognize people that we work with? I mean most of us do. Most of us have opportunities to recognize our co-workers, to recognize new team members, to recognize people when they leave our team, to recognize people for achievement. I mean, those are just a few. And you don’t have to have a title to recognize people. You can do it in any social situation on your team.

But if you are a people leader or a supervisor, recognizing people on your team, there’s actually a very powerful way to do this, which is when you’re going to recognize somebody in front of their peers, is to meet with them a little bit ahead of time. I like to say 24 hours, but it could be a couple of hours before you’re going to recognize them, say farewell to them, welcome them to the team.

And when you do that, ask them a couple of thoughtful, open-ended questions about their recent experiences. If you’re going to recognize them, for example, for the work that they did on your team before they departed, ask them some thoughtful, open-ended questions that start with how and what, that have to do with their experience while they were on the team.

“What were some of your most fond memories while you were on the team? What was the most embarrassing thing that you had to overcome that really taught you a lesson while you were on the team?” And then just listen, just shut up and listen. You don’t need to take notes. You don’t need to write down bullet comments because the story brain is wired for narrative. It will remember everything. You just listen with pure discovery.

And then when they’re done, you say, “Would it be okay if I share a few of these with some folks when I recognize you?” They’ll probably say yes, I’ve never seen them say no. And then when it’s time to recognize that individual, you get up there and you share a couple of narratives or stories about what that person told you and why you think it matters to the people you’re talking to. And what you’ll see is a level of an immediate trust acceleration between the two parties. You’ll see a level of reciprocity with this person that you’re honoring, and there’s just no greater way to get that serotonin flow and build credibility with your people than something like that.

You can do the same thing with introductions. If you introduce somebody at a mixer or you’re going to introduce somebody on the stage, rather than get up there and read their bio, which is just so off-putting, meet with them a little ahead of time, ask them some thoughtful open-ended questions, and then tell their story. Tell their story. The one thing that just resonates so deeply with people we lead is when we tell their story better than they do. And no one does it.

And when you do, man, it’s an immediate trust accelerant. It opens doors. It’s sacred. I’ve seen it work in so many different situations, and it’s just a great way to use story in the day-to-day and elevate your role in your position, no matter what that position is.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. So, one great storytelling tip is just ask people those open-ended questions so that their stories bubble up and we can hear them and be enriched by them. Well, Scott, give us an example of when you told a story to introduce someone that was awesome.

Scott Mann
I actually did it recently.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s hear the story.

Scott Mann
We were traveling around, and we were doing our play, “Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret,” and we travel around the country performing this play. And there was a Gold Star family member who had lost a family member in in combat, who had really been through a lot.

And so, meeting with this individual a little bit ahead of time, I was able to ask some questions, and just get to know and some things about their background. And then to recognize that individual and tell their story up on the stage in front of a group of other people that were there to attend the play and that were there to basically attend this play, but what it transitioned into was an opportunity to really recognize a Gold Star family member that had been through immense loss, and who was really trying to find her way in the world.

And, all of a sudden, she hears her story told and the story of her loved one, and she’s immediately immersed in the social connection of this group, and the group feels an immediate connection to her. And, in that case, I’m just the vessel. I’m just the storyteller. I’m just sharing a beautiful narrative of this woman’s life and her loved one with these people that I know are going to care. I’m just that bridge. And as soon as that happened, it was an accelerant for trust. It gave her access and placement to a group of people that she really needed to be around.

So, it doesn’t have to be like epic, or it doesn’t have to have like an ROI to it that we typically evaluate engagements. It could be something as, it’s just a small touch point like that, but extremely profound in somebody’s life. And when we do that, we’re building social capital. One other thing I’ll just say, Pete, to this, and I think it’s a pivot to the same topic, a lot of times it’s not the stories we tell. It’s the stories we ask to hear, particularly in low-trust environments where everybody’s really going through it, or there’s a lot of stress.

Thoughtful, open-ended questions to the other party that just let them respond in story about what’s going on with them in their life, what’s going on with the merger, “How are you feeling about what we’re doing here? What’s the latest thing you’re seeing with this?” and just listen with pure discovery, trying to just see the pictures in their head, pain and goals, pain and goals. And I just keep asking how and what until I really get a sense of what the pictures in their head are.

And that alone, Questionology, Warren Berger calls it, using the reverse where you ask questions that let them tell you a story. It’s like a dance. Narrative competence, the integration of stories and everything that we do, and, hell, two-thirds of the time, it’s stories we’re hearing, not saying, that will really elevate our effectiveness in how we lead.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a great perspective. So now, can we hear you tell a story that’s awesome?

Scott Mann
Well, there can be short stories that are like super short, even when we’re doing social media and things like that. There was Hemingway, had a bet with a reporter, when he was alive, that he could tell a sad story in six words. And the reporter said, “There’s no way you can do that.” So, they had a typical Hemingway wager over a bottle of rum, and Hemingway said, “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I have heard this.

Scott Mann
And I think the larger point is that there is a way to tell stories that, if you train on it, you can integrate even your toughest struggles, your toughest scars. I tell a story, Pete, about my mental health when I came out of the military after almost 23 years. In 2015, I nearly took my own life, and right in this house, in my bedroom closet. I had reached a point after years of combat, and then coming home to a world, it was like a different planet to me.

The people that I looked everywhere were as divided as they were in Afghanistan. They were tearing each other apart, and my purpose and perceived sense of purpose was gone. Everything that I’d known about my life was no more. I’m walking around the house in a bathrobe and not having showered in two weeks, and just like two weeks earlier, I was a high-performing Green Beret. And I lost my way in a very short period of time and found myself in a closet holding a pistol.

And had my son not come home when he did, I don’t think I’d be here. But he did, and thank God I wasn’t able to go through with it. And as a result of that extremely dark low point in my life, it put me on this path to try to find an answer. I knew I had something to say. I knew there was something for me to do in this world. I still had relevance. It’s just that every time I would try to talk about, for example, my lessons that I’d learned as a Green Beret, about human connection, I would jam up when I got in front of people, when I started to talk about those lessons and the battlefield. I would lock up.

And so, I became convinced that there had to be a way for me to bridge that gap. And eventually I ended up finding a mentor, a civilian mentor who was a storyteller himself. He was a former NFL football player named Bo, and he had become an actor and a playwright and a storyteller, and a really good one. And when I saw him on the stage, and I saw what he did, I just thought, “Man, that’s what I ought to be doing. That’s how I can find my way again.” I just knew it like in my chest cavity. And he listened to me and he said, “Okay, I’ll train you.”

And he trained me for two years in the art and science of storytelling, and how to bring the physicality of it, and the struggle, the tough stuff, the scars. And that really was what I locked onto, was taking the struggles and repurposing them into stories that first healed myself, and then I started to use those stories as ways to bridge gaps with bankers, with associates in the tech industry, small businesses, because we’re all wired for struggle. We all go through it. We all struggle.

And when we hear stories of struggle, we listen autobiographically, we locate ourselves in them. And before I knew it, I had done three TED Talks, I had done hundreds of keynotes, I wrote a play about the war to complete my midlife crisis, I learned how to act at age 50 and took the play on tour with Gary Sinise. But at the heart of all of it, Pete, was storytelling, what we’re doing right now.

And it’s just crazy because, at this primal level, we all locate each other in our stories. And if we can just unleash that thing, unleash that muscle and put it into the world, there’s just no ceiling for what you can do. It’s a powerful, powerful tool.

Pete Mockaitis
Whew, I like that a lot. Well, one, I’m so glad you’re here, and thank you.

Scott Mann
Thank you.

Pete Mockaitis
And, two, thank you for sharing that. And, three, as we think about story, it’s amazing how, boy, it’s night and day in terms of like the impact of storytelling when you say, “After I returned from Afghanistan, I struggled with my mental health.” Now, a lot of times when we express ourselves, we kind of leave it at that. But when you actually paint the picture of you are in a closet with a pistol to your head, and your son walks in, it’s night and day.

And both of these descriptions, there is a person struggling with their mental health. But in the latter, in which you’re really sharing what went down, you, a human being in a physical place with objects that we can visualize, it ignites something inside of us, inside of me, and I imagine every listener with a heart, and I think there’s science on this in terms of like mirror neurons or biochemical stuff going on in there. And I think that’s a huge takeaway right there.

And it takes a whole lot more vulnerability as well and courage to share that, not so much, “I struggle with my mental health when I returned from Afghanistan” to painting that picture. And in so doing that, like the connection is like night and day. It’s like ten, a hundred-fold.

Scott Mann
I appreciate you calling that out. And what I want to get across here is this is available to every single one of us. When I was first exposed to this, I thought, “There’s no way.” I watched Bo do this, and I thought, “I could never do that,” and I had the stuff buried deep inside me that I hadn’t even told my wife.

But, Pete, I mean, I’ve lost nine friends to suicide since I got out of the Army, nine friends. And these were, look, these were Delta Force, Navy SEALs, Rangers. These were highly resilient individuals. And then I looked around, that’s what’s happening to mental health in our workplace today, two plus years of COVID, prolonged isolation. Honest to God, I feel like, in so many ways, what we’ve gone through as a society of employees and associates, post-COVID, is like coming home from a two-year deployment.

It’s very similar because people have had these different lived experiences and we don’t know what they are, but there is a, I know this, there is a mental health tsunami in this country right now that we’re dealing with in the workplace, and people are going through it. They’re dealing with stuff. And what I feel like is, “Okay. Well, if my story of how I’ve coped and went through this and struggled and overcame it, and found my way out, if that can allow a young associate somewhere in the country to hear that and locate herself in my story, that’s what I call the generosity of scars.”

It’s when we can repurpose our struggles through stories in the service of other people, and the cool thing is, it is actually why storytelling was invented. It’s what happened. You nailed it when you said the mirror neurons. When we hear a story of struggle, the armor comes down and we listen autobiographically to the person talking. And, all of a sudden now, yeah, you have the context of me in that closet, but there might be some version of you in that closet or someone you knew in that closet.

We start to make sense of, because story is a sense-making tool, we start to make sense of our lived experience, the tough parts, in the safety of somebody else’s narrative. And that’s where the love and the courage and the relatability comes in because, now, you’re holding space so somebody else can make sense of their life in the safety of your story. And, to me, it’s just like, “Man, what a gift to have gone through these things and then be able to repurpose them so that somebody else can make sense of it for their own journey.”

I mean, as far as I’m concerned, that saved my life. It saved my life in so many ways. It gave me my life back, and I love talking to people, like you who get it, who have an audience of people who, I know, will be capable of doing some version of that themselves, and who knows what that can lead to.

Pete Mockaitis
When you say it’s a gift, that really resonates. And I’m thinking that so often, this gift is sort of wrapped up so tight in opaque brown wrapping that we can’t even appreciate it in terms of like, “I struggle with my mental health when I returned from Afghanistan,” or I could just say, “I’m disappointed that I don’t seem to have as much energy, drive, and motivation for my work as I did in 2019.” It’s like, “Okay, that’s something.”

But then you can really share a story in terms of, “I remember when I used to be able to crank through 11 one-hour coaching calls in a day, and say, ‘That was awesome.’ And now, I’m struggling to roll off the couch at 2:30 p.m. after a hefty afternoon nap, just to make it through my inbox,” for example. So, now, it’s sort of like, it’s again, night and day in terms of, “Okay, it’s almost like you’re telling me about the situation versus you’re really telling me here’s the situation.”

Scott Mann
A hundred percent. And, look, the former, to me, is unwatchable. This is what we get all the time. We get this all the time, and we all know it’s false, and frankly, social media, the 24/7 news cycle, this represented reality that we live in most of the time, it’s all performative. It’s all performative. Everyone is giving a performance all the time. And when you’re dealing with that and you’re dealing with a growing level of disconnection in the country and different levels of distrust, you start to isolate.

That starts to have a really profound effect on every aspect of how you do your job, of how you think about your work, how you think about your purpose at your work. And we’re hungry for people, not even leaders, we’re just hungry for people who authentically connect to us. And I get it, some people worry about vulnerability, particularly like in corporate environments, in the military, and the V word gives people a lot of angst because you feel like you’re sticking your jugular out, and I get it.

And what I tell people is, “Okay, cool. Let’s reframe it. Rather than get wrapped up in the vulnerability or the signaling vulnerability, think about relatability. Humans are social creatures. We are actually wired to be social. It’s our superpower, and we connect to the other humans who are relatable to our pain, and that’s what we’re looking for.” And so, if you just focus on asking yourself, when your teenage daughter has been bullied on Instagram, “Am I being relatable to her right now?” You will automatically demonstrate the appropriate level of vulnerability for that moment.

And I found, at least for me, that’s a very, and I teach this to Green Berets and FBI, is it works. It still allows you to bring vulnerability in at just the right level. But as a metric, focus on just being relatable. Just be relatable to somebody’s pain. Be an empathetic witness, as Dr. Benjamin Hardy says. Bear witness to their pain just for the sake of discovery and curiosity, just to see the pictures in their head. No one does that. And if you do that, you’re immediately going to help them drop the body armor, there’s going to be a biological element of reciprocity, and you can start to connect.

We’re actually wired to do it. We just haven’t done it in a long time. And, unfortunately, this transactional world we live in drives us away from it. So, to bring it back to that Nobody’s Coming to Save You, that’s why I wrote the book, it’s just to give as many tactical tools as I can to folks that are having to do this with their teenagers and their spouse and their PTA. We need leaders that connect, and it’s not a foregone conclusion, that instinct is going to get you there.

Pete Mockaitis
And now, when you say, when you respond, just be relatable, could you maybe give us some examples of snippets of dialogue, which would be put in the relatable column and the not relatable column?

Scott Mann
Right on. So, let’s break it down this way. The guy that I studied negotiations under is a guy named Professor Stuart Diamond, and he wrote the book Getting More. One of the things I like that Stuart always said is, “You want to see the pictures in the head of the other party.” Humans operate off the transfer of imagery. It’s just what we do, theory of mind and all that. So, it’s really important to see the pictures in the head of the other party.

A great example of what you’re talking about with the relatability, Chris Voss talks about in Never Split the Difference. When you talk about relatability, I want to see their pain and their goals. I want to be relatable to their pain and relevant to their goals. If I can just get some sense of the pain points that they’re going through, if I can just get some sense of what they’re experiencing internally, of what it is that’s jamming them up, and just ask thoughtful open-ended questions of how or what, that allow me to ascertain what that pain is, and it can be incremental in the beginning.

Like, for example, if my son, Brayden, who’s my youngest, if he’s having a really rough day, I might just start with, “What’s going on, man? How are you feeling? What’s up?” It could just be as simple as that. And, usually, you’re going to get something, you know. And then, a lot of times you could just reflect back, reflective listening, “Really? Really, that’s what she said?” Just be curious. Just show discovery.

And, again, not from a transactional creepy kind of way. I really want to see the pictures in their head, like, “What’s the pain going on here? What’s happening?” And I want to get a clear picture of it, and my end game goal is that I get clear enough on what it is that’s going on with them that I can articulate it back, and they say something like, “That’s right. That’s right.” And when you hear “That’s right,” you’re probably really close to where that person’s ready to listen to what the hell you have to say.

Pete Mockaitis
So, for a teenage bullying situation, so lay it on us, what does relatable sound like there?

Scott Mann
The thing to remember in this is, see what a lot of people try to do when they’re negotiating or influencing is they try to just look at the Questionology aspect of it. In other words, they try to look at the formatting of the questions, and that’s cool, but what I like better is a, “What’s your approach? What is your approach to this situation?” Because, you know, every situation is different with every teenager.

However, there are some universal singulars at play here. For example, if your teenager has been bullied, then it is a foregone conclusion that they are in a sympathetic state. The emotional arousal is somewhere between fear and anger, and there’s pain, and it is a highly aroused state, trance-like state that they’re likely in. They are agitated to a very high degree. If it was a thermometer, they’re high in the red.

And the problem with that is when someone’s in a sympathetic state like that, they can’t hear you. Physiologically, the ears don’t work. Bullets get quiet in a gunfight because you don’t need to hear them. The body moves energy where it needs to move it so that it can handle the situation for survival. It’s an autonomic, physiological response. The sympathetic nervous system clicks in.

Think about if you’ve been in a car wreck or if you get in an argument with somebody, and you’ve heard the term “seeing red” why is that? It’s because you’re elevating your emotional temperature to such a degree you’re preparing to survive. You’re preparing. This is a primal 250,000-year-old response. So, it’s not conducive to reflective listening or cognitive processing and certainly not shared perspective.

So, if I’m a parent, the first thing that I want to remember is what James Claussen says, from Darden University, “Leadership is the management of energy.” Humans are mostly energy. It’s the management of energy, yours and then theirs. So, when I get in front of my kid, “What’s my emotional temperature?” What do most of us do when we see our kids bullied? We mirror. We go in the red, too, right?

And so, I look like I don’t trust myself as I go in, and what I’m trying to say to Brayden, I’m really scared for him, but I just want him to be okay. It comes across as what? I’m telling him how to do it. I’m telling him what he needs to do. It comes across as prescriptive, which immediately agitates him, and he goes up. So, a lot of it is the approach of three diaphragmatic breaths, say, “I have time” three times. Ask yourself these three questions, “Who am I? Why am I here? What do they need from me?”

Just those three steps, three diaphragmatic breaths, belly breaths, three “I have times,” and then “Who am I? Why am I here? What does Brayden need from me?” It will bring you down into a parasympathetic state, calm and connect.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s interesting, the “I have” times.” I’ve heard other things such as “I am safe,” “I am enough,” “I am loved.” If you went for “I have time,” can you expand upon that?

Scott Mann
It’s called temporal pacing. It’s actually something. And a lot of the techniques that I’ve actually learned for high-stakes engagement, I actually learned in acting, because in acting, when you get up in front of people, you go into a sympathetic state. Because we’re status creatures and we’re worried about how we’re being judged, and so we start to speak faster and we start to move up. The same thing when we get up in front of people to give a presentation and a briefing. We have to pace it down. We have to slow it down, which feels unnatural. It’s called temporal pacing.

So, just by verbally saying, “I have time,” I regulate my own emotional temperature. I slow my pacing down, and all of that crap that I just had in the last meeting that is jamming me up, by doing those three “I have times,” I can leave that at the door where they belong and not in the next meeting and projecting it on someone who doesn’t deserve it.

Pete Mockaitis
And I love this, the effect of the rate of speech. And I see this in my own world if I’m listening to an audiobook, sometimes I will crank that bad boy at over 2X speed, and that produces one effect, like “Okay, I’m dialed in. We’re doing this.” And other times, I will crank it all the way down to like 0.7 speed, so slow.

And Audible is amazing at this with their algorithms to not make the pitch get weird. I’m an audio dork in that way, and so it’s just very slow. But, sure enough, that gets me sleepy. It is fantastic when I want to fall asleep, it’s like, “We’ll make that super slow.” And, likewise, “I have time,” slowly to yourself, it would make sense, it follows then, that that would get you in that groove of, “Oh, okay, no need to rush and speed through this, because I have time.”

Scott Mann
It’s the coolest thing. And I’ve had guys take this into Afghanistan, Syria, acting, Broadway shows, interrogations, presentations. Like, it works, and I call it pre-engagement preparation. If you want, I’ve got it on a little video, I’ll flip it over to you, and feel free to share it with whoever. I think we need all the tools we can get, and that one does work.

But taking it back to the bullied teenager, regulating your own emotional temperature is essential, and then getting a sense of the emotional temperature of the teenager across from you, “What is her emotional temperature? Is she in the red?” And the ultimate question I want to ask myself in this moment, and it’s not just for bullied teenagers, it’s for any high emotion situation, “What’s it going to take to get her ready to listen to me? What does she need? What is it going to take to get her to a place where she’s ready to listen to what I have to say, because she’s clearly not. She’s clearly not.”

Nine times out of ten, someone is dealing with something, the last thing they want is another party coming in and chirping in their ear. They’re not ready for it. They’re still in a state. They are in a trance state of fear or anger-based behavior. So, the responsible thing is to show up, “Okay, how can I hold space here and help her bring her emotional temperature down to where she’s ready to listen to what I have to say?”

Now in this case, the most important thing is just, make a human connection first. Don’t try some questioning technique. Don’t try, you know, whatever. Just make a human connection, and your instincts will guide you in that if you’re open to it. Is it just sitting there in silence with them? Is it just putting your arm around them? Is it just letting them know you’re there? And is it just saying, “Are you okay? How can I help?”

But if we can ask these open-ended questions of how and what, even if they’re irate and angry, Pete, what will happen is their emotional temperature, they’re expending energy, right, so the emotional temperature from the sympathetic state will start to drop, and that’s why questions are so important instead of statements. How and what questions allow them to respond in narrative, which is the natural way to respond, and their emotional temperature will start to drop from sympathetic state of fight, flight, or freeze to parasympathetic state of calm and connect.

And then, at some point, and again, what am I looking for? I’m just trying to ascertain pictures in their head, pain and goals, pain and goals, what’s going on. And the more that I can get clarity on that with pure discovery and curiosity, and that’s it, at some point, when I articulate back to them, and they say, “That’s right,” “Would it be okay if I shared something with you?” like, then you’re probably ready to engage, really engage, and maybe offer something. Nine times out of ten, that’s what people need. They don’t need you to sit there and spew at them. They need two-thirds of every engagement, if it matters, is questions.

Pete Mockaitis
All right, thank you. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Scott Mann
He’s sitting right outside the room here listening to my podcast because that’s what he does. My dad, my hero, a 42-year firefighter in the Forest Service on his third bout with cancer, a stroke, my biggest fan, and I’m his biggest fan, “Leave tracks. Leave tracks.” That’s what my dad says that all of us should be doing in this world. And it is this notion that we’re all here to do something bigger than ourselves, that we’re all meaning-seeking, meaning-assigning creatures, looking for that impact, and our legacy is the most important thing that we can do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Scott Mann
I would say mine has been in the generosity of scars. It’s been in noticing how storytelling works with deep grief and trauma and loss, and how it’s allowed people to come out of the darkness and really find new meaning in their life by repurposing these stories in the service of others. I think it’s not the silver bullet to mental health, but it is definitely a hugely helpful tool that we’re not tapping into and we need to.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Scott Mann
Let’s see, favorite book would be this one right here, Steven Pressfield, The War of Art. He’s a good buddy of mine, and I’m a big fan of Steve and his outlook on resistance and overcoming self-sabotage for something greater than yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Scott Mann
I would say my PEP, pre-engagement preparation is my favorite tool. Yeah, what we just talked about, “I have time” and those three things.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit, something you do that helps you be awesome at your job?

Scott Mann
I do a thing called the Tribal 12 every morning where I wake up and I work on my instrument as a storyteller. And it’s a series of 12 rituals that I do that involve everything from diaphragmatic breathing, to voice and articulation drills, to physical movements and character gestures, that no matter what I face that day, my instrument for communication is ready to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote back to you often?

Scott Mann
“Meet people where they are, not where you want them to be.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Scott Mann
ScottMann.com. It’s all right there.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Scott Mann
See if you can get somebody to say “That’s right” in the next 48 hours that’s going through something.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Scott, this has been a treat. I wish you much good trust conversations.

Scott Mann
Thanks, Pete. Appreciate you, man.